TAMPA, Fla. — Ninety minutes before Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band give their first news conference in 22 years, Bruce’s longtime publicist, Marilyn Laverty, says it will be OK if I ask him a question.
We’re standing with NFL executive and news conference host Brian McCarthy in the green room at the Tampa Convention Center just outside the hall where the cameramen and press already have started to assemble.
”They rolled with the motorcade about 10 minutes ago,” a worker tells McCarthy, meaning Bruce and gang are on their way.
My question: ”I want to say that elite football players almost always have a supportive parent or two behind them and were encouraged all the way. And they always had coaches. Bruce’s dad told him, ‘Turn down that damn guitar!’ So who encouraged Bruce? Who coached him?”
Laverty, a small, middle-aged woman with reddish hair, looks at me.
”You know his father passed away,” she says.
Well, yes, ”Dutch” Springsteen died in 1998.
I am sorry.
And yet it was Bruce himself who often told the story in concerts about his dad yelling at him about the noise coming through the bedroom wall.
”Unless,” I offer, ”you want me to ask him about how many chicks he’s gotten?”
McCarthy says quickly, ”Patti, his wife, will be there.”
I was just kidding.
But I wasn’t kidding about the early guidance dilemma, about the structure and support — at some time — that any creative, disciplined, successful person or group must have. Where did this man who just performed at the presidential inauguration with Pete Seeger, who has won Grammies and Oscars and everything else, find out he could do it?
The blending of the greatest football players on the planet with arguably the greatest rock band on the planet is an ironic one.
Ben Roethlisberger and Kurt Warner had mentors and learned to follow orders from Pee-Wee ball on up. They couldn’t be eccentric or rebellious; they had to conform. Bruce and Max and Little Steven and Clarence ”Big Man” Clemons and the others had to be the opposite. If they didn’t test the rules, walk the edge, they would be nothing. And yet, at the end, a great band and a great team are almost the same.
In the news conference, Springsteen is asked by a writer how the group decides what songs to play.
”Well, I’m ‘The Boss,”’ Springsteen replies. ”’The Boss’ decides what we play! People suggest, plead, cajole, but I decide.”
Later when guitarist Nils Lofgren, a former high school gymnast, tries to explain why he’s a Cardinals fan, he finds his microphone is off.
”Only the Boss’s works!” Springsteen says with a chuckle. ”I had them turn the other ones off.”
They switch mikes.
”I’m pulling for the Cardinals,” Lofgren eventually says.
”No!” Springsteen hollers. ”You can’t say that. It’s in the contract.”
So we understand quickly this is not a democracy. Bruce runs it, Bruce trumps it.
Yet this only makes his success all the more remarkable.
He’s about 5-8, maybe 5-9, and he used to play some baseball. But he admits up front he knows nothing about football.
”All my football questions will be answered by Steve [Van Zandt],” he says. ”Max [Weinberg, the drummer] did say he won a Punt, Pass and Kick contest back in grammar school. And Clarence actually played football, which is why he has the cane.”
Indeed, the 67-year-old sax player had to be brought down the hallway via golf cart, and he has to lean on an assistant at the end simply to exit the stage. He sits during the band’s concerts, nearly immobile. But he’s still part of the team.
Super Bowl halftimes used to be lame, quasi-college shows featuring entertainment by the likes of Carol Channing and Up With People.
Then in 1992, the Fox network, which had no NFL rights, decided to co-opt the moment by broadcasting at the same time a live episode of then-ever-so-hip ”In Living Color.” The stunt sucked about 20 million viewers from Super Bowl carrier CBS.
Boom — the next year Michael Jackson jetted into the Super Bowl halftime party. (And this was when Jacko was cool, not simply terrifying.)
Since then halftime shows have featured Diana Ross, James Brown, Boyz II Men, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins, Britney Spears, U2, Sting, Kid Rock, P. Diddy, Janet Jackson with Justin Timberlake (ah, ”Nipplegate”), Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and, now, Bruce and his buddies.
I never did get to ask my question — the microphone handlers ignored me, for some reason — and Springsteen ended up admitting that doing the Super Bowl was about money and promotion as much as art.
”We have a new album coming out, dummy!” he roared. ”Come on!”
But this band, which lost keyboardist Danny Federici to cancer last spring, is mostly about survival and inspiration. You get old, but you don’t have to get irrelevant. Tape up what hurts and play with your heart. Even if it’s only for, as it will be Sunday, a mere 12 minutes.
It was Lofgren who summed up the game-time thing best: ”You pull out of the gate and you get to get lost in the music and you don’t come up for air for till it’s over.”
Just like championship football.
No matter how different.
Bruce will be the guest DJ on the E Street channel (SIRIUS channel 10, XM channel 58), on Monday, January 19, and next Monday, January 26. Bruce will sit down with DJ Host and official Bruce biographer Dave Marsh. The music is hand-picked by Bruce from his personal record collection. Bruce will share how he discovered each song and what he likes about the music in his commentary. SIRIUS XM listeners will hear Bruce playing a variety of music ranging from folk songs to contemporary music including hip hop and progressive rock.”