Greetings 1

Greetings from Freehold:

How Bruce Springsteen’s Hometown Shaped His Life and Work

David Wilson

Chairman, Communication Council

Monmouth University

Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium

Presented Sept. 26, 2009 Greetings 2

ABSTRACT

Bruce Springsteen came back to Freehold, New Jersey, the town where he was raised, to attend the Monmouth County Fair in July 1982. He played with Sonny Kenn and the Wild Ideas, a band whose leader was already a Jersey Shore-area legend. About a year later, he recorded the song "County Fair" with the E Street Band.

As this anecdote shows, Freehold never really left Bruce even after he made a name for himself in Asbury Park and went on to worldwide stardom. His experiences there were reflected not only in "County Fair" but also in "My Hometown," the unreleased "In Freehold" and several other songs. He visited a number of times in the decades after his family left for California.

Freehold’s relative isolation enabled Bruce to develop his own musical style, derived largely from what he heard on the radio and on records. More generally, the town’s location, history, demographics and economy shaped his life and work.

“County Fair,” the first of three sections of this paper, will recount the July 1982 episode and its aftermath. “Growin’ Up,” the second, will review Bruce’s years in Freehold and examine the ways in which the town influenced him. “Goin’ Home,” the third, will highlight instances when he returned in person, in spirit and in song. Greetings 3

COUNTY FAIR

Bruce Springsteen couldn’t be sitting there. Could he?

The question came to me in the summer of 1982, as my then-fiancée and I sat in a field at the Monmouth County Fairgrounds in Freehold, New Jersey. We were waiting for Sonny Kenn and the Wild Ideas, a local band that she followed around the Jersey Shore, to start playing.

Sonny was already a guitar hero by the time Bruce debuted with Freehold’s Castiles in

1966. His band at the time, Sonny and the Starfires, had even been the opening act for rocker

Jerry Lee Lewis.1 Since then, their fortunes had diverged.

Bruce had released five albums for Columbia Records and was getting ready to put out his sixth, “Nebraska.” He had scored four top-40 singles -- “Born to Run,” “Prove It All Night,”

“Hungry Heart” and “Fade Away” -- and played to millions of fans with the E Street Band.2

Sonny worked at a musical-instrument store in Red Bank by day and played in Shore- area bars and clubs at night. With the Wild Ideas, he released an independent single with two original songs, “All American Angel” and “Turn It Up.” It went nowhere.

There was no reason to expect Bruce to be anywhere near the fairgrounds, let alone sitting next to me and my fiancée. Yet when I looked to my left, I saw someone who looked mighty familiar. He wore blue jeans, a flannel shirt and a yellow cap that said CAT -- short for

Caterpillar, the farm-equipment maker. He was chatting up a woman I didn’t recognize. Nobody was bothering him, and I didn’t either.

A few minutes later, as dusk set in, the concert started. Sonny and the band made their way onto a trailer-like stage at one end of the field. When the lights came up, there they were.

And there was Bruce, jamming with them.

They played Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally,” Greetings 4

Berry’s “Carol,” Sam Cooke’s “Shake” and an early hit for Wilson Pickett, “Land of a Thousand

Dances.”3 Sonny and his band didn’t usually play songs like those. Their sets featured originals and covers like “Jack the Ripper,” by Link Wray. But that night was different. Bruce was there.

Based on what happened that evening -- July 23, 1982 -- it wasn’t a complete surprise to learn that Bruce wrote and recorded a song called “County Fair” the following year.4 These lines, included in the third verse, rang true to my experience: “At the north end of the field they set up a stand / And they got a little rock and roll band / People dancin’ out in the open air.”5

While there isn’t any record of Bruce playing at the Monmouth County Fair again, he easily could have attended the event when he wasn’t on tour. He owns a house in Rumson that’s about half an hour’s drive from the fairgrounds, now known as East Freehold Park. He also has a house, recording studio and horse farm in Colts Neck, just 12 minutes away by car.6

Assuming that Bruce made the trip at least once wouldn’t be unreasonable. He has returned again and again to Freehold, where he lived, attended school and found his musical calling in the 1950s and 1960s. He has revisited his hometown just as regularly in his lyrics.

“Springsteen is not just from Freehold, but is of and in it,” Kevin Coyne, the town’s historian, once wrote. He drew a parallel between Bruce and William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize- winning writer whose works were often set in his native Mississippi -- “the ‘postage stamp of native soil,’ as Faulkner called it, in which he found the whole world.”7 Greetings 5

GROWIN’ UP

Bruce Frederick Springsteen arrived in Freehold, the seat of Monmouth County, New

Jersey, shortly after he was born on Sept. 23, 1949, in Long Branch. His parents, Douglas and

Adele, brought him to the home of his paternal grandparents at 87 Randolph St., where they lived at the time. His sister Virginia, known as Ginny, was born the next year.1

St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, which his family attended, was next door to the house. Bruce was baptized and confirmed there, which might explain why he has another middle name, Joseph, that isn’t listed on his birth certificate.2 He also served as an altar boy.3

Many of his relatives lived nearby. “There was my cousin’s house, my aunt’s house, my great-grandmother’s house, my aunt’s house on my mother’s side with my other grandmother in it,” he later said. “We were all on one street, with the church in the middle.”4

Bruce and his family moved out of the house in 1954, shortly after his fifth birthday.5

About three years later, St. Rose of Lima acquired the property and tore down the building as part of an expansion of its parking lot.6

The family settled into a duplex at 39 ½ Institute St., about three blocks east of Randolph

Street.7 Forman and Willetta Smith owned the house until 1959, when they sold it to a neighbor,

Samuel J. Venti.8 He worked at the A. & M. Karagheusian Co. rug mill and was president of the plant’s union local when production was shut down in 1961.9 The duplex was across the railroad tracks from Karaghuesian and Texas, a residential area to the east of the mill.10

Douglas and Adele moved the family again after their daughter Pamela, known as Pam, was born in January 1962. They rented half of a duplex at 68 South St., four blocks from their

Institute Street home, that November.11 Greetings 6

Ducky Slattery’s Sinclair gas station, the topic of stories that Bruce would later tell during concerts, was next door.12 John W. Duckett Jr., a Sinclair distributor, was the family’s landlord. He bought the house on the assumption that his company would want the property to expand the station.13 It didn’t, and Slattery’s was eventually closed. A convenience store now operates on the site.

Bruce’s education began at the St. Rose of Lima School, an elementary school that his father had attended. In the classroom and in church, he gained an awareness of religious images that would later resurface in his lyrics. “Nuns run bald through Vatican halls, pregnant, pleadin’ immaculate conception,” he wrote in “Lost in the Flood,” released on his debut album.14

Music first attracted him as a 7-year-old, when he watched Elvis Presley perform on the

Ed Sullivan Show. After seeing the show, he asked his parents for a guitar. They bought him a small, semi-toy acoustic.15

Before long, he set his sights on baseball instead. “I wanted it pretty bad at the time,” he said later. “Every day from when I was eight until 13 I’d be outside pitching that ball.”16 In 1960, he played in the Colonial League. He moved up to Little League the following year as a member of the Indians, the first team in league history to go unbeaten in the regular season.17 They were the “Indians in the summer” cited in "Blinded by the Light," also from his first album.18

Bruce returned to music at 13, when he bought his first guitar with money earned from doing odd jobs. The second-hand acoustic cost $18 at a Western Auto store in Freehold. Frank

Bruno, his cousin, taught him some basic chords. His mother borrowed $60 to buy a Japanese- made Kent electric guitar and an amplifier for him as a Christmas gift.19 She made the purchase at Caiazzo’s Music Store, at the corner of Center and Jackson streets, when he was 16.20 Greetings 7

Bruce made his performance debut with the Rogues, a band that threw him out because

“my guitar was too cheap.” George Theiss, a guitarist who was dating Ginny, then recruited him for the Castiles.21 Bruce passed an audition with the group’s manager, Gordon “Tex” Vinyard, in

June 1965. Tex and his wife, Marion, lived in a duplex just across the street from Caiazzo’s. The band practiced at the house, frequented by children from the neighborhood.22 The duplex and the building where Caiazzo’s was located were eventually torn down.

The Castiles played about two dozen shows in Freehold with Bruce. The last five were monthly appearances at the local Hullabaloo club, starting in March 1968, when it opened. The group broke up that August, and Bruce performed at Hullaballoo in October with Earth, a band he had formed. After that, he didn’t have a show in his hometown for 28 years.23

Two songs co-written by Bruce and George, “That’s What You Get” and “Baby I,” were recorded in May 1966. The band made the recordings at Mr. Music, a studio in Brick Township,

Ocean County. They weren’t released as a single, though acetate copies survive.24

Bruce’s singular focus was evident at Freehold High School, then called Freehold

Regional, which he attended after graduating from St. Rose of Lima.25 “He always carried his guitar around in the halls, and every once in a while he’d sit down in a corner and play for hours,” his music teacher, William Starsinic, later recalled.26 The school was located on

Robertsville Road, about three-quarters of a mile from his South Street home.27

“You had your plaid bookbaggers and your greasers, and Bruce was one of the greasers,” said Bob Hoenig, a classmate at Freehold Regional. After school ended on Fridays, Bruce hung out at Federici’s Pizza on Main Street with a group of leather-jacketed friends. 28 Frank “Spat”

Federici Jr., whose family owned the restaurant, was a childhood friend of his father.29 Greetings 8

His musical ambitions were a source of conflict with his dad, who worked at a series of blue-collar jobs. So was his hair, which fell past his shoulders. He sometimes spent hours in a phone booth so he wouldn’t have to go home.30 Their relationship found its way into his songs, especially "Independence Day,” where he wrote: "There was just no way this house could hold the two of us / I guess that we were just too much of the same kind."31

Another prominent theme in his lyrics, cars and driving, also can be traced back to his father. "He liked to get in the car and just drive," he once said. "He got everybody else in the car too, and he made us drive. He made us all drive."32 Bruce took his fans for a drive on "Racing in the Street," from 1978, which began by describing "a '69 Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a

Hurst on the floor."33 He came out with the song “Used Cars” four years later.34

Bruce graduated from Freehold Regional in June 1967, although he skipped the ceremony. He then enrolled at Ocean County College, where he spent three semesters.35 The

January 1969 edition of the community college's literary magazine, Seascape, published a paragraph entitled "My Lady" and an untitled poem that he wrote.36

Bruce was drafted at 19, amid the Vietnam War. He was classified 4-F, making him ineligible for military service, because of injuries from a motorcycle accident two years earlier.

He also filled out forms incoherently and failed to take all the required tests.37 Later, he drew on the experiences of those who served for "Born in the U.S.A.," the title song of his 1984 album.38

In the fall of 1969, his family moved to California.39 At first, he stayed at 68 South St., which his mother arranged for him to rent from Duckett. He was asked to leave after kicking out the glass in a bedroom window that wouldn’t open.40 He moved out and headed to Asbury Park, where his ascent to rock and roll stardom began in earnest. Greetings 9

Location

Look at a map of New Jersey, and it would be easy to conclude that Freehold is the state's geographic center. The town is about halfway between the Atlantic Ocean, which defines the eastern boundary, and the Delaware River in the west. It's also roughly equidistant from the northern tip, bordering New York state, and Cape May at the southern end.

New Jersey’s actual center is about five miles southeast of Trenton, the state's capital city.1 Yet the location of Bruce’s home town worked to his advantage, at least in some respects, during his initial rise to stardom and beyond. Just consider some of the places that were within reasonable driving distance.

Asbury Park, where he made a name for himself in clubs such as the Student Prince and formed the E Street Band, is only 24 minutes from Freehold by car.2 Bruce moved there after his family left town and went to California.

New York is about an hour away.3 Bruce first played there in November 1966, when the

Castiles appeared at the Café Wha nightclub. The band performed about 30 shows there through

February 1968, six months before its breakup.4

Philadelphia, one of the first cities where Bruce established a fan base outside New

Jersey, takes about 75 minutes to reach.5 The first arena concert that he and the E Street Band ever played took place there in 1976, when they performed at the Spectrum.6

Atlantic City, the Jersey Shore town that inspired the song of the same name, is about 90 minutes away.7 In 1982, “Atlantic City” appeared on the “Nebraska” album. Twenty-one years later, he performed there for the first time at Boardwalk Hall.8 Greetings 10

Three state highways run through Freehold, linking the town to these cities and many others. Route 9, cited in “Born to Run” and other Bruce songs, carries travelers north and south.

Route 79 starts in town and heads northeast to Matawan, where the Castiles played in November

1966 at the Matawan-Keyport Roller Drome, a roller-skating rink.9 Route 33 crisscrosses New

Jersey from Trenton to Neptune, near the entrance to Asbury Park, and ran straight through

Freehold before a bypass was built to the south.

Freehold also was tied to New York through the reach of the city's television and radio stations. When Bruce saw Elvis Presley’s January 1957 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and the Beatles’ performances seven years later, he surely was watching WCBS-TV Channel 2 in New York. The Rolling Stones’ debut on the “Hollywood Palace” program, which he saw in

June 1964, would have aired on WABC-TV Channel 7.10 He and his friends were New York

Yankees fans and would listen to radio broadcasts of the team’s games.11

Having this kind of access suggests Freehold was everywhere. But it was also nowhere at the same time. “It’s real ‘away,’ you know? It’s like an hour from New York, but it might as well have been 10 million miles,” Bruce once said. “It was all very, very local. That’s the way those towns and stuff are, you just never get out.”12

Freehold’s isolation worsened as Bruce grew up. The town got caught in between two newly built state highways. The first was the New Jersey Turnpike, which opened in 1951.13 The

Garden State Parkway, constructed between 1952 and 1957, followed.14 Once they were up and running, travelers passing through New Jersey had no reason to go through town any more.

At the same time, public transportation became harder to come by for the town’s residents. The Central Railroad of New Jersey’s Freehold Branch, which offered connecting service to New York via Matawan, stopped carrying passengers in 1953.15 The Pennsylvania