Founders - #407 Bruce Springsteen Repairs the Hole in Himself

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

A viciously unhappy childhood causes Bruce Springsteen to retreat into work in an extreme way as he searches for success (and control). He channels his pain into focus and drive and gets everything he thought he wanted. He didn’t yet know he was lying to himself. He will find that out soon. He falls into a deep depression. One that almost leads to s*icide. With the help of his true friend Jon Landau he seeks professional help. This help helps immediately. The lie he was telling himself was that work was the most important thing in his life. What he really wanted, was what he was incapable of doing: forming a lasting and loving relationship with a woman. For that he realizes he can’t run. For that he realizes he has to stay. That thought terrifies him and is what caused him to seek help. He meets a truly singular woman and for the first time in his life he's able to have a healthy relationship with someone he loves. This realization comes almost 400 pages into Bruce’s incredible autobiography (one of the best I’ve ever read) and it is shocking. I originally thought I was making an episode about Bruce Springsteen’s extreme work ethic (one example: He wrote this book out by hand, multiple times, over 7 years. It’s almost 600 pages. He’s like this with everything btw.) But as I read, and reread this book over the last 6 months I realized that is not the most important part of the story. The work Bruce had to do to fix his mind is the heart and soul of the book. The work he did with Dr. Wayne Myers over 25 years is what allowed him to have a life. Not just a job. A life. As Bruce says after coming through the other side of this: “Work is work . . . but life . . . is life . . . and life trumps art . . . always.” This is a very unusual episode of Founders. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to skip to the part where he starts dealing with the struggles going on in his mind that starts 46 minutes in. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

I've been dancing around with this book on and off for probably like six months, maybe even longer. So I'd read parts of it, I'd put it down, I'd pick it back up. I wasn't even sure how, like how to make an episode about it or even if I should make an episode about it. But what kept me coming back was that Bruce is able to describe ideas that have been in my head. There's stuff in this book that I have believed, that I have experienced, especially with his, the way he views his work, that I have been unable to articulate before. I have been unable to put into words the exact same feeling that Bruce describes in the book.

And what is great about this book, and this is where I was really unsure, is he's unbelievably honest about things that most people hide. He is writing the book as a nearly 70-year-old man full of experience and hard-earned wisdom that only comes from time and from living a full life. And so I want to tell you what made me pick up the book to begin with. I've told you over and over again that one of my favorite documentaries, one I've watched, I don't know, 10, 15 times. It's called The Defiant Ones.

It is a four-part series on the partnership between Jimmy Iveen and Dr. Dre. To me, it's one of the best documentaries about entrepreneurship. And Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Iveen are very close friends. They work together. And in that documentary, I heard Bruce Springsteen say this. he said I didn't want to be rich I didn't want to be famous I didn't even want to be happy

I wanted to be great and what drew me to Bruce Springsteen was when in the documentary Jimmy Iveen said it was Bruce Springsteen that taught Jimmy about work ethic and so I'm going to read a few quotes from Bruce Springsteen that's in the documentary that made me pick up his autobiography and so he says if you want to accomplish what hasn't been

accomplished before you have to be relentlessly and unapologetically determined when you're trying to push the boundaries on things and when you're moving into different types of frontiers you need to be surrounded by people who really believe in what you're doing. We were just very, very determined. If you were new to our club,

the relentless pursuit of our idea would have exhausted you. It was simply understood that you're there because you believed what we were doing was worth it. And he's describing working on the album that changes his life. It is his third album. It's called Born to Run. Which is also the name of his autobiography

in the book I'm going to talk to you about today. Now, this work ethic never left him. So even the, he wrote this autobiography by hand. This book is almost 600 pages. It's huge. He hand wrote the entire manuscript in his notebook. And then he rewrote it again and again in longhand. He was editing not just for accuracy, but for tone.

He wrote it like he was composing a record. And you feel it when you read the book. I think the lesson there for you and I is when you pour a lot of love and dedication and obsess over details and take the time to get it right in the, the product or service you're building, even if the customer or the person that's using your products or service can't articulate it. They feel it. And so that's what drew me to pick up the book. And the reason I was going back and forth on this, because if I just focus on his work ethic, which was originally the idea, I was going to name the episode, you know, the relentless

work ethic of Bruce Springsteenstein. That would make perfect sense for an episode of Founders. But then I'd be ignoring the most important part of the book, which is this insanely talented, musical genius, hardworking obsessive, getting everything that he ever wanted and being plunged deep into depression. I got to go to Jimmy Iveen's house. I spent a few hours at his house in Beverly Hills recently. It was remarkable.

And to this day, Jimmy and Bruce are very close friends. Before I left, Jimmy's like, you need to go see the new Bruce Springsteen movie. It's called Deliver Me from Nowhere. I didn't even watch the trailer before I saw the movie. Jimmy Avine says, go watch the movie. I'm going to go watch the movie. But what I was shocked, it wasn't about,

I thought it was going to be an overview of his career. It wasn't about that. It was about a lot of the dark things that Bruce speaks about in this autobiography. And so what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to go through the book in chronological order. His life story unfolds in chronological order. And I think that's a really important part of the book.

And I think you'll identify, learn, and benefit from the way that Bruce Springsteen describes his life, the experiences that he had, what he learned from that and how he changed over time. And so I also want to do something different in regards to the sponsors of this podcast. Usually I try to weave the sponsors into the actual story of the podcast. I see no way to do that with the subject matter we're about to talk about. So I'm just going to tell you about the three very important partners that I have right now up front.

And then obviously if you get value from my work and you need these services, these are the people I recommend that you use. And so the first one is obviously Ramp. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast. As we were about to go through, I just told you this guy, Han wrote his autobiography by hand. He is obviously obsessed with details. That is something that a lot of history's greatest founders have in common. They know their business from A to Z and their costs down to the penny.

And Ramp makes doing this effortless. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, bill payments, accounting, and cost control. These corporate cards are fully programmable. You can set limits so the spending of your team never gets out of hand. Most companies only find out about excessive spending after the fact. With Ramp, you can stop it before. it happens. The chief accounting officer of Notion just said this about Ramp. Ramp is the only

vendor that can service all of our employees across the globe in one unified system. They handle multiple currencies seamlessly, integrate with all of our accounting systems, and thanks to their customizable card and policy controls, were compliant worldwide. Matt Paulson, who's the founder of Market Beat, recently switched to Ramp, and this is what he said about it. Ramp is the best. The amount of money you'll save from unwanted renewals and employees who think company credit card equals buy whatever you want will far exceed the best credit card rewards program. Matt just sent me a message and said, Ramp helped him save $420,000 a month. Take the time to set up a demo of the product,

and you'll see why many of the world's top founders are running their company on Ramp. Go to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money today. That is Ramp.com. The second partner I want to tell you about is Vanta. Vanta helps your company prove you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. Customers trust can make or break your business. This is one of the things that most interesting to me about Bruce, by the way, is the fact that the trust that he earned and never violated with his customers,

with his listeners have compounded for decade after decade to the point where he's almost 80 and he's still touring. He's still selling out giant stadiums. You should do everything in your power to make your customers trust your business the way that Bruce's customers or fans trust him. Customer trust can make or break your business. And the more your business grows, the more complex your security and compliance tools will get. That can turn into chaos.

and Vanta helps you tame that chaos. You can think of Vanta as you're always on AI-powered security expert who scales with you. Vanta automates compliance, continuously monitors your controls, and gives you a single source of truth for compliance and risk. So whether you're a fast-growing startup like Cursor or an enterprise company like Snowflake, Vanta fits easily into your existing workflows so you can keep growing a company your customers can trust. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals, and stay secure, faster, and with less effort. Go to vanta.com, ford slash founders, and you'll get you.

get $1,000 off. That is vanta.com forward slash founders. And finally, I want to tell you about collateral. Collateral is all about storytelling. Most companies have a very hard time telling their own story. Springsteen is a master at this. This is what the book you and I are about to go over is all about. It's Springsteen telling his own story in the best possible way. And this skill set is incredibly important because it's a great quote from Don Valentine, who's the founder Sequoia. He says that the art of storytelling is critically important. Learn to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories and that is exactly what collateral does collateral transforms your complex ideas into

compelling narratives i will leave a link down below but make sure you go to collateral dot com and improve the way that your company tells its own story that is collateral dot com storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it and you can do that by going to collateral dot com so we start right in the forward of the book and he tells us exactly what he's trying to do i'm asked over and over again by fans on the street how do you do it in the following pages i will try to shed a little light on and more important why. And he also tells us who the book is for. It's for people like you and I.

He says, if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, you need a furious fire in the hole that just don't quit burning. He had that fire as a 15-year-old boy when he decides he wants to be a musician. He still has it as an almost 80-year-old man. And he jumps right into his childhood and he describes the way he grew up. We were pretty near poor, though I never thought about it. We were clothed, fed, and bedded. Our house was old and decrepit.

One kerosene stove in the living room was all we had to heat the whole place. You woke up on winter mornings with your breath visible. I was a timid little tyrant. I felt like the rules were for the rest of the world. When I became of school age and had to conform to a time schedule, it sent me to an inner rage that lasted most of my school years. When he's very young, he decides he wants to live with his grandparents and not his parents.

And this is how he describes it. It was my true home, and they felt like my real parents. I could and would not leave, but they also live in a very decrepit house. There was one bathroom, the only place to relieve yourself, and no functioning bath. My grandparents fell into a state of poor hygiene and care that would shock and repel me now. My grandma slept on a couch with me tucked in at her side while my grandfather had a small cot across the room. That was it. This was where I needed to be to feel at home, safe, loved.

It ruined me, and it made me. It made me in the sense that it would set me off on a lifelong pursuit of a singular place of my own, giving me a raw hunger that drove me, hell-bent, in my music. It was a desperate, lifelong effort to rebuild. For my grandmother's love, I abandoned my parents, my sister, and much of the world. itself. Then that world came crashing in. My grandparents became ill. Soon, my grandfather would be dead and my grandmother would be filled with cancer. He describes the traits that he had as a child that he has for most of his life. I would say he's disagreeable, defiant, nonconformist,

and independent. And he was like that since he was a kid. He says, I will not conform to the way things are. I don't know shit nor care about the way things are. And so he has two sides of his family. He's primarily Italian and Irish. The Irish side is full of these soft, kind of weak demure men. So when he starts spending time with the Italian side of his family, he sees a different way of being. And so his Italian grandfather, this is very fascinating. He says he was my grandfather. And he's able to tell an entire story in a few words describing his grandfather. He says he served three years in the Navy, had three wives spent three years in Sing Sing Prison. And so he continues to talk about the influence of spending time with his grandfather when he was a very little

kid, right? He says something made him seem grand, important, not part of the passive, aggressive, wandering, lost male tribe that populated much of the rest of my life. He was a force of nature. So what if he got into a little trouble? The real world was full of trouble. And if you wanted, if you hungered, you'd better be ready for it. You'd best be ready to stake your claim and not let go because, quote, they were not going to give it to you for free. You would have to risk and to pay. His love of living, the intensity of his presence, his engagement in the day and his dominion over his family made him a unique male figure in my life. He was exciting, scary, theatrical, self-mythologizing, bragging. He was like a rock star.

and what you realize when you read this book is every single experience that Bruce encounters he pulls into his work there is no separation between him and his work and so he talks about what he learned from his family and how it influenced his work there is a strength fear and desperate joy in all of this hard spirit and soul that naturally found its way into my work we push until we can go no further stand strong until our bones give way reach and hold until our muscles fatigue twist shout and laugh until we can no more until the very end now what is masterful about the storytelling in this book is he's describing his family i didn't understand this till i reread everything and a huge part of the book is just this disastrous relationship that he has with

his father and so the beginning is describing his life describing his work the second half of the book is the toll that all of this took on him because he tried to bury it and never dealt with it. I'm 25 pages into this book and he starts describing something that I didn't know affected him too. So he says, I don't know where this started, but a serious strain of mental illness drifts through those of us who are here seemingly randomly pick off a cousin, an aunt, a son, a grandma, and unfortunately, my dad. I was not my father's favorite citizen. When my dad looked at me, he didn't see what he needed to see. I don't remember if it was in this book or if it was in this interview that I saw Bruce Giff, but he said that during his entire childhood,

his dad said less than a thousand words to him. And when he did speak to him, it was like this. Unfortunately, my dad's desire to engage with me almost always came after the nightly religious ritual of the sacred six pack. So his dad had a job he hated, had a life that he hated, would come home, sit at the kitchen table, smoke cigarette after cigarette, and drink beer after beer. He had hostility and raw anger towards his son. He couldn't stand me. He also saw too much of his real self in me. Beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, timidity, shyness, and a dreamy insecurity.

These were all the things I were on the outside, and the reflection of those qualities in his boy repelled him. It made him angry. It was soft, and he hated soft. Now, remember, he's writing this as almost a 70-year-old man. He's thinking about his childhood through that experience. he wasn't a child anymore he is now a father he actually has his own children and so he's contrasting it's like why did my dad feel this way about me and he's got beautiful writing about this so he actually said on howard stern he's got this great interview on harvard stern that he did a few months ago and he said that his greatest achievement was not going into the rock and roll hall fame was not selling 150 million records was not you know being unbelievably famous and wealthy and rich he said his greatest achievement was not passing down the problems of his family to his own children. His greatest achievement, he said, was from breaking the chain. Listen to this writing about children they has. It's incredible. Children bring with them grace, patience, transcendence, second

chances, rebirth, and a reawakening of the love that is in your heart. They are God giving you another shot. At 45 years old, my father was friendless. My father was truly ill, and his father was also abusive to his mother. So he tells the story. They were standing in the kitchen. My father's back to me. My mother inches away from his face while he was yelling at the top of his lungs. I shouted at him to stop. Then I let him have it. He went and go grabbed. He grabbed a baseball bat. He's got a baseball bat in his hand. I think he said he was 10 years old when this is happening. Then I let him have it square between his broad shoulders. A sick thud and everything grew quiet. He turned. His face red. The moment lengthened. Then he started laughing. The

stopped. It became one of his favorite stories and he'd always tell me, don't let anyone hurt your mom. And so Bruce obviously loves his mother deeply. He had a complicated relationship with her because she was his largest supporter, but she also would put her husband above the needs of her children. And he kind of wrestles with this throughout the book. But one thing you realize early on is that the way that his mom approached her work sounds a lot like the way he approaches his. She goes to work she does not miss a day she is never sick she is never down she never complains work does not appear to be a burden for her but a source of energy and pleasure truthfulness consistency professionalism kindness compassion manners thoughtfulness pride in yourself honor love faith in and fidelity to your

family commitment joy in your work and a never say die thirst for life these are some of the things my mother taught me and that i struggle to live up to and so he goes back to describing a childhood he He knows he does not have the things that he needs. I never saw the inside of a restaurant until I was well into my 20s. My father was a misanthrope who shunned most of humankind. And so he knows he doesn't have what he wants. And then he sees a glimpse of a better life. And he describes this in such an incredible way.

And this is when his life really begins. His life begins when he sees Elvis Presley perform for the very first time on TV. Bruce calls Presley a human earthquake. And so he says, the small part of the world I inhabit has stumbled upon an irreversible moment. I don't know what his thoughts were. I don't know whether he thought about the broader implications of his actions. I do know this. He lived a life he was driven to live and brought forth the truth that was within him and the possibilities within us.

How many of us can say that we committed all of ourselves to something? I sat there transfixed in front of the television, my mind on fire. The next day I convinced my mom to take me down to this small store. There with no money to spend, we rented a guitar. I took it home, opened its case, smelled its wood. Still one of the sweetest and most promising smells in the world. I felt its magic and I sensed its hidden power. And it is very shortly after that he realizes he is different from other people.

His response to things is almost always different. This is in the middle of Beatlemania. and this is what he says. I didn't want to meet the Beatles. I wanted to be the Beatles. So at 15 years old, he's going to join a band and he starts performing. And he is so obsessed, he's willing to play any and everywhere. And so for the very first time he performs, it's at the Elks Club.

And there's a series of bands that play for a crowd of about 75 locals. After this, his band was booked at a high school dance. Very shortly after that, his bandmates decide to vote him out of the band. They said his guitar was too cheap and it wouldn't stay in tune. And he describes his response to being kicked out of the band. I was going to make it work. That night, I went home, pulled out a Rolling Stones album, put it on and taught myself the guitar solo from the song, It's All Over Now. It took me all night, but by midnight, I had a reasonable copy of it down.

Fuck them. I was going to play lead guitar. For the next several years, I would spend every available hour cradling my guitar, twisting and torturing the strings. until they broke or until I fell back on my bed asleep with it in my arms. While other kids were hanging out, I would rush home to my room and I'd stay there and play until the early morning. I had a secret. There was something that I could do, something I might be good at. I fell asleep at night with dreams of rock and roll glory in my head. This is the start of that determined work ethic. And so he forms another band. Their first gig is at a trailer park. And

that, they would take any gig they could get. He says it was YMCA's, high schools, ice rinks, supermarket openings, drive-in theaters, mental hospitals, beach clubs, and any place you could set up a five-piece band that won a decent local entertainment at a cheap price. He is still in high school. He meets these older guys that are in this legendary local band called the motifs. It's these two brothers. One would teach Bruce about the guitar, and the other one would provide Bruce what being a rock star

was like. The first brother, his name is Ray Shosham. And Ray would share his great guitar knowledge, which with undeserving young wannabes like us. That's how Bruce is describing himself at this point. Ray remains one of my great guitar heroes, a real man with a life who took the time to pass down what he knew to a bunch of not necessarily promising kids. His brother Walter was another story entirely. The first true star I'd ever been close to, a full-blooded rock and roll animal with the attitude, the sexuality, the toughness, the raw sensuality pouring out of him, scaring and thrilling all of us who came in contact with him. Walter was not your everyday guy, but something vastly different. He lived like he wanted. Walter proved that you could stake

a rebel's flag and make it stand, that you could be different, that you could be your own man. That is exactly what Bruce Springsteen is going to do. Another important thing that happens to him in his life. Remember, I think he's like 17 years old when we're at in the story. He meets Steve Van Zant. And so he says, so began one of the longest and greatest friendships of my life. He met somebody that thought and believed

and loved music like he did. I'd finally met someone who'd felt about music the way I did. Needed it the way I did. Respected its power in a way that was a notch above the attitudes of the other musicians that so far I'd come in contact with. Somebody I understood and I felt understood

me. With Steve and me from the very beginning. It was heart to heart and soul to soul. It was all impassioned, endless arguments over the minutia of the groups that we loved, the deep delving into the smallest details of guitar sounds, style, image, the beautiful obsession of sharing with someone who was as single-minded and crazy as you were, a passion that you simply could not get enough of. These were the things that you could not explain to outsiders. So he skips his high school graduation, because he's playing music. He doesn't care about anything else from music. He knows what he's going to do in his life. He starts the band, and this is the band, he says, that would initially

call itself child, then morph into Steele Mill, then the Bruce Springsteen band, and eventually become the core of the original E Street band. Now, it's right around this time where he feels his mom abandons him and his sister. His dad is deeply depressed, decides to move from New Jersey to California, and this is how he describes this. My mom and pops were bound by an unknowable thread. They made their deal a long time ago. She had her man who wouldn't leave and he had his gal who couldn't leave. Those are the rules and they superseded all others. Even motherhood. This was how it began and this is how it would end. My father was able to draw from my mom a saving and selfless mother, her own ambivalence about family. And so then we get the first inclination that he's got some

deep unresolved trauma and just trouble in his mind because he's pursuing this dream but he would constantly go back to this little town of freehold new jersey and he's going to do this for decades and he would drive his car he would never get out of his car but he would drive his car late at night by himself through his old town keep in mind the book is called born to run he's trying to outrun his problems he does this for decades until he can't anymore that's what the movie's about That's what the last half of this book is about. He says, I would drive as if the miles themselves could repair the damage done. Write a different story, force these streets to give up their heavily guarded secrets.

They couldn't. Only I could do that, and I was a long way from being ready. I would spend my life on the road logging hundreds of thousands of miles, and my story was always the same. Man comes to town, detonates. Man leaves town, and dries off into the evening. fade to black just the way I liked it and it takes him a very long time to realize that he had been lying to himself at this point he puts everything he has into his work

most of the people in rock and roll are obviously doing a lot of drugs and alcohol he doesn't do anything he says there would be no wasted days and no wasted nights for me I'd seen that and I'd wanted no part of it I didn't do any drugs or drink one of my ex-roomates and a fellow guitarist would end it all with a gunshot to the head after a short life of ingesting far too many chemicals and ending up a wasted talent on the skids. I'd seen people mentally ruined, gone and not coming back. I was barely holding on myself as it was. I couldn't imagine introducing unknown agents into my system. I needed control. I was afraid of myself. What I might do or what might happen to me. I'd already experienced

enough personal chaos to not go in search of the unknown. I'd seen my dad and that was enough. I wasn't looking for outside stimulants to help me lose or find anything. Music was going to get me as high as I needed to go. And so he's just relentlessly practicing. He's relentlessly focused. All he does is play and practice and play and practice. At this time, the band is called Still Mill. They start getting, like they don't have any albums.

They start getting a very devoted local fan base. Since we began to draw and draw big. First hundreds, then thousands came to our impromptu appearances in parks at the local armory, at the college, or any other location that we'd hold our growing tribe. We became something people wanted to see. We had a raw stage show and songs that were memorable. enough for people to want to come back, to hear them again, to memorize their lyrics and sing their choruses. We began to attract and hold real fans. We would draw up to 3,000 people at our

concerts with no album to our name. We were cocky as hell and sure we were good enough to make our mark anywhere. We felt we were the best undiscovered thing we had ever seen. This is another very important part of Bruce Springsteen. He was very, very confident. Michael Jordan has this great quote where he says work ethic eliminates fear. And Bruce's practice and his work ethic helped him develop very real talent and skill. And even before other people saw it, he believed in himself. And it's interesting, he's the exact same age. So one of my favorite lines from Michael Dell's autobiography is the fact that, you know, he starts his company. He's 19 years old. He's got a thousand dollars. He's going to compete with IBM, the biggest company in the world of time. And he's

going to do it from his dorm room. And in his autobiography, Michael Dell writes, was I little full of myself at 19? Sure I was. I think you have to be. to do anything important. Bruce Springsteen is the exact same age when he says we were cocky as hell and sure we were good enough to make our mark anywhere. We felt we were the best

undiscovered thing we'd ever seen. And so a very important thing happens. We're dominating this little section on the east coast. We're going to go to California and hit it big. And so they go to California, they start doing auditions

and they realize there's other bands, undiscovered bands, better than them. And so after losing, he goes and tries to go to sleep and he lays awake at night and this is what he's thinking.

They were better than us, and I hadn't seen anybody, certainly anybody who was still unknown that was better than us, better than me in a long time. The guy doing the booking was right. My confidence was mildly shaken, and I had to make room for a rather unpleasant thought. We were not going to be the big dogs we were back in our little hometown. We were going to be one of many very competent, very creative musical groups fighting over a very small bone. Reality check. I was good. very good, but maybe not quite as good or as exceptional as I'd gotten used to people telling me

or as I thought, right here in this city, there were guys who in their own right were as good or better. That hadn't happened in a long while, and it was going to take some mental re-alignment. And his response here was so important. It is why he was able to sustain success for multiple decades. It's not that I didn't expect to come up against superior talent. That happens. It's the way God planned it. I was fast, but like the old gunslingers knew, there's always somebody faster. And if you can do it better than me, you earn my respect and admiration and you inspire me to work harder. I wasn't afraid of that. I was concerned with not maximizing my own abilities, not having a broad or intelligent enough vision of what I was capable of. Listen to what he's saying.

I'm not afraid that you're better than me. I'm afraid that I'm not going to reach my potential. I was concerned with not maximizing my own abilities, not having a broader, intelligent enough vision of what I was capable of. I was all I had. This is why it's so important. I'm not done in the middle of this either. This is why it's so important to tie people's work and the ideas they come up with to their life story.

I was all that I had. There is a quote that I save on my phone as a reminder to myself. It says, I cannot afford to give up. I don't have a backup. I am the backup. Bruce is saying the exact same thing. I was all I had. I had only one talent.

I was not a natural genius. I would have to use every ounce of what was in me, my cunning, my musical skills, my showmanship, my intellect, my heart, my willingness, night after night to push myself harder to work with more intensity than the next guy just to survive in the world that I lived in. As I sat there in the pitch black,

I knew when we got home, there would have to be changes made. And one of these things is he realizes he doesn't want to be part of a band. He is not made for democracy. He needs control. He understands that about himself, but he also understands about his industry. He says, only the luckiest bands don't grow apart.

Everyone moves differently, and no two musicians' commitment is exactly the same. He says, I declared democracy and band names dead. I was leading the band, playing, singing, and writing everything we did. If I was going to carry the workload and responsibility, I might as well assume the power. I didn't want to get into any more decision-making squabbles or have any confusion about who set the creative direction of my my music. I wanted the freedom to follow my muse without unnecessary argument. From now on, the buck would stop here. I look back on this as being one of the smartest decisions of my young life. It is Bruce Springsteen. He's going to be signed as a solo artist. It is Bruce Springsteen

and the East Street band. He says, clarity ruled and allowed us to forge a bond based on the principle that we worked together, but it was my band. I crafted a benevolent dictatorship. Creative input was welcomed within the structure that I prepared, but it was my name on the dotted line and on the records. And he's willing to risk failure to do this. And he talks about, you know, he uses a perfect example of how dangerous democracy could be in a band. And he's like, just look at the Beatles. So he stops using the name Steel Mill and he starts performing as Bruce Springsteen. Problem is, there's no fans of Bruce Springsteen. So he has to start all the way over. So he says with Still Mill, we had made as much as $3,000 a night with no recording contract. And when the

money was split after expenses, band members went home with hundreds of dollars in their pockets. Do you know how long you could live on hundreds of dollars in 1971 or 1972 with no taxes, no dependents, and no rent? A long, long, long time. Now I sent my men home with $3. He's got to rebuild his fan base from scratch. And control over his work was so important to him that he was willing to go from making $3,000 a night to $100 a night. $50 a night. And even when his band is making $3 a night per person, he says, I still felt I was the best undiscovered player I'd ever seen.

And so he's looking for his point of differentiation where he could stand out, how he can finally break through and not be the greatest person no one's ever heard of, the undiscovered talent. That's not what he was going for. He's going to be very clear. This book's incredible. He's going to be very honest about what he wanted. And I think a lot of people lie to themselves about what they truly want.

And so he's going to lean very heavily into what he's thinking. his differentiation is, which is songwriting. I decided the world was filled with plenty of good guitar players. Many of them matched me or were better. But how many good songwriters were there? Songwriters with their own voice, their own story to tell, who could draw you into a world they created and sustain your interest in the things that obsessed them.

Not many, a handful at best. And so obviously he's going to be inspired by the people that came before him, just like everybody else is. So he talks about Bob Dylan. He said, Bob Dylan was preeminent amongst these type of writers. Bob Dylan is the father of my country. And he talks about Bob Dylan's songs were the first time I can remember

being exposed to a truthful vision of the place that I lived. It's kind of how I feel about his book. Bob Dylan inspired me and gave me hope. He asked me the questions everybody else was too frightened to ask. Bob pointed true north and he served

as a beacon to assist you in making your way through the wilderness. Many, many decades into the future, Springsteen says, I had the opportunity to sing for Bob when he received the Kennedy Center honored award. We were alone together for a brief moment walking down a back stairwell when he thanked me for being there and said if there's anything I could ever do for you. And I thought, are you kidding me? And I answered him, it's already been

done. So Bruce meets this guy named Mike Appel, who becomes his manager, who's also going to unbelievably screw him over. The music business is full of managers screwing over talent. It's insane. But he did do something that was very valuable early in his career, which is he made Bruce believe in himself even more. He says one of Mike's talents that was that he could get you excited about yourself. And he presents this young green, uneducated musician, one of the worst contracts in history. He says we would split everything 50-50. The problem is that all expenses would end up coming out of my half. The whole thing was overreaching and counterproductive, leading to a lot of damage in the end. But who was I to say? He was just excited to be signed.

I wanted to Clyde with the Times and creative voice that had musical, social, and cultural impact. I was not modest in the assessment of my abilities. I thought I was the realest thing you'd ever seen. I had a huge ego, and I'd built up the talent and craft to pursue my ambitions with years of playing experience and study. I had my doubts, and I had a sense of humor about the balls I had and the big bite I was trying to take. But damn, that is where the fun was. And I was a natural. It was in my body.

bones. And so he actually gets signed to the same record label as Dillon's Columbia Records. This is, he's describing what happens after. We climbed to the heavens and spoke to the gods who told us that we were spit in thunder and throwing lightning bolts. It was on. It was all on. After the years of waiting, of struggling towards that something that I thought might never happen, it had happened. And so Bruce is about to release his first album ever, and this is how he describes it. As my first album drew to a close, I was nervous about my rock and roll dream. finally coming to fruition. Did I make a good record? On a national level, would I cut it? Was I who I thought I was, who I wanted to be? I truly didn't know, but I knew I was about to find out,

and that thrilled and frightened me. And so he releases the album when he starts touring in this paragraph that I'm about to reach you, this is what it sounds like when you're completely in love with what you're doing. I was 23, 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 40 years. We continue to do so, but it's still playing.

It's life-giving, joyful, sweat-drenched, muscle- aching, voice-blowing, mind-clearing, exhausting, soul-invigorating, cathartic pleasure and privilege every night. It is something that lets the 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. That's another hint of where we're going. Again, I didn't understand it the first time I read it. 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 that you've written

and suddenly you're bound together by the feeling of the things that matter to you most I was lucky to be doing what I loved most now here's the humans just can't can't help him messing up a good thing he has a big fight

with his record label they don't like the direction he's taking his music they stop promoting him and what he realizes like this is a mismatch of commitment. They thought they could get rid of us. We have nothing to lose and no alternatives. You can't get rid of somebody like that. And so he says the basic drift was that these guys thought we were just going to go away, that we'd return to our day jobs, that we'd go back to school, that we'd disappear. They didn't understand they were dealing with men without homes, lives,

any practical skills or talents that could bring a reliable paycheck in the straight world. We had nowhere to go and we loved music. was going to be it. There was no going back. This is when he starts working on his third album. This is what we see in that documentary Defiant Once. This is the album Born to Run, which he obviously names this book after. This is why you see that fierce work ethic in the documentary. This is what Bruce was trying to do. I wanted to craft a record that sounded like the last record on Earth, like the last record you might hear, like the last one you would ever need to hear. And in what he understands even this early in his career,

He wants longevity. He wants durability. He does not want what is prevalent in the rest of his industry. This is excellent writing on longevity and durability. This is obviously my obsession. I'm obsessed with people that do things for a long time, and they do them at the highest levels. But if you want to burn bright, hard, and long, you will need to depend upon more than your initial instincts. You will need to develop some craft and a creative intelligence that will lead you farther when things get dicey.

That's what I hope you make crucial sense and powerful music as time passes, giving you the skills that may also keep you alive, creatively and physically. The failure of so many of Rock's artists to outlive their expiration date of a few years, make more than a few great albums, and avoid water treading, are worse. I felt was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession. I think this is also true for entrepreneurship, by the way, this is where I'm reading this to you. I felt that was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession. These were strong, addictive personalities, fired by compulsion, narcissism, license, passion, and an inbred entitlement, all slammed over a world of fear, hunger, and insecurity.

That is a Molotov cocktail of confusion that can leave you unable to make or resistant to making the leap of consciousness a life in the field demands. After first contact knocks you on your ass, you better have a plan. Some personal development will be required if you expect to hang around any longer than your 15 minutes. Now, some guys five minutes are worth other guys 50 years. And while burning out and one brilliant supernova will send record sales to the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there is something to be said for living.

Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled, and here. Aging is scary, but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways. In a transient field, I was suited for the long haul. I had years of study behind me. I was physically built to endure, and by disposition was not an edge dweller. I was interested in what I might accomplish over a lifetime of music making. So assumption number one is you're going to keep breathing. He prioritized endurance and durability and longevity.

And one of the most important things happens around this time of his life. He meets somebody that understands him. This is the beginning of his relationship with John Landau. John Landau was the first person I met who had a language for discussing these ideas in the life of the mind. Together we shared a belief in the bedrock values of musicianship, skill, the joy of hard work, and the methodical application of one's talents. We also had that instant chemical connection that says, I know you. John was better educated than most of my homeboys.

I was interested in doing my job better and being great. Not good. Great. Whatever that took, I was in. Now, if you don't have the raw talent, you can't will yourself there. But if you have the talent, then will, ambition, and the determination to expose yourself to new thoughts, counter arguments, new influences will strengthen and fortify your work driving you closer to home. In 1974, I was a young and developing musician. I was

interested in forefathers, meaning the great people that came before him. It's exactly what you and I get together every week and talk about. I was interested in forefathers, artists, brothers, in arms, people who thought like this who had come before me, John knew who and where they were. This was very hard for Bruce Springsteen to do. He does not let people into his life easily. He says, I'm insular by nature and don't let new people in casually. And even though it may have been uncomfortable, it's one of the best decisions Bruce made in his entire life. And it's also when he's working on Born to Run that he meets Jimmy Iveen. They're still friends to this day.

And this is the other side of his life. He is no longer going to be unknown. He says from here on in, it was going to be a lot more complicated. Born to Run was the dividing line. But listen to his reaction to this. This is wild. This is his most important album. And all he could see were the flaws to the point where he almost didn't want to release it.

This is also why I think Jimmy Avine has this great advice that he trained. himself when he feels fear most people run and jimmy's like what i've trained myself to do is when i feel fear i go towards it bruce did the same thing and it changed his life we managed to finish the record that would put us on the map on the exact day our born to run tour was starting that is not supposed to happen the record should be ready months before you hit the road still i wrestle with born to run for a few more months rejecting it refusing to release it and finally throwing it into a hotel swimming pool in front of a panicked Jimmy Iveen. He had brought the finished master out on tour.

But to hear it, the two of us had to go to a stereo store and beg them to let us use one of their record players. I stood in the back of the store, fretting, hemming and hawing as the record played. Jimmy's eyes plastered to every look on my face, begging, please just say yes and let it be done. Jimmy, John, and Mike got crazy, but I still couldn't release it.

All I could hear was what I perceived. received as the record's flaws. But this is why having somebody that understands you so important. John tried to patiently explain to me that art often works in mysterious ways. What makes something great may also be one of its weaknesses, just like in people. That's excellent advice. So I let it go. He is on the precipice of getting every single thing that he thought he wanted, and he's full of doubt and fear.

I needed to find out what I had. 40 years later, I did not want to be sitting in my rocking chair on a sunny afternoon with the woulda, shoulda, coulda, blues. All I could think of was my dad, covered in a cloak of cigarette smoke lamenting. I could have taken that job with the phone company, but I would have had to travel. So instead, it was lights out, depression, beer, and resenting his own family for what he thought he could have accomplished. Dead meat. I worried, but in the end, my ego, ambition and fear of not to. taking my shot, outweighed my insecurity.

The record goes everywhere. They put him on the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines. And everybody around was like, isn't this great? This is what Springsteen said. I looked at them and thought, oh my God, and immediately retired to my room. I was not comfortable. But what could a poor boy do? As Hyman Roth in the Godfather Part 2 says,

this is the business we've chosen. Sure, I had nurtured my ambivalence. It made me happy. It gave me plausible deniability and granted me the illusion of staying one step removed from my ravenish ambitions. But this was the course I had striven towards relentlessly. Stardom. This is what I mentioned where he's very, very honest.

This is, again, the good and the bad. He's going to tell you things that no one else is going to tell you. And he probably could only say it as a 70-year-old man that he couldn't when he was 35, or 25, or even 45. These are not the kind of things that you casually mention to other people. and these are the most valuable things to understand. He's being honest with what he actually wants. Stardom in all capital letters. Not a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday gig at the local gin joint.

Not a musical weekend warrior. Not a college kids down low secret hero. Stardom. The impact. The hits. The fame, the money. The women. The recognition and the freedom to live as I please

to take it to the limit or wherever all of this was leading me born to run lifted us into another league and so now he starts talking about the struggles that are going on in his mind no one you have been and no place you've ever gone ever leaves you the new parts of you simply jump in the car and go along for the rest of the ride and this is where he realizes where he's getting all the professional success that he ever dreamed of and he's miserable off the road life was a puzzle without that nightly hit of adrenaline in the show provided i was at loose ends and whatever was that was always always eating at me rose up and came calling. Eventually, I had to come to grips with the fact

that at rest, I was not at ease. And to be at ease, I could not rest. The show centered and calm me, but it could not solve my problems. I had no family, no home, no real life. I was a runner, not a stayer. Family was a terrifying and compelling thought for me in 1980. Yet on this album, I'd begun to write about that life. A part of me truly admired it and felt it was where real manhood lies. I just wasn't any good at it. He's talking about his inability up until this point to actually establish meaningful relationships and connections with other people. I had only my father's experience to go on and no intimate knowledge of men who were at ease with family life. I didn't trust myself to bear the burden or the responsibility for other

people's lives. My experience with relationships and love to that point all told me I wasn't built for it. I grew very uncomfortable, very fast. All of this sat nicely on a top of a sea of fear and depression so vast, I hadn't begun to contemplate it, much less consider what I should do about it. Easier to just keep rolling. I had it down. I'd routinely and roughly failed perfectly fine women over and over again. I figured needing people too much might not provide the best payoff. Better off playing defense,

but it was getting harder and harder to pretend nothing was amiss. Two years inside of any relationship and it would all simply stop. As soon as I get close to exploring my frailties, I was gone. It was rarely the women themselves I was trying to get away from.

At work, I could take on all the responsibility you could load on my shoulders, but in life, all I could find was a present that I could take no comfort in. This goes on for dozens and dozens of pages. This is what he's explaining to us. It's like, this is sad. He does not want to live this way.

He wants to find a way to fix it. With the end of each affair, I'd feel a sad relief from the suffocating clusterphobia love had brought me and had be free. I'd switch partners, hit rewind, and take it from the top, telling myself this time it would be different. Then it would be high times and laughs until fate

and that unbearable anxiety came knocking and it'd be one more for the road and in the very next paragraph he goes back to this hold that his traumatic childhood has on him as a grown man as a rock star a world famous musician this is what he's doing goes back to the little town

Freehold New Jersey where he grew up I still spent many hours on the edges of my birth city he's in the car again Mine was a pathetic and quasi-religious compulsion. On my visits to my hometown, I would never leave the confines of my car. My car was the sealed time capsule from whose seats I could experience the little town that had its crushing boot on my neck.

I'd roll through its streets listening for the voices of my father, my mother, and me as a child. I would daydream of purchasing a house, moving back away from all the noise that I'd created, bringing it all full circle fixing things finding a love one that would last marrying and walking through town my children in my arms my woman at my side it was a pleasant fantasy and i suppose i took comfort in the illusion that i could go back but i've been around long enough to know history is sealed and unchangeable you can move on with a heart stronger in the places it's been broken create new love you can hammer pain and trauma into a righteous soul sword and use it in defense of life, love, human grace, and God's blessing. But nobody gets a do-over. Nobody gets to go back. There's only one road out, ahead, and into the dark.

And this is where he does this cross-country trip. This is what the movie's about. And he falls into the deepest depression of his life. He says, this was the trip where the ambivalence, trouble and toxic confusion I had volcanically bubbling up for 32 years would finally run. reach critical mass. I felt a deeper anxiety than I have ever known. Why here? Why tonight? 34 years later, I still don't know. All I do know is that as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier, much heavier. With each passing year, the price of our

refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher. This is such good, great writing. Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlive their usefulness, and I'd become an abuser of their once life-saving powers. I relied on them to wrongly isolate myself, to cut me off from life, to contain my emotions to a damaging degree. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment will be in tears. He leaves Jersey. He travels across to California, he is running from his problems on this road trip, he realizes I can't run from this anymore. But when he gets to California, he reacts just like he's always reacted. This is what makes his story so fascinating. He finally confronts and then fixes this. So he gets to his house

in California. I immediately start thinking about leaving. Where am I going to go? Anywhere, as long as it's away from this home that seems to be asking me for something I find so disturbing I cannot submit or surrender to. It wants me to stay. And I I don't stay. I don't stay for this house. I don't stay for anyone. That's for everyone else. I go.

The only thing that stops me is knowing that if I get in the car and make that long trip back east, once my toes tickle the Atlantic, I'd be driven to turn around and return here in a never-ending cycle of wheel-spinning madness. I am existentially spent. My emotional well of tricks dry. There is no tour to hide behind, no music to save me, I'm face up against the wall I've been inching towards for a long time. I call John Landau. Remember how I told you how important it was to find that person in his life? I've broached these subjects in several long conversations with John in the past.

He gets it. It's dark and getting darker. My well of emotion is no longer being channeled and safely pipelined to the surface. There's been an event and my depression. is spewing like an oil spill all over the beautiful turquoise green gulf of my carefully planned and controlled existence. Its black sludge is threatening to smother every last living part of me. John advises you need professional help. At my request, he makes a call. I get a number and two days later I drive 15 minutes west to a residential home in a suburb of Los Angeles. I walk in, look into

the eyes of a kindly white-haired, mustached, complete stranger, sit down and burst into tears. I started talking, and it helped immediately. Over the next few weeks, I regained some equilibrium. I felt myself steading, writing myself. I had danced and driven my way all on my own to the brink of my big, black sea, but I didn't jump in. By the grace of God and the light of friends, I wouldn't live and die there. So began 30 years of one of the biggest adventures of my life, canvassing the squirrely terrain inside my own head for signs of life. Life, not a song, not a performance, not a story, but a life.

I worked hard, dedicatedly, and I began to learn things. I began to map a previously unknown internal world, A world that when it showed its weight in mass, its ability to hide in plain sight and its sway over my behavior, stunned me. There was a lot of sadness at what had happened, at what had been done, and what I had done to myself. But there was good news also,

how resilient I'd been, how I turned so much of it into music, into love, and smiles. I'd mostly beaten the hell out of myself and my loved ones. However, I understood what had recently drawn me so far down had also rallied to my defense as a child, had covered my heart and provided shelter when I needed it. For that I was thankful.

But now, those wayward blessings were standing squarely between me and a home and a life that I needed. The question was, could I tolerate those? those things. I needed to find out. This is where the entire book comes together. So he starts meeting with Dr. Wayne Myers. And over many meetings and long-distance phone calls during the next 25 years, Doc Myers and I would fight many demons together until he passed in 2008. In all psychological wars, it is never over. There's just this day, this time, and a hesitant belief in your own ability to change. It is not an arena where the unsure should go looking for

absolutes and there are no permanent victories. It is about a living change filled with insecurities, the chaos of our own personalities. The results of my work with Dr. Myers and my debt to him are at the heart of this book. And this is where he's trying to form long-term relationships. I wanted something serious. I met Julianne Phillips. She was 24 years old, tall, blonde, educated, talented, a beautiful and charming young woman. We hit it off and began seeing each other. Six months into dating, I proposed and we were married. Following our wedding, I was struck by a series of severe anxiety attacks. I fought my way through with my doctor's help. I tried to hide them as best as I could, and that was a mistake. I also had shades of my dad's paranoid delusions that scared me. His dad is going to wind up being

diagnosed later on as paranoid schizophrenic. And there's cases, this is also in the movie, but in the book, where his dad would just disappear. And Bruce Smeasing is, again, world famous musician has to fly across the country and search the streets of San Francisco trying to locate his dad. And again, we go back into things. These are just things that people would not admit

when they're happening. He's in his mid-30s. He's married now. And his mind is playing tricks on him. One evening while I sat across my beautiful wife in an upscale Los Angeles restaurant, a conversation formed silently inside my head. There, as we politely chatted,

hand in hand, a part of me tried to convince myself that she was simply using me to further her career. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Julianne loved me and didn't have an exploitive or malicious bone in her body. Inside, I knew that, but I was out where the buses don't run. He's lost in his mind. And couldn't center myself around the truth. I was sliding back towards a chasm where fear, rage, distrust, insecurity,

made war with my better angels. Once again, it was the fear of having something. He italicizes a lot of these words And he's talking about what he's fearful What he's fearful of Staying is italicized a lot Having is italicized a lot Loving is italicized a lot

I mean I don't know if it's in I'm pretty sure I'll go over this later He literally talks about the fact that he thought He was so unlovable That he would start to hate The people that loved him Because he didn't think he deserved it And yet at the same time

It's what he wants most in the world Which is where The book really flips and catches it by surprise because you think that work, we're 400 pages, 332 pages into the book. So far as all been, I'm obsessed with work, all I want to do is work. And you realize that's not even his top priority in life. And of course, if he feels this way, he's not the only human being that feels this way. This is why these stories are so important.

Once again, it was the fear of having something, allowing something into my life, someone loving that was setting off a myriad of bells and whistles and a fierce reaction. Who would care for me? Who would love me? the real me, the me I knew who resided inside my easygoing facade. He has a mask. I was scared, but I did not want to scare the wits out of my young bride. It was the wrong way to handle it and created a psychological distance at just the moment when I was trying to let someone into my life. How did this paragraph start? I tried my best to hide them. That was a mistake. How does it end?

It was the wrong way to handle it and created a psychological distance at just the moment I was trying to let someone into my life. This is why he has spent so much time talking about his childhood and how much his family fucked him up. He understands the cause of his inability to form healthy relationships. He doesn't like this. He doesn't want to be like this. He wants to fix it. And he does. And so he immediately goes back to his old habits. When Julie was filming on location, I'd be at home in New Jersey, slowly slipping back to my old ways. The bars, the late nights. Nothing serious. Just my usual drifting, but it wasn't married life. It was during one of these periods, Patty and I got together under the excuse of working on our duets. So Patty was a musician. She is in Bruce's band. And even after

all the women that you can imagine a rock star has been with, he never found another person like her. They are still together to his day 40 years after the events in the book that he's talking about now. He says, in my life, Patty is a singularity. And so that leads him to divorcing his first wife. And so originally they start living together in New York City. And he says in New York City I was a magic rat in his maze. I couldn't get the sky, couldn't see the sun and couldn't run. So he's like, I'm not a city boy. He goes, this is my one try. My only try I becoming a city boy and it was a no-go. So we packed up our bags and headed back to Jersey where she and I spent a summer with me up to some of my old ways and thoughtless behavior. Patty was patient to a point. Patty and I fought a lot, which was a good

thing. I'd never argued much in most of my other relationships and it had proved detrimental. Two many issues simmering unresolved beneath the surface always proved poisonous. And so he starts to hurt her. These incidents occurred only with people I cared about, people I loved. That was the point. I wanted to kill what loved me because I couldn't stand being loved. It infuriated and outraged me. Someone having the temerity to love me. It was ugly and a red flag for the poison I had running through my veins and my genes. Over the years, I'd come to the realization that there was a part of me, a significant part, that was capable of great carelessness and emotional cruelty, that sought to reap damage and harvest shame, that wanted to wound and hurt and make sure

those who loved me paid for it. It was all straight out of my dad's playbook. My father led us to believe he despised us for loving him, would punish us for it. It seemed like he could be driven crazy by it, and so could I. When I tasted as part of myself, it made me scared and sick. and so at this point they were spending half the year in New Jersey and half the years in California. This is going on for quite a while. So it took a while and one massive end-all blowout of an argument where Patty finally fed up with my bullshit threw down the gaunt and laid it out. Stay or go? This is what I'd push her toward and with one foot out the door. I stopped for a moment and the weak but clear thinking part of me asked where

the hell do you think you're going? The road? The bar? I still enjoyed them but it wasn't a life. I'd been there, seeing all they had to offer. What was conceivably going to be different? Was I going to get back on the hamster wheel of indecision, of lying to myself that it would all never grow old, and throw away the best thing, the best woman I'd ever known? I stayed. It was the sanest decision of my life. Together, we settled into a reassuring quiet. not trying to push each other too hard or make too much of things we gave each other a lot of room and something happened it was a sweet surrender and i've always felt that it was there at that time in the gentle days and nights we spent at the sea that patty and i emotionally married i loved her

i was lucky she loved me the rest was paperwork a few years later their son is born Listen to how he describes what having a kid is like. Making life fills you with humility, balls, arrogance, a mighty manliness, confidence, terror, joy, dread, love, a sense of calm and reckless adventure. Isn't anything possible now? If we can populate the world, can't we create and shape it? Now you're almost 400 pages into the book. You understand his life story. this is the sentence that grabs you, that ties everything together.

This is a holy shit, full circle moment. He says, work is work, but life is life. And life trumps art always. This is the full circle moment. If you think about everything he's talked about in the book up until this point, a viciously unhappy childhood and a family life that causes him to retreat into work in an extreme way as he searches for control and success. He gets everything he ever wants professionally, and then falls into a deep depression, retreats

back into work, but finds the reprieve temporary. Demons follow him everywhere he runs. He finally stops and faces them, realizes what he truly wants and that he was lying to himself. For the first time in his life, he's able to have a healthy relationship with someone he loves who loves him, which causes this profound realization that is unexpected to come from somebody like him. Work is not life. Life is life. Work is an important part, but only a part and I need to find out how to build a great life. To me, that's what he's been talking about. And what he finds in Patty, he says, we love those in whose company is reflected the best of us. For a couple of loners and

musicians, they were both loners, they're both musicians, we've made it pretty far. She had plenty of admirers and was a tough dance card if you tried to tame her independent. She lived alone and like a musician, she was not domestic. I liked all of this. There was a lot of emotional dueling and plenty of arguing. We tested our ability to withstand each other's insecurities hard. It was good. We could fight, surprise, disappoint, raise up, bring down, withhold, surrender, hurt, heal, fight again, love, refit, then go out it one more time. We were both broken in a lot of ways, but we hoped with work our broken pieces might fit together in a way that could create something

workable, something wonderful, and they did. We created a life and a love fit for a couple of emotional outlaws. That similarity bound and binds us very close. I had let Patty know me

like I'd never done with anyone else. This frightened me. I believed a lot of me wasn't so nice to know. My self-centeredness, my narcissism, my isolation, Still, Patty tended to be alone to herself, and this gave her a pretty good heads-up on how to handle me. She was strong and had proven she could stand against my less-than-constructive behavior. She was confident in us, and that gave me confidence that we would be all right.

Patty had changed my life in a way that no one else ever had. She inspired me to be a better man, turned the dial-way down on my running, while still leaving me room to move. she took care of me perhaps more than I deserved. And so as he's trying to fix himself, as he's trying to have longstanding relationship, as he's trying to still build his career, he's still dealing with his father. And once his dad was diagnosed as schizophrenic,

he says finally it all began to make sense, but there's just unbelievable stories in the book. Here's just one of them. Once he drove all the way from New Jersey, nonstop from California, to leave a note on my door saying, sorry, I missed you. Then he drove over to my mom's relatives,

which is in another town in New Jersey, curse them out, then got in the car and drove nonstop back to the west coast. He zipped around the country like a madman. And so his dad, without warning, would just drive hundreds of miles and he would just show up unannounced.

And so at one time he did this right before Bruce was about to become a father. And so he just shows up unannounced at Bruce's house in L.A. And he says, Bruce, you've been very good to us. He continued, and I wasn't very good to you. You did the best you could, I said.

That was it. it. That was all I needed. All that was necessary. I was blessed on that day and given something by my father that I thought I'd never see. A brief recognition of the truth. It is why he had come 500 miles that morning. He'd come to tell me on the eve of my fatherhood that he loved me and to warn me to be careful, to do better, to not make the same painful mistakes that he had made. And I try to honor that. We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down, by fighting and taming the demons that laid them low and now reside in us. I learned many rough lessons from my father, a deep attraction to silence, secretness and secretiveness. You always withhold something.

You do not lower your mask. This distorted idea that the beautiful things in your life, the love itself you struggled to win, to create, will turn and possess you, robbing you of your imagined long fought for freedom. All of that leads ultimately to a wreck of a life. I can't lay this all on my dad's feet. Plenty of it is my own weakness and inability to put this all away. Through hard work and Patty's great love, I have overcome much of this, though not all of it. I have days when my boundaries wobble. My darkness and blues seem to beckon, and I seek to medicate myself in any way I can. but on my best days I can freely enjoy the slow passing of time, the tenderness that is in life.

I can feel the love I'm a part of surrounding me and flowing through me, something that feels almost like being free. Those whose love we wanted but could not get, we emulate. It is dangerous. It stakes our claim upon that which was rightfully ours, but denied. This is the final takeaway on his father's life, and it's devastating. My dad was ill but wily. He held us hostage for many years.

In my mom's case, right up until he died, and she never called him on it. The other life my mom seemed built for and could have had, the life of dining, dancing, laughter, adult partnership, the equal sharing of life's burdens. She was not compelled to pursue. There is so much of my own mom's life in what he's describing right now. We don't always want what seems best suited for us. We want what we need. You make your choices and you pay the piper.

She chose and she paid. We all did. My mother stood behind my wildest dreams, accepted me at face value for who I truly was and nurtured the unlikely scenario I held deepest in my heart that I was going to make music and that someone somewhere was going to want to hear it. She shone her light on me at a time when it was all the light there was.

When I hit it big, my mom believed the saints had come marching in and blessed us for the heart. times we had endured. I suppose they had. Many years later, at a ceremony for the rock and roll hall fame, I stood on stage between Mick Jagger and George Harrison, all of us together on one mic, singing. I was thinking, what's wrong with this picture? How did a kid from New Jersey end up on this evening between these two men whose work had driven so deeply into his soul that he had to follow the road they laid out before him? Follow it with everything he had. look at it like this in 1964 when Bruce started millions of kids saw the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and decided that looks like fun some of them went out and bought instruments some of them learned to play a little some of them got good enough to maybe join a local band some of them might have even made a demo tape some might have lucked out and gotten a record deal

A few of those might have sold some records and done some touring. A few of those might have had a small hit, a short career in music, and managed to eke out a modest living. A very few of those might have managed to make a life as a musician. And a very, very few might have had some continuing success that brought them fame, fortune, and deep gratification. And tonight, one of those. ended up standing between Mick Jagger and George Harrison, a Rolling Stone and a beetle. I did not fool myself about what the odds were back in 1964,

that that one would have been the acne-faced 15-year-old kid with a cheap guitar from Freehold, New Jersey. My parents were right. My chances were one, one in a million, one in many millions. But still, Here I was.