I had put my convertible top down about a mile ago. After the four hour drive in the midday sun, it was cool enough now to allow the feel of the outdoor air and the pre-set sun. My GPS showed one more stoplight and a half mile to go before I'd come to Kingsley Street. I shuffled my car stereo player to Bruce's "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" and skipped to the third track, Something In The Night. My memory flashed back 22 summers ago to 2002, when my best friend and fellow Springsteen fanatic Mike and I did the same thing. The difference being it was a cassette tape we popped in and not a cd. We had to stop at the beginning of the street before we could proceed, waiting to hit the right spot on the cassette tape before we pressed play. On this day, by myself, the timing was perfect, there was no waiting.
The four-note piano intro starts which follows with a three note measure repeat. Bruce's wordless voice enters 20 seconds later, accompanied by a crescendo of drumbeats... "Ohhh, Ohhh, Ohhhhhh...." Crashing symbols are followed by Bruce's first line of the lyrics another minute later. I take my left turn in perfect timing...
"Well I'm riding down Kingsley figuring I'd get a drink
Well, I turn the radio up loud so I don't have to think..."
A wave of excitement hits me. My heart fills with a surge of euphoria. I'm here. Asbury Park. More specifically, The Asbury Park boardwalk. The place where it all began: the other Genesis story. Only this one was not the creation of man, but the creation of the rock star. The defining touring spot for every Bruce Springsteen fan looking for the Bruce Springsteen museum. Except instead of a brick or stone building filled with statues and memorabilia, this museum is an open air museum of musical nostalgia and history. It sits between Kingsley Street and Ocean Avenue, and between Ocean Avenue and New Jersey's Atlantic Ocean.
I see the old carousel and the shell of what was once the Asbury Park Casino on my right. I drive slowly past The Stone Pony and various shops and restaurants until I see The Wonder Bar on the corner of 5th & Ocean Avenue up ahead. I make the turn on 5th and miraculously find an open parking spot adjacent to the Bar. I get out of my car and the music of Something in The Night shuts off and is immediately replaced with One Step Up. Not from my car stereo, but from the musical soundtrack hidden in my subconscious that plays from time to time. It's a Pavlovian response dependent upon whatever stimulating forces pervade my senses. Here, it's the outside of The Wonder Bar right in front of me, where inside Bruce filmed his 1987 video for One Step Up.
"When I look at myself I don't see the man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
One step up and two steps back..."
To my left, Ocean Avenue continues north up the Jersey coastline for many miles through Long Branch and Monmouth County, with beautiful beaches and mansions the size of castles. But right in front of me, nestled between the Convention Hall and the skeleton of the casino, is where I want to be. A portion of boardwalk less than two football fields in length, jampacked with bars, restaurants, arcades, and mobile pizza and lemonade stands on one side, and the Asbury Park Beach and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I cross Ocean Avenue and walk a few more steps until I feel the wood beneath my feet. Here I am, on the boardwalk. The Asbury Park boardwalk. The warm breeze and the salty air hits my face as I stand motionless, soaking in the oceanscape in front of me, disappearing into the endless blue and white clouded horizon. I look to my left, then my right, then repeat approximately a dozen times. On this Friday evening, the beach and boardwalk are at maximum capacity. There's not a lot of unoccupied space on the beach, boardwalk, or outdoor restaurant tables. The hundreds of people with their hundreds of voices pass me by. Music is being played from everywhere. But all I hear is one singular voice coming from that soundtrack inside my brain:
"I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud.
So am I, if you haven't figured that out over the past forty years.
In 1972 I was just a guitar player, on the streets of Asbury Park.
And that was pretty much all that I knew."
Those were some introductory words Bruce spoke during his Broadway show. I'd hear his voice speak these words on a loop over the entire weekend whenever I'd stroll on the boardwalk or sit on one of its benches. My Pavlovian boombox was constantly on play-mode. Every time I walked past Madam Marie's psychic teller booth:
"Well the cops finally busted Madam Marie
For telling fortunes better than me
This boardwalk life for me is through
You outa quit this scene too..."
- (Asbury Park/4th Of July (Sandy)
When I'd see a girl in bluejeans:
"Chasing the factory girls underneath the boardwalk
Where they'd all promise to unsnap their jeans."
- (Asbury Park/4th Of July (Sandy)
When my mind's eye pictured the music video clip of Bruce walking from that merry-go-round carousel next to the casino:
"There's a room of shadows that get so dark, brother
It's easy for two people to lose each other
In this tunnel of love..."
- (Tunnel Of Love)
The Oxford Dictionary defines spiritual as relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things. I'm certainly not the first to claim Bruce's music and storytelling as having a spiritual component to it. The beauty and wonderment of his songs and how they can elicit a plethora of emotional responses from the listener is why he is so good at his craft. He speaks to his listeners; he speaks for his listeners. But it's not so much what is heard by the listener, but what is felt. Make a list of emotions as long as you can, and you can bet Bruce has written a song that relates perfectly to whatever that emotion is that you're feeling. It may just be one line in a song that stirs you, like in Brilliant Disguise: "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of." Or it may be an entire song of his, with a cinematic story of characters, simultaneously wrought with desperation and relentless hope, like The Ghost Of Tom Joad. That's the measurement of greatness for any musician or artist or author or sculptor: the emotional and spiritual response and connection their creation elicits from their audience or peers.
I've felt that connection to Bruce's music for decades. Seeing him in concert 78 times magnifies that connection well beyond any quantifying explainability. Yet there was something new on this day, on this boardwalk way past dawn. I actually felt Bruce's presence, as if he were next to me. Specifically, like he were right behind my right shoulder. Call me crazy (and I do), but it was undeniable. The psychology of the brain can do some wonderful gymnastics sometimes, no doubt. But whether real or imagined, my musical hero made his presence felt, and I welcomed it unquestionably, like a friendly ghost or spirit. And of course, this led me back to hearing, and more strongly - feeling - his words.
Over the last several years, and during the last several concerts I've been to, Bruce has invoked the term "ghost" often. More specifically, "ghosts". He has spoken about the loss of friends and band members during tribute songs, and talks about "the ghosts that are all around us, trying to reach us, every step of the way", invoking all the good and wonderful influences left for us by those who have passed. How their spirit remains with us, and how we carry the gift of their spirit in how we live and how we share it with others. His latest album, Letter To You is themed with the inescapable inevitability of what every life on earth will experience: It's ending. The losses of those we love, and the ever-present reality of life being a finite thing.
The Stoics of classical antiquity were known for their philosophical adherence to the concept "Memento Mori", the Latin translation for "remember death" or "remember that you have to die". The Stoics taught that having death at the forefront of thought will allow one to live life to the fullest without wasting the precious time one has left. Bruce seems to have adopted this philosophy quite well, sharing his love of music and performing for us with no plan to stop. And like he is wont to do, he invites anybody willing, to come along for the ride. To be present with him, and feel the presence of others in a celebration of being alive.
The next day I expand my tour to the usual mandatory sites to see. I make the trip to Bruce's childhood homes in nearby Freehold. I visit where his first home on Randolph Street used to be, right next to St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church where he served as an altar boy. I drive down Institute Street and locate the home where as a 7-year old, Bruce watched Elvis perform on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time - a transformative, life-changing experience. I take a selfie with 39.5 Institute as my background.
"Well I got out of here hard and fast in Freehold
Everybody wanted to kick my ass in Freehold
Well if you were different, black, or brown
It was a pretty redneck town, back in Freehold"
- (Freehold)
I Google-search the tiny house Bruce rented in Long Branch where he wrote his masterpiece album Born To Run, released on August 25, 1975. I park and take another selfie. Of course, in Asbury I make stops in The Stone Pony and see a favorite band play at The Wonder Bar. If Yankee Stadium is "the house that Ruth built", The Stone Pony was built by Bruce. Everywhere I go, I feel an expanded feeling of ecstasy, of tranquility, of presence. Like the feeling of being surrounded by God when looking up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the spirit of Bruce was here for the taking. It would've been cool driving along Ocean Avenue with the top down and Bruce in the passenger seat beside me (a fleeting visual hallucination I briefly imagine), but this feeling is still pretty cool.
To the average person, to the uninitiated, making a 200 mile trip to Asbury Park, New Jersey for the weekend seems kind of odd. Making a trip to Asbury Park not to see Bruce in concert, but just to see places he's lived and where he honed his craft is a head-scratcher to most. But Mike gets it. My concert partner, Cindy gets it. Mom understands. And Paula understands more than anybody. They understand the magical and mystical power of Bruce's music, and its emotional and spiritual impact upon the music lover. In one of my favorite lines from Springsteen On Broadway, Bruce tells his fans, "You've provided me with purpose, with meaning, and with a great, great amount of joy. I hope I've done that for you and that I've been a good traveling companion". He's done that for me more than words can describe. And as long as I'm alive, Bruce will forever be my very best traveling companion.
"It's just your ghost moving through the night
Your spirit filled with light
I need, need you by my side
Your love and I'm alive"
- ("Ghosts")
