"He loved me but he couldn't stand me," the son writes. His father, Douglas, was an angry, drifting misanthrope whom Springsteen seems always to see drinking in the dark, alone at the kitchen table. His mother, Adele (still dancing at her son's concerts at 90), is gregarious and indomitably optimistic she often supported the family as a legal secretary. I am alienating, alienated and socially homeless. Born into a mostly Irish and Italian family, he was spoiled from birth by a fiercely protective grandmother, a process that gave him a precocious self-confidence but also "turned me into an unintentional rebel, an outcast weirdo misfit sissy boy. The richest and most heartfelt portions of the book deal with a major theme that has always run through Springsteen's songwriting: his upbringing in the blue-collar, mostly Catholic, largely immigrant town of Freehold, N.J., and the family dynamics that shaped him indelibly. And they reveal that the music that has rocked and raised up countless fans was born at a cost. The book is an affirmation that, along with his musical brilliance and matchless performance skills, the man is a terrific storyteller and writer. No Springsteen concert has ever disappointed me, but I missed those intros.īorn to Run, Springsteen's new autobiography, reads like a greatest-hits collection of them. As his list of hits grew and his concerts morphed into the four-hour marathons he now (at age 67) performs, those wonderful stories fell by the wayside.
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