Sunday, April 2, 2023 Entry #65
Here is another report on the bus tour of Springsteen sites on the Jersey Shore I took the day after seeing the man himself in concert at Madison Square Garden.
II. “Springsteen and Music” (continued)
While we were in Freehold, the town where Bruce Springsteen grew up, we passed a CVS store, which looked like all the CVS stores that have become ubiquitous throughout the land. However, we were told by our guide Stan Goldstein that this particular storefront was actually worth talking about. Turns out there is a Springsteen connection there, from back when it housed a J.J. Newbury department store.
Starting on his 1992 tour, Springsteen started telling versions of the following story about one of his visits to Freehold:
“I was driving through the town I grew up in, and I looked in the J.J. Newbury’s window, and there was a black velvet painting of Bruce Lee, a picture of me, and a picture of a dog next to me!…Underneath was a sign that said, Sale, $19.99! In my own hometown! Kind of puts the whole job into perspective!”
On his album, Lucky Town, Springsteen turned that tale into a delightfully self-deprecating song called “Local Hero.” In the song’s first verse, Springsteen sings, “So I asked the salesgirl, ‘Who was that man between the Doberman and Bruce Lee?’ She said, ‘Just a local hero…he used to live here for a while.”
She couldn’t even come up with his name!
However, I was on a tour bus filled with fans from all over the world who had trekked out to the Jersey Shore primarily if not exclusively because it is Bruce Springsteen’s place of origin. My day here made it abundantly clear to me that Springsteen is absolutely and unironically a local hero in these parts. Forget about the many formally documented and sanctioned Springsteen stops we made. We also simply passed right on by a number of homegrown, more temporary looking Bruce tributes. These included a mural randomly painted on a wall, and a frankly weird looking Springsteen bust in an Asbury Park square. (By the way, there had been talk a few years ago about creating and installing an official statue of Springsteen in Freehold, but a lack of funds halted the progress. Afterwards, Springsteen humbly thanked the Town Council for “saving me from humiliation by displaying good hard common sense.”)
While those are fun to spot, there are also two well-organized and official (and presumably less “humiliating”) efforts underway to honor Bruce Springsteen and preserve his legacy on his home turf that have been announced just in the last few years.
The first to open will be in Freehold. It was announced in 2022 that the town’s Fire Department would be relocating and that the firehouse on Main Street (we passed by the building on the tour) will become the new home of a museum and exhibit space devoted to Bruce Springsteen. The firehouse will be renovated so that it can present Springsteen-related artifacts, photographs, and multimedia displays to the public. The plan is to create strong ties between the museum, the Freehold community, and the area schools so it can be utilized for public programs and tours. The museum, tentatively named “My Hometown: The Bruce Springsteen Story Center,” is slated to be rolled out in 2024.
“The central idea behind the Freehold project is to tell the story of Bruce Springsteen as a writer, as a storyteller, as a chronicler of America, and how his story and the story of his hometown intertwine to tell the larger story of his country.” -Freehold historian Kevin Coyne
In addition, there is The Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music (characteristically, Springsteen insisted that the organization have a wider focus than being only about himself), which has been housed in a relatively small building at Monmouth University in Long Branch, N.J. since 2011. The organization recently revealed their plan to build a new 30,000-square-foot Springsteen center on the same campus. The new building will house and display the Archives’ extensive collection of material, presently 48,000 items from 47 countries (Springsteen once quipped, “More stuff than any place except my mother’s basement!”), and include a 230-seat theater. The school also sits mere blocks from the small house where Springsteen wrote his definitional song, Born To Run (see entry #62).
The big announcement was made in the fall of 2023 at a press conference held at the university’s Great Hall. Poignantly, directly outside of that same campus building, Springsteen and his youthful Steel Mill band played a free outdoor concert at a 1969 event for incoming freshman. Springsteen delivered often humorous remarks at this event in which an artist’s renderings of the Center were displayed.
“First thing I want to say is how happy I am that my archives will have a home right here in Jersey, that means a lot...Having a building with your name on it is a tricky thing because I’m still alive…I mean, I could get arrested for shooting tequilas in a public park (this is a reference to something that actually happened to Springsteen in 2021 when he was charged, quite nearby the university, with DWI on his motorcycle after taking a shot of tequila offered by a fan). But all I can say is I will try to do my best to do nothing for the rest of my life to embarrass a building…I’m getting all the junk out of my house, because it was beginning to get really cluttered in there, so now I have some place to put that stuff.”
Plans for the new Center include exhibits, symposia, conferences, intimate concerts, lectures, and film series centered around Springsteen and a diverse, multi-genre and artist history of American music. There will also be listening and reading rooms featuring oral histories, concert recordings, interviews, as well as literature which inspired Springsteen’s creative process. Bruce’s “stuff”—the artist’s songs and other written work, photographs, periodicals, videos, academic articles, concert memorabilia, clothing, guitars and other artifacts—will be curated in research and collection areas and rotated into galleries for thematic exhibitions.
About two-thirds of the $45 million needed to complete the project has been raised so far, and the university is hoping for a spring 2026 opening.
Springsteen concluded his remarks by harkening back to his long connection to Monmouth University.
“At 19, I played on these very steps, out here, so to stand here today is quite humbling, knowing I’m going to be a presence here on this campus…It’s deeply satisfying.”
Bruce Springsteen is a '“Local Hero” indeed!