Born to Run (24 page)

The talk began lighthearted: “How have you been?” Then, as the night and booze set in and we shouted over the band, I heard there’d been a divorce, a separation from a high school sweetheart,
tears, it was over. Though I truly couldn’t have cared less, I was listening like the secrets of the Dead Sea scrolls were being revealed to me. All I was hearing was her hair, her
eyes, her lips, her T-shirt, then, with the dark spirits of tequila slowly working their way down below my belt, it was last call. The house lights were up. The bouncers were herding the crowd toward the door and suddenly
I was saying good-bye to . . . Big Danny! I was in a car headed for Freehold, the scene of my childhood sins, and I was ready to add a few more. In the backseat was a pal of mine who’d hooked it up with my gal’s girlfriend. The two of us were headed for my hometown.

Somewhere along the highway, just west of a wreck of a theme park called Cowboy City, where you could ride little mules, get held
up in a stagecoach and see gunfights of the old West reenacted on any Summer Jersey afternoon, a syrupy lover’s lament came on the radio, bringing tears from my cheerleader’s slate-blue eyes as she mentioned it was their song and asked if I too was moved. I made the mistake of saying, “Not so” . . . and my buddy and I found ourselves deposited roadside, on Route 33, at four a.m., caught in the emotional
confusion of my suddenly self-reproaching high school crush.

We waved good-bye to the taillights and broke into hysterical booze-fueled laughter, rolling in the shoulder-side grass outside the chain-link fence of the Earle Naval Ammunition Depot. We stuck out our thumbs, and it still being the day when midnight drivers would pick up two staggering drunks by the side of the road in the wee hours,
we scored a spirited ride with a kindred soul all the way back to Asbury Park. I scuttled in at dawn, having had what I believed to be the greatest night of my life. I believed it all the way to the next morning, when I woke up, head banging, muscles aching, dry mouthed and stupid with my first-ever hangover. Still, it was worth it. I’d shut down my loudmouthed, guilt-infested, self-doubting,
flagellating inner voice for an evening. I found, unlike my father, I was generally a merry drinker simply prone to foolish behavior and occasional sexual misadventure, so from then on and for quite a while thereafter the mescal flowed . . . tequila.

Greetings
was done. I’d gotten the first few dollars of some advance
money, which I unfortunately had to use to bail Big Danny out of jail for some
unremembered infraction. We went back to our apartment and I played my album for Danny, its first listener. Success! He liked it but he had just one question: “Where’s the guitar?” I was the fastest guitar player alive . . . in Monmouth County, and there was no guitar to be found on my record. No one locally had heard this new and very different material I’d been writing. I’d made the conscious
decision to double down on my songwriting skills; I felt this was the most distinctive thing I had going. Here in town it would be a few albums before my small legion of fans would understand what I was doing, but I’d recorded a real album, one with a real record company, songs and an album cover. It was unheard of.

I Heard It on the Radio

Things were heating up. A film was sent to every Columbia
Records branch in every major city of Clive Davis doing a solo reading of the lyrics to “Blinded by the Light” like it was Shakespeare. Even so,
Greetings
only sold about twenty-three thousand copies; that was a flop by record company standards but a smash by mine. Who were all those strangers buying my music?

I was standing on a street corner before a college gig in Connecticut as a car pulled
up to a light and I heard “Spirit in the Night” blasting from the radio, your number one rock ’n’ roll dream come true! You never forget the first time you hear your song on the radio. Suddenly, I was a part of the mystery train of popular music that had had me in its spell since I’d been driven past the “buttons” of the radio tower in my grandpa’s sedan with the smoky sounds of doo-wop caressing
my sleepy eyes. The radio had kept me alive and breathing throughout my teens. For my generation, music sounded best coming out of a tiny, tinny radio speaker. Later, when we recorded we had one of those speakers sitting on top of the studio console and we didn’t sign off on a mix until the music sounded like it was roaring out of it. Music on
the radio is a shared fever dream, a collective hallucination,
a secret amongst millions and a whisper in the whole country’s ear. When the music is great, a natural subversion of the controlled message broadcast daily by the powers that be, advertising agencies, mainstream media outlets, news organizations and the general mind-numbing, soul-freezing, life-denying keepers of the status quo takes place.

In the 1960s the first version of my country that struck
me as truthful and unfiltered was the one I heard in songs by artists like Bob Dylan, the Kingsmen, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield. “Like a Rolling Stone” gave me the faith that a true, unaltered, uncompromised vision could be broadcast to millions, changing minds, enlivening spirits, bringing red blood to the anemic American pop landscape and delivering a warning, a challenge that could become
an essential part of the American conversation. This was music that could both stir the heart of your fellow countrymen and awaken the mind of a shy, lost fifteen-year-old in a small New Jersey town. “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Louie Louie” let me know that someone, somewhere, was speaking in tongues and that absurd ecstasy had been snuck into the Constitution’s First Amendment and was an American
birthright. I heard it on the radio.

As I stood on that corner listening to “Spirit in the Night” through a stranger’s car window at a stoplight, I finally felt like a small piece of that glorious train. It was more than a thrill. It was all I wanted to do: find a way to honor those who’d inspired me, make my mark, have my say and hopefully inspire those who’d pick up the flag long after we were
gone. Even as young men we took our fun seriously, and forty-three years later I still get the same thrill when I hear new music of mine for the first time coming across the airwaves.

TWENTY-SIX

ROAD WORK

Greetings from Asbury Park
had been released on January 5, 1973, to many good reviews and a few ripping pans. We then hit the road. Our first official gig was a freebie at a Pennsylvania college opening for Cheech and Chong. Cheech and Chong were at their jokin’, dope-smokin’ peak and the school auditorium was jammed. Right out of the box we had a rocking little show. The
Big Man was there. I strapped on my new guitar, a 1950s mutt with a Telecaster body and an Esquire neck I’d purchased at Phil Petillo’s Belmar guitar shop for one hundred and eighty-five dollars. With its wood body worn in like the piece of the cross it was, it became the guitar I’d play for the next forty years. It was the best deal of my life. For our live show we’d recast the songs from
Greetings
into rock and soul music and were having a pretty good time for twenty-five minutes or so, then I felt a tap on my back while I was playing the piano and a guy whispered in my ear to get off the stage.
Somebody decided we were through. We left to a decent ovation and it was one down, one thousand and one to go.

Touring conditions were not the best. All five of us rode in Vini’s junker, and everyone
but myself took turns driving. I still had no license and my style behind the wheel was considered inept and reckless endangerment by the band. We drove, we slept where we could—cheap motels, promoters’ houses, with girlfriends in a variety of cities—we drove, we played, we drove, we played, we drove, we played. We opened for Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sha Na Na, Brownsville Station, the
Persuasions, Jackson Browne, the Chambers Brothers, the Eagles, Mountain, Black Oak Arkansas. We shared bills with NRBQ and Lou Reed and did a thirteen-day arena tour with brass-section hit makers Chicago. We were top billed, with Bob Marley and the Wailers opening (on their first US tour), in the tiny 150-seat Max’s Kansas City. On stages across America we were cheered, were occasionally booed,
dodged Frisbees from the audience, received rave reviews and were trashed. Mike booked us at car shows and Sing Sing prison. It was all in a day’s work and as far as I was concerned, it was the life. There would be no nine-to-five world for me, just a long, often arduous but who’s-kidding-who free ride of a seven-day weekend.

Conditions were generally horrible, but compared to what?! The dumpiest
motel on the road was a step up from my home digs. I was twenty-three and I was making a living playing music! Friend, there’s a reason they don’t call it “working,” it’s called PLAYING! I’ve left enough sweat on stages around the world to fill at least one of the seven seas; I’ve driven myself and my band to the limits and over the edge for more than forty years. We continue to do so but it’s
still “playing.” It’s a life-giving, joyful, sweat-drenched, muscle-aching, voice-blowing, mind-clearing, exhausting, soul-invigorating, cathartic pleasure and privilege every night. You can sing about your misery, the world’s misery, your most devastating experiences, but there is something in the gathering of souls that blows the blues away. Something that lets some sun in, that keeps you breathing,
that lifts you in
a way that can’t be explained, only experienced. It’s something to live for, and it was my lifeline to the rest of humanity in the days when those connections were tough for me to make. Can it be hard? . . . Yeah. Is everyone built for it physically and psychologically? . . . No. Are there nights you don’t want to go on? . . . Yep. But on those nights, there
will
come a moment
when something happens, the band takes flight, a face lights up in the audience, someone, with their eyes closed, singing along to the words, the music you’ve written, and suddenly you’re bound together by the feeling of the things that matter to you most. Or . . . there may be some great-looking women in the crowd—that always works too!

Show Me the Money

We made thirty-five dollars a week and
had our rent and bills paid. That was the deal and it was the only way we could afford to stay on the road. There was an honor system. You stated what your expenses were and you got your money. Each man was different: some had alimony, child support payments, extenuating circumstances; some needed more than others. Everybody played by the rules . . . mostly.

After Steel Mill, I’d decided working
with my pal Danny Federici, as lovely a guy as he could be, was just too life shortening. He needed too much caretaking. Everything around Danny was usually all fucked up. However, when it came time to form a touring band, Davey Sancious was unavailable, so I needed a keyboardist and Danny was the best I knew. He played beautifully and was a true folk musician, his style developed from being an
accordion player as a child. His right hand had a lyricism, a fluency and spontaneity, I’ve never heard in another musician. He had the shortest highway between his fingers and his heart I’d ever heard. His left hand did virtually nothing; his self-conscious mind but not his musical intellect was put on hold. The notes came rushing forward, wonderfully chosen and perfectly placed with a freeness
that seemed to flow effortlessly out of his
soul. He was a real accompanist, humble, always at the service of the song, never overplaying, never stepping on another player’s toes, just finding the open space and filling it with the perfect flourish. If I needed to loosen up any piece we’d recorded, I sent Danny into the studio and just let him play. He never missed.

Unfortunately he was also
a guy whose nature it was to game any system he came into contact with, so taking a shot with his own homies was as natural to Danny as all those beautiful notes that came floating freely out of his fingers. He was overstating his expenses and skimming off the top. By twenty-three, Danny and I’d already had a long and rocky history. In our previous lives together, we’d been through a shitstorm of
trouble. What pissed me off the most was being constantly cast as the unwelcome voice of moderation and reason, the arbiter of professional limits and personal behavior . . . “Daddy.” In the end somebody had to set the boundaries, so I did, and then he crossed one. We were broke; he was stealing money from all of us. I drove directly to Dan’s apartment, confronted him in a rage, received the usual
shrug of the Federici shoulders, put my foot through his expensive stereo speakers and left. I loved Danny but some version of this and worse would be a part of our friendship for the next forty years.

That Christmas we returned triumphant to my hometown of Freehold. What could be a better seasonal surprise than the return of a successful son coming home to his roots, the humility, the generosity,
naaah . . . I haven’t forgotten you. We did a holiday show for the locals at a Russian social club called Rova Farms on the outskirts of town. It held about five hundred souls and the evening featured the only full-scale truly scary bar brawl of our club lives. All started out well for an hour or so. That we might be able to celebrate the festive spirit of the Christmas season, we’d recently
learned the Crystals’ “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Just as we cracked into it the place exploded into multiple pockets of fistfighting. It may have been gang related, I don’t remember. I looked toward the bar and saw the bartender standing on top of the deck impolitely kicking at the faces of his patrons.
There was a second-floor loft with an Old West banister running along it at the back
of the joint and as I sang out my yuletide greetings, I saw a man lifted up and tossed over the banister to come crashing down onto the first floor. Richard Blackwell, playing congas that evening, leapt from the stage into the crowd in search of my boyhood pal, his brother David. The concert was raided by the police and brought to a halt. Amazingly no one was killed, though several left on stretchers.
An ugly calm returned and we played another half hour or so. Then it was merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Who said you can’t go home?