The nice people at W. W. Norton & Company have been kind enough to offer a copy of Marc Dolan’s wonderful biography “Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ‘n’ Roll” to one lucky winner on Greasy Lake. The prize will be the new paperback edition of the book that was originally published in 2012 with an extra chapter thrown in that brings the story up to date. Readers of this site may remember that The Bruce Librarian had pretty high praise for the book when.... Read more

   

To many Australians, Bruce Springsteen’s 2013 return to the land down under - as welcome as it was - had a feel of “it’s about bloody time”. It had been 10 years since the last visit, 10 years during which Bruce was just about an annual visitor to European and North American venues. And while Australia geographically and perhaps psychologically is a pretty remote place, Bruce’s relationship with Australia has been a troubled one from the get-go, which may have.... Read more

   

“Bruce” by Peter Ames Carlin is one of the most talked-about Springsteen biographies ever put to print, and Greasy Lake must be the last publication with even the slightest interest in the protagonist to review it, and chances are, if you read this, you’ve already read a few other reviews. Heck, you probably already read the book and formed your own opinion.Still, this column simply wouldn’t be complete without a piece on what is not only the most talked-about Bruce.... Read more

   

As someone who got to know Bruce around the time he was the biggest living rock star on the planet, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ,  was not an easy bite to chew. Just accepting the fact that it was the same person who bawled out bigger-than-life rock ‘n’ roll anthems at gigantic football stadiums as the bearded weirdo who stared back at you from the back cover of the Greetings album took years.It didn’t help that one of the first Springsteen albums I owned - long before.... Read more

   

We survived the Mayan apocalypse, but if the tinfoil hats had been right and the world had gone poof from under our feet, 2012 wouldn’t have been such a bad year to be the last one. At least if you see it from a Bruce Springsteen fan point of view.After a two-year hiatus, during which Bruce was never really that far off the radar (can you say Darkness box?), in 2012 he was back with a vengeance. The highlights were as high as they were plentiful, and the big question that fans had asked.... Read more

   

2012 is turning out to be a great year for Springsteen books. I recently reviewed Marc Dolan’s excellent The Promise of Rock ‘n’ Roll; November will see the release of the authorized biography “Bruce” by Peter Ames; and in between those two we now have “Bruce Springsteen FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Boss” by John D. Luersson. What separates “Bruce Springsteen FAQ” from most other Bruce biographies is the characteristic.... Read more

   

Greasy Lake confucted an email interview with the author of Bruce Springsteen FAQ, John D. Luersson. Here are his replies to our questions. Greasy Lake: Why does the world need another Bruce Springsteen book?John D. Luersson: Bruce Springsteen FAQ is designed to be an entertaining reference book – one that hardcore fans can enjoy as much as passive fans. When I was quoted as saying “It’s the only Bruce book you’ll ever need” by Backstreets, it might have.... Read more

   

Which was the bigger surprise is hard to say, but yesterday two announcements were made that were both rather unexpected. One was that Bruce has added a final show for 2012 in Mexico City, and the other was that this Thursday he will once again take time out of his calendar to perform in support of Barack Obama, in Ohio and Iowa respectively.Bruce Springsteen has never played in Mexico in any shape or form. The country has never seemed to exist on Bruce’s personal world map, but that is.... Read more

   

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band are about to hit New Jersey again. When that happens these days the whole state knows it and a couple of percent of the population are present (all right, that would require no repeat customers and no out-of-staters, but still...) . Of course, it wasn't always so. Guest writer and photographer James Shives takes us back to a time when things were very different: the September 22, 1974 gig at Kean College and shows us some of his famous and not quite so.... Read more

   

 [Note: this review is based on a preview copy of the book. It is therefore possible that some of the information referred to in the book is not part of the published version.] When you’ve read as many Bruce Springsteen biographies as this Bruce Librarian has, you don’t often come across one that is full of new information and interesting facts and analysis. There’s rarely much true insight, and a lot of them contain more than a little repetition of Dave Marsh’s.... Read more