On another occasion, Noel and I were out riding around in my car, listening to Springsteen, and he says, "Billy's at this party over at so-and-so's house." This wasn't a wild, the-parents-are-out-of-town party. It was adults and young men and women socializing. I forget what the occasion was, maybe somebody's birthday. But we're out, listening to Springsteen, and we want to share it with Billy. For some reason, we have the "Born to Run" album in the car with us. So we decide to crash this party. It's one of those ideas that you have to psyche each other up for, and with our youthful energy, that's no problem.

So we get to the house, we park, we knock on the front door, and a perfectly nice and reasonable adult answers, and we say "is Billy here?" And he says, sure, come on in and suddenly we are in the middle of a suburban living room full of folks in mid-party, most of which we don't know. Billy, of course, is delighted to see us. We exchange awkward pleasantries with everyone, and then Billy herds us into the kitchen. As soon as we get in there, we say excitedly, "Billy! We have Bruce in the car!" And he says, "What? No Clarence?"

Riding The River

By college I'd raised the romance of the doomed outsider to an art form (I even wanted to be an artist). During our early college days, Billy, Noel and I would listen to "The River" often. We'd put on side one, and end up listening to all four sides, blown away by the depth of feeling.

"The River" is a lovely album. The production is gorgeous. It's a pleasure to listen to. The music is intricate, the piano rides atop the base and both are interwoven perfectly with the organ while the acoustic guitar fills out the edge and it all ebbs and flows and crashes with the drums like the surf. "Oooh the price you pay, oooh the price you pay, now you can't walk away (crash of surf) from the price you pay." And back behind it all, backing vocals and wonderfully expressive nonwords, oooohhhss, iiiyyiiiyyiiyiiis. Then there's the rockers, including I'm a Rocker (bring it on home!) and the joyous Sherry Darlin (hey, hey, hey, whataya say, Sherry Darlin --- sax solo!). You had your problems (Fade Away, Stolen Car, Jackson Cage) but you also had the ability to dance all over them.

Did we really understand it, this album about what happened to the kids that met 'neath that giant Exxon sign, that raced in the streets, that dreamt of escaping the workin, the workin, just the workin life? Did we know about getting shot point blank by the pretty lies that they sell? Or that you can become the hand that turns the key to the jackson cage? We did, and we didn't. Bruce told us what we were going to face, but we were different. We had the courage and the vision. The Big Chill was for others.