Peter Carlin and I met while checking out that cringey Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show LOVE way back in the olden times before Obama, and we’ve kept in touch. He was working on his Paul book while I was working on John, and he gives good blurb. Carlin worked his way into Springsteen’s crew when he wrote his biography, and created alliances that make his new book on Born to Run, now 50, a worthwhile read. I asked him to own up to all those sordid rumors, and he did not:

Peter Carlin:

Well, when I finished my R.E.M. book, I took a little time off to lick my wounds, and then I had a bunch of time between when the book was done and its publication, and I started scratching around and thinking about what to do next. I'd had an idea for a long time—I was looking around at writing about something set in the '70s.

Later in the decade, there was an interesting moment where rock'n'roll became institutionalized, in a sense. When Jimmy Carter became president and, suddenly, you know, you heard all these tales, you know, any band going through DC would stop off and visit the president in the White House, which obviously had never been the case before.

We can’t even think of a word that rhymes:

And rock'n'roll was kids' music, and counterculture music. There was no exchange between the White House and rock'n'roll, and that began to change. But I got into that, and there were some other coincidental things happening in the culture at the same time, and I thought, well, that's interesting, but it just didn't speak to me.

I was trying to [00:01:00 ] write a proposal, and get my thoughts together, and I kept bumping up against the fact that it just wasn't touching me. I just didn't feel that sense of drive and internal disquiet that really compels you to take on a book.

The extent of control that he required, and needing to know every single note, and even the silences between the notes were exactly right, was because this was it: there would be no tomorrow…

I was thinking about other stuff that had happened around them, and I began to realize like, wait a second, it's been 50 years, or it will be next year, 50 years since "Born to Run." And I thought of the several boxes of archives I had left over from the Springsteen biography, and I just thought, oh, I bet I have a ton of leftover stuff in there about "Born to Run"—I should do something on that. So I talked about it with my agent who, after months of hearing me complain about my inability to write this other book was like, "Yeah, do that." And so I wrote a quick proposal and my editor at Doubleday was immediately in.

Then, I talked to Jon Landau, Bruce's manager. I'd actually floated it by him when I was catching up with [00:02:00 ] him backstage at a show in San Francisco and I said, you know, "This is something I might want to do next." He was immediately like, "Oh, I think we could be up for that."

So once the deal was done, I wrote to them and said, "Hey, this is actually going forward. I'd love to talk to you guys about 'Born to Run.'" Fairly immediately I got a note back from Jon saying we (Jon and Bruce) would both be into doing that. So then they were on board. The challenge was that in March of 2024, the deal kind of unfolded on Doubleday's end.

You know how publishing works. You need a lot of lead time between when you submit the manuscript and when the book comes out. Usually, it's a year (or even more) depending on the project. And this time around, clearly we weren't gonna have a year. The message was: if you can do this by October, then let's do this.

And I was like, okay, well, what else am I doing? So the clock was ticking from the [00:03:00 ] moment we all shook hands on it. I just dove right in and obviously the first thing I did was dig through all my leftover material from the biography, and then I suddenly realized, oh, I don't have that much leftover "Born to Run" stuff after all. Doing the biography was a story, you know. It was 60-plus years of a man's life, and none of it wasn't interesting.

It seemed key to this great big epic story of Bruce's life. There were certain parts of that book that got in real deep into the making of particular records, but somehow the making of "Born to Run" was more lightly sketched.

Fortunately, I could hit the ground at a pretty fast clip because I still had all my contact information left over, and so I knew how to get in touch with people, and they knew who I was, and they knew Bruce and Jon were into the project. So it was [00:04:00 ] relatively easy to get in touch with everyone, to connect with them, and to get to start talking to them, and collecting more information.

I very quickly ran to the usual archives, the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, and the Springsteen Center in Monmouth. And then, I began ringing people up and visiting folks. Once that was done, I canceled all of my social plans and did nothing until it was done, which was in early November…

MORE

* Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run: publisher page

* Peter Carlin author page

* Bruce Springsteen.net: many of the Live Series editions pouring out of this shop have great reach and durability, just avoid Only the Strong Survive.

* The riley rock report interview with Warren Zanes on Deliver Me From Nowhere, the basis for the new film. New Nebraska package imminent.

* Peter Carlin appears at the Texas Book Festival in Austin on November 8

hot licks & rhetoric

The newsletter archives include implicit commentary on last week’s events: Kimmel met his moment, but he still looks tame by Jen Friedman’s standards. She walked up in front of the dude at a rally talking on the phone, ignoring him for the whole world to see. Jeremy Braddock keeps working on his Firesign Theatre project, including recent talks… and the new Darren Aronofsky film Caught Stealing, has faded rapidly, but so have a few other “mid-budget” thrillers this year. Austin Butler keeps on thumping it, and, in a casting twist to match the thriller’s wit, Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio show up as Hasidic gangsters.

This hagiographic Cameron Crowe NYT profile doesn’t mention Roadies (Showtime, 2016), his TV show which extends Almost Famous out into an real-time tour, with Carla Gugino, Imogen Poots, and Luke Wilson. The central irony of his career remains: he didn’t grow up to work as a critic, he grew up to make movies. The Carol Kaye portrait, where she refuses to accept a R&R Hall of Fame induction, fares better. And she doesn’t say it, but it’s obvious: that organization has a Big Gender Problem (Evelyn McDonell, 2011).

Few books explain the conflicting American narratives better than A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America by Richard Slotkin, which came out last year and doesn’t feel an inch out of date. Given publishing time lags, this counts as magnificent.

Riley appearances

“No Limits: Tina Turner’s Global Feminism”

Tina Turner Heritage Days in Greenwood, TennesseeSaturday, September 26, 2pm

“Rubber Soul Defies Context”

EF4Fest Celebrates Rubber Soul at 60November 6-8, Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, Asbury Park, New JerseyWith Rob Sheffield, Nellie McKay, and others

noises off

* recent Instagram posts: Chris Thile’s Bach Vol 2, Etta James, and LBJ’s scar.

* Coming soon: Peter Richardson’s