People Xmastime Likes-Backstreets

  guest post by MARLEY


Xmastime likes Bruce Springsteen?

Okay, I'm a fan of his records. And I kind of like him, but he caught Steve Earle-itis and I'm of the "shut up and sing" contingent. And then he goes and talks to Rolling Stone

Did you ever go to a therapist or seek help like that?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I got really down. Really bad off for a while. And what happened was, all my rock & roll answers had fizzled out. I realized that my central idea — which, at a young age, was attacking music with a really religious type of intensity — was okay to a point. But there was a point where it turns in on itself. And you start to go down that dark path, and there is a distortion of even the best of things. And I reached a point where I felt my life was distorted. I love my music, and I wanted to just take it for what it was. I didn't want to try to distort it into being my entire life. Because that's a lie. It's not true. It's not your entire life. It never can be.

And I realized my real life is waiting to be lived. All the love and the hope and the sorrow and sadness — that's all over there, waiting to be lived. And I could ignore it and push it aside or I could say yes to it. But to say yes to part of it is to say yes to all of it. That's why people say no to all of it. Whether it's drugs or whatever. That's why people say no to all of it. Whether it's drugs or whatever. That's why people say no: I'll skip the happiness as long as I don't have to feel the pain.

So I decided to work on it. I worked hard on it. And basically, you have to start to open up to who you are. I certainly wasn't the person I thought I was. This was around the time of Born in the U.S.A. And I bought this big house in New Jersey, which was really quite a thing for me to do. It was a place I used to run by all the time. It was a big house, and I said, "Hey, this is a rich man's house." And I think the toughest thing was that it was in a town where I'd been spit on when I was a kid.

Add to that the fact that his band is now a Vegas act.


THE E STREET BAND IN "CATS!"

And then he did StoryTellers, where he'd sing his songs just with an acoustic guitar, but stop after every line to explain, "Well, Mary's dress really wasn't waving when I wrote that, but I was thinking of the American flag and the tattered dreams of the heartland and the broken promises of our government and . . . where was I? Oh yeah. (strum) Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays. In this line, the radio is a metaphor for the the stirrings of a new voice and the porch is oak. No. Pine."

He's a myth and myths should not be caught grocery shopping or otherwise letting us peek behind the curtain.