Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, “Born to Run,” is chock full of interesting stories. If there had been galleys and time to read it before publication, I’d have been able to give you a more comprehensive review.
Springsteen includes memories and anecdotes about a lot of people.He says he wrote the song “Fire” for Elvis Presley, but he died before it could happen. The Pointer Sisters had the hit, produced by Richard Perry.
But it may be the people he left out who are more interesting. That group includes three well known girlfriends he had before marrying Julianne Phillips. They were Karen Darvin (who went to marry Todd Rundgren), Joyce Hyser, and the famed photographer Lynn Goldsmith.
Darvin was mentioned in the Time cover story in 1975. Goldsmith’s absence from “Born to Run” is the most curious. She took hundreds of photographs of him that became classics. She’s also written about the relationship and published books of the photos.
Somehow, Bruce has managed to publish a book about himself using not one of Goldsmith’s photos. That’s pretty hard to do since anyone else who would publish a book about Bruce Springsteen would definitely use pics taken by Lynn Goldsmith.
Ah well. I’m sure other forums like Page Six will address this issue. Me, I’m wondering why there’s no mention of the song “Fever” and no anecdote about the cover artists who made money for Bruce — how Patti Smith made “Because the Night” a big hit, ditto the Pointer Sisters with “Fire,” or Manfred Mann with “Blinded by the Light.” Five hundred pages– and not a peep about those peeps, either.
Bruce notes at the end of the book:
“Writing about yourself is a funny business. At the end of the day it’s just another story, the story you’ve chosen from the events of your life. I haven’t told you “all” about myself. Discretion and the feelings of others don’t allow it. But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise: to show the reader his mind. In these pages I’ve tried to do that.”
