That sense
of everything riding on the present moment permeated the studio where
Springsteen had been reworking his songs for months. Not surprisingly, Meola
found “someone who had put his soul on the wire for the better part of a year
to make eight songs.”
The
intensity of one artist was matched by the one viewing and capturing his image.
“I had a sense of the history unfolding in front of my camera,” Meola
remembered. “I wanted to photograph that history more than anything I have ever
worked on.”
The
product of that session featuring Springsteen and saxophonist and onstage foil
Clarence Clemons is at the heart of “Born To Run at 50,” an exhibition at the Passaic County Arts Center (PCAC) in Hawthorne, NJ, containing a sampling of items
from the recently opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at
Monmouth University.
Three
months ago, at the time the exhibit opened, I clipped an article out of my
local paper, The Bergen Record, about this commemoration of that
landmark album’s cultural impact and the aftermath of its success. The other day, picking up that piece again, I wondered
when I should see it.
At that
point, a lyric from another Springsteen LP went through my mind:
“Summer’s here and the time is right.” There was no doubt that I had to see
this.
One photo
plucked out of the Meola session, folded in half and wrapped around, ended up
on the cover of Born To Run and found their way, Springsteen noted, in
“the windows of every record store in America”: the one with him leaning on the
cover of Clemons—“the big man with the big smile,” in Meola’s words.
But in
truth, almost any of the more than two dozen outtakes displayed on the walls of
the PCAC would have made for a compelling visual image of this turning point in
The Boss’s life.
My
favorite shows the same Springsteen attire (black leather jacket, tweed cap) as
the album cover, but with sneakers hanging off the guitar and an “Elvis Fan
Club of NYC” button on his jacket.
In
addition to the evocative Meola photos, the exhibit contains other artifacts
documenting Springsteen’s time in New Jersey in the two-year period between Born
To Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, such as:
*A
handwritten note addressed to the “landlordess” of the cottage where he
composed Born To Run, apologizing for a later payment of a water bill
(two humorous postscripts ask, “Do you like my classy writin’ paper?” and “I’m
practicing my autograph. Whadya think?”
*An
artistic recreation of the customized guitar featured on the cover of the
album;
*A video
from his acclaimed 1978 performances at the now-defunct Capitol Theatre in
Passaic;
*A
now-ragged sweater worn by The Boss thrown into the audience at one of these
shows, then caught—and now displayed, like a precious relic, all these years
later.
For
longtime fans like myself, the exhibition (which runs through July 19 at the
PCAC (in the John W. Rea House, 675 Goffle Road, Hawthorne) offers the
opportunity to relive when the New Jersey rock ‘n’ roll scene (including good
friend Southside Johnny) burst with vitality and the seemingly endless promise
of being young and alive.
For later
generations, it tells a story of how music was recorded, promoted, and
performed long before the digital era utterly transformed how the industry reached
millions of listeners worldwide.
The exhibit
has whetted my interest in seeing what other events may be sponsored by PCAC.
And, at some point, I’ll have to drive down to Monmouth County and spend a few
hours at the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.
