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Bruce is everywhere! The Boss Does the BlitzBy Rick Horowitz
When the doorbell rings the first time, I'm still half asleep, so I roll myself into a nice tight ball and pull the sheet back over my head. Whatever it is, it can wait. When the doorbell rings the second time, I realize this isn't going to work; whatever it is, it's going to keep at it until I make it stop. I stagger out of bed, throw on yesterday's clothes and stumble my way downstairs. That's when I see him, standing there on the front steps in his faded jeans and his jet-black T-shirt. Bruce Springsteen. "I came to talk," he says. "I figured you would," I tell him. So then we're sitting in the living room; he's on the couch, I'm on the chair right across from him. He seems nice enough. (Great biceps!) And he isn't pulling any of that rock-legend stuff -- I tell him I'm out of orange juice, he doesn't tell me to go run down to the store and get some, and make sure it's the extra pulpy, he won't touch if it's anything but the extra pulpy. He just says he'll have some water. I tell him I caught him on Ted Koppel -- both shows. I missed the "Today" show, I admit, but then with two nights on Letterman, and the cover of Time magazine, and the cover of the Rolling Stone, and -- "You're really getting around," I tell him. "Just doing my job," he says. He means promoting the new album, which I know he has to do, although personally, I think he could have limited himself to the major media outlets and saved himself a lot of trouble. I'm not sure going on Animal Planet does him much good, and I don't even want to talk about the Popular Mechanics crowd, even if it was a really good interview. (That one and the one in Foreign Affairs were probably my favorites.) On the other hand, he's been at this business a long time, and he certainly knows what he's doing. If he thinks he needs to market the thing that way, then who am I to say he shouldn't? When did I ever fill a stadium? And if he thinks he needs to go door-to-door, that's fine, too, though I'm wishing he could've scheduled me an hour later, or even after supper, the way he did with most of the other houses on the block when he started doing these drop-ins a couple of nights ago. You live way down near the corner, though, I guess you take what you can get. "Ask me anything," he says. "Anything at all." But I'm stumped. I've already heard him talk about everything -- about his music, and his message, and his fans, and his family, and the therapists and the terrorists and -- "So how do you like our 7-Eleven?" "Your what?" "Our 7-Eleven. Is the microphone OK?" It isn't a great question, I know, but it's the best I can come up with under the circumstances. I've heard he's been doing some quick acoustic sets over at the 7-Eleven parking lot. Just one or two of the new ones, but there's always plenty of traffic going by, so I'm just making sure that -- "The microphone is fine," he says. And my next question is even dumber than that one. "Shouldn't you be rehearsing or something?" I ask him. "You know, getting ready to go out on tour and all?" And he just smiles at me, this really odd smile. Then he gets up off the couch and leads me out of the living room, through the kitchen to the back window. I look out the window and there they are -- the entire E Street Band and all their equipment, set up in my backyard! They're waving. I wave back. (Of course I wave back.) "Mind if we work on a few tunes?" Bruce Springsteen asks me. It's still early. They're going to wake the whole neighborhood. Why should I be the only one up? Posted 8/1/02. Start
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Rick Horowitz
