(2016)
Dear Bruce,
I’ve been meaning to write this letter for decades—ever since the day your music saved my soul.
I was a child of divorce, no siblings, lost in a world where adults were scrambling to find their way in fogs of their own making. I was ten in 1980, the year “No Nukes” hit theaters. Thanks to my mother’s obsessive need to see James Taylor and Carly Simon mock their birds over and over, we trekked to the local movie theater as often as she could afford tickets. At first I sang along to her favorite songs, eager to be The Good Kid keeping our fragile family boat afloat in endlessly unpredictable waters. But after the fourth or fifth viewing, I wasn’t there for the easy listening. I was there for you.
That Christmas, all I wanted was vinyl. First came Darkness on the Edge of Town, and I swallowed it whole like an Italian ice on a hot city afternoon; the almost painful brain freeze was my heart clenching as I listened to “Something in the Night” and “Racing in the Street.” I was thunderstruck. I hadn’t realized one could be dissatisfied with one’s life. I thought my world, with its shitty apartment and depressed mother and indifferent, coke-nosed father, was all there was. To discover there was searing, scalding beauty out there that could make me feel something akin to hope... that it was okay to question one’s surroundings and want something better… that quite literally saved my life.
Then came your back catalog, and my father, finding a rare bridge of connection, turned me onto The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, Greetings from Asbury Park, and then, holy shit, Born to Run, an 18-wheeler barreling down the highway. “Jungleland” taught me that music and poetry could crash and tumble like lovers. I feasted, and then came The River. The joy of “Cadillac Ranch,” the sadness of the title track, the ethereal beauty of “Drive All Night.” And then came Nebraska. Jesus, that album. It was everything. It was a mirror. It was a lifeline.
My early teens were a sloppy mess of sadness and hope and jealousy and confusion amidst a burgeoning sense of self. I saw you live for the first time in 1984, when you played a string of nights at the Brendan Byrne Arena. My father said you didn’t play “Growin’ Up” anymore, but you did, and I swear to god you sang it to me, a pimply redhead in the nosebleed seats on the far side of the room. He got me and my stepsister hotdogs, but I was too nervous to eat. I remember looking at the page about Patty in the program—another redhead!
Fast forward to 1990. I was a junior in college, spinning vinyl at the campus radio station. The night I met Jeff at a party, we discovered a mutual love of your music, and spent the whole night talking and listening and talking and listening—and then, finally, kissing. We dated for a few months, then went our separate ways. We were young and dumb. Twenty years later we reconnected. He was alone; I was in the process of separating from my then-husband. We tried to be friends. We failed miserably.
Change happened. Heartbreak happened. Love happened. We were living in one of your songs, and I was able to follow the chords. Jeff and I got married in 2014 in our friends’ backyard, walking each other down the grassy aisle, hand in hand, as the ’75 Hammersmith recording of “Thunder Road” warbled from a little Bluetooth boombox.
The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison’s singing for the lonely
Hey, that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again
Don’t run back inside, darling
You know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared and you’re thinking
That maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright
Oh, and that’s alright with me
And here we are, getting ready to ride the rails down the Hudson to see you on the big broad way. We live in the same town as your magnificent Sister Soozie Tyrell, but I haven’t had the courage to seek her out. Doesn’t seem right. But I admit I love knowing she’s here among us, proof that everything you’ve given me is real and relevant and relatable. You’ve given most of your life as a gift to people you’ll never meet, myself and my husband and my fucked up family included. Please know that that gift, that proffered voice of honesty and beauty and hope so freely given, has never been taken for granted.
Thank you for saving my life. And thank you for giving me a life.
(2025)
Nine years later… 35 years later… we’re still happy as a couple of clams. The world’s on fire but we’re still here, living and loving and learning how to keep hope alive. (It’s hard.) We still listen to you. (All the time.) We went to the twice-rescheduled Albany show last year (it was worth the wait to hear “Nightshift” live), and we just downloaded the ’75 Toronto show (worth it for “Lost in the Flood”). About hope—yeah, well, that’s the thing. You can’t grasp it like a record jacket or your phone, it doesn’t wait to be found under an overpass or in an arena. Your music taught me that if I want it, if I really want it, I need to look for it and listen to it and reach out and take it. I try to remember that every day.
Rain and storm and dark skies
Well now they don’t mean a thing
If you got a girl that loves you
And who wants to wear your ring
So c’mon mister trouble
We’ll make it through you somehow
We’ll fill this house with all the love
And all that Heaven will allow
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