The dust hasn't settled yet, and now likely never will. After almost three years of legal entanglements, a creative time-out and a lingering celebrity hangover, Bruce Springsteen has come storming back, raising a fine ruckus, not just reaffirming his promise as the pre-eminent rock figure of the late '70s, but redeeming, even enhancing it.
A volley of legal actions between Bruce and his former manager kept Springsteen effectively off course for more than a year after the release of his galvanic 1975 album Born to Run. Once he and Producer Jon Landau began recording again in the spring of 1977, it took him ten months, and upwards of 30 songs, to come up with Darkness on the Edge of Town, which headed straight for the Top Ten after its release in June. It has been there ever since, setting up a long-term residence and lending a little class to that generally tacky neighborhood.
All this time, too, Springsteen had to do battle with the crosscurrents of high hopes and deep cynicism that eddied around him; there were those who thought his career was a classic case study in media hype. Although most of these critics never listened to his records or saw him in concert, the charge still stung. Celebrity had hit Springsteen with unexpected force. One of his crew members recalls that the afternoon of his first London concert Springsteen found every seat in the house covered with enthusiastic, often evangelic, reviews and "started tearing them all up. He just wasn't ready." Later, he handled the fuss in the same way he deals with all the reflections of his past and refractions of his fantasy: through his music.
In Rosalita, his classic rocker about a street dude come acourting, the suitor presses his advantage by announcing that "the record company just gave me a big advance." Springsteen often sings it that way. But sometimes, he will throw his head back into the full glare of an overhead spot, grin with pride on one side of his wide smile and irony on the other, and shout out: "Your Papa says he knows that I don't have any money/ This is his last chance/ Tell him, Rosie, I ain't no freak/ 'Cause I got my picture/ On the cover of TIME and Newsweek." The audience roars, and the Boss, as friends call him, moves along to more pressing matters.
"When all that attention started," Springsteen, now 28, reflects, "I was out in L.A. and Jack Nicholson came to a show. I asked him how he handled the attention. He said, for him, it was a long time coming and he was mostly glad to have it. I didn't see it quite that way. I bundled it all together into one general experience and labeled it 'bad.' I felt control over my life and career was slipping away and that all the attention was . . . like . . . an obstacle. But that was a mistake. After a while I realized, well, time was on my side. What ever happens. I wasn't gonna go away. I got no place to go."