JOE McGINNISS

All quiet on the Sarah front, so I’m starting to develop the proposal I’ll soon send to my publisher regarding the book I’d like to write about Springsteen.

As a fan, I go back to the beginning of Bruce’s recording history. I was living near Philadelphia and listening to Philly radio stations like WMMR when they started to play songs from his first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1973.

We’re both in our sixties now, but both still going strong.  If you drained the Great Salt Lake in Utah, you could fill the basin to overflowing with the sweat Bruce has left behind on stage over forty years, giving his every audience every bit of himself.

After three years of Sarah, it’s a joy to contemplate writing a book about someone who’s made such a difference to America in such a positive way over so many decades. In his life, his recordings, and especially in his electrifying stage performances, Bruce has shown that America still can be the land of hope and dreams.

As more and more of us find ourselves, “ten years down the road, nowhere to run…nowhere to go”–as it becomes ever more clear that our economy will never again be what it was in the 20th Century, as joblessness rises along with the costs of health care, as corporate interests crush the common man as brutally (though perhaps with more polish and finesse) as in the Robber Baron era–the strength and clarity of Bruce Springsteen’s vision of democracy and celebration of individuality and of the sheer–if only occasionally realized–joy of being alive is perhaps more vital than ever.

More on Sarah and THE ROGUE as the need arises or as the impulse occurs, but right now I feel like a guy who’s spent three years in a dark cellar and is suddenly Blinded by The Light.