Bruce Springsteen is my third favorite rock & roll songwriter of all time (Elliott Murphy and Ian Hunter are first and second, respectively.) I remember the exact first moment I heard a Bruce Springsteen song. It was in January 1973 in Pearl Alley Discs, the first “hippie” record store in Columbus, Ohio, on 13th Avenue right across the street from OSU.
The song was “Blinded By The Light.” It came on over the record store speakers when one of the store employees cued up a new disc after whatever hippie album they’d been playin’ ran out. I remember thinking as I cruised the record racks, “This is a pretty cool song.” Then “Growin’ Up” started blowin’ out of the speakers and I thought, “What the fuck is this? This is one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard.”
I walked over to the register counter and asked the guy what was playing. He handed me the cover of Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and said – somewhat derisively as I recall – “It’s that guy from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen, he’s another ‘New Dylan.’”
“New Dylans” was a thing in those early 70’s days. At that point in time the actual “Old Dylan” was in his John Wesley Harding/Nashville Skyline/Self Portrait kinda lame post-motorcycle accident folkie/country period after his brilliant mid-60’s heyday. Singer-songwriters as disparate as John Prine, Loudon Wainwright III and David Blue were all being hailed as “New Dylans” by a rather desperate record industry.
I wound up not buying Greetings that day, because it also contained songs like “Mary Queen Of Arkansas” and “The Angel” that were just a little too folkie/tuneless/non-rockin’ for my 3-minute hit-single attention span. But later in 1973, The Wild, The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle BURIED all of those concerns and 1975’s Born To Run and Bruce’s live show put ALL the icing on ALL the cakes. (If you so choose, you can read about all that here.)
Now of course, Bruce Springsteen is – quite rightly – the biggest thing going in Rock & Roll For the Over-50 Set, A Complete Unknown went HUGE and almost won an Oscar, so now we MUST have a Bruce Springsteen movie.
A coupla problems right off the bat; Timothee Chalamet was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT in his portrayal of Bob Dylan in Complete Unknown but whoever that chaunce is they chose to portray Bruce is a total ZERO. No charisma, not even close in the Springsteen-looks department (i.e.: when in 1982 was Bruce’s forehead 3 miles high), and I don’t think the vocals are that great or that close in the 2:42 I’ve been proffered in the trailer. (And that blonde love interest it seems like the producers decided to shoehorn into the movie, I dunno.)
I always say, I don’t like going to movies based on times & themes that I’ve lived through; history that I know WAY TOO MUCH about.
So - the long and the short of it – deliver me from Deliver Me From Nowhere. I ain’t going. Somebody let me know how it is. – Ricki C. / June 30th, 2025.
ps. If the producers of DMFN had ANY faith in their abilities OR any faith in the audience’s intelligence, they would not have had to throw “Born To Run” into the 2-minute trailer. Talk about no faith in the people you’re trying to reach.
pps. The Warren Zanes (formerly of great 1980’s Boston band The Del Fuegos) book Deliver Me From Nowhere that this film is based on was pretty great. Maybe everybody should just read that and pass on the movie. (“Hey, Boomer, what is your damage? You think we’re gonna READ A BOOK about something? What year is this, 1952?)
Ricki C. turned 73 the day he wrote this blog. His first favorite rock & roll song was “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly in 1957. He figures his last favorite rock & roll song in this life will be by either Elliott Murphy or Ian Hunter, two other New Dylans he’s worshipped since the early 1970’s.