Simon & SchusterBruce Springsteen fans will get to read the New Jersey rock legend’s life story in his own words starting today, when the Boss’ memoir, Born to Run, gets its release. The 528-page tome covers the 67-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s life and career from his early days growing up in Freehold, New Jersey, through the rise of The E Street Band and on to the present day.
In a promo video posted recently on Springsteen’s official YouTube channel, Bruce explained how working on the book was different from writing songs.
“When you’re writing musically, you have that guitar, you have the rhythm that condenses time, and you can say an awful lot with just a brief line or two lines or three lines,” he maintains. “Part of the freedom of the book, it allows you to delve into great detail but, once again, it still has to be musical and it still has to flow and move in a way that keeps the reader interested.”
In the same clip, the Boss reads a segment of the book in which he discusses some of the images and artists that inspired his songwriting.
“I wanted to use the classic rock ‘n’ roll images — the road, the car, the girl. What else is there?” he says. “It was a language enshrined by Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Hank Williams and every lost highwayman going back to the invention of the wheel.”
As previously reported, Bruce also has lined up a series of special appearances to promote the Born to Run book, starting today at noon ET at a Barnes & Noble store in his hometown of Freehold.
Here the full list of Springsteen’s book-tour stops:
9/27 — Freehold, NJ, Barnes & Noble
9/28 — New York, NY, Barnes & Noble Union Square (at 12 p.m. ET)
9/28 — New York, NY, Apple Soho (at 7 p.m. ET)
9/29 — Philadelphia, PA, Free Library of Philadelphia
10/1 — Seattle, WA, Elliott Bay Book Company
10/3 — Los Angeles, CA, Barnes & Noble at The Grove
10/4 — Portland, OR, Powell’s City of Books
10/5 — San Francisco, CA, City Arts & Lectures
10/7 — New York, NY, The New Yorker Festival
10/10 — Cambridge, MA, The Harvard Coop
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