All photos by Tracy May.
Bruce Springsteen is not a God. He’s not a hero.
He's gone so far as to refer to that sort of misplaced adulation in his 1992 self-mocking “Local Hero,” a song where he jokingly refers to seeing himself depicted on a black velvet painting between other works of art that include a “doberman and Bruce Lee.”
No, Springsteen is none of those things. He’s first and foremost a man. An artist. A songwriter. A dad. A husband. A showman. An entertainer. All roles far more admirable, complex and endearing than a super-human force. While admiration and diehard dedication for the local boy from the “swamps of Jersey” hasn’t waned amongst his legions of passionate followers for the better part of three decades, it’s actually his normalness his followers are most drawn to. Sure, a lot of his detractors have poked fun at his "all-American, working man" image — an image concocted by the media in a feeble attempt to make that image his “gimmick.” Springsteen himself NEVER once came forth and begged for or pandered to that type of perception. Most of his nay-sayers have him all wrong … these are the same folks who’ve never taken the time to really listen to what the title track of his 1984 mega-selling Born In The USA is really all about. Many wrote it off as a flimsy, rah-rah paean to ham-fisted patriotism shtick, only proving how ill-conceived perceptions of Springsteen’s message can be.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2000.