JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

This is what Greil Marcus wrote in his original Rolling Stone review of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. “What is new is the majesty Springsteen and his band have brought to this story. Springsteen’s singing, his words and the band’s music have turned the dreams and failures two generations have dropped along the road into an epic–an epic that began when that car went over the cliff in Rebel Without a Cause. One feels that all it ever meant, all it ever had to say, is on this album, brought forth with a determination one would have thought was burnt out years ago.”

That was written in 1975, and every word of it is still true. Springsteen and the E Street Band are now touring in support of their new album Magic. I have to see The Boss. Now how do you intend to do that in your present circumstances? I have no idea, but I know I am going to catch that tour. Last night I realized that I have Springsteen’s VH1 Storyteller episode on my iPod, and I saw it for the first time. Bruce opens with Devils and Dust, a song about American soldiers in Iraq, he explains how he wrote it, and he’s insightful, passionate, and funny. Then he moves on to Blinded By The Light, his only number one song (in the Manfred Mann version, not his), and it makes me want to listen to the entire Springsteen discography.

The thing about Springsteen is, we’re so used to him being brilliant, we tend to take the work for granted. Oh right, glowing reviews, critics falling at his feet, what else is new. But in our constant search for the Next Big Thing, the cool trends and cheap thrills, we overlook the amazing that is here now. Okay, I sound like those melodramas where the middle-aged guy leaves his middle-aged wife for some younger woman, but there is nothing middle-aged or cliche about The Boss. Springsteen is eternal and essential.