Springsteen Cases The Promised Land (Part One)

by Bart Bull (published in Sounds, 1975)

It's Wednesday,  no show tonight, and Bruce and his guitar player, a guy called Miami Steve Van Zandt, and another guy, remarkably and conveniently named R.M, who turns out to be road manager for something called Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, are all wandering around the Arizona State Fair, looking for something to do in Phoenix F. Arizona on their night off. Bruce was more than a little disappointed at only getting two encores at last night's show, and now . . . now there's this Hollywood business. It's getting to be a real drag. 

 "They got me going to California on Thursday after the show," he's grumbling, "to talk to some guy."    It sounds especially ominous the way he delivers it. " . . . some guy . . . " And then, even worse, to actually have to talk to him. Striding down the midway with his tough guy punk walk, the tough punk walk that fits him right in with every other tough guy punk who's cruising past the corn-dogs, sauntering beyond the all the flashing bulbs on all the Tilt-A-Whirls and the Swedish Bobsleds and the Haunted Houses of Horror, and Bruce is mostly and mainly distinguished by his distracted thoughtful look, and by the fact that there's a red-headed photographer scrambling over all kinds of obstacles to grab just the exact right perfect shot off this one particular tough-walking punk at the State Fair. 

 It's real late on a real slow week-night in those last final days when the State Fair has pretty much shot its wad (they've got to be losing money just by being open) and the carneys aren't hustling like they would if there was anything that vaguely resembled a crowd. It's empty, pretty much, and pretty much dead. Besides, Springsteen and R.M. and Miami Steve (Bruce never calls him Steve, and never even just shorthands it down to "Miami," it's always "MYYY-AMI-STE-Eee-EVE!") are spectacularly easy marks. You'd never guess they grew up within stumbling distance of the Asbury Park, New Jersey boardwalk. Matter of fact, Miami Steve even falls for that one where you try to toss ping-pong balls into glass ashtrays, with the ashtrays floating and spinning as they swirl around a blue-green plastic wading pool. A genuine sucker's shot, one that nobody ever wins, nobody ever, except maybe that long and lean lantern-jawed cowboy over there, the one with larceny in mind, that Cottonwood cowpoke who's looking surreptitiously side to side, waiting ultra-obviously until the carneys allegedly aren't looking — because, you know, they've never ever had any local Wednesday night cowboy attempt to put one over one 'em before — and then, leaning way, way, wa-a-ay over, and ever . . . so . . . gently . . . and — Da-amn! But eventually he somehow finally manages to actually slip one in, and then the carneys grab up a big giant stuffed St. Bernard and toss it back and forth among themselves, semi-bored, chanting "Anothah winnah! Anoth-ah win-nah!!" and big Tex is grinning his jaw so hard it looks like he actually believes he won a stuffed dog on the up-and-up square and so, to properly focus her attentions, he keeps a steady pumping motion of his elbow right directly into his cowgirl companion's ribs all the while.

Miami Steve catches all the hoopla and decides, the perfect victim of the shill, that this has got to be his game. He plunks down his buck, gets his dozen ping-pong balls and commences tossing. The astonishing experience of watching ball after ball hit dead center and then bounce blithely right back out again begins to get to him, so he sort of sidles over to the blond kid in the ponytail and gets him to secretly slip him some of the balls that have rolled under the counter. It's a ploy that nets him maybe a couple of extra balls, but to no avail whatsoever.  He strikes out. Daunted but entirely undaunted, only just slightly dejected, he rushes and hustles to catch up with Bruce over at the video machines. The two of them start out with a duck hunting game, then they move over to "Anti-Aircraft," shooting down fighter planes as they jet across the screen to the sound of engines roaring and calamitous explosions. "We got it! This is our machine," chortles Miami Steve, a winner at last, yanking at his artillery controls. "This is our machine, Boss!" The Boss is leaning back grim-lipped and silent, trying to gun down the jet that just shot past Miami Steve. The game trailer attendant is eyeballing them impatiently —as soon as their last plane goes down with a sputtering spluttering buzz, he reaches up to lower the trailer's siding, which has been propped up to create a roof. Bruce and Miami Steve are searching their pockets for more quarters, entirely oblivious, but when the carney starts to lower the siding right down on top of them, Miami Steve stage-whispers, "I think they're trying to give us a message..." 

 Looking for a way out, winding around the fairgrounds, they break into two bunches. Miami Steve and the redheaded photographer are profoundly engaged in a philosophical discussion at a volume level right on the borderline between debate and armed combat. Springsteen, R.M., and the blond kid are lagging. "I kinda O.D.'ed on interviews," Springsteen says, scuffing his boot at an empty popcorn box. Within the week, he'll be on the cover of both Time and Newsweek simultaneously. "Everybody wants to spend all their time talkin' about what we're doin'.  All I want to do is do it, but it's gettin' harder and harder." His speaking voice is surprisingly identical to the pained Brando-esque voice on his recordings. It would sound affected if it didn't come so easily. Maybe it was an affectation back in some dim and obscure adolescence, when some skinny kid first tried it on in front of his friends, like a too-new leather jacket, unworn, unstained, with not a rip or a scratch. Now, nicely broken-in, nothing could fit more naturally. 

Both the two small groups pass by the flag-draped stage only just vacated by "Poncie Ponce — TV's Favorite Hawaiian cabdriver!" and "his Royal Hawaiian Revue." (Poncie Ponce was once a sort of sub-sidekick on "Surfside Six;" with a billing like that, you can't help but wonder who works out to be TV's least favorite Hawaiian cabdriver.) Outside the Exhibition Hall, where prize cattle and sheep are settling in for the night, there is a wooden box, painted as if to resemble an old fashioned red barn, but with a glass showcase in front. On the other side of the glass resides a chicken, a white hen who will, if a dime is shoved into the slot, begin to tap-dance. 

Miami Steve sees the sign over the miniature barn, "Dancing Chicken," and hollers back over his shoulder to Springsteen: "Hey, here's one of them chickens!" There is a metal floor beneath the bird, and when the dime drops, electricity is conducted, and the chicken hops and skips and jumps and does its best to keep from touching the hot-wired floor it must necessarily touch. And it dances.  

Springsteen swings his hands-in-pocket shuffling to steer by the chicken's cage, staring in silently. Concerned, perhaps, or maybe just reconciled, the bird stares back. No wisdom is exchanged. "Those poor chickens. In Jersey, it's against the law to do that." This, however, is Arizona; not every state is so enlightened. He jams his hands into his pockets even more fiercely, then begins to mumble to himself. Looking up at R.M., he says, "I don't think I wanna go. Mike keeps tellin' me I gotta go, but I'll just get on some plane and go there and meet this guy and then get back on some other plane. I don't think I'm gonna go." His boot heels are dragging hard against the fairgrounds. The chicken is still staring as he goes. Maybe it's waiting for the next dime to drop. "Okay with me," says R.M. "You're the Boss." (follow this link for more)

The Runaways (their first record reviewed)

published in Sounds

Rock'n'roll has always been the domain of the ignorant, the immature, the idiot. It's not, let's face it, the most advanced musical form around in terms of cerebral stimulation, but there's a certain undeniable satisfaction to be derived from a particularly brash bass line, a sudden Chuck Berry lick, from those damn dumb drums. Intellectuals can't rock. Or, as The Runaways might put it: Brains suck!

Noted Hollywood hypester Kim Fowley has gathered together these nubile young females, each absolutely guaranteed to be sixteen (one exception: the lead guitarist is an old maid of seventeen), each absolutely guaranteed to play her own instrument. He's been flooding the pop journals with juicy little tidbits, assembling an image for The Runaways as the girls in your history class who could never stay awake because they'd been out until three the night before. Sex! Drugs! Beer!

Fowley's publicity overkill is almost certain to result in the type of backlash that nearly swamped the careers of both Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith last year, with program directors, rock critics, radio deejays and the public lining up arm-in-arm cha-cha-chanting "Hype!" Which is kind of unfortunate because when all considerations of package and product and pimp are over, this is great strong rock'n'roll. Ok, so the album does sound like it was recorded in a galvanized garbage can (Fowley produced) and the playing is unspectacular but it works nevertheless. It takes a certain degree of naivetee to make rock'n'roll and The Runaways are nothing if not genuinely enthusiastically naive. The Who may have a hard time keeping a straight face while doing "My Generation" these days but when Cherie Currie shrieks "Her life was saved by rock'n'roll," (from Lou Reed's "Rock And Roll"), there's no doubt she believes it. It may be dumb, but so what?

Most of the album consists of single-sized punchers with titles like "Cherry Bomb," (the band's logo carries a cherry, just in case you missed the point), "Thunder," and "You Drive Me Wild," most of them underscored with orgasmic moans. The album's capper though, is a seven minute rock epic entitled "Dead End Justice" that, if nothing else, will put Springsteen's more dramatic yarns in a new light:
"Where am I?"
"You're in a cheap, rundown teenage jail, that's where!"
"Oh my God!"

Springsteen Cases the Promised Land

by Bart Bull
published in Sounds, 1975 (excerpt)

[Scene: Arizona State Fair, middle of the week, late]

Springsteen is brooding still, walking, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, only slowing his pace to look sideways at a big heifer. The heifer grunts as he goes by. Leaving the barn, a security guard lets them out a gate and they converge on the now-empty lot where the car is parked. Somebody put the homemade cardboard parking sign on the windshield. Miami Steve's discussion with the photographer is getting more and more, uhm, involved, and R.M. the road manager has gone over to supply reinforcements to Van Zandt, who's punctuating a very important point by prodding the photographer with his stuffed snake. The kid and Springsteen are standing off together, over to the side, and the the kid is saying something about a hype. "Like I said, I ODed on publicity," Springsteen mutters. "I mean, I like it, I like to talk to people about my music, but it's gettin' to be so much, ya know? I mean the only people who read what a writer's got to say is other writers."

But aren't you a writer?, the kid asks.

"Yeah, but what I'm doin' . . . it's like I'm here, and that's all you can say. I'm doin' what I want. I mean, all I ever wanted to do was make records, have a band like this . . . " His hands, which had been pulled out of his pockets to illustrate his intentions, get jammed back in, and he rocks back and forth on the heels of his boots. "I don't want all this other stuff, ya know?"

[More excerpts will appear until this story is complete and entire]

Elvis Presley; The Great Performances

by Bart Bull
(published in Details)

Elvis, of course, invented rock ‘n’ roll. And rap too. Elvis invented Judaism and schmaltz both. He invented the guitar and the gramophone, Dilaudid and the DEA, Dylan, Springsteen, Morrissey, Public Enemy, Guns N’ Roses, rock criticism, and the modern milking machine. He was the Singing Brakeman, the Father of Country Music, the Waltz King, the High Sheriff of Hell, the Woman Who Broke Up The Beatles, His Master’s Voice. Regrets ? He had a few. Then again, too few to mention.

Neil Young; Life

by Bart Bull
(published in SPIN)

I don't know about you, but when I'm looking for trenchant analysis of one or another of today's unutterably complex political issues, I reach for the latest record by some rock star. Like Neil Young, for instance. As far back as "Southern Man," Neil was offering thoughtful solutions to our nation's centuries-old racial conflict:

Southern man, better keep your head
Don't forget what your good book said . . .

Of course, Neil's a lot older now, and he's smoked a lot more pot. A lot more. A lot. A lot more pot. What were we talking about? Ok, so, like, Neil Young. He's got another new album out -- that makes maybe 26 or 27 for this decade alone -- and on it he daringly dives head first into some of the more baffling international issues of our day. Ever see somebody dive head first into a swimming pool they thought was full of water, only it turns out it wasn't?

Neil's not exactly all that sure what it is he wants to say about the Middle East , but he goes ahead and says it just the same. He's big on being enigmatic anyway, and it sure sounds profound -- he uses more gunfire for percussion on his first two songs than you'd ordinarily find on an entire Big Audio Dynamite lp. On "Long Walk Home," he sort of gathers it all up into one big epiphanous nutshell:

From Vietnam to old Beirut
If we are searching for the truth
Why do we feel that double-edged blade
Cutting through our hand?
America, America
[a comparatively small mortar round explosion here]
Where have we gone?

Okay, I would admit that Neil's not at his absolute best here, that it kind of makes Little Steven seem listenable, that it's not all that likely to be reprinted verbatim in The Nation or The New Republic. (Then again, I've seen stuff in those places about rock stars like Bruce Springsteen and David Byrne too silly to be printed on a Neil Young lyric sheet. And that's real silly.) But there are actually some areas that Neil can be said to know some actual something about, like what it's like to be the first rock star to be sued by his own record company for being an uncommercial weirdo. That's a subject Neil ought to be able to gnaw on with some considerable authority, right? So here goes:

People tell us that we play too loud
But they don't know what our music's about
We never listen to the record company man
They try to change us and ruin our band
That's why we don't wanna be good

Well, something that Neil really knows a lot about is being lonely, and all the rest of the songs are about just that. They're maybe not the best lonely songs Neil's ever done, they're maybe not even in the upper fiftieth percentile of the three or four hundred songs that Neil's done that have the word lonely in them. But they do sound just like Neil Young singing about being lonely, and if there weren't some kind of market for that kind of thing, I can't imagine record company men would keep giving the guy record contracts, considering what an uncommercial weirdo he is. Besides, Neil's always been somewhat of a hit-or-miss kind of guy. He brings out an album or two that's pretty good, has a couple of songs on it that are real good. Then he brings out a dozen or two of the other kind. Like this one.