Pumpin’ Some Pittsburgh Labor Day Love with The Iron City Houserockers

Pumpin’ Some Pittsburgh Labor Day Love with The Iron City Houserockers

There’s no city in America that defined labor quite like beautiful, hardscrabble Pittsburgh. Our workers produced the big, hard, heavy, clanging things that made the world go 'round: iron, steel, aluminum, glass, massive rotors, giant generators. Nobody worked as hard as Pittsburghers. And nobody wrote and sang about the working class lives and loves of Pittsburghers quite like the fabulous…

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Roaring Down Thunder Road: Darlin’, You Know Just What I’m Here For

Roaring Down Thunder Road: Darlin’, You Know Just What I’m Here For

August 25, 2015: I took a road trip with "Born to Run" yesterday. It's the 40th anniversary of Bruce's groundbreaking album, and there's no better way to experience it than by blasting it in your car, with the windows open and the wind blowing back your hair. Cars and tunnels and backstreets and highways are just as central to the…

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What Motivates Us to Work? For Bruce and Me, It’s ‘Abandonment of the Self’

What Motivates Us to Work? For Bruce and Me, It’s ‘Abandonment of the Self’

At a show at New York's legendary Apollo Theater a few months back, Bruce Springsteen joked that he was the "hardest working 'white' man in show business." Bruce made this remark in homage to one of his idols, the late James Brown, the soul-funk sensation long known as the "hardest working man" in the business. James, the Apollo apostle, often performed up to 330 one-night shows per year, in extravagant bop-till-you-drop style. Growing up in extreme poverty may have driven James Brown to work till exhaustion, but what inspired a middle-class white boy from Long Branch, New Jersey, to rock his heart out onstage for four hours, night after night, from beach bars to coliseums? "His love of his fans" is one easy answer. But it goes much deeper than that, as I was reminded after reading a fascinating profile of Bruce in the July 2012 issue of "The New Yorker" magazine.

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My Wild and Innocent Days Loving Bruce Springsteen

My Wild and Innocent Days Loving Bruce Springsteen

Jimmy Cagney, hat brim low over his eyes, talking wise to Joan Blondell. Soapy and Bim picking pockets in Hell's Kitchen. Platinum angels with arched, pencil-thin eyebrows, sipping bathtub gin and waiting in vain for their square-jawed mugs to return from the hoosegow. Sharpies named Ace and Lefty. Dames named Ruby and Peaches. Those were the cinematic heroes of my youth. So, it's no surprise I'd fall hard for the denizens of Bruce Springsteen's second LP, "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle." To this day, it's the most romantic "life on the street" album I've ever heard.

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The Fireworks are Hailin’ Over Little Eden Tonight: Bruce’s Boardwalk Lullaby

The Fireworks are Hailin’ Over Little Eden Tonight: Bruce’s Boardwalk Lullaby

When the cops finally busted Madam Marie, the young ne'er-do-well knew it was time to leave the seaside carnival life forever. Riding Tilt-a-Whirls and chasing factory girls underneath the boardwalk…cruising the circuit with switchblade lovers and open-shirt casino boys…it was all kid's stuff. Someday he'd look back on those barefoot slacker days and sex-seeking nights, and rage against the dying of the pier lights that once cast a protective cover, like a soft beach blanket, over his body and hers. But now, as the fireworks hailed over his Little Eden on that 4th of July, he determined it was time to move on. And, taking a page from that ancient tome, "Seduction Tactics 101," he made his plea to sweet "Sandy Girl:" Love me tonight, for I may never see you again. Ah, how I miss the beach life lullabies and city-sidewalk serenades that Bruce abandoned long ago! Songs like "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" are among the most visual and desperately romantic works in his catalog. And this one, in particular, is as beautiful and wistful as they come.

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