Lost But Not Forgotten: Bruce Springsteen and My Father

There’s a car ride that sticks out from the earliest years of my life that feels more like a faded photograph than a fully formed memory. Mind you, it’s not anything special. It’s not one of those prominent moments in your life like winning a championship baseball game, learning to ride a bike, or your prom night. It’s just a simple one of my father and I taking a drive in his truck along the curved loop of Riverton Rd. More than likely, it was one of the numerous Friday nights that he had driven after work to pick me up from my mother’s house.

If I recall correctly, it was right after he had gotten a brand-new truck. He was so proud of it. It’s one of those emotions you can feel even as a kid. Because he was proud of it, I was proud of it too. Heck, I was in awe of this truck, and I’ve never been in awe of any automobile even to this day. On the driver’s side door was his company’s logo. What made this truck special to me, however, was the radio.

This truck had the fanciest radio I had ever seen. It could flip down so you could put all your CDs in it behind the display. There was a full-color display that showed small animations while the music was playing. I had never seen anything like it. It was something out of the future. That radio was the highest tech gadget money could buy, and my dad had it. 

But the real reason this radio mattered to me was because my father and I spent most of our time together in his car; I was an every-other-weekend kid, and music was our primary form of connection. It wasn’t his fault that I was an every other weekend kid, mind you, because it’s no one’s fault when two young kids in love have a kid of their own. My mother and father never got married but married other people very young so I have never known them as a single unit. You hear a lot of stories like that in the music my father and I bonded over. Music like Bruce Springsteen. In this memory, Bruce Springsteen is playing on the radio. Bruce was always his music.

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure if this memory is even real or an amalgamation of countless Friday night drives on small-town roads in New Jersey that blurred together but the gravely voice of Bruce runs through all of them like a heartbeat, keeping the memory alive. This memory or this feeling has been running through my head a lot lately, like a record stuck on a loop. I’m not sure why it’s this one in particular that has ingrained itself so deeply in my mind, but it’s stuck in there like a hot coal.

It’s been more than a year since my father and I spoke honestly.

See, I say we haven’t spoken in a year, but I’m not sure if we’ve ever really spoken at all. I don’t think the man has ever really seen me in his life.

I still drive down Riverton Rd. Many things have changed, but that road remains the same, and Bruce Springsteen’s music is still playing on the radio. I listen to Bruce almost every day now, but I never speak to my father. Bruce is still his music, though.

Verse

Tradition isn’t really something you think about having in your own life until it’s gone. You’re ingrained with different sets of routines from your family that are “just what you do” rather than being something with a history or reason for you to uncover. But now that I spend so much of my time sitting with only the memories of those golden times with my father, I wanted to unpack a tradition I didn’t realize was ours until it wasn’t. 

Spending the 4th of July down at the Jersey Shore sounds like I’m borrowing ideas from a Bruce Springsteen song to make this whole thing sing. But for my entire conscious life, I have spent the 4th of July down the shore with my father and his side of the family. It was never a political celebration for them;  in all those years, I’m not sure I can recall a single person discussing something patriotic.

It came from those small-town traditions in all those small towns you hear Bruce Springsteen sing about in songs like “My Hometown.” My father and I come from the kinds of places where, even today, the 4th of July parade, the church carnival, and other traditions are still very much part of the DNA of everyone who’s from there. These traditions go as far back as my grandmother’s grandmother, I was told. 

Every summer was spent going on amusement park rides, wandering the boardwalk, and gaming at the arcade. Those trips to the arcade, especially, are some of the dearest memories of my father I hold. There, we would spend god only knows how many quarters playing the X-Men arcade machine; just him and I, while the radio played Bruce Springsteen hits like “Born to Run” or “Born in the U.S.A.” Bruce was always there. He’s in my DNA just as much as the St. Charles Church Carnival. 

What’s most clear about the 4th of July to me today, though, are those drives down the shore that felt like an eternity. When I think of those 4th of July car rides, I’m brought back to teenage me. I was living in Maryland at the time and my father had to drive all the way there to pick me up for the trip. The move to Maryland couldn’t have been easy for him. Nor could that additional 2-hour drive. I wasn’t happy to be going; I thought I had better things to do. My dad always tried to talk to me during those car rides—something that I will always commend him for—but as a teenager, I didn’t really give him much to work with in the way of conversation, so we always ended up sitting in silence with the radio on. 

I didn’t want to listen to the E Street Radio that was always blaring in his BMW convertible. I will never forget when he bought that car because he didn’t want my mother to see it when he picked me up. He would arrive extra early just to avoid her which I never understood but I think it’s because she saw him for who he truly was. It was an obnoxious car but he had worked hard to earn it. When I think of that car, it makes me realize that material objects are the only way my father knows how to show pride in himself. Those material objects are what define him, a diametric opposition to where I draw my worth, despite his beliefs.

That convertible is the birthplace of that radio station to me. The radio station that made Bruce a constant staple in those long car rides. Did you know they play full concerts on E Street Radio on SiriusXM? Teenage Dan did and he hated it. Teenage Dan hated Bruce Springsteen. There were so many years where I was fighting against that storm that I was born to embrace. As much as I ran from it, I was born to run into it. 

Even with my own hatred of the music, I can remember how excited my father got over certain songs. For us, music is how we embrace who we are. My father and I have a thing where we playfully grab whoever is in the passenger seat and try to get them as excited as we are about the song that’s playing on the radio. As if they have never heard it before or like it’s some massive event about to occur. I think it’s just us wanting that person to be as amped up as we are, and to sing with us too. On those rides down the shore, that passenger was me, but I never embraced it. I regret that now.

The song that always comes to mind when I think of the sudden burst of jovial energy that precedes a car concert is “Rosalita.” I am not even sure if it’s my father’s favorite but with the way he would get when it was on, you would believe it was. 

“Rosalita” is a song built for letting everything go and embracing letting loose. It’s a song about forbidden love between two young lovers and how the titular Rosalita’s parents hate the song’s protagonist. It’s one of those seven-minute powerhouse songs that blows you back off your feet with its energy. If you haven’t heard it, I suggest listening to a live version because hearing Steve Van Zandt’s backing vocals and  Clarence Clemons’s clean, raw saxophone is magical.

When I began working on this piece, I started breaking down songs to try to find some hidden key to the universe in the lyrics. A song about a young man and woman… I thought maybe my father saw himself in it. A story of a young man who was hated by his girlfriend’s parents.

As with the tradition of looking deeper into things around this essay, I only found pain. I wanted to have a fun song and set of memories be a reminder of why I feel this pain. A reminder of why I want to get these feelings out—for whoever is reading this—as an example that those you love are as complex as you are. That sometimes having the strength to remove someone who caused you pain will make them fix the way they became. But what if it’s who they’ve always been?

“Papa knows I don’t have any money” is one of the repeated lines of the song that has become concrete in my heart. I inquired about the relationship between my father and my mother’s parents. That conversation led to learning that my father believed “getting married and having a baby didn’t fit in with his plans to become rich and successful.” There is more to it all but it’s just a bit ironic in the Alanis Morissette way that I find that out for a song like this. My father didn’t have any money when I was born but he made sure he has it now. But with all the money in the world, he’s still down a son.

Now I look back at that teenage Dan with his headphones on blaring My Chemical Romance and I want to tell him to just keep those headphones in. The 4th of July means nothing to me now. I don’t get to be a part of the family because I cut him out. He has that control. But I have Bruce and all those songs to keep those feelings alive. Even though I fought against it for so many years, having Jersey in your DNA means that, no matter what, Bruce will find you in the end.

Pre-Chorus & Chorus

Now I am alone. I am cut off from my father. We haven’t spoken in almost two years. Nothing real except pleasantries at family events I won’t miss on his account. No amount of therapy can close this wound across my heart. I have been so angry. Every piece of this essay was written during a different stage of my journey through this anger. 

I’ve been searching through Bruce’s catalog to find a song that’ll help me work through these feelings. I must have listened to his entire discography three times over (which does include the new previously unreleased tracks). I keep coming back to one song that hits on so many parts of what makes this pain feel so raw, even now. 

“Adam Raised a Cain” is the second track of Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s a song Bruce has called “emotionally autobiographical” because it deals with a complicated relationship between a father and son. It’s something that Bruce himself struggled with and I hear it in so much of his music. 

I can’t speak to Bruce’s relationship with his father because I don’t know him. But I can use his words as tools to interpret my own pain.

In the summer that I was baptized

My father held me to his side

As they put me to the water

He said how on that day I cried

Bruce Springsteen—as I and many others who engage so deeply with his lyrics are—is a lapsed Catholic. “Adam Raised a Cain” is a song drenched in religious iconography such as baptism, the story of Cain and Abel, and all sorts of other biblical allegory. My father is a man who had me baptized and, infrequently, still visits church. There’s a certain level of guilt that comes with being Catholic, and if you’re a recovering Catholic, you already know that. You’re shown this world through the light of repentance and told to confess your sins. You’re always looking to make up for some wrong that you had nothing to do with. My guilt is that sometimes I believe I’ve done the wrong thing. That I have sinned by cutting my father out of my life.  I didn’t ask for all this inherited pain.

We were prisoners of love, a love in chains

He was standin’ in the door, I was standin’ in the rain

With the same hot blood burning in our veins

The pre-chorus of “Adam Raised a Cain” has tattooed itself into my eardrums and my heart. No one should have to think of love, of familial connection, as a chain. Whether my father wanted me or not, we are bound to one another: A son to a father, a father to a son. Both of us are so much alike that maybe we won’t ever get to a point where we see eye to eye. But I came to him with a letter, my metaphorical standing in the rain. I put everything out there and laid myself bare. It was not met  by the father I hoped was there. Both of us have our pride, but his won’t allow him to see the pain he has caused. The fire that keeps us both running like sharks with the fear that if we slow down, then we will never move again is maybe what will always keep us apart. I took a chance to change the way things were done but he couldn’t meet me there. So there I stood, alone, in the rain, watching as I lost a father to his own ignorance. 

In the darkness of your room

Your mother calls you by your true name

You remember the faces, the places, the names

You know it’s never over, it’s relentless as the rain

There is no relief when you share the name of the person who broke your heart. There is no relief when you share the same face as the person who made you feel like you failed your entire family. Every time you see your relatives, you see the father who didn’t love you enough to fix his heart.

This pre-chorus is why this song has been replayed countless times as I have driven that same route on Riverton Rd. As I listen, I feel thankful for my mother, because she helped me carve away those remaining tendrils of connection. My mother has called me Daniel Patrick for years. Patrick is my middle name. To me, names have always had power. It’s a belief that I’ve held for a long time but it only deepened when I learned the truth behind Daniel Patrick.

It’s my true name. My name is Daniel Patrick, after a family member, not just my father. My entire life, I thought my name was taken from my father, or because it was what my grandmother would’ve named my mother if she had been born a boy. But the truth of it all is: Daniel Patrick Bradley, an Irish Catholic priest from Philadelphia, was my great-great-great-grandmother’s brother. He officiated my grandparents’ wedding. I found this out on the one-year anniversary of cutting my father out of my life. It felt like a sign that learning the true story behind my name allowed me to free myself from my father. I had taken back an essential piece of control. 

Well, Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain

Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame

But you inherit the sins, you inherit the flames

My father has worked very hard his entire life to achieve everything he and his family could have ever dreamed of. They want for nothing, go on fancy vacations I find out about through social media posts, and generally have the best life one could ask for. I am proud that my father can provide that for them. Though all I ever wanted was a dad who wanted to sit down and ask me how I’m doing, I think that’s a bridge too far for a man like my father. Which is why we’re here. 

He’s kept the rest of his family at arm’s length because they have a relationship with me. It speaks of a man looking to blame other people for the mistakes he’s made. A man who cannot admit he has wronged those around him. I always hear second hand that he is sad how everything has gone with his son but it’s all for show, so that he looks like a father who cares instead of a man who would ice out those who don’t agree with the way he does things. 

I don’t want to feel the burn for his sins anymore. I don’t want the scorched skin from carrying the pain he gave me anymore. 

I want him to be alone with what he has done and to feel the same isolation that I have been left with.

Bridge

I’ve wanted to write about Bruce Springsteen for as long as I’ve been writing about comic books, movies, life, loss, longing, connection, disconnection, being an outsider, belonging, not belonging, and every other feeling that comes with being a human being that I’m able to express through the experiences I’ve had during my time on Earth. But it felt like my fingers were paralyzed, sapped of the power to write anything real with these computer keys when it came to talking about the Boss. 

To be quite frank, I was afraid that my dad might see this. I was worried that he would read something I poured my whole heart into, like I do with everything I write. What the hell was I so afraid of? I poured my entire heart into asking him to be my dad, and that didn’t make the needle budge. What the hell was a silly little essay about Bruce Springsteen going to do to make him change the way he’s been for more than 50 years? 

Bruce is and always has been his music. But god damn it, I’ve got the same cursed blood of his running through my veins. I grew up in the same small towns he did. Hell, Bruce and I have more in common than he and my father do. Neither of us has done a hard day’s work in our lives, and we are bleeding-heart liberals whose weapon is a pen.

But even if Bruce is my father’s music, that doesn’t mean he isn’t mine, too. My father is a hardworking man, perhaps the steadfast person I know. He’s toiled with his hands since before I was born. There’s a line in the preamble to “My Father’s House” from Springsteen on Broadway, in which Bruce says, “Now those whose love we wanted but didn’t get, we emulate them.” 

This brief, one-line understanding of the universe that Bruce often shares through his songs has seared itself into my heart like these memories I’m sharing with you. Bruce goes on to talk about how he was looking for a voice to meld with his own, and he chose his father’s. Now here I am, doing the same thing. I’m using the voice of the man my father has listened to since before I was born, so I can get these burning, awful feelings out of me. 

I’m using these lyrics to mourn a man who isn’t even dead. I’m having conversations through Bruce Springsteen lyrics that my father was never man enough to have with me. When I don’t have the words of my father to bring me comfort, I still have Bruce.

Bruce is my music now.

Outro

It’s August 11, 2003, and I turn 11 in seven days. Bruce Springsteen is playing his first encore at the first concert in Lincoln Financial Field, the new Eagles stadium. As an almost-11-year-old kid, I wasn’t really ready to party past 9 o’clock, and I was falling asleep standing in front of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. We left early, which probably didn’t make my father the happiest.

I remember so vividly hearing the starting drum and music of “Born to Run” and looking up to see my father’s face as we walked. I had no idea what the future held. I had no idea how essential Bruce Springsteen would be to me. I was a 10-year-old boy looking up at their father, who they wanted to be like, and watching as he heard a song he loved. We stood there in the parking lot so he could listen.

This is one of those rare times I don’t remember a car ride. I just remember that walk. That perfect walk back to the car with a father who I believed would always do what was best for both of us. A man who so deeply loved Bruce Springsteen that he would stand in a parking lot just to listen. I didn’t understand it at the time. 

I understand it now. I just wish I understood the man who stands so perfectly in that memory, in that parking lot, with the words of Bruce Springsteen himself ringing out into the streets of Philadelphia.