springsteen2

0
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:15,000
INDOXXI
Support dengan like & share :)

1
00:00:29,237 --> 00:00:33,324
DNA, your natural ability,
the study of your craft,

2
00:00:34,034 --> 00:00:37,746
a development of
and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy.

3
00:00:38,329 --> 00:00:39,247
Balls.

4
00:00:40,457 --> 00:00:43,793
Naked desire for fame, love, adoration,

5
00:00:43,877 --> 00:00:45,795
attention, women,

6
00:00:45,879 --> 00:00:48,131
sex, a buck.

7
00:00:48,548 --> 00:00:51,342
Then, if you want to take it
all the way out to the end of the night,

8
00:00:51,426 --> 00:00:54,471
you will need a furious fire
in your belly

9
00:00:55,013 --> 00:00:56,639
that just don't quit burning.

10
00:00:57,432 --> 00:01:01,478
These are some of the elements
that will come in handy

11
00:01:02,228 --> 00:01:04,064
should you come face-to-face

12
00:01:04,481 --> 00:01:07,317
with 80,000 screaming rock 'n' roll fans.

13
00:01:09,194 --> 00:01:13,073
Because these are fans who are waiting
for you to pull something out of your hat,

14
00:01:13,531 --> 00:01:16,493
out of thin air,
something out of this world.

15
00:01:17,035 --> 00:01:19,954
Something that, before the faithful
were gathered here today,

16
00:01:20,038 --> 00:01:21,998
was just a song-fueled rumor.

17
00:01:22,832 --> 00:01:24,793
Now, I come from a boardwalk town

18
00:01:24,876 --> 00:01:28,546
where everything is tinged
with just a bit of fraud.

19
00:01:33,343 --> 00:01:34,552
So am I.

20
00:01:35,595 --> 00:01:38,765
In 1972,
I wasn't any race-car-driving rebel.

21
00:01:38,848 --> 00:01:40,558
I wasn't any corner street punk.

22
00:01:40,850 --> 00:01:44,020
I was a guitar player
on the streets of Asbury Park.

23
00:01:44,687 --> 00:01:47,941
But I held four clean aces.

24
00:01:48,233 --> 00:01:52,195
I had youth, I had a decade
of hard-core bar band experience

25
00:01:52,278 --> 00:01:53,446
already behind me.

26
00:01:53,738 --> 00:01:55,907
I had a great group of musicians
and friends

27
00:01:55,990 --> 00:01:58,993
who really knew my playing style,
and I had a magic trick.

28
00:01:59,744 --> 00:02:02,872
Now I'm here tonight
to provide proof of life

29
00:02:03,748 --> 00:02:06,501
to that ever-elusive,
never completely believable,

30
00:02:06,584 --> 00:02:09,045
particularly these days, us.

31
00:02:10,421 --> 00:02:12,090
That's my magic trick.

32
00:02:12,173 --> 00:02:14,259
And like all good magic tricks,

33
00:02:14,342 --> 00:02:16,010
it begins with a setup.

34
00:04:02,450 --> 00:04:05,703
Now, I've never held an honest job
in my entire life.

35
00:04:07,372 --> 00:04:09,457
I've never done any hard labor.

36
00:04:10,166 --> 00:04:12,377
I've never worked nine to five.

37
00:04:13,086 --> 00:04:16,339
I've never worked five days a week
until right now.

38
00:04:24,013 --> 00:04:26,140
I don't like it.

39
00:04:26,891 --> 00:04:31,396
I've never seen the inside of a factory,
and yet, it's all I've ever written about.

40
00:04:32,605 --> 00:04:34,732
Standing before you is a man

41
00:04:34,816 --> 00:04:38,403
who has become wildly
and absurdly successful

42
00:04:38,945 --> 00:04:42,532
writing about something
of which he has had...

43
00:04:43,950 --> 00:04:46,160
absolutely no personal experience.

44
00:04:48,621 --> 00:04:50,623
I-- I made it all up.

45
00:04:52,625 --> 00:04:53,918
That's how good I am.

46
00:05:01,634 --> 00:05:02,635
Now, how?

47
00:05:03,636 --> 00:05:07,181
I'm sure you're wondering,
how did this great miracle come to pass?

48
00:05:08,057 --> 00:05:09,058
Well...

49
00:05:10,143 --> 00:05:11,311
in the beginning...

50
00:05:12,061 --> 00:05:15,064
there was a great darkness
upon the waters.

51
00:05:15,565 --> 00:05:19,402
As a child, there was Christmas,
your birthday, summer vacation,

52
00:05:19,944 --> 00:05:23,614
but the rest of life was a lifeless,
sucking black hole.

53
00:05:24,615 --> 00:05:29,037
A lifeless, sucking black hole
of homework, church,

54
00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:32,206
school, homework, church,

55
00:05:32,582 --> 00:05:35,752
school, homework, church,

56
00:05:35,835 --> 00:05:38,379
school, green beans,

57
00:05:38,713 --> 00:05:42,258
green beans, fucking green beans.

58
00:05:44,635 --> 00:05:49,515
But then,
in a blinding flash of sanctified light,

59
00:05:49,974 --> 00:05:53,102
a human being and just a kid,

60
00:05:53,811 --> 00:05:55,772
just a kid from the southern sticks.

61
00:05:56,522 --> 00:06:01,444
But, a... new kind of man.
And he split the world in two.

62
00:06:01,861 --> 00:06:02,945
And suddenly...

63
00:06:04,030 --> 00:06:05,615
a new world existed.

64
00:06:08,785 --> 00:06:10,453
The one below your belt.

65
00:06:16,542 --> 00:06:17,835
And...

66
00:06:18,503 --> 00:06:19,587
above your heart.

67
00:06:20,463 --> 00:06:22,799
On a Sunday night in 1956,

68
00:06:22,882 --> 00:06:26,344
at 39 1/2 Institute Street,
into a cold-water flat

69
00:06:26,427 --> 00:06:28,763
and into the mind of a seven-year-old kid.

70
00:06:29,013 --> 00:06:32,100
The revolution had been televised!

71
00:06:32,642 --> 00:06:34,143
Right under the noses

72
00:06:34,477 --> 00:06:36,145
of the powers that be!

73
00:06:36,854 --> 00:06:39,774
Who, if they'd have known
what was actually happening

74
00:06:39,857 --> 00:06:41,442
and the great changes...

75
00:06:42,193 --> 00:06:44,195
the changes that were about to come,

76
00:06:44,779 --> 00:06:47,615
they would have shut this shit down.

77
00:06:48,950 --> 00:06:52,036
Or more likely signed it up real quick.

78
00:06:52,370 --> 00:06:57,250
Because we, the unwashed,
the invisible, the powerless, the kids,

79
00:06:57,333 --> 00:07:00,002
would want more.

80
00:07:02,088 --> 00:07:03,381
Now more life...

81
00:07:04,382 --> 00:07:07,343
more love and more sex
and more hope...

82
00:07:07,927 --> 00:07:09,095
and more truth...

83
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:11,013
and more power.

84
00:07:12,056 --> 00:07:13,474
And more soul.

85
00:07:13,558 --> 00:07:17,186
And most of all, more rock 'n' roll.

86
00:07:24,068 --> 00:07:27,572
So I sat with my mom,
my little seven-year-old mind on fire,

87
00:07:28,030 --> 00:07:31,451
staring into a blue tube as fun happened.

88
00:07:32,410 --> 00:07:34,620
Fun, the real kind.

89
00:07:34,704 --> 00:07:37,498
The joyful, life-affirming, hip-shaking,

90
00:07:37,582 --> 00:07:39,584
ass-quaking, guitar-playing,

91
00:07:39,667 --> 00:07:44,422
mind- and heart-changing,
race-challenging, soul-lifting bliss

92
00:07:44,505 --> 00:07:46,466
of a freer existence.

93
00:07:48,843 --> 00:07:53,806
A freer existence exploded
into unsuspecting homes

94
00:07:54,182 --> 00:07:55,725
all across America.

95
00:07:56,225 --> 00:07:57,894
On a regular Sunday night.

96
00:07:59,270 --> 00:08:02,565
The world had fucking changed.

97
00:08:03,524 --> 00:08:05,067
In an instant.

98
00:08:06,235 --> 00:08:10,364
In a sweating, wet orgasm of fun.

99
00:08:12,492 --> 00:08:14,118
And all you needed to do

100
00:08:14,702 --> 00:08:16,162
to get a taste of it...

101
00:08:17,330 --> 00:08:19,624
was to risk being your true self.

102
00:08:22,919 --> 00:08:26,255
Because a rock 'n' roll genie
had been let out of the bottle

103
00:08:26,339 --> 00:08:28,716
and he told us that if you were...

104
00:08:32,678 --> 00:08:36,474
...my fellow citizens,
these feelings, these freedoms,

105
00:08:37,016 --> 00:08:38,351
this fun...

106
00:08:39,727 --> 00:08:41,062
was your birthright.

107
00:08:41,854 --> 00:08:45,274
I listened, I believed,
and I heard a mighty call

108
00:08:45,650 --> 00:08:46,943
to action.

109
00:08:47,944 --> 00:08:50,780
So I studied my new hero.

110
00:08:51,239 --> 00:08:55,117
I know today he's got the same
two arms, two legs, two eyes that I got.

111
00:08:55,409 --> 00:08:58,079
Yes, he's a human Adonis.

112
00:08:59,205 --> 00:09:00,373
And I'm...

113
00:09:08,130 --> 00:09:09,757
...pathetically creepy.

114
00:09:11,551 --> 00:09:13,844
But I'll figure that part out, all right?

115
00:09:13,928 --> 00:09:16,180
The one thing he had
that I didn't have was strapped

116
00:09:16,264 --> 00:09:17,557
around his waist.

117
00:09:17,848 --> 00:09:19,350
It was the guitar!

118
00:09:20,101 --> 00:09:22,770
The guitar,
or as my father had christened it,

119
00:09:22,853 --> 00:09:24,730
"that fucking guitar."

120
00:09:25,982 --> 00:09:28,693
But that fucking guitar was the key!

121
00:09:29,235 --> 00:09:31,862
It was the sword in the stone!

122
00:09:32,572 --> 00:09:35,575
It was the staff of righteousness!

123
00:09:36,284 --> 00:09:39,579
And they sell 'em
at Western Auto downtown

124
00:09:40,413 --> 00:09:41,998
for 25 dollars!

125
00:09:43,583 --> 00:09:46,544
So I begged and I pleaded with my mother

126
00:09:46,627 --> 00:09:49,338
just to rent me,
'cause we couldn't afford to buy,

127
00:09:49,422 --> 00:09:52,717
a guitar from Mike Diehl's Music School
on South Street.

128
00:09:52,800 --> 00:09:56,012
One Saturday afternoon,
I brought it home.

129
00:09:57,388 --> 00:10:00,099
And I sat on the living room couch,

130
00:10:01,058 --> 00:10:04,186
and I unlatched its full alligator case,

131
00:10:05,271 --> 00:10:08,065
and I slowly opened it up,

132
00:10:10,401 --> 00:10:12,862
and up from the green velvet lining...

133
00:10:13,738 --> 00:10:15,656
came the sweet smell...

134
00:10:16,449 --> 00:10:19,952
of a cherry wood cocktail of power,

135
00:10:20,620 --> 00:10:23,164
pleasure, salvation,

136
00:10:23,831 --> 00:10:26,959
dreams, and dreams and dreams.

137
00:10:27,668 --> 00:10:31,213
So I took lessons, dedicatedly.

138
00:10:31,631 --> 00:10:35,134
I took lessons for two solid weeks...

139
00:10:39,680 --> 00:10:40,681
and I quit.

140
00:10:42,308 --> 00:10:43,809
It was too fucking hard.

141
00:10:45,269 --> 00:10:48,606
Learning the guitar,
not only was it fucking hard,

142
00:10:48,939 --> 00:10:51,442
but the lessons were boring!

143
00:10:51,525 --> 00:10:55,529
Just give me the three magic chords,
please!

144
00:10:55,863 --> 00:10:57,531
And let me twist...

145
00:10:58,282 --> 00:10:59,367
and shout!

146
00:11:00,910 --> 00:11:04,955
But I was a seven-year-old kid
and my hands barely fit around the neck

147
00:11:05,039 --> 00:11:08,834
and I couldn't waste my mother's
hard-earned cash week after week,

148
00:11:09,251 --> 00:11:13,756
so very shortly, I knew.
That back it was gonna have to go.

149
00:11:14,799 --> 00:11:18,969
But the morning before I returned it,
I strapped it on one more time.

150
00:11:21,013 --> 00:11:24,225
I took it out into the backyard
where the neighborhood kids were,

151
00:11:25,518 --> 00:11:27,770
and I put on my first show.

152
00:11:29,313 --> 00:11:30,690
Whoo!

153
00:11:30,773 --> 00:11:33,859
I slapped it, I shook it, I shouted,

154
00:11:33,943 --> 00:11:35,903
I sang voodoo nonsense.

155
00:11:36,112 --> 00:11:38,155
I burned a hole in the grass,

156
00:11:38,572 --> 00:11:41,325
I shook my little seven-year-old ass.

157
00:11:44,954 --> 00:11:48,374
Most importantly, I posed with it!

158
00:11:49,458 --> 00:11:50,876
That's the shit!

159
00:11:55,172 --> 00:12:00,261
I danced with it,
I did everything but play it.

160
00:12:01,429 --> 00:12:02,972
I couldn't do that.

161
00:12:04,181 --> 00:12:07,226
I sucked so bad and the kids laughed
and laughed and laughed

162
00:12:07,309 --> 00:12:08,644
at my silly ass.

163
00:12:09,395 --> 00:12:11,731
And we brought it back that afternoon.

164
00:12:13,149 --> 00:12:16,026
But riding back home
with my mom in the car...

165
00:12:16,652 --> 00:12:18,988
I sat in the backseat and I was quiet.

166
00:12:19,780 --> 00:12:20,823
I was thinking...

167
00:12:22,450 --> 00:12:25,578
I was a little disappointed in myself.

168
00:12:27,830 --> 00:12:29,415
But somewhere inside...

169
00:12:30,583 --> 00:12:33,586
somewhere inside,
I knew that for a moment,

170
00:12:34,795 --> 00:12:36,338
just a moment,

171
00:12:37,590 --> 00:12:39,884
in front of those kids in that backyard...

172
00:12:42,052 --> 00:12:44,764
Mm... I smelled blood.

173
00:13:48,911 --> 00:13:51,330
And it was bye-bye, New Jersey,

174
00:13:52,331 --> 00:13:57,211
I'm gonna be airborne!

175
00:14:16,605 --> 00:14:18,023
Now, everybody...

176
00:14:18,524 --> 00:14:21,402
everybody has a love-hate relationship
with their hometown.

177
00:14:22,903 --> 00:14:25,322
It's just built into the equation
of growing up.

178
00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:27,283
If you take me.

179
00:14:28,492 --> 00:14:29,994
I'm Mr. Born to Run.

180
00:14:31,954 --> 00:14:34,081
I'm Mr. Thunder fucking Road.

181
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:37,668
I was born...

182
00:14:38,752 --> 00:14:40,754
to run, not to stay.

183
00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:44,425
My home, New Jersey...

184
00:14:50,055 --> 00:14:51,181
it's a death trap.

185
00:14:56,562 --> 00:14:58,564
It's a suicide rap.

186
00:14:59,648 --> 00:15:02,151
Listen to the lyrics, all right?

187
00:15:02,776 --> 00:15:05,029
I gotta get out, I gotta hit the highway,

188
00:15:05,112 --> 00:15:09,033
I'm a road running man,
I got the white line fever in my veins.

189
00:15:09,575 --> 00:15:12,620
I am gonna bring my girl
and I have had enough

190
00:15:13,621 --> 00:15:15,789
of the shit that this place dishes out.

191
00:15:16,916 --> 00:15:20,210
I am gonna run, run, run, and I'm...

192
00:15:21,462 --> 00:15:23,088
well, I'm never coming back.

193
00:15:24,465 --> 00:15:26,634
I currently live ten minutes
from my hometown.

194
00:15:35,935 --> 00:15:38,312
But, uh... "Born to Come Back" or, uh...

195
00:15:38,812 --> 00:15:41,440
Who would have bought that shit?

196
00:15:41,857 --> 00:15:42,900
Nobody.

197
00:15:43,567 --> 00:15:45,402
Nobody, nobody.

198
00:15:51,492 --> 00:15:53,953
In our front yard,
only a few feet from our porch

199
00:15:54,036 --> 00:15:56,205
stood the grandest tree in town.

200
00:15:56,830 --> 00:16:00,292
It was a towering,
beautiful copper beech tree.

201
00:16:00,876 --> 00:16:04,755
And on sunny days,
I lived under its branches.

202
00:16:04,838 --> 00:16:09,760
Its roots were a fort for my soldiers
and a corral for my horses.

203
00:16:10,552 --> 00:16:12,846
And I was the first on my block

204
00:16:13,514 --> 00:16:16,308
to climb high into its upper reaches,

205
00:16:17,476 --> 00:16:19,478
leaving behind a world that...

206
00:16:21,313 --> 00:16:23,273
I didn't care for much already.

207
00:16:25,109 --> 00:16:27,736
And up near the top,
I had the wind in my face

208
00:16:27,820 --> 00:16:29,947
and I had all the dreaming room

209
00:16:30,823 --> 00:16:32,074
that you could want.

210
00:16:33,367 --> 00:16:36,036
On slow summer nights,
I'd sit beneath its arms

211
00:16:36,120 --> 00:16:38,622
with my pals like the cavalry at dusk,

212
00:16:39,623 --> 00:16:41,750
just listening and listening...

213
00:16:42,751 --> 00:16:45,212
for the evening bells
of the ice cream man,

214
00:16:46,714 --> 00:16:49,425
and my grandmother's voice
calling me in to bed.

215
00:16:51,260 --> 00:16:54,430
I lived on Randolph Street
with my sister, Virginia,

216
00:16:54,513 --> 00:16:57,057
she was a year younger than me,

217
00:16:57,141 --> 00:17:00,602
my parents, Adele and Douglas,
my grandparents, Fred and Alice,

218
00:17:00,686 --> 00:17:03,981
and my trusty dog Saddle.

219
00:17:05,190 --> 00:17:09,403
We lived spitting distance
from the Catholic Church,

220
00:17:09,486 --> 00:17:11,822
the priest's rectory, the nuns' convent,

221
00:17:11,905 --> 00:17:14,950
the St. Rose of Lima Grammar School,
all of it

222
00:17:15,034 --> 00:17:17,244
just a football's toss away,

223
00:17:17,786 --> 00:17:19,913
across a field of wild grass.

224
00:17:19,997 --> 00:17:24,168
I literally grew up surrounded by God.

225
00:17:26,295 --> 00:17:28,464
Surrounded by God...

226
00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:31,550
and my relatives.

227
00:17:32,509 --> 00:17:35,471
'Cause we had cousins
and aunts and uncles

228
00:17:35,554 --> 00:17:37,306
and grandmas and grandpas

229
00:17:37,389 --> 00:17:39,683
and great-grandmas and great-grandpas,

230
00:17:39,767 --> 00:17:43,520
all of us were jammed
into five little houses

231
00:17:43,604 --> 00:17:45,272
on two adjoining streets.

232
00:17:45,355 --> 00:17:49,610
And when the church bells rang,
the whole clan would hustle up the street

233
00:17:50,319 --> 00:17:54,865
to stand witness to every wedding
and every funeral

234
00:17:54,948 --> 00:17:57,576
that arrived like a state occasion

235
00:17:58,160 --> 00:17:59,745
in our little neighborhood.

236
00:18:01,747 --> 00:18:04,958
My sister and I, we'd pick up
the thrown rice from the weddings,

237
00:18:05,959 --> 00:18:09,713
pack it away in small brown paper bags
and take it home and save it,

238
00:18:10,839 --> 00:18:13,717
and run up the street and throw it
at the next wedding...

239
00:18:14,426 --> 00:18:15,677
and the next wedding...

240
00:18:16,678 --> 00:18:18,222
and the next wedding.

241
00:18:19,723 --> 00:18:22,601
We also had front row seats
to watch the townsmen

242
00:18:22,684 --> 00:18:26,271
in their Sunday suits carry out
an endless array...

243
00:18:27,606 --> 00:18:29,399
of dark wooden boxes

244
00:18:30,317 --> 00:18:33,779
to be slipped into the rear
of the Freeman's Funeral Home

245
00:18:34,113 --> 00:18:36,949
long black Cadillac

246
00:18:37,908 --> 00:18:39,201
for the short ride

247
00:18:39,868 --> 00:18:42,913
to St. Rose Cemetery hill
on the edge of town.

248
00:18:43,580 --> 00:18:44,623
And there...

249
00:18:45,624 --> 00:18:47,918
all our Catholic neighbors,
all the Zerillis,

250
00:18:48,001 --> 00:18:51,588
all the McNicholases,
all the Springsteens who came before...

251
00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:54,842
they patiently waited for us.

252
00:18:55,968 --> 00:18:57,386
On Sundays,

253
00:18:58,762 --> 00:19:01,140
as my mom tended to our graves,

254
00:19:01,223 --> 00:19:02,766
my sister and I...

255
00:19:04,393 --> 00:19:07,437
we played hide-and-seek
amongst the gravestones.

256
00:19:10,566 --> 00:19:11,817
I gotcha.

257
00:19:12,943 --> 00:19:15,445
Now, when it rains in Freehold...

258
00:19:16,697 --> 00:19:18,282
When it rains,

259
00:19:19,074 --> 00:19:22,661
the moisture in the humid air
blankets the whole town

260
00:19:22,744 --> 00:19:27,708
with the smell of moist coffee grounds
wafting in from the Nescafé plant

261
00:19:27,791 --> 00:19:29,459
on the town's eastern edge.

262
00:19:30,294 --> 00:19:31,879
Now, I don't like coffee,

263
00:19:33,881 --> 00:19:35,716
but I loved that smell.

264
00:19:37,134 --> 00:19:40,888
It was comforting. It united our town,

265
00:19:41,471 --> 00:19:43,765
just like our clanging rug mill,

266
00:19:44,349 --> 00:19:48,020
in a common sensory experience.
There was a place here.

267
00:19:48,103 --> 00:19:51,064
You could hear it, you could smell it.

268
00:19:52,232 --> 00:19:54,693
A place where people made lives

269
00:19:54,776 --> 00:19:57,237
and where they worked
and where they danced

270
00:19:57,321 --> 00:20:02,075
and where they enjoyed small pleasures
and played baseball and...

271
00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:04,870
and suffered pain.

272
00:20:06,538 --> 00:20:08,498
Where they had their hearts broke

273
00:20:09,708 --> 00:20:11,376
and where they made love,

274
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:14,296
had kids...

275
00:20:16,381 --> 00:20:17,841
where they died...

276
00:20:20,177 --> 00:20:23,931
and drank themselves drunk
on spring nights.

277
00:20:25,849 --> 00:20:28,060
And where they did their very best,

278
00:20:29,770 --> 00:20:31,063
the best that they could,

279
00:20:33,065 --> 00:20:37,027
to hold off the demons,
outside and inside,

280
00:20:38,278 --> 00:20:40,030
that sought to destroy them...

281
00:20:42,449 --> 00:20:44,910
and their homes, their families,

282
00:20:47,704 --> 00:20:49,164
and their town.

283
00:20:59,091 --> 00:21:02,386
Here, we lived in the shadow
of the steeple,

284
00:21:02,469 --> 00:21:06,098
crookedly blessed in God's good mercy,
one and all.

285
00:21:07,182 --> 00:21:10,060
In the heart-stopping, pants-dropping,

286
00:21:10,519 --> 00:21:13,397
race-rioting, freak-hating,

287
00:21:13,480 --> 00:21:16,566
soul-shaking, redneck,

288
00:21:17,859 --> 00:21:19,653
love-and-fear-making,

289
00:21:21,113 --> 00:21:22,948
heartbreaking town...

290
00:21:26,034 --> 00:21:28,036
of Freehold, New Jersey.

291
00:25:36,868 --> 00:25:39,579
My father worked
as a 16-year-old floor boy

292
00:25:39,663 --> 00:25:40,872
in that rug mill.

293
00:25:40,956 --> 00:25:44,376
And then he went off to war.
When he came home, he got married.

294
00:25:45,043 --> 00:25:47,337
They shut the rug mill down,
and so he went to work

295
00:25:47,420 --> 00:25:49,548
on the Ford Motor plant line
in New Brunswick.

296
00:25:49,631 --> 00:25:52,384
Then he worked at the Nescafé plant
in Freehold,

297
00:25:53,093 --> 00:25:55,095
worked in a plastics factory in town.

298
00:25:55,178 --> 00:25:58,557
He was a truck driver, a bus driver,
drove a taxi.

299
00:25:58,932 --> 00:26:01,518
He lived mostly at home,
except for his second home,

300
00:26:01,601 --> 00:26:04,104
which was a little local bar
in the center of town.

301
00:26:05,105 --> 00:26:10,860
Now, to a child, bars in Freehold
were these citadels of great mystery.

302
00:26:12,153 --> 00:26:14,781
When you walked through barroom doors
in my hometown,

303
00:26:14,864 --> 00:26:16,825
you entered the mystical realm of men.

304
00:26:17,450 --> 00:26:20,954
On the rare night
that my mother would call my father home,

305
00:26:21,580 --> 00:26:24,249
we would slowly drive through town
until we drew to a stop

306
00:26:24,332 --> 00:26:25,917
outside of a single lit door.

307
00:26:26,001 --> 00:26:28,878
She'd look at me and say,
"Go in and get your dad."

308
00:26:30,171 --> 00:26:33,008
This both thrilled and terrified me.

309
00:26:33,758 --> 00:26:36,886
Thrilled me,
because I had been given the license

310
00:26:36,970 --> 00:26:37,846
by my mother,

311
00:26:38,388 --> 00:26:40,807
the law...

312
00:26:40,890 --> 00:26:42,934
...to go into the bar!

313
00:26:43,935 --> 00:26:45,061
I'm a kid!

314
00:26:46,313 --> 00:26:48,189
But it terrified me,

315
00:26:48,690 --> 00:26:50,358
because to enter the bar

316
00:26:50,442 --> 00:26:56,948
is to enter my father's privileged,
private, and sacred space.

317
00:26:57,490 --> 00:27:02,412
He was not to be disturbed
when he's down at the bar.

318
00:27:03,079 --> 00:27:05,665
Everybody knew that.

319
00:27:05,749 --> 00:27:07,208
So, I would walk in.

320
00:27:07,584 --> 00:27:11,588
And I was waist-high, and like a Jack
who climbed some dark beanstalk

321
00:27:11,671 --> 00:27:12,714
into a land of giants,

322
00:27:12,797 --> 00:27:16,635
all I remember is the men towering
over me on their way out the door.

323
00:27:17,052 --> 00:27:19,346
Now, once you were in,
to the left against the wall

324
00:27:19,429 --> 00:27:22,057
was a line of red leather booths

325
00:27:22,140 --> 00:27:24,934
that were filled
with husband and wife tag team drinkers.

326
00:27:25,185 --> 00:27:27,687
Now, they were your hard-core regulars,

327
00:27:27,771 --> 00:27:30,482
there night after night
after night, all right?

328
00:27:30,565 --> 00:27:32,651
Now, to the right was the bar,

329
00:27:33,151 --> 00:27:37,447
a line of stools filled by a barricade
of broad working-class backs,

330
00:27:37,530 --> 00:27:41,618
clinking glasses, too loud laughter,
and very few women.

331
00:27:41,701 --> 00:27:46,081
I would stand there lost in the noise
and the hustle of the crowd

332
00:27:46,164 --> 00:27:50,251
and I would drink in
that dim smell of beer

333
00:27:50,335 --> 00:27:53,046
and booze and aftershave.

334
00:27:53,129 --> 00:27:58,051
That, to a kid,
that was the scent of adulthood.

335
00:27:58,510 --> 00:28:01,471
It was the scent of manhood.

336
00:28:02,430 --> 00:28:04,599
I wanted some of that, you know?

337
00:28:05,016 --> 00:28:09,062
Finally, somebody would notice me
and draw me over to my pop.

338
00:28:09,145 --> 00:28:11,606
Now, my view from the floor
was the first thing I'd see

339
00:28:11,690 --> 00:28:13,817
is the chrome legs of the barstool.

340
00:28:13,900 --> 00:28:17,529
Then I'd see his black shoes,
white socks, dark green work trousers,

341
00:28:17,612 --> 00:28:19,072
powerful legs and haunches.

342
00:28:19,155 --> 00:28:22,951
My dad, till the day he died,
had the legs and an ass of a rhinoceros.

343
00:28:24,285 --> 00:28:27,789
And-- and his trousers always looked
like they were stretched,

344
00:28:27,872 --> 00:28:31,918
stretched over those legs and ass somehow.
I don't know how.

345
00:28:32,836 --> 00:28:34,921
He was always busting out, you know?

346
00:28:35,296 --> 00:28:38,299
Uh, then I would see
his black Garrison work belt,

347
00:28:38,383 --> 00:28:40,093
his green work shirt, and then his face.

348
00:28:40,176 --> 00:28:42,679
By the time I got there,
his face was flushed red,

349
00:28:43,430 --> 00:28:45,849
red as a tomato because he was Irish,

350
00:28:45,932 --> 00:28:49,227
and whatever he drank
went straight to his face.

351
00:28:49,936 --> 00:28:54,274
All right? He couldn't hide a thing
when he came home, you know? Uh...

352
00:28:54,899 --> 00:28:57,736
And not only was it red,
but it was like...

353
00:28:57,902 --> 00:29:03,867
...it was, like, distorted, too,
into some sort of booze mask, you know,

354
00:29:03,950 --> 00:29:07,120
by... by Mr. Schlitz and-- and...

355
00:29:07,871 --> 00:29:12,500
It was so foreign to me as a child that,
uh...

356
00:29:15,044 --> 00:29:16,337
He...

357
00:29:18,089 --> 00:29:19,966
Fuck, I don't know!

358
00:29:20,049 --> 00:29:23,887
But it was scary, and he'd be peering
down over his shoulder,

359
00:29:24,220 --> 00:29:27,348
down through cigarette smoke
and he'd be looking at me like,

360
00:29:28,016 --> 00:29:30,477
"I've never seen you before
in my fuckin' life."

361
00:29:36,816 --> 00:29:40,028
I'd then uttered the immortal words
that I was sent to deliver,

362
00:29:41,196 --> 00:29:42,906
"Mom wants you to come home."

363
00:29:45,825 --> 00:29:50,121
I'd hear, "Go outside.
I will be right out."

364
00:29:50,580 --> 00:29:54,375
And I would follow my breadcrumb trail
back out the barroom door,

365
00:29:54,709 --> 00:29:59,506
I would hop into the backseat
and I would inform my mother...

366
00:30:02,425 --> 00:30:05,470
"Um, he'll be right out.
He'll be right out."

367
00:33:31,843 --> 00:33:35,221
Now, those whose love we wanted
but didn't get,

368
00:33:36,180 --> 00:33:37,473
we emulate them.

369
00:33:38,850 --> 00:33:41,769
It's the only way we have in our power

370
00:33:43,479 --> 00:33:46,983
to get the closeness and the love
that we needed and desired.

371
00:33:47,442 --> 00:33:49,861
So, when I was a young man
and looking for a voice

372
00:33:49,944 --> 00:33:53,948
to meld with mine, to sing my songs,
and to tell my stories,

373
00:33:54,032 --> 00:33:56,075
well, I chose my father's voice.

374
00:33:58,578 --> 00:34:01,205
Because there was something sacred
in it to me.

375
00:34:02,540 --> 00:34:05,001
When I went looking for something to wear,

376
00:34:05,460 --> 00:34:07,879
I put on a factory worker's clothes,

377
00:34:08,504 --> 00:34:10,590
because they were my dad's clothes.

378
00:34:14,177 --> 00:34:17,013
And all we know about manhood
is what we have seen

379
00:34:17,096 --> 00:34:18,306
and what we have learned

380
00:34:18,389 --> 00:34:22,477
from our fathers,
and my father was my hero

381
00:34:23,895 --> 00:34:25,396
and my greatest foe.

382
00:34:28,524 --> 00:34:31,819
Not long after he died, I had this dream.

383
00:34:31,903 --> 00:34:33,946
I'm on stage,
I'm in front of thousands of people

384
00:34:34,030 --> 00:34:37,075
and my dad's back from the dead,
and he's sitting in the audience.

385
00:34:37,158 --> 00:34:40,203
And suddenly, I'm kneeling next to him
in the aisle.

386
00:34:41,287 --> 00:34:45,166
And for a moment,
we both watch the man on fire on stage.

387
00:34:51,798 --> 00:34:53,174
And then, to my dad, who for years,

388
00:34:53,508 --> 00:34:56,344
he sat at that kitchen table, unreachable,

389
00:34:58,096 --> 00:34:59,555
in what I was too young

390
00:34:59,639 --> 00:35:02,809
and I was too stupid
to understand was his depression.

391
00:35:04,727 --> 00:35:06,896
Well, I kneel next to him in the aisle...

392
00:35:07,814 --> 00:35:09,398
and I brush his forearm...

393
00:35:11,317 --> 00:35:12,902
and I say, "Look, Dad,

394
00:35:13,820 --> 00:35:15,363
that guy on stage.

395
00:35:18,533 --> 00:35:20,076
That's how I see you."

396
00:36:28,644 --> 00:36:31,439
Now, my mom
was a different story altogether.

397
00:36:32,648 --> 00:36:35,776
I'm gonna release you
from suicide watch right now.

398
00:36:39,113 --> 00:36:40,990
Snap out of it! Come on.

399
00:36:42,617 --> 00:36:44,577
Because my mother was bright, happy.

400
00:36:44,660 --> 00:36:47,246
She'd merrily make conversation
with a broom handle.

401
00:36:47,622 --> 00:36:51,834
She believed that there was good faith,
good heart, good hope in all citizens.

402
00:36:52,126 --> 00:36:56,172
She gave the world a lot more credit,
perhaps, than it deserves,

403
00:36:56,255 --> 00:36:57,757
but that was her way.

404
00:36:57,840 --> 00:36:59,926
Now, on school mornings-- I hated school.

405
00:37:00,009 --> 00:37:01,886
That's just Rock Star 101.

406
00:37:05,556 --> 00:37:07,558
If you don't hate school in my business,

407
00:37:07,642 --> 00:37:10,019
please keep your fucking day job,
all right?

408
00:37:11,437 --> 00:37:14,732
Because it's a sign.
It's a sign that, brother,

409
00:37:14,815 --> 00:37:17,860
you're going nowhere, man. Nowhere.

410
00:37:18,236 --> 00:37:20,947
You need to have hatred in your heart

411
00:37:21,697 --> 00:37:24,116
to get to the top where I am, all right?

412
00:37:24,575 --> 00:37:27,411
You've got to hate, all right? Uh...

413
00:37:27,870 --> 00:37:29,497
So, of course I hated getting up.

414
00:37:29,580 --> 00:37:32,583
And, uh, my mom had perfected
this technique in the morning

415
00:37:32,667 --> 00:37:35,169
where she'd stand over my bed
with a glass of ice water

416
00:37:35,253 --> 00:37:36,337
and give me 30 seconds.

417
00:37:37,213 --> 00:37:39,840
You know, "Five, four, three, two..."

418
00:37:39,924 --> 00:37:42,260
Boom! Niagara Falls.

419
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,138
I would get dressed,
I would drift downstairs to breakfast,

420
00:37:46,222 --> 00:37:51,060
where I would feast daily
on a huge bowl of Sugar Pops.

421
00:37:52,270 --> 00:37:53,729
A fine product...

422
00:37:54,981 --> 00:37:57,316
...with just one problem.

423
00:37:58,234 --> 00:38:00,695
They don't put enough sugar
in those Sugar Pops.

424
00:38:01,362 --> 00:38:04,907
So, I wasn't content
until I snowed more sugar

425
00:38:04,991 --> 00:38:08,619
on my Sugar Pops
until they looked like the Himalayas.

426
00:38:08,995 --> 00:38:12,873
- And then... Mmm!
- "Good!"

427
00:38:13,249 --> 00:38:16,919
With a buzz on and a kiss from my mom,

428
00:38:17,003 --> 00:38:18,296
I was off

429
00:38:19,005 --> 00:38:22,633
with my sister, lumbering up the street
with our book bags

430
00:38:23,175 --> 00:38:25,928
as my mom's high heels clicked lightly
in the other direction

431
00:38:26,012 --> 00:38:28,973
toward Lawyers Title Insurance Company
in town center.

432
00:38:29,056 --> 00:38:30,558
She was a legal secretary.

433
00:38:30,891 --> 00:38:33,477
That was the job she did
since the day she got out of high school,

434
00:38:33,561 --> 00:38:35,021
50 years that followed.

435
00:38:35,104 --> 00:38:38,566
Goes to work, doesn't miss a day,
never sick,

436
00:38:38,649 --> 00:38:41,027
never down, never complains.

437
00:38:41,110 --> 00:38:43,279
Work doesn't appear to be a burden
for her,

438
00:38:43,362 --> 00:38:46,282
but it's a source of energy
and of social pleasure.

439
00:38:46,866 --> 00:38:49,910
Now, some evenings, I would meet my mother
at closing time,

440
00:38:49,994 --> 00:38:52,872
and we would be the last
to leave the office,

441
00:38:52,955 --> 00:38:55,541
and this was always a great privilege
to me.

442
00:38:56,167 --> 00:38:59,128
I would have my mother all to myself.

443
00:38:59,503 --> 00:39:02,006
And with the building empty,
her high heels would echo

444
00:39:02,089 --> 00:39:04,383
down the long linoleum hallway.

445
00:39:04,717 --> 00:39:08,554
And with the fluorescent lights out,
lawyers' cubicles empty,

446
00:39:08,637 --> 00:39:12,725
secretaries' desks empty,
typewriters covered,

447
00:39:13,100 --> 00:39:18,481
silent, the building was so still
after all the noise of the day.

448
00:39:18,564 --> 00:39:22,234
You know, it was so--
It got so quiet, it was as if...

449
00:39:23,194 --> 00:39:28,366
It-- It was as if the building itself
was resting

450
00:39:28,991 --> 00:39:32,578
after a long day of service
in the interests of our town.

451
00:39:33,788 --> 00:39:35,831
And then suddenly,
we'd be through the front door

452
00:39:35,915 --> 00:39:37,166
and out on Main Street

453
00:39:37,249 --> 00:39:40,586
in the five o'clock rush hour,
and she would stride along,

454
00:39:41,003 --> 00:39:45,549
statuesque, and I would be running
alongside her just...

455
00:39:46,550 --> 00:39:49,261
trying to keep up and I would be,
you know, looking up at her.

456
00:39:49,345 --> 00:39:52,681
And, uh, it's a sight
that I've never, never forgotten.

457
00:39:53,516 --> 00:39:55,851
My mother walking home from work.

458
00:39:56,644 --> 00:39:57,853
It had some...

459
00:40:02,233 --> 00:40:04,443
just some eternal impact on me.

460
00:40:05,403 --> 00:40:06,445
You know? Uh...

461
00:40:07,154 --> 00:40:10,574
She-- She always had
these very ethnic features.

462
00:40:10,658 --> 00:40:11,575
She had...

463
00:40:12,118 --> 00:40:15,121
coal-black hair, Italian olive skin,
and when she was young,

464
00:40:15,204 --> 00:40:18,082
she wore that red lipstick
that was very fashionable

465
00:40:18,582 --> 00:40:19,792
in the '50s.

466
00:40:20,334 --> 00:40:23,421
And she'd be looking down at me
with a look that, for me,

467
00:40:23,754 --> 00:40:26,966
was like the grace of Mary, you know?

468
00:40:27,049 --> 00:40:30,928
Made me understand,
for the first time, how good it feels

469
00:40:31,929 --> 00:40:34,390
to feel pride in somebody that you love,

470
00:40:35,516 --> 00:40:37,226
and who loves you back.

471
00:40:38,644 --> 00:40:41,647
You know, she let the town know
that we are handsome,

472
00:40:41,730 --> 00:40:45,109
responsible members
of this shit-dog burgh,

473
00:40:45,192 --> 00:40:47,194
pulling our own individual weight

474
00:40:47,278 --> 00:40:50,489
doing what has to be done
day after day.

475
00:40:50,573 --> 00:40:53,659
We have a place here that we have earned!

476
00:40:54,535 --> 00:40:58,956
And we have a reason to open our eyes
at the break of each day

477
00:40:59,039 --> 00:41:02,084
and breathe in a life
that's steady and good.

478
00:41:04,545 --> 00:41:08,549
Now, my mom was truthfulness,
consistency, good humor,

479
00:41:08,924 --> 00:41:13,512
professionalism, grace,
kindness, optimism, civility,

480
00:41:13,888 --> 00:41:16,307
fairness, pride in yourself,

481
00:41:16,390 --> 00:41:19,810
responsibility,
love, faith in your family,

482
00:41:20,311 --> 00:41:23,981
commitment, joy in your work,
and a never-say-die thirst

483
00:41:24,064 --> 00:41:27,109
for living, for living and for life.

484
00:41:27,860 --> 00:41:31,113
And most importantly, for dancing.

485
00:41:31,947 --> 00:41:36,744
My mother and her two sisters
were dancing machines, all right?

486
00:41:37,244 --> 00:41:40,456
They grew up in the '40s
with the big bands and the swing bands

487
00:41:40,539 --> 00:41:43,584
and they--
they learned to jitterbug and-- and...

488
00:41:47,046 --> 00:41:49,465
It was in their bones, you know?

489
00:41:49,882 --> 00:41:53,552
My mom is seven years into Alzheimer's.

490
00:41:55,221 --> 00:41:56,764
And she's 93.

491
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:01,894
But dancing and the desire
and need to dance is something that...

492
00:42:02,144 --> 00:42:03,771
it hasn't left her.

493
00:42:04,855 --> 00:42:08,317
Remains an essential,
primal part of who she is.

494
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,987
It's beyond language.
It's more powerful than memory.

495
00:42:12,655 --> 00:42:16,742
And when she comes in the door,
we make sure there's music on.

496
00:42:18,244 --> 00:42:20,621
She wants to dance, you know?

497
00:42:21,622 --> 00:42:24,500
Uh, these things were the embodiment
of my mother.

498
00:42:24,583 --> 00:42:25,793
They were her heart.

499
00:42:25,876 --> 00:42:30,673
She carried on and she carries on
as if they never,

500
00:42:32,091 --> 00:42:33,551
never deserted her.

501
00:47:03,278 --> 00:47:06,198
There's nothing like being young
and leaving someplace.

502
00:47:07,115 --> 00:47:09,785
That was a feeling that, oh,

503
00:47:10,536 --> 00:47:11,578
I loved.

504
00:47:12,079 --> 00:47:14,289
Maybe that's why I became a musician.

505
00:47:15,082 --> 00:47:16,250
Um...

506
00:47:17,167 --> 00:47:19,378
Sleep late, stay up late.

507
00:47:20,254 --> 00:47:22,089
And you do an awful lot of leaving.

508
00:47:23,423 --> 00:47:25,717
Night I left Freehold for the last time,

509
00:47:26,802 --> 00:47:29,346
I laid back on the couch,
it was perched high atop a load

510
00:47:29,429 --> 00:47:30,764
of the band's junk furniture

511
00:47:30,848 --> 00:47:34,560
in the back of an open flatbed truck
on a beautiful summer night.

512
00:47:35,018 --> 00:47:36,937
I was 19 years old.

513
00:47:37,229 --> 00:47:41,441
Ooh... that felt pretty good.

514
00:47:41,525 --> 00:47:44,903
Soft ocean breeze of the shore
was reaching all the way inland.

515
00:47:44,987 --> 00:47:46,738
And as we drew through town,

516
00:47:46,822 --> 00:47:48,490
for the very last time,

517
00:47:49,366 --> 00:47:51,285
we were stopped by the police...

518
00:47:53,245 --> 00:47:57,332
...who informed us that there was a law
against moving after dark.

519
00:48:01,253 --> 00:48:05,340
What the fuck?

520
00:48:06,049 --> 00:48:08,343
Who the fuck would know that?

521
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:10,888
Don't move your shit after dark?

522
00:48:11,722 --> 00:48:14,892
What are we running off with,
Freehold's great antiquities?

523
00:48:16,018 --> 00:48:17,603
The sun goes down,

524
00:48:19,062 --> 00:48:21,440
they'll bust your ass in Freehold, son.

525
00:48:22,733 --> 00:48:24,902
Anyway, they, uh...
They sent us on our way.

526
00:48:24,985 --> 00:48:27,070
Glad to be rid of the town hippies,
I guess.

527
00:48:27,154 --> 00:48:28,864
And so, I lay back on my couch

528
00:48:28,947 --> 00:48:30,866
and I was watching
the tree branches rush above me

529
00:48:30,949 --> 00:48:34,077
and the stars scrolling in the night sky,
and I remember

530
00:48:34,453 --> 00:48:36,246
I felt absolutely wonderful.

531
00:48:36,580 --> 00:48:38,665
I had nothing, no parents.

532
00:48:38,749 --> 00:48:41,960
They had moved away
with my little sister Pam

533
00:48:42,544 --> 00:48:45,047
to California in 1969.

534
00:48:45,756 --> 00:48:49,301
My sister Virginia,
great soul that she is,

535
00:48:49,384 --> 00:48:52,304
she got pregnant and had a baby at 18.

536
00:48:52,387 --> 00:48:55,891
She left high school,
married a competitive bull rider

537
00:48:56,850 --> 00:48:59,269
and they moved into the wilds
of southern New Jersey,

538
00:48:59,353 --> 00:49:01,563
because that's where the cowboys live.

539
00:49:01,647 --> 00:49:03,023
I ain't kidding.

540
00:49:03,106 --> 00:49:05,901
The real joke is, 50 years later,

541
00:49:05,984 --> 00:49:08,862
they're still together
and they still go to the rodeo.

542
00:49:12,282 --> 00:49:16,161
Well, I had no money and no family
and no realistic future.

543
00:49:16,244 --> 00:49:20,916
But yet, I remember laying on that couch
with the summer wind rushing over me

544
00:49:20,999 --> 00:49:26,463
and, you know,
that-- that saltwater smell in the air

545
00:49:26,546 --> 00:49:28,757
of the shore coming on, and thinking...

546
00:49:29,758 --> 00:49:31,218
I was just happy.

547
00:49:31,843 --> 00:49:33,011
I was happy.

548
00:49:33,512 --> 00:49:37,474
I got it all, you know?
Maybe I did, you know?

549
00:49:38,225 --> 00:49:41,853
Maybe there's nothing like that moment
in your life of being young and...

550
00:49:42,312 --> 00:49:45,023
leaving someplace,
all that youthful freedom.

551
00:49:45,565 --> 00:49:49,069
You feel-- Finally being untethered
from everything you've ever known:

552
00:49:49,152 --> 00:49:51,655
the life you've lived, your past,
your parents,

553
00:49:51,738 --> 00:49:54,992
the world you've gotten used to
and that you've loved and hated.

554
00:49:55,242 --> 00:49:58,120
Your life laying before you
like a blank page.

555
00:49:58,537 --> 00:50:00,664
It's the one thing I miss
about getting older,

556
00:50:00,747 --> 00:50:05,293
I miss the beauty of that blank page.

557
00:50:06,253 --> 00:50:08,171
So much life in front of you.

558
00:50:08,714 --> 00:50:12,342
Its promise, its possibilities,
its mysteries, its adventures.

559
00:50:13,093 --> 00:50:14,553
That blank page...

560
00:50:16,054 --> 00:50:17,389
just laying there.

561
00:50:20,100 --> 00:50:21,810
Daring you to write on it.

562
00:55:51,056 --> 00:55:53,975
So... So, I'm 20 years old

563
00:55:54,434 --> 00:55:56,186
and I'm living and playing
on the Jersey Shore

564
00:55:56,269 --> 00:55:58,021
and I'm waiting to be discovered.

565
00:55:58,938 --> 00:56:01,483
Now, I have some confidence.

566
00:56:02,192 --> 00:56:03,651
I've been around a bit.

567
00:56:04,611 --> 00:56:05,862
And without a doubt,

568
00:56:06,404 --> 00:56:08,740
I am definitely the best thing
that I've ever seen.

569
00:56:10,825 --> 00:56:14,079
I've already played in front
of every conceivable audience.

570
00:56:14,621 --> 00:56:16,664
I have played firemen's fairs,

571
00:56:16,915 --> 00:56:20,877
midnight madness, supermarket openings,
drive-in movies,

572
00:56:21,169 --> 00:56:24,339
uh, in front of the concession stand
in between films.

573
00:56:24,756 --> 00:56:27,008
I've played beach parties,
officers' clubs,

574
00:56:27,092 --> 00:56:28,676
pizza parlors, coffee shops,

575
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:32,389
bowling alleys, trailer parks,
roller rinks, VFW halls,

576
00:56:32,514 --> 00:56:36,267
CYO canteens, the Elks Lodge,
YMCA gymnasiums,

577
00:56:36,351 --> 00:56:40,397
hockey rinks, county fairs, carnivals,
high school dances, weddings,

578
00:56:40,688 --> 00:56:43,483
fraternity parties,
bar mitzvahs...

579
00:56:43,566 --> 00:56:47,278
...soul revues, battle of the bands,

580
00:56:47,362 --> 00:56:51,783
Sing Sing Prison,
and Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital.

581
00:56:58,873 --> 00:57:02,794
Send me your murderers and your maniacs
and let me entertain them, all right?

582
00:57:03,211 --> 00:57:05,964
That's what I do. That's all true.

583
00:57:06,047 --> 00:57:08,425
That's all before I was 23 years old.

584
00:57:08,508 --> 00:57:10,552
I'm frustrated. I listen to the radio

585
00:57:10,635 --> 00:57:13,096
and I think, "I'm as good as that guy.

586
00:57:13,179 --> 00:57:14,764
I'm better than that guy.

587
00:57:15,056 --> 00:57:16,474
So why not me?"

588
00:57:17,183 --> 00:57:23,148
Because I live
in the fucking boondocks, all right?

589
00:57:23,898 --> 00:57:26,943
Let me explain this to you.
I live in the boondocks.

590
00:57:27,026 --> 00:57:31,197
There's nobody here,
and no one comes down here.

591
00:57:32,365 --> 00:57:33,867
It's a grave.

592
00:57:34,701 --> 00:57:40,290
There was no Jersey, Jersey,
Jersey Shore, Jersey Almighty shit.

593
00:57:44,043 --> 00:57:45,920
I invented that.

594
00:57:55,054 --> 00:57:56,347
Before me...

595
00:57:57,599 --> 00:57:59,559
Jersey was Jeserkhistan.

596
00:58:00,894 --> 00:58:02,562
Jeserkhistan!

597
00:58:03,396 --> 00:58:07,650
One of the little -stan things
that nobody knows a fucking thing about.

598
00:58:07,901 --> 00:58:08,776
You know?

599
00:58:08,860 --> 00:58:13,156
And New York was a million miles away

600
00:58:13,239 --> 00:58:16,201
from the Jersey Shore.
In my little town as a child,

601
00:58:16,284 --> 00:58:20,288
we knew no one who had ever been
to New York City.

602
00:58:22,332 --> 00:58:25,627
Jesus Christ, it was--
it was only an hour away!

603
00:58:27,295 --> 00:58:31,090
But no, you might as well have said
you're going to the fucking Moon.

604
00:58:32,258 --> 00:58:35,470
"Hey, we're going to the Moon,
you wanna go?" "No, no, no.

605
00:58:35,845 --> 00:58:37,931
No, New York. No..."

606
00:58:38,014 --> 00:58:38,932
We were provincial.

607
00:58:39,015 --> 00:58:42,644
Everybody was afraid
of the big city.

608
00:58:43,102 --> 00:58:45,939
And there was no Internet,
there was no ET, or MTV,

609
00:58:46,022 --> 00:58:48,691
or cable TV, or satellite, or...

610
00:58:48,775 --> 00:58:52,987
This is before anyone and everyone's
ass crack from Anyplace, USA...

611
00:58:53,738 --> 00:58:55,573
could be seen all over the world,

612
00:58:55,657 --> 00:58:59,577
uh, should they choose,
in the push of a key, in the next instant.

613
00:58:59,953 --> 00:59:02,247
So who was gonna come
to the Jersey Shore

614
00:59:03,081 --> 00:59:06,042
to discover the next big thing in 1971?

615
00:59:10,046 --> 00:59:11,130
You're correct.

616
00:59:16,261 --> 00:59:17,428
No-fucking-body.

617
00:59:19,389 --> 00:59:21,599
All we heard down there
was the sound of...

618
00:59:23,017 --> 00:59:24,310
one hand clapping.

619
00:59:24,978 --> 00:59:26,521
Wasn't gonna happen.

620
00:59:26,604 --> 00:59:27,647
I had one shot.

621
00:59:27,730 --> 00:59:29,774
My girlfriend
at the time did me a great favor.

622
00:59:29,857 --> 00:59:32,860
Brought a guy who had
a successful recording band

623
00:59:33,403 --> 00:59:36,614
down to the Student Prince,
our club in Asbury Park,

624
00:59:36,906 --> 00:59:38,408
to discover us.

625
00:59:38,491 --> 00:59:42,245
We got up on a little stage
in a club that fit 150 people.

626
00:59:42,328 --> 00:59:43,746
It was about half full.

627
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:45,623
And we played for this guy

628
00:59:45,707 --> 00:59:48,501
like we were at Madison Square Garden.

629
00:59:48,793 --> 00:59:51,588
Everything we had, all night long.

630
00:59:52,547 --> 00:59:56,843
We played five sets,
from 9:00 p.m. till 3:00 a.m.

631
00:59:58,052 --> 01:00:00,888
At the end of the night,
I was soaked to my bones.

632
01:00:00,972 --> 01:00:04,017
I got off the bandstand,
this guy walked up to me.

633
01:00:04,100 --> 01:00:06,477
He looked me in the eye,
shook my hand and said,

634
01:00:06,561 --> 01:00:09,772
"You guys are the best unsigned band
I've ever seen."

635
01:00:11,482 --> 01:00:13,735
Then he slept with my girlfriend
and left town.

636
01:00:21,826 --> 01:00:23,328
That's the end of that story.

637
01:00:26,748 --> 01:00:28,041
It's a sad ending.

638
01:00:28,124 --> 01:00:30,710
I mean, I don't--
But that was enough for me.

639
01:00:32,211 --> 01:00:34,297
I gathered together the men...

640
01:00:35,340 --> 01:00:39,010
and I said, "Gentlemen,
we are going to have to leave

641
01:00:39,260 --> 01:00:43,139
the confines of the Jersey Shore

642
01:00:43,806 --> 01:00:46,434
and venture into parts unknown...

643
01:00:47,644 --> 01:00:49,354
if we want to be seen,

644
01:00:50,063 --> 01:00:53,524
heard by anybody or discovered."

645
01:00:54,108 --> 01:00:57,654
I found a manager, surfboard manufacturer
from the West Coast--

646
01:00:57,737 --> 01:01:01,074
he'd moved East-- by the name
of Carl Virgil "Tinker" West.

647
01:01:01,532 --> 01:01:05,912
Now, together, he,
Mad Dog Lopez, and myself

648
01:01:05,995 --> 01:01:08,247
we lived in the surfboard factory.

649
01:01:08,831 --> 01:01:13,086
In the industrial wastelands
of Wanamassa, New Jersey.

650
01:01:13,795 --> 01:01:17,465
Tinker said he had some remaining
rock 'n' roll contacts in San Francisco.

651
01:01:17,548 --> 01:01:21,135
So we all got excited,
and he said if we could get there,

652
01:01:21,594 --> 01:01:23,054
something might happen.

653
01:01:23,137 --> 01:01:27,433
So we saved up all our money
until we had $100.

654
01:01:27,517 --> 01:01:28,685
All right?

655
01:01:28,768 --> 01:01:31,562
And then me, Danny Federici,
Mad Dog Lopez,

656
01:01:31,646 --> 01:01:33,815
Little Vinnie Roslin, our bass player,

657
01:01:33,898 --> 01:01:36,275
rigged out Danny's station wagon
for the drive.

658
01:01:36,359 --> 01:01:39,445
Put a mattress in the back
for the drivers to spell each other

659
01:01:39,529 --> 01:01:41,239
and to sleep in on the way out there.

660
01:01:41,322 --> 01:01:44,826
We rigged Tinker's old '40s flatbed
to carry our equipment

661
01:01:44,909 --> 01:01:48,246
and we had three days
to make it across the country

662
01:01:48,329 --> 01:01:52,375
for a New Year's Eve gig
in Big Sur, California.

663
01:01:52,458 --> 01:01:54,419
Now, three days means

664
01:01:54,794 --> 01:01:57,797
those are gonna be thousand-mile days.

665
01:01:58,423 --> 01:02:01,634
You can make it, but you can't stop.

666
01:02:02,593 --> 01:02:05,596
You stop for gas and for nothing else.

667
01:02:05,972 --> 01:02:11,185
You drive, drive, drive, drive,
72 hours straight.

668
01:02:11,269 --> 01:02:14,522
Somebody's driving all the time
around the clock.

669
01:02:15,064 --> 01:02:16,858
Now, of course, we lost Danny

670
01:02:16,941 --> 01:02:20,027
and the entire station wagon
full of drivers

671
01:02:20,486 --> 01:02:23,448
in Nashville, Tennessee.

672
01:02:23,531 --> 01:02:25,658
Now, there's no cellular phones.

673
01:02:27,326 --> 01:02:28,786
Young people, take a moment.

674
01:02:38,713 --> 01:02:39,964
Let's try it.

675
01:02:41,257 --> 01:02:43,634
Imagine a world
without the cellular phone.

676
01:02:44,802 --> 01:02:46,512
When you lose someone

677
01:02:46,888 --> 01:02:49,265
in that world
without the cellular phone...

678
01:02:51,017 --> 01:02:52,643
oh, they're fucking lost.

679
01:02:57,774 --> 01:02:59,484
There's no device.

680
01:02:59,734 --> 01:03:02,779
You can't get in touch with them.
They're gone!

681
01:03:03,196 --> 01:03:04,405
Out of your life!

682
01:03:07,533 --> 01:03:08,534
Into the ether.

683
01:03:10,620 --> 01:03:13,873
So now, it's just Tinker and me,
Tinker's dog,

684
01:03:14,290 --> 01:03:15,917
thousands of miles to go,

685
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:19,754
and we got several problems.
One is I have no license.

686
01:03:20,129 --> 01:03:23,758
Second problem is I don't have a clue
as to how to drive.

687
01:03:24,550 --> 01:03:26,761
And by that, I mean the man

688
01:03:27,178 --> 01:03:30,473
who would very, very shortly
write "Racing in the Street"...

689
01:03:40,191 --> 01:03:41,692
That's how good I am.

690
01:03:43,903 --> 01:03:48,241
Because, at 21,
I had never driven a fucking block.

691
01:03:49,951 --> 01:03:51,327
Around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.,

692
01:03:51,410 --> 01:03:54,539
Tinker's eyes glass over
and he says, "I'm fried.

693
01:03:54,622 --> 01:03:57,166
I need to get some sleep.
It's your turn to drive."

694
01:03:57,250 --> 01:03:59,377
I go, "Tink, I can't drive."

695
01:03:59,794 --> 01:04:02,171
He says, "Springsteen,
there's nothing to it.

696
01:04:02,547 --> 01:04:05,466
Idiots all over the world are doing it,
all right?"

697
01:04:06,509 --> 01:04:09,262
He pulls me into a parking lot.
He puts me behind the wheel.

698
01:04:09,345 --> 01:04:11,389
I start grinding gears,
pumping the clutch,

699
01:04:11,472 --> 01:04:15,685
jerking the truck all over the lot--
It's a 1940s manual transmission.

700
01:04:15,768 --> 01:04:18,271
I can't get past first gear!

701
01:04:19,856 --> 01:04:22,650
After a moment Tinker says,
"This isn't going to work,

702
01:04:22,733 --> 01:04:24,360
but I got another idea."

703
01:04:24,443 --> 01:04:26,070
He gets in the driver's seat.

704
01:04:26,153 --> 01:04:29,115
He slips in the clutch.
He smoothly shifts it into first.

705
01:04:29,198 --> 01:04:30,825
He eases out on the clutch.

706
01:04:30,908 --> 01:04:33,411
He gets that truck going
on a sweet little roll,

707
01:04:33,661 --> 01:04:36,163
looks at me and says,
"Now let's switch seats."

708
01:04:37,748 --> 01:04:39,375
And that's what we did.

709
01:04:40,418 --> 01:04:44,088
I was fine in second, third, and fourth
and I could keep it in between the lines

710
01:04:44,171 --> 01:04:48,092
as long as I didn't have to stop
or go near first gear.

711
01:04:48,926 --> 01:04:52,388
If I've gotta do either of those things,
I have to wake up Mr. West.

712
01:04:52,763 --> 01:04:55,933
All right? Now, it doesn't matter

713
01:04:56,392 --> 01:04:58,185
because he's awake anyway,

714
01:04:58,269 --> 01:05:00,897
because the guy who can't drive
is driving!

715
01:05:03,983 --> 01:05:06,027
You're not gonna sleep through that!

716
01:05:07,445 --> 01:05:08,863
So...

717
01:05:08,946 --> 01:05:12,074
You'd be surprised how far
you can go across this big country

718
01:05:12,158 --> 01:05:14,285
without having to stop. You know, it's...

719
01:05:14,952 --> 01:05:18,623
it's a long ways between things out there,

720
01:05:18,998 --> 01:05:20,917
and, man, I drove my share

721
01:05:21,417 --> 01:05:23,085
of 2,000 miles...

722
01:05:24,253 --> 01:05:26,380
in second, third, and fourth gear.

723
01:05:30,092 --> 01:05:31,928
Without killing anybody.

724
01:05:34,847 --> 01:05:38,684
Uh... And we made it on time,
you know, but, uh...

725
01:05:39,226 --> 01:05:40,061
that trip was...

726
01:05:42,396 --> 01:05:44,899
...was where I saw the United States
at its fullest

727
01:05:44,982 --> 01:05:49,111
and as a young man, I was overwhelmed
by its size and its beauty, and...

728
01:05:49,195 --> 01:05:51,530
this is a short piece
from the book about...

729
01:05:52,823 --> 01:05:55,409
riding across the country
for the very first time.

730
01:05:59,997 --> 01:06:01,582
The country was beautiful.

731
01:06:01,791 --> 01:06:06,921
And I felt a great elation at the wheel
as we crossed the western desert at dawn.

732
01:06:07,755 --> 01:06:11,175
The deep blue, purple shadowed canyons.

733
01:06:11,968 --> 01:06:13,970
The pale yellow morning sky

734
01:06:14,845 --> 01:06:16,847
with all of its color drawn out,

735
01:06:17,848 --> 01:06:20,184
leaving just
the black silhouetted mountains

736
01:06:21,978 --> 01:06:23,521
in your rearview mirror.

737
01:06:24,939 --> 01:06:27,400
Then with the eastern sun rising
at our backs,

738
01:06:27,483 --> 01:06:30,987
the deep reds and the browns
of the plains and the hills

739
01:06:31,737 --> 01:06:34,532
came to life slowly in front of us.

740
01:06:38,452 --> 01:06:42,957
Your palms turn salty white
on the wheel from the aridity.

741
01:06:43,249 --> 01:06:46,502
Morning woke the Earth
into this muted color.

742
01:06:46,585 --> 01:06:49,255
And then came the flat light
of the midday sun

743
01:06:49,588 --> 01:06:52,800
and everything stood revealed
as pure horizon.

744
01:06:53,968 --> 01:06:57,388
Just sky, sky, sky, and more sky.

745
01:06:57,972 --> 01:07:00,391
Lowering onto two lanes of blacktop

746
01:07:01,684 --> 01:07:04,562
and disappearing into nothing.

747
01:07:06,105 --> 01:07:07,648
My favorite thing.

748
01:07:09,400 --> 01:07:12,653
Then the evening
with the sun burning red into your eyes

749
01:07:12,737 --> 01:07:15,906
and dropping gold
into the western hills in front of you.

750
01:07:16,615 --> 01:07:18,576
All felt like home to me.

751
01:07:19,952 --> 01:07:23,205
And I fell into a lasting love affair
with the desert.

752
01:11:25,447 --> 01:11:27,408
So, it's-- it's 1980.

753
01:11:27,533 --> 01:11:30,953
I'm 30 years old, I'm on another
cross-country trip with a buddy of mine

754
01:11:31,036 --> 01:11:33,497
and we stop outside of Phoenix to gas up.

755
01:11:33,580 --> 01:11:35,874
Go into a small-town drugstore,

756
01:11:35,958 --> 01:11:38,210
I'm rifling through a rack
of paperback books,

757
01:11:38,294 --> 01:11:41,130
I come across a book
called  Born on the Fourth of July

758
01:11:41,338 --> 01:11:44,174
by a Vietnam veteran named Ron Kovic.

759
01:11:44,258 --> 01:11:46,719
Now, his book was a testimony
of the experience

760
01:11:46,802 --> 01:11:50,055
that he'd had as a combat infantryman
in Southeast Asia.

761
01:11:50,556 --> 01:11:51,932
A week or two later,

762
01:11:52,725 --> 01:11:56,854
I'm bunked in at the fabulous
Sunset Marquis motel in Los Angeles.

763
01:11:57,354 --> 01:12:00,774
Uh-- For the uninformed,
it's kind of an upscale,

764
01:12:00,858 --> 01:12:03,694
lowlife rock star hangout, all right?

765
01:12:03,777 --> 01:12:05,529
Uh, small world theory.

766
01:12:06,030 --> 01:12:08,324
Small world theory proves itself
once again.

767
01:12:08,407 --> 01:12:10,409
I'd been seeing a young guy
with shoulder-length hair

768
01:12:10,492 --> 01:12:13,287
sitting in a wheelchair
by the pool for several days.

769
01:12:13,662 --> 01:12:18,834
So, one afternoon he rolled up to me
and said, "Hi, I'm Ron Kovic.

770
01:12:18,917 --> 01:12:21,462
I wrote a book
called  Born on the Fourth of July."

771
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:26,091
I said, "Jeez. I just-- I just read it.
And it-- it destroyed me."

772
01:12:26,633 --> 01:12:30,846
He spent the afternoon talking to me
about many returned soldiers

773
01:12:30,929 --> 01:12:33,265
who were struggling
with a wide variety of problems,

774
01:12:33,349 --> 01:12:38,145
and he wanted to know if I'd take a drive
with him to the vet center in Venice...

775
01:12:38,896 --> 01:12:41,607
meet some
of the Southern California veterans.

776
01:12:42,066 --> 01:12:44,777
So I said, "Sure."
The next day, we headed out there,

777
01:12:44,860 --> 01:12:48,572
and I'm usually pretty easy with people,
but once we were at the center,

778
01:12:49,490 --> 01:12:53,369
I didn't know how to respond
to what I was seeing. Uh...

779
01:12:54,203 --> 01:12:58,040
Talking about my own life
to these guys seemed frivolous.

780
01:12:58,123 --> 01:12:58,957
You know?

781
01:12:59,041 --> 01:13:02,669
There was homelessness and drug problems
and post-traumatic stress and...

782
01:13:03,253 --> 01:13:06,173
young guys my age
dealing with life-changing...

783
01:13:07,299 --> 01:13:08,675
physical injuries.

784
01:13:08,759 --> 01:13:11,929
And it made me think about my own friends
from back home.

785
01:13:12,513 --> 01:13:13,847
Walter Cichon.

786
01:13:14,473 --> 01:13:18,477
Walter Cichon was the greatest
rock 'n' roll front man

787
01:13:18,560 --> 01:13:21,897
on the Jersey Shore
in the bar band '60s.

788
01:13:22,314 --> 01:13:24,358
He was in a group called The Motifs,

789
01:13:24,441 --> 01:13:28,946
and he was the first real rock star
that I ever laid my eyes on.

790
01:13:29,530 --> 01:13:32,741
He just had it in his bones.
He had it in his blood.

791
01:13:32,825 --> 01:13:35,327
It was in the way that he carried himself.

792
01:13:35,411 --> 01:13:39,665
On stage, he just was deadly.

793
01:13:39,748 --> 01:13:44,128
He was raw and sexual and dangerous,

794
01:13:44,211 --> 01:13:48,841
and in our little area he taught us,
by the way that he lived,

795
01:13:49,425 --> 01:13:52,344
that  you  could live your life
the way you chose.

796
01:13:52,428 --> 01:13:54,304
You could look the way you wanted to look,

797
01:13:54,388 --> 01:13:56,432
you could play the music
you wanted to play,

798
01:13:56,515 --> 01:13:58,475
you could be who you wanted to be,

799
01:13:58,559 --> 01:14:00,769
and you could tell anyone
who didn't like it

800
01:14:00,853 --> 01:14:02,604
to go fuck themselves.

801
01:14:02,688 --> 01:14:04,523
Walter had a...

802
01:14:05,607 --> 01:14:07,818
guitar-playing brother, Raymond.

803
01:14:08,861 --> 01:14:10,112
Raymond was...

804
01:14:10,487 --> 01:14:12,906
tall, tall, kind of sweetly clumsy guy,

805
01:14:12,990 --> 01:14:16,827
one of those big guys
who just isn't comfortable with his size.

806
01:14:17,369 --> 01:14:21,039
You know, uh, he's always, like,
"Ooh. Ooh."

807
01:14:21,123 --> 01:14:25,294
Knocking into shit wherever he is.
And wherever that is,

808
01:14:25,627 --> 01:14:29,548
there is just not enough space
for Raymond, for some reason.

809
01:14:30,048 --> 01:14:31,133
And, uh...

810
01:14:31,717 --> 01:14:35,095
But the strange thing was
he was always dressed impeccably

811
01:14:35,179 --> 01:14:40,184
with a pastel shirt, long pointed collar,
sharkskin pants, nylon socks,

812
01:14:40,559 --> 01:14:44,104
spit-shined pointy-toed shoes,
slicked-back black hair

813
01:14:44,188 --> 01:14:47,858
with a little curl that would come down
when he was playing the guitar.

814
01:14:47,941 --> 01:14:50,360
Uh, Raymond was my guitar hero.

815
01:14:50,652 --> 01:14:53,071
He was just a shoe salesman in the day.

816
01:14:53,780 --> 01:14:56,992
And, uh, Walter, I think,
worked construction.

817
01:14:57,075 --> 01:14:58,952
They were only a little bit older
than we were,

818
01:14:59,036 --> 01:15:02,539
never had any national hit records,
never did any big tours,

819
01:15:02,831 --> 01:15:04,500
but they were gods to me.

820
01:15:05,584 --> 01:15:06,585
And...

821
01:15:07,252 --> 01:15:09,755
the hours I spent standing
in front of their band,

822
01:15:09,838 --> 01:15:13,342
studying, studying, studying,
class in session.

823
01:15:14,176 --> 01:15:16,345
Night after night,
watching Ray's fingers fly

824
01:15:16,553 --> 01:15:18,931
over the fretboard,
and Walter would scare...

825
01:15:21,225 --> 01:15:23,143
the shit out of half the crowd.

826
01:15:23,894 --> 01:15:25,103
Oh, man.

827
01:15:26,355 --> 01:15:29,858
They were essential to my development
as a young musician.

828
01:15:30,317 --> 01:15:35,322
I learned so much
from Walter and from Ray.

829
01:15:35,739 --> 01:15:37,032
And my dream,

830
01:15:37,533 --> 01:15:40,494
my dream was I just wanted
to play like Ray

831
01:15:40,577 --> 01:15:41,787
and walk like Walter.

832
01:15:42,162 --> 01:15:43,413
And then there was Bart Haynes.

833
01:15:43,497 --> 01:15:47,834
Bart Haynes was the drummer
from my first band, The Castiles.

834
01:15:48,293 --> 01:15:51,588
He was the first real drummer
I ever played with.

835
01:15:51,672 --> 01:15:53,549
He was an absurdly funny kid,

836
01:15:53,632 --> 01:15:57,761
classic class clown,
was a good, good drummer...

837
01:15:58,178 --> 01:16:02,641
with one strange quirk--
couldn't play "Wipe Out" by The Surfaris.

838
01:16:04,726 --> 01:16:08,605
This may not seem so critical to you
right now, I understand.

839
01:16:09,690 --> 01:16:12,234
But in those days,

840
01:16:12,818 --> 01:16:15,696
your skills, your mettle,

841
01:16:16,029 --> 01:16:21,410
your self-worth as a drummer
and as a human being

842
01:16:23,120 --> 01:16:27,583
was tested in front of your peers
once an evening

843
01:16:27,666 --> 01:16:30,168
by your performance of "Wipe Out."

844
01:16:30,752 --> 01:16:34,214
Now, Bart could play
every other fucking thing,

845
01:16:34,298 --> 01:16:36,300
but when it came to "Wipe Out"...

846
01:16:40,679 --> 01:16:42,973
beyond his capabilities!

847
01:16:44,474 --> 01:16:45,809
It was tragic.

848
01:16:47,561 --> 01:16:49,354
You know, uh...

849
01:16:50,355 --> 01:16:52,441
One day he got off...

850
01:16:52,983 --> 01:16:56,278
got up off the drum stool,
he joined the Marines, and...

851
01:16:57,487 --> 01:16:59,990
Walter and Bart...

852
01:17:00,073 --> 01:17:05,829
...they were both killed in the war
in 1967 and '68.

853
01:17:06,580 --> 01:17:09,625
Bart was the first young man
from our hometown

854
01:17:10,334 --> 01:17:12,377
to give his life in Vietnam.

855
01:17:12,753 --> 01:17:18,634
So, I really didn't know what to say
to the guys that I was meeting in Venice.

856
01:17:18,717 --> 01:17:22,220
I sat there for most of the afternoon
and I just listened.

857
01:17:23,180 --> 01:17:27,267
Then in 1982, I wrote
and I recorded my soldier story.

858
01:17:27,351 --> 01:17:29,770
It was a protest song, a GI blues.

859
01:17:30,270 --> 01:17:33,148
The verses are just
an accounting of events.

860
01:17:33,940 --> 01:17:38,487
The choruses were a declaration
of your birthplace...

861
01:17:38,987 --> 01:17:41,782
and the right to all of the blood
and the confusion

862
01:17:41,865 --> 01:17:45,118
and the pride and the shame
and the grace...

863
01:17:47,079 --> 01:17:48,955
that comes with birthplace.

864
01:17:50,040 --> 01:17:54,461
In 1969, Mad Dog, Little Vinnie,
and myself,

865
01:17:55,212 --> 01:17:59,633
we were all drafted on the exact same day.

866
01:18:00,133 --> 01:18:01,218
All three of us.

867
01:18:01,301 --> 01:18:05,597
We rode together early one Monday morning
from the Selective Service Office

868
01:18:05,681 --> 01:18:10,060
on probably the unhappiest bus
that ever pulled out of Asbury Park,

869
01:18:10,143 --> 01:18:12,229
because we were on our way

870
01:18:12,312 --> 01:18:16,108
to what we were sure
was going to be our funeral.

871
01:18:16,942 --> 01:18:20,278
We'd seen it already, up very close.

872
01:18:22,739 --> 01:18:28,078
When we got to the Newark Draft Board,
we did everything we could not to go.

873
01:18:28,453 --> 01:18:31,039
And we succeeded, all three of us.

874
01:18:31,123 --> 01:18:32,666
When I go to Washington,

875
01:18:32,749 --> 01:18:35,544
and I have the occasion
to visit Walter and Bart,

876
01:18:35,877 --> 01:18:40,298
I'm glad that Mad Dog's, Little Vinnie's,

877
01:18:41,216 --> 01:18:45,637
for that matter,
my name isn't up on... on that wall.

878
01:18:45,721 --> 01:18:50,142
But it was 1969, and thousands
and thousands of young men to come

879
01:18:50,809 --> 01:18:54,479
would be called, simply sacrificed,

880
01:18:54,563 --> 01:18:57,566
just to save face for the powers that be

881
01:18:57,983 --> 01:18:59,860
who, by then, already knew.

882
01:19:00,944 --> 01:19:02,821
They knew it was a lost cause.

883
01:19:06,241 --> 01:19:08,577
And still, thousands and thousands...

884
01:19:09,745 --> 01:19:11,329
of more young boys.

885
01:19:13,039 --> 01:19:14,040
So, uh...

886
01:19:18,420 --> 01:19:21,590
So I do sometimes wonder
who went in my place.

887
01:19:22,716 --> 01:19:24,468
Because somebody did.

888
01:24:12,756 --> 01:24:13,673
Now...

889
01:24:14,549 --> 01:24:19,304
a real rock 'n' roll band
evolves out of a common place and time.

890
01:24:19,763 --> 01:24:24,559
Bands come out of towns,
out of a city, out of a neighborhood.

891
01:24:25,268 --> 01:24:28,354
And they come along
at a particular moment, you know?

892
01:24:28,855 --> 01:24:32,150
Bands are all about what happens
when musicians

893
01:24:32,650 --> 01:24:34,819
who come from the same streets,

894
01:24:35,236 --> 01:24:42,202
with the same passions and influences,
go in search of lightning and thunder!

895
01:24:42,285 --> 01:24:44,370
They come together in a whole

896
01:24:44,454 --> 01:24:47,082
that is greater than the sum
of their parts.

897
01:24:47,165 --> 01:24:50,376
They may not be the best players.
That's not necessary.

898
01:24:50,460 --> 01:24:54,130
They need to be the right players
and when they play together,

899
01:24:54,214 --> 01:24:57,967
there is a communion of souls

900
01:24:58,551 --> 01:25:02,597
and a natural brotherhood
and sisterhood manifests itself,

901
01:25:02,680 --> 01:25:05,767
and a quest, a quest is begun.

902
01:25:05,850 --> 01:25:07,977
You're in search of something,

903
01:25:08,269 --> 01:25:10,188
an adventure's undertaken.

904
01:25:10,730 --> 01:25:12,607
And you ride shotgun.

905
01:25:14,025 --> 01:25:19,656
In a real band, the principles of math
get stood on their head.

906
01:25:20,281 --> 01:25:22,325
And one plus one equals three.

907
01:25:34,045 --> 01:25:37,090
Now one plus one equals two,
that happens every day.

908
01:25:37,382 --> 01:25:40,677
That is not magic. That's the grind.

909
01:25:41,052 --> 01:25:42,971
That's when you get up, one,

910
01:25:43,054 --> 01:25:46,015
go to work, one, go to bed...

911
01:25:46,766 --> 01:25:48,852
Two.

912
01:25:49,435 --> 01:25:52,522
Two, geniuses, two.

913
01:25:53,690 --> 01:25:58,361
But when one plus one equals three,
that's when your life changes

914
01:25:58,945 --> 01:26:00,780
and you see everything new.

915
01:26:01,614 --> 01:26:05,243
And these are days
when you are visited by visions...

916
01:26:06,035 --> 01:26:08,580
when the world around you
brings down the spirit,

917
01:26:08,663 --> 01:26:10,957
and you feel blessed to be alive.

918
01:26:12,542 --> 01:26:15,420
It is the essential equation of love.

919
01:26:15,503 --> 01:26:18,923
There is no love without one plus one
equaling three.

920
01:26:19,007 --> 01:26:21,509
It's the essential equation of art.

921
01:26:21,593 --> 01:26:23,970
It's the essential equation
of rock 'n' roll.

922
01:26:24,053 --> 01:26:28,141
It's the reason the universe
will never be fully comprehensible.

923
01:26:28,224 --> 01:26:33,188
It's the reason "Louie Louie"
will never be fully comprehensible.

924
01:26:35,440 --> 01:26:38,026
And it's the reason true rock 'n' roll

925
01:26:38,109 --> 01:26:41,988
and true rock 'n' roll bands
will never die.

926
01:28:18,209 --> 01:28:21,879
Now, Gary, Danny, Little Steven,
Mighty Max, Professor Roy,

927
01:28:21,963 --> 01:28:26,634
Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa,
that is my one plus one equals...

928
01:28:26,718 --> 01:28:30,221
- Three!
- Excellent, grasshopper.

929
01:28:32,098 --> 01:28:34,642
But nobody captured
my audience's imagination

930
01:28:34,726 --> 01:28:36,644
or their hearts like Clarence.

931
01:28:42,066 --> 01:28:43,359
Clarence was...

932
01:28:44,068 --> 01:28:46,988
Clarence was a figure
out of a rock 'n' roll storybook,

933
01:28:47,071 --> 01:28:50,325
and together, we told a story
that was bigger than...

934
01:28:50,950 --> 01:28:53,411
any of the ones I'd written in my songs.

935
01:28:53,494 --> 01:28:57,040
It was the story where,
not only did Scooter and the Big Man

936
01:28:57,123 --> 01:28:58,708
bust the city in half...

937
01:28:59,584 --> 01:29:01,377
but we remade the city.

938
01:29:02,337 --> 01:29:05,048
We remade the city,
shaping it into the kind of place

939
01:29:05,131 --> 01:29:09,802
where our friendship
and our love for one another

940
01:29:11,220 --> 01:29:13,556
wouldn't have been
such an exceptional thing.

941
01:29:15,099 --> 01:29:18,019
First night I saw Clarence,
he came walking out of the shadows

942
01:29:18,102 --> 01:29:19,312
towards the bandstand,

943
01:29:19,395 --> 01:29:24,192
nodded to me, got up,
stood to my right for the very first time.

944
01:29:24,442 --> 01:29:26,486
He picked up his saxophone.

945
01:29:27,445 --> 01:29:29,072
And when he played...

946
01:29:36,412 --> 01:29:39,665
When he played,
he whispered that story in my ear.

947
01:29:42,585 --> 01:29:44,962
And then we whispered it into your ear.

948
01:29:47,548 --> 01:29:50,718
And we carried it together for a long...

949
01:29:53,179 --> 01:29:54,931
a long, good time.

950
01:29:57,475 --> 01:29:59,936
The Big Man was big.

951
01:30:01,145 --> 01:30:02,897
Everything about him.

952
01:30:03,398 --> 01:30:06,984
His personality, his size, his laugh...

953
01:30:07,568 --> 01:30:09,779
the sound of his saxophone.

954
01:30:10,613 --> 01:30:14,158
When I first heard it, I thought it was
the biggest sound I ever heard.

955
01:30:15,618 --> 01:30:16,869
And it was.

956
01:30:18,371 --> 01:30:23,334
His heart and his problems,
they were big.

957
01:30:27,380 --> 01:30:29,924
But he was elemental in my life.

958
01:30:32,218 --> 01:30:34,720
And losing him was like losing the rain.

959
01:30:53,739 --> 01:30:55,992
If I were a mystic...

960
01:30:56,742 --> 01:30:59,620
If I were a mystic,
I guess Clarence and my's friendship

961
01:30:59,704 --> 01:31:03,082
would lead me to believe
that we-- we stood together

962
01:31:03,166 --> 01:31:04,709
in other older times.

963
01:31:05,918 --> 01:31:07,003
You know, in, uh...

964
01:31:07,503 --> 01:31:08,880
in other lives.

965
01:31:10,089 --> 01:31:11,632
Along other rivers.

966
01:31:13,885 --> 01:31:15,678
In other ancient cities.

967
01:31:16,804 --> 01:31:18,347
In other fields...

968
01:31:19,390 --> 01:31:21,225
working side by side,

969
01:31:22,643 --> 01:31:24,187
with the sun setting,

970
01:31:25,521 --> 01:31:28,191
doing our modest version of God's work.

971
01:31:34,572 --> 01:31:36,824
I'll see you in the next life, Big Man.

972
01:32:30,294 --> 01:32:33,714
Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it
for the biggest man you ever saw.

973
01:32:36,300 --> 01:32:41,138
Clarence "Big Man" Clemons!

974
01:32:46,185 --> 01:32:48,145
And the legendary...

975
01:32:50,815 --> 01:32:54,527
- E...
- Street Band!

976
01:32:55,695 --> 01:32:56,654
That's it!

977
01:33:18,926 --> 01:33:23,472
All right, all right,
she is the queen of my heart!

978
01:33:24,807 --> 01:33:27,184
She is my flaming beauty!

979
01:33:27,560 --> 01:33:30,021
- Patricia!
- My Jersey girl.

980
01:33:30,396 --> 01:33:31,939
She is a great songwriter.

981
01:33:32,023 --> 01:33:34,442
She's one of the loveliest voices
I've ever heard.

982
01:33:34,525 --> 01:33:37,862
She is smart, tough... but fragile.

983
01:33:39,280 --> 01:33:40,698
Don't forget that part.

984
01:33:40,781 --> 01:33:43,909
If we love those in whose company's
reflected the best of us,

985
01:33:43,993 --> 01:33:46,245
that's the light that she shines on me.

986
01:33:46,537 --> 01:33:49,790
In 1984 one night, I'm hanging out
at the Stone Pony

987
01:33:49,874 --> 01:33:54,879
and this beautiful redhead shows up,
sits in with the Sunday night house band.

988
01:33:55,379 --> 01:33:58,549
And that is the night
I fell in love with Patti's voice.

989
01:33:58,633 --> 01:34:01,093
She got on stage, this blaze of red.

990
01:34:01,177 --> 01:34:04,972
She performed a great version
of The Exciters' hit song "Tell Him."

991
01:34:05,348 --> 01:34:12,063
So the first line of the first song
I ever heard Patti sing was...

992
01:34:19,487 --> 01:34:22,531
She does. Ladies and gentlemen,
Patti Scialfa.

993
01:34:36,295 --> 01:34:37,380
Thank you.

994
01:39:14,281 --> 01:39:15,783
Yeah, trust...

995
01:39:17,076 --> 01:39:19,703
Trust in a relationship's a fragile thing.

996
01:39:20,955 --> 01:39:23,916
Uh... Always been a little complicated
for me

997
01:39:23,999 --> 01:39:26,377
because trust requires allowing others

998
01:39:27,544 --> 01:39:31,548
to see as much of our real selves
as we have the courage to reveal.

999
01:39:32,758 --> 01:39:34,051
But, I mean, uh...

1000
01:39:34,885 --> 01:39:37,429
I don't want to see my real self.
Why would...?

1001
01:39:38,305 --> 01:39:41,809
- Why would others want to?
- You know? But...

1002
01:39:41,892 --> 01:39:45,646
But it means allowing others to see
behind our many masks,

1003
01:39:46,313 --> 01:39:49,108
the masks we wear, overcoming that fear.

1004
01:39:49,984 --> 01:39:52,987
Or rather, learning how to love
and how to trust in spite of it.

1005
01:39:53,737 --> 01:39:55,447
That takes a little courage...

1006
01:39:56,115 --> 01:39:57,908
and a very strong partner.

1007
01:39:58,867 --> 01:40:00,953
'Cause in this life,
you make your choices,

1008
01:40:01,036 --> 01:40:02,204
you take your stand,

1009
01:40:02,287 --> 01:40:05,541
and you awaken
from that youthful spell of immortality

1010
01:40:05,624 --> 01:40:08,419
where it feels like the road
is gonna go on forever.

1011
01:40:09,837 --> 01:40:15,634
And you walk alongside your chosen partner
with the clock ticking.

1012
01:40:16,635 --> 01:40:21,473
And you recognize that life is finite,
that you've got just so much time.

1013
01:40:22,057 --> 01:40:23,475
And so together...

1014
01:40:24,184 --> 01:40:27,771
you name the things that will give
your life in that time its meaning,

1015
01:40:29,064 --> 01:40:32,735
its purpose, its fullness,
its very reality.

1016
01:40:33,944 --> 01:40:36,947
And this is what you build together.
This is...

1017
01:40:38,198 --> 01:40:40,284
what your love consists of.

1018
01:40:41,160 --> 01:40:42,911
This is what you...

1019
01:40:44,329 --> 01:40:46,373
This is your life, you know?

1020
01:40:47,332 --> 01:40:50,586
And these are things
that you can hold onto

1021
01:40:51,253 --> 01:40:52,880
when the storms come,

1022
01:40:54,298 --> 01:40:55,466
as they will.

1023
01:45:28,447 --> 01:45:30,198
Patti Scialfa!

1024
01:45:31,867 --> 01:45:33,577
She's a badass!

1025
01:45:44,755 --> 01:45:47,132
Gonna add this song to our set tonight.

1026
01:45:48,050 --> 01:45:52,804
All right, this is the final days
of Patti's first pregnancy.

1027
01:45:53,555 --> 01:45:58,477
I receive a surprise visit
from my father at my home in LA.

1028
01:45:58,560 --> 01:46:01,438
You know, he had driven 500 miles,
unannounced,

1029
01:46:02,022 --> 01:46:03,523
to knock on my door.

1030
01:46:04,608 --> 01:46:05,859
That's his style.

1031
01:46:06,485 --> 01:46:08,487
So at 11:00 a.m., we sit

1032
01:46:08,570 --> 01:46:11,907
in the sunlit dining room
and we're nursing morning beers.

1033
01:46:13,241 --> 01:46:15,327
That's his style.

1034
01:46:15,410 --> 01:46:17,746
It's my father's breakfast of champions.

1035
01:46:18,789 --> 01:46:24,294
When my dad, never a talkative man,
right, blurted out,

1036
01:46:25,045 --> 01:46:26,630
"You've been very good to us."

1037
01:46:27,798 --> 01:46:31,551
And I nodded that I had, you know?
And, uh...

1038
01:46:33,178 --> 01:46:36,098
And then he says,
"And I wasn't very good to you."

1039
01:46:39,059 --> 01:46:41,728
And the room just...

1040
01:46:44,815 --> 01:46:46,942
well, stood still...

1041
01:46:48,110 --> 01:46:52,239
as to my shock, the unacknowledgeable
was being acknowledged.

1042
01:46:52,322 --> 01:46:53,156
If I...

1043
01:46:54,199 --> 01:46:57,160
If I didn't know better,
I would have sworn an apology...

1044
01:46:58,120 --> 01:47:00,080
of some sort was being made.

1045
01:47:01,081 --> 01:47:02,249
And it was.

1046
01:47:03,333 --> 01:47:06,503
Here in the last days, before I was...

1047
01:47:07,838 --> 01:47:11,299
to become a father,
my own father was visiting me...

1048
01:47:12,717 --> 01:47:15,220
to warn me of the mistakes
that he had made,

1049
01:47:16,054 --> 01:47:19,057
and to warn me not to make them
with my own children.

1050
01:47:20,559 --> 01:47:24,020
To release them
from the chain of our sins,

1051
01:47:24,104 --> 01:47:27,399
my father's and mine
and our fathers' before.

1052
01:47:28,733 --> 01:47:30,444
That they may be free...

1053
01:47:31,153 --> 01:47:34,364
to make their own choices
and to live their own lives.

1054
01:47:36,241 --> 01:47:41,329
We are ghosts or we are ancestors
in our children's lives.

1055
01:47:42,247 --> 01:47:46,084
We either lay our mistakes,
our burdens upon them

1056
01:47:46,543 --> 01:47:47,961
and we haunt them.

1057
01:47:49,129 --> 01:47:52,632
Or we assist them in laying
those old burdens down,

1058
01:47:52,966 --> 01:47:57,554
and we free them from the chain
of our own flawed behavior.

1059
01:47:58,763 --> 01:48:02,559
And as ancestors,
we walk alongside of them,

1060
01:48:03,268 --> 01:48:06,062
and we assist them
in finding their own way

1061
01:48:06,688 --> 01:48:08,440
and some transcendence.

1062
01:48:09,608 --> 01:48:11,026
My father...

1063
01:48:12,611 --> 01:48:16,364
on that day, was petitioning me

1064
01:48:17,240 --> 01:48:20,285
for an ancestral role in my life

1065
01:48:20,368 --> 01:48:24,706
after being a ghost for a long, long time.

1066
01:48:25,957 --> 01:48:30,754
He wanted me to write
a new end to our relationship,

1067
01:48:31,046 --> 01:48:34,841
and he wanted me to be ready
for the new beginning

1068
01:48:35,759 --> 01:48:37,969
that I was about to experience.

1069
01:48:42,599 --> 01:48:45,519
It was the greatest moment
in my life with my dad.

1070
01:48:46,353 --> 01:48:48,188
And it was all that I needed.

1071
01:48:56,321 --> 01:48:58,198
Yeah.

1072
01:52:47,802 --> 01:52:48,887
All right.

1073
01:52:49,888 --> 01:52:52,599
I never believed that people come
to my shows

1074
01:52:52,682 --> 01:52:55,477
or to rock shows in general
to be told anything.

1075
01:52:57,896 --> 01:52:58,730
But...

1076
01:52:59,481 --> 01:53:02,108
I do believe that they come
to be reminded of things,

1077
01:53:02,192 --> 01:53:04,986
to be reminded of who they are
at their most joyous,

1078
01:53:05,069 --> 01:53:07,322
at their deepest when life feels full.

1079
01:53:07,864 --> 01:53:10,408
It's a good place to get in touch
with your heart and your spirit.

1080
01:53:10,492 --> 01:53:12,285
It's good to be amongst the crowd,

1081
01:53:12,869 --> 01:53:15,622
be reminded of who we are
and who we can be collectively.

1082
01:53:15,705 --> 01:53:17,916
Music does those things pretty well.

1083
01:53:18,458 --> 01:53:21,669
Sometimes, they can come in pretty handy.

1084
01:53:22,587 --> 01:53:24,964
And particularly these days,
when some reminding

1085
01:53:25,548 --> 01:53:28,426
of who we are and who we can be
isn't such a bad thing.

1086
01:53:28,510 --> 01:53:29,552
You know?

1087
01:53:36,810 --> 01:53:40,730
I-- I refer back to the weekend
of the March for Our Lives

1088
01:53:40,814 --> 01:53:43,233
when we saw all those young people
in Washington,

1089
01:53:43,316 --> 01:53:45,318
and citizens all around the country,

1090
01:53:45,401 --> 01:53:48,029
remind us of what faith in America

1091
01:53:48,112 --> 01:53:50,698
and what real faith in American democracy

1092
01:53:51,241 --> 01:53:53,201
and how sacred that is.

1093
01:54:00,416 --> 01:54:01,543
You know...

1094
01:54:02,752 --> 01:54:07,298
that weekend, you just saw
what it actually looked and felt like.

1095
01:54:07,882 --> 01:54:09,467
It was just encouraging

1096
01:54:10,093 --> 01:54:12,428
to see all those people out on the street

1097
01:54:12,512 --> 01:54:16,599
and all that righteous passion alive
in the service of something good.

1098
01:54:17,517 --> 01:54:19,185
To see it's still there,

1099
01:54:20,186 --> 01:54:22,939
at the center of the beating heart
of our country...

1100
01:54:24,148 --> 01:54:25,233
and...

1101
01:54:26,901 --> 01:54:29,946
in spite of what we've been going through.
And it was a good day, you know?

1102
01:54:30,029 --> 01:54:31,239
It was just...

1103
01:54:31,948 --> 01:54:33,741
it was just one good day.

1104
01:54:34,784 --> 01:54:36,744
But it was a necessary day.

1105
01:54:37,370 --> 01:54:40,790
Because these are times
when we've also seen folks marching,

1106
01:54:40,874 --> 01:54:46,045
and in the highest offices of our land,
who want to speak to our darkest angels,

1107
01:54:46,379 --> 01:54:50,091
who want to call up the ugliest
and the most divisive ghosts

1108
01:54:50,174 --> 01:54:53,928
of America's past.
And they want to destroy the idea

1109
01:54:54,012 --> 01:54:56,764
of an America for all.
That's their intention.

1110
01:54:57,307 --> 01:54:59,517
That's what we've been seeing,
in the outrage

1111
01:54:59,601 --> 01:55:01,978
of the broken families on the border,

1112
01:55:02,061 --> 01:55:07,191
and in hate-filled marches
on American streets this year.

1113
01:55:07,567 --> 01:55:13,364
Things I never thought
I would see again in my lifetime.

1114
01:55:13,448 --> 01:55:17,327
Things that I thought
were dead and gone...

1115
01:55:18,036 --> 01:55:21,331
forever, on the ash heap of history.

1116
01:55:22,123 --> 01:55:23,249
You know...

1117
01:55:24,626 --> 01:55:26,920
We've come too far and worked too hard,

1118
01:55:27,003 --> 01:55:30,590
too many good people paid
too high a price,

1119
01:55:31,132 --> 01:55:35,678
paid with their lives,
to allow this to happen now.

1120
01:55:36,846 --> 01:55:38,723
You know...

1121
01:55:39,641 --> 01:55:42,936
There's been too much hard work done,

1122
01:55:43,853 --> 01:55:45,146
and sacrifice.

1123
01:55:46,940 --> 01:55:48,858
There's a beautiful quote by Dr. King

1124
01:55:48,942 --> 01:55:51,027
that says,
"The arc of the moral universe is long,

1125
01:55:51,110 --> 01:55:52,737
but it bends toward justice."

1126
01:55:53,488 --> 01:55:57,533
It is important to believe in those words
and to carry yourself

1127
01:55:58,117 --> 01:56:01,454
and to act accordingly,
to live with compassion.

1128
01:56:02,455 --> 01:56:05,166
And to have faith
in that what we're seeing now,

1129
01:56:05,750 --> 01:56:07,627
it's just another hard chapter...

1130
01:56:08,544 --> 01:56:11,464
in the long, long, ongoing battle

1131
01:56:12,465 --> 01:56:14,175
for the soul of the nation.

1132
02:05:24,934 --> 02:05:28,437
I always--
I always thought I was a typical American,

1133
02:05:28,521 --> 02:05:31,857
and so I fought my whole life,
and I studied and I played

1134
02:05:31,941 --> 02:05:33,734
and I worked,

1135
02:05:33,817 --> 02:05:37,404
'cause I wanted to hear and I wanted
to know the whole American story.

1136
02:05:38,489 --> 02:05:41,825
I wanted to know my story
and your story.

1137
02:05:42,743 --> 02:05:45,538
I felt like I needed to understand
as much of it as I could

1138
02:05:45,621 --> 02:05:47,581
in order to understand myself.

1139
02:05:48,290 --> 02:05:50,334
You know? Who was I? And...

1140
02:05:51,627 --> 02:05:54,046
where I came from and what that meant.

1141
02:05:54,880 --> 02:05:58,300
What did it mean to my family?
Where was I going?

1142
02:05:59,426 --> 02:06:01,762
Where were we going together
as a people?

1143
02:06:02,346 --> 02:06:05,474
And-- and what did it mean
to be an American?

1144
02:06:05,975 --> 02:06:11,689
And to be a part of that story
in this place and in this time.

1145
02:06:12,815 --> 02:06:16,193
I wanted to be able to celebrate
and honor its beauty,

1146
02:06:17,570 --> 02:06:18,779
its power.

1147
02:06:19,697 --> 02:06:21,949
And I wanted to be able
to be a critical voice

1148
02:06:22,032 --> 02:06:24,910
when I thought that
that's what the times called for.

1149
02:06:25,536 --> 02:06:26,954
But most of all,

1150
02:06:27,037 --> 02:06:31,000
more than anything else, I wanted
to be able to tell that story well to you.

1151
02:06:32,418 --> 02:06:34,920
That was my young promise to myself.

1152
02:06:35,588 --> 02:06:37,756
And this was my young promise to you.

1153
02:06:38,215 --> 02:06:40,426
From when I was a very young man,

1154
02:06:41,176 --> 02:06:43,262
I took my fun very seriously.

1155
02:06:43,345 --> 02:06:45,180
You know?

1156
02:06:45,264 --> 02:06:47,975
And this is what I have pursued
as my service.

1157
02:06:48,058 --> 02:06:51,937
I still believe in it as such.
This is what I've presented to you

1158
02:06:52,021 --> 02:06:55,524
all these years
as my long and noisy prayer,

1159
02:06:55,608 --> 02:06:58,986
as my magic trick.

1160
02:07:04,950 --> 02:07:06,201
I wanted...

1161
02:07:06,952 --> 02:07:10,414
I wanted to rock your very soul!

1162
02:07:10,914 --> 02:07:14,960
And have you bring it home
and pass it on and...

1163
02:07:15,544 --> 02:07:20,549
I wanted it to be sung and altered by you
and your folks and your children,

1164
02:07:20,633 --> 02:07:21,967
should they be interested.

1165
02:07:22,885 --> 02:07:25,429
I wanted it to be something
that you could call on

1166
02:07:25,512 --> 02:07:27,181
when things were good.

1167
02:07:28,140 --> 02:07:29,016
And, uh...

1168
02:07:29,975 --> 02:07:31,894
and when things were not so good.

1169
02:07:32,811 --> 02:07:36,523
You know, that it might strengthen,
help make sense of...

1170
02:07:37,149 --> 02:07:40,569
your story and your life the way
that you strengthen me and help me

1171
02:07:40,653 --> 02:07:43,614
make sense of my life.
You've provided me with purpose,

1172
02:07:44,239 --> 02:07:47,868
with meaning and with a great,
great amount of joy.

1173
02:07:48,369 --> 02:07:49,828
I hope I've done that for you

1174
02:07:49,912 --> 02:07:52,373
and that I've been
a good traveling companion.

1175
02:07:56,960 --> 02:08:01,548
Remember that the future
is not yet written.

1176
02:08:02,049 --> 02:08:07,680
So when things look dark,
do as my mighty mom would insist,

1177
02:08:08,097 --> 02:08:11,975
lace up your dancing shoes
and get to work.

1178
02:10:12,763 --> 02:10:14,640
There's a joke here somewhere.

1179
02:10:15,849 --> 02:10:17,935
When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

1180
02:15:48,849 --> 02:15:50,142
Whoo!

1181
02:16:12,789 --> 02:16:14,082
Thank you.

1182
02:16:14,416 --> 02:16:15,667
Please...

1183
02:16:16,251 --> 02:16:19,045
be seated.

1184
02:16:19,713 --> 02:16:23,592
It was a beautiful fall November evening.
It was during the writing of my book.

1185
02:16:23,967 --> 02:16:26,678
I drove back to my neighborhood
where I grew up,

1186
02:16:27,554 --> 02:16:28,889
looking for, uh...

1187
02:16:31,850 --> 02:16:33,560
I still don't have a fucking clue.

1188
02:16:33,643 --> 02:16:35,353
All right?

1189
02:16:35,437 --> 02:16:36,771
But, uh...

1190
02:16:37,689 --> 02:16:39,774
All I know is the streets were dead empty

1191
02:16:39,858 --> 02:16:44,529
and the whole place looked
like it had been locked down since 1955.

1192
02:16:45,447 --> 02:16:47,782
My corner church was silent and unchanged,

1193
02:16:47,866 --> 02:16:50,118
no weddings, no funerals. I...

1194
02:16:50,577 --> 02:16:53,455
rolled slowly another 50 yards up my block

1195
02:16:53,538 --> 02:16:56,208
to visit my great tree, and it was gone.

1196
02:16:57,584 --> 02:17:02,005
It had been cut to the street
since the last time I had drove through.

1197
02:17:02,797 --> 02:17:06,176
So I got out of the car
and I looked down and there was a...

1198
02:17:06,927 --> 02:17:11,097
square of musty earth that held
the remaining snakes of its roots

1199
02:17:11,181 --> 02:17:13,058
on the edge of a parking lot.

1200
02:17:13,516 --> 02:17:16,728
So I reached down and I picked up
a handful of dirt

1201
02:17:17,103 --> 02:17:19,522
and I just kind of ran it
through my hands.

1202
02:17:20,774 --> 02:17:23,151
And my heart sank like...

1203
02:17:24,110 --> 02:17:26,947
like a kid who had suffered
some irretrievable loss.

1204
02:17:27,030 --> 02:17:28,448
You know, like some...

1205
02:17:29,824 --> 02:17:32,827
some piece of me was gone.

1206
02:17:34,913 --> 02:17:36,206
Um...

1207
02:17:38,416 --> 02:17:40,835
I don't know. I guess I...

1208
02:17:43,338 --> 02:17:46,091
It was just it had been there
long before I was.

1209
02:17:46,174 --> 02:17:49,177
I assumed it would be there
long after I was gone.

1210
02:17:49,261 --> 02:17:51,054
And I liked that.

1211
02:17:51,846 --> 02:17:53,723
It-- It felt eternal.

1212
02:17:54,307 --> 02:17:58,687
It was at the center of our street
and it had rooted

1213
02:17:59,854 --> 02:18:03,817
our neighborhood for so long.

1214
02:18:04,734 --> 02:18:07,821
So I sat there for a while
just cursing the county.

1215
02:18:08,655 --> 02:18:11,157
And listening to the sounds
of the evening come on,

1216
02:18:11,241 --> 02:18:14,244
and I looked again
and I realized it was gone, but some...

1217
02:18:15,245 --> 02:18:17,497
some essential piece of it
was still there,

1218
02:18:17,580 --> 02:18:20,166
the air and the space above its roots.

1219
02:18:20,792 --> 02:18:25,005
I could still feel the life
and the soul and the light

1220
02:18:25,964 --> 02:18:28,174
of my childhood friend there.

1221
02:18:29,467 --> 02:18:32,429
It's just that its leaves, its branches
and its massive trunk

1222
02:18:32,512 --> 02:18:36,599
were now outlined, shot through,

1223
02:18:37,392 --> 02:18:40,103
by evening stars and sky.

1224
02:18:41,271 --> 02:18:45,483
But my great tree's life couldn't be ended
or erased so easily

1225
02:18:46,234 --> 02:18:48,361
from this place, because it's history,

1226
02:18:49,154 --> 02:18:50,488
and history matters.

1227
02:18:51,531 --> 02:18:53,450
Its imprint was too great.

1228
02:18:53,533 --> 02:18:57,495
It was too old and it was too strong,
and it had been there too long...

1229
02:18:58,413 --> 02:19:00,415
to be done away with so easily.

1230
02:19:00,498 --> 02:19:02,125
It had stood witness

1231
02:19:02,959 --> 02:19:07,881
to everything that had happened
on these small streets beneath its arms.

1232
02:19:08,590 --> 02:19:09,883
All the joy...

1233
02:19:11,134 --> 02:19:12,677
and all the heartbreak.

1234
02:19:14,304 --> 02:19:15,764
And all the life.

1235
02:19:18,308 --> 02:19:23,396
And we live amongst ghosts,
always trying to reach us...

1236
02:19:25,732 --> 02:19:27,400
from that shadow world.

1237
02:19:28,360 --> 02:19:30,570
They're with us every step of the way.

1238
02:19:31,780 --> 02:19:34,282
You know,
my dead father's still with me every day.

1239
02:19:34,366 --> 02:19:36,785
I miss him, and if I had a wish...

1240
02:19:38,286 --> 02:19:39,746
Oh, man...

1241
02:19:41,748 --> 02:19:44,167
I wish he could have been here
to see this.

1242
02:19:47,962 --> 02:19:50,882
But I visit with him every night.

1243
02:19:52,050 --> 02:19:55,011
A little bit. That's a grace-filled thing.

1244
02:19:55,095 --> 02:19:56,930
And Clarence, I get to...

1245
02:19:57,931 --> 02:20:01,226
I get to see and be with Clarence
a little bit every night.

1246
02:20:02,602 --> 02:20:03,895
And Danny...

1247
02:20:04,562 --> 02:20:05,605
Walter,

1248
02:20:06,731 --> 02:20:07,774
and Bart.

1249
02:20:07,857 --> 02:20:10,568
My own family, so many of them gone...

1250
02:20:11,361 --> 02:20:15,240
from these houses that are now filled
by strangers, but the soul...

1251
02:20:15,907 --> 02:20:17,742
the soul is a stubborn thing.

1252
02:20:18,993 --> 02:20:21,204
It doesn't dissipate so quickly.

1253
02:20:21,287 --> 02:20:22,956
Souls remain.

1254
02:20:24,040 --> 02:20:26,042
They remain here in the air,

1255
02:20:26,668 --> 02:20:28,211
in empty space,

1256
02:20:28,920 --> 02:20:30,296
dusty roots,

1257
02:20:31,089 --> 02:20:33,675
in sidewalks
that I knew every single inch of

1258
02:20:33,758 --> 02:20:35,635
like I knew my own body

1259
02:20:36,261 --> 02:20:37,429
as a child...

1260
02:20:39,514 --> 02:20:41,766
and in the songs that we sing.

1261
02:20:44,853 --> 02:20:47,772
You know... That is why we sing.

1262
02:20:49,566 --> 02:20:52,527
We sing for our blood and for our people.

1263
02:20:54,404 --> 02:20:57,532
Because that's all we have
at the end of the day.

1264
02:21:01,703 --> 02:21:03,121
Each other, and...

1265
02:21:03,746 --> 02:21:06,207
maybe that's what I'm looking for
when I go down there.

1266
02:21:06,291 --> 02:21:08,042
I just want to commune...

1267
02:21:09,043 --> 02:21:10,628
with the old spirits,

1268
02:21:11,713 --> 02:21:13,465
stand in their presence,

1269
02:21:14,007 --> 02:21:15,925
feel their hands on me...

1270
02:21:23,516 --> 02:21:24,893
one more time.

1271
02:21:28,646 --> 02:21:32,233
Anyway, once again, I stood in the shadow
of my old church, you know?

1272
02:21:32,317 --> 02:21:34,611
You know what they say about Catholics?

1273
02:21:35,778 --> 02:21:38,865
Yeah, there's no getting out.

1274
02:21:38,948 --> 02:21:42,577
No, no. You know,
once they got you, they got you.

1275
02:21:42,660 --> 02:21:45,497
The bastards got you
when the gettin' was good.

1276
02:21:46,080 --> 02:21:49,042
They did their work hard
and they did it well.

1277
02:21:50,835 --> 02:21:54,839
'Cause the words of a very strange
but all too familiar benediction

1278
02:21:54,923 --> 02:21:57,800
came back to me that evening.

1279
02:21:58,468 --> 02:22:01,095
And I want to tell you,
these were words that as a kid,

1280
02:22:01,179 --> 02:22:04,599
I mumbled these things,
I singsonged them,

1281
02:22:04,682 --> 02:22:08,895
I... chanted them,
bored out of my fucking mind

1282
02:22:08,978 --> 02:22:11,898
in an endless drone before class

1283
02:22:11,981 --> 02:22:15,568
every fucking day.

1284
02:22:15,652 --> 02:22:19,489
Every day, the green blazer,
the green tie, the green trousers,

1285
02:22:19,572 --> 02:22:23,993
the green socks of all
of St. Rose's unwilling disciples.

1286
02:22:28,081 --> 02:22:29,165
You know?

1287
02:22:29,666 --> 02:22:31,626
But for some damn reason

1288
02:22:32,669 --> 02:22:35,880
as I sat there on my street that night,

1289
02:22:37,465 --> 02:22:41,177
you know, mourning, mourning my old tree,

1290
02:22:42,136 --> 02:22:44,889
and once again surrounded by God,

1291
02:22:46,516 --> 02:22:49,894
those were the words that came back
to me and they flowed differently.

1292
02:22:52,939 --> 02:22:56,442
It was "Our Father, who art in Heaven,
hallowed be thy name,

1293
02:22:56,776 --> 02:22:58,319
thy kingdom come,

1294
02:22:59,612 --> 02:23:01,823
thy will be done on this Earth

1295
02:23:02,574 --> 02:23:04,033
as it is in Heaven.

1296
02:23:05,243 --> 02:23:07,161
Give us this day.

1297
02:23:07,996 --> 02:23:10,582
Just give us this day, and forgive us

1298
02:23:11,583 --> 02:23:14,127
our sins, our trespasses,

1299
02:23:14,210 --> 02:23:17,547
as we may forgive those
who trespass against us.

1300
02:23:17,964 --> 02:23:21,676
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil,

1301
02:23:22,093 --> 02:23:23,386
all of us,

1302
02:23:24,804 --> 02:23:26,806
forever and ever. Amen."

1303
02:23:35,315 --> 02:23:40,111
May God bless you, your family,
and all those that you love.

1304
02:23:40,737 --> 02:23:42,739
And thanks for coming out tonight.

1305
02:27:56,868 --> 02:27:59,871
Bruce!

1306
02:28:01,747 --> 02:28:02,623
Thank you.