Sunday, April 2, 2023 Entry #66
I have grouped my reflections on my Springsteen-centric day at the Jersey Shore into three categories: “Springsteen and Home” (Entry #62); “Springsteen and Music” (Entries #63, #64 and #65); and now I’m ready to “dive” into the third!
III. “Springsteen and Ocean”
Although I am from the Midwest, I have had a few opportunities in my life to be oceanside and stroll up and down some classic beachside boardwalks, all junk food, amusement rides, and souvenir shops. Still, it was a singular thrill to finally visit the Asbury Park Boardwalk for the first time, even though it was off-season, windy, cold, and nearly deserted. After all, this was the ocean strip that Bruce Springsteen cruised before he was “The Boss.” It is the very boardwalk where, in the late 1960’s, Springsteen had his fortune read at the Madam Marie psychic readings stand. There, for 25 bucks, Madam Marie told the aspiring musician that he was definitely going to be a great success (Bruce responded by self-deprecatingly ribbing the psychic, saying that “she must say that to all the guitar players.”). Springsteen immortalized Madam Marie and other characters and scenes from the boardwalk in his evocative 1973 song “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” When Madam Marie passed away in 2008 (her family continues to give readings in the same booth on the boardwalk), Springsteen said, “Back in the day when I was a fixture on the Asbury Park Boardwalk, I’d often stop and talk to Madam Marie as she sat on her folding chair outside the Temple of Knowledge…The world has lost enough mystery as it is-we need our fortunetellers.”
“Those pier lights, our carnival lights forever…As the wizards play down on Pinball Way on the boardwalk way past dark, the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open like Latin lovers on the shore…Now the greasers, they tramp the streets, or get busted for sleeping on the beach at night…And me, I just got tired of hangin’ in them dusty arcades, bangin’ them pleasure machines, chasing the factory girls underneath the boardwalk where they all promise to unsnap their jeans…And you know that tilt-a-whirl down on the South Beach drag, I got on it last night and my shirt got caught, and they kept me spinnin’ babe-didn’t think I’d ever get off…She worked that joint under the boardwalk, she was always the girl you saw boppin’ down the beach with the radio. The kids say last night she dressed like a star in one of them cheap little seaside bars, and I saw her parked with lover boy out on the Kokomo. Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin’ fortunes better than they do?
-Lyric excerpts from Bruce Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park, (Sandy)”
Springsteen’s connection to beaches, boardwalks and the ocean started young. He remembers sitting at the Manasquan Inlet (an area that to this day Springsteen calls one of his favorite hideaways) with his dad, watching the boats come in from the ocean. Springsteen has said he would walk out onto the jetty and stare into the pitch-black nothing of the Atlantic, listening to the waves crashing rhythmically on the shore behind them. As he further recounted on his radio show:
“There were evenings, that if it got hot enough, my dad showed mercy on us, and he’d pack us into the Olds…for the 20-minute ride to Manasquan…on those nights the heat and the humidity of inland Freehold became too much to bear-we’d sleep in our pajamas, our beach blankets stretched out into the cool sand, enjoying the ocean air of the Manasquan Inlet.”
“I rolled myself into a sand ball at the beach. Man, all I remember was coming home from the beach with my folks with sand everywhere. Sand in my pants, sand all over the car, sand in all your toys, sand in your ears, sand in your hair.”
As a teen, Springsteen found his way to the beach without his family. Again, here are his recollections from the satellite radio show Springsteen hosted during the COVID lockdown:
“I’m out the door, striding down South Street towards Route 33. I carry nothing but a folded beach towel under my arm…I take my hitchhiker’s stance…My destination, the beaches and bikinis of Manasquan, N.J., and I wait for the magic to begin…And then an hour, three or four rides later, I will be deposited at the beach…I head for a plot of sand, I scan thoroughly for the beach cops and the nearest crowd of pretty girls, and I settle in. After a few moments in the sun, I head for my morning baptism in the wonderful, God-given Atlantic Ocean.”
A few years later, Springsteen was a young and nomadic working musician, and he lived for a spell with his bandmates over a surfboard factory on Bradley Beach, spending all his time either surfing, rehearsing, or gigging. Springsteen has described that time as idyllic. Not only did he play music on the Jersey beaches, Springsteen also attended shows there as a fan. The Osprey, a seasonal beach bar in Manasquan that featured live music, is the setting for Springsteen’s “Seaside Bar Song” (also the title of this blog’s Entry #63). In the song, Springsteen describes the epic night he spent at The Osprey in the early 1970’s when he saw the great Bo Diddley perform and also when he had his first taste of alcohol.
Springsteen the rock star still returns to these beaches again and again. He filmed one video for 1987’s Tunnel of Love at the northern end of the Asbury Park boardwalk, and another 20 years later for his older-age beach lament “Girls in their Summer Clothes” (still scanning for those pretty girls, but now “they pass me by.”) at the Ocean Shore Beach.
In his personal life as well, Bruce Springsteen cannot stay away from the sun, sand and surf of the Jersey Shore, a place clearly imprinted on his soul. Springsteen continually pops up at area beach clubs like Tradewinds, Donovan’s Reef, McCloone’s, and Seabright, which was pointed out to us on the tour.
Spotting the Boss on the beach and snagging a selfie with him has become a New Jersey pastime.
I will close this category with another Springsteen soliloquy from his “From My Home To Yours” show on E Street Radio, a passage so near and dear to me that I have used a few times in this blog. Here, Springsteen offers some advice to his listeners. It is wisdom soaked up from his life-long passion for the very ocean area that I spent this great day exploring. Swimming in his home turf is clearly more than just recreational for Springsteen (I love that one of the many houses where he has lived on the Shore is on the “Swimming River Reservoir”), his immersions in this place actually constitute a significant part of Bruce Springsteen’s practice of spiritual renewal.
“There is nothing like the sea at night, when the water is slightly warmer than the air, even though the air is humid after a 95 degree day. God, I love swimming at night. It is all darkness and mystery. It is the void. And it must be done naked. Clothes at the waterline, please. Do this, my pilgrim, and you will become cleansed. Never will the evening air, or a kiss at the beach, or a dry towel ever feel so good again. The walk to your car will be filled with star-lit grace, and you will never forget it. And once you’ve hit the water, you will be covered in the blossoming beauty of your youth, no matter how old you are, and whoever you are with, you will always remember them.”