From the Writer's Almanac this morning
Sep. 23rd, 2005 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sun_set_bravelyIt's the birthday of the singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen, born in Freehold, New Jersey (1949). He was a working class kid. His father took odd jobs. His mother worked as a secretary. Bruce didn't do well in school. He didn't seem to have much ambition. Then he saw Elvis on TV, and he scraped together $18 to buy a secondhand guitar. Music was his way of being noticed by people. By the time he was 14, he was playing in local bands on the bar circuit, bands with names like the Rogues, the Castiles, the Steel Mill, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom.
He played at prisons and mental hospitals, a rollerdrome, shopping center parking lot, and he played at firemen's balls. His first album was Greetings from Asbury Park (1973). In just a few years, he'd been on the cover of Time magazine. He was a best-selling artist.
Monmouth County, where Bruce Springsteen grew up, lost more people in the World Trade Center than any other county in New Jersey. He read the New York Times obituaries, and he saw how many times one of his songs was played at a memorial service and how many of the articles mentioned that the deceased had loved Springsteen's music. There was a headline for one man, Jim Berger, that read: "Fan of the Boss," so Springsteen called up his widow, Suzanne. Another fan was a firefighter named Joe Farrelly, and Springsteen called his wife as well. She later said, "I got through Joe's memorial and a good month and a half on that phone call."
~ ~ ~
I guess this is when you know you're successful, when you've touched lives like he has. What a guy.
In other news, I'm going on vacation. Kinda tricky to think about relaxing right now, when most of my family is in the path of a Category 4 hurricane. But I'm praying and calling them often, and there's not much more I can do. It'll be okay.
See y'all soon.
He played at prisons and mental hospitals, a rollerdrome, shopping center parking lot, and he played at firemen's balls. His first album was Greetings from Asbury Park (1973). In just a few years, he'd been on the cover of Time magazine. He was a best-selling artist.
Monmouth County, where Bruce Springsteen grew up, lost more people in the World Trade Center than any other county in New Jersey. He read the New York Times obituaries, and he saw how many times one of his songs was played at a memorial service and how many of the articles mentioned that the deceased had loved Springsteen's music. There was a headline for one man, Jim Berger, that read: "Fan of the Boss," so Springsteen called up his widow, Suzanne. Another fan was a firefighter named Joe Farrelly, and Springsteen called his wife as well. She later said, "I got through Joe's memorial and a good month and a half on that phone call."
~ ~ ~
I guess this is when you know you're successful, when you've touched lives like he has. What a guy.
In other news, I'm going on vacation. Kinda tricky to think about relaxing right now, when most of my family is in the path of a Category 4 hurricane. But I'm praying and calling them often, and there's not much more I can do. It'll be okay.
See y'all soon.
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Your Family
Date: 2005-09-23 11:21 am (UTC)and that you have a swell vacation.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 01:28 pm (UTC)Whoa-oh-oh, I'm on fire.
Date: 2005-09-23 03:01 pm (UTC)Another band he formed--with a few future E Streeters, I think--was called Earth, but changed their names either because of, or coincidentally at the same time as, a bunch of Birmingham, UK rockers who had named themselves the same thing. 1970 dawned, and those Birmingham rockers became...Black Sabbath. There's your rock trivia for the day.
And if any musician short of Dylan deserves to show up in the Writer's Almanac, it's the Boss. Not just for artistic achievement, but for that kind of humanitarian achievement that this excerpt talks about. It takes real effort to stay as down-to...er...earth as he is when you're that successful.
Big prayers to you and yours, and to anyone else who's feeling afraid right now. I pray your vacation is relaxing.
Heard it at Noon
Date: 2005-09-23 08:57 pm (UTC)caught Garrison Keilor(sp?) doing this piece.
Good stuff.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 09:54 pm (UTC)