cobalt
Aug 29th, 2001, 03:12 PM
Jukebox Graduate of Greasy lake posted this. It's so cool I had to bring it here. thanks JG...
BORN TO SCHMOOZE
HOW FOUR TRUCKERS FROM CLEVELAND MANAGED TO MAKE IT INTO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S INNER CIRCLE
Sunday, August 8, 1999
Section: BEACON MAGAZINE
Page: 4\
STORY BY BOB DYER
So how, exactly, did a tipsy Bruce Springsteen come to be hanging out the front passenger window of Jim Kluter's beat-up, four-door Chevy Malibu, heading north on Interstate 77 toward Cleveland, singing along at the top of his lungs to a bootleg concert tape of his own song Spirit in the Night?
The tale will take some telling. But it's worth the effort. It hasn't been fully told before, mainly because Springsteen's local buddies are so protective of his image.
Actually, the rock legend's Northeast Ohio pals are beyond protective. They are the musical equivalent of the Dawg Pound: ferociously loyal, absurdly committed, relentlessly grateful for his talent and companionship. Even if he hasn't been around much lately.
The long-ago adventure was so out of character for Springsteen -- who doesn't smoke, doesn't touch drugs and rarely drinks to excess -- that his pals are a bit uncomfortable talking about it even 21 years after the fact.
But let's take this story from the top. It really begins a quarter century ago -- in Akron.
Cleveland resident Jim Kluter, then 25 and driving a Pepsi delivery truck, is having girlfriend troubles. So he calls Pat Erdman, a buddy since fourth grade, and unloads his tale of woe. In an effort to lift Kluter's spirits, Erdman invites him to his apartment on Dodge Street. They talk about women and jobs and hopes and dreams and all the other stuff single pals talk about at age 25. Then, as Erdman leaves for work, he tells Kluter to go to the turntable and play an album he just bought -- The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, by some guy named Springsteen.
Kluter is immediately enthralled. For two days, he listens almost constantly. He feels as if Springsteen is talking directly to him.
By 1976, Kluter has become so obsessed with Springsteen that he decides he has to meet him. Over the Fourth of July weekend in the year of the Bicentennial, he and two Cleveland buddies, Joey Juhasz and Bill Spratt, travel to Springsteen's old stomping ground, Asbury
Park, N.J., to try to track him down.
Kluter, now 50 and sitting in his Brecksville condo, howls with laughter at the audacity of youth. Keep in mind that Springsteen had already made the covers of Time and Newsweek. He had already been the subject of one of the most famous sentences in the history of music criticism -- "I have seen the future of rock 'n' roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen." And these guys were truck drivers from Ohio.
But the trio flies to Newark, rents a car and stakes out the Stone Pony, a Springsteen haunt on the boardwalk of the funky Jersey seaside town. Sure enough, the following evening, "The Boss" shows up to jam with the house band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. The guys are not able to hang out with their hero that night, but they learn he will be playing in a celebrity softball game the next day at a local high school.
When Kluter gets to the school, he walks over a rise, sees Springsteen playing catch and goes straight up to him. "I says, 'Hey, Bruce! I love you!' and I hugged him."
Springsteen laughs, asks where the guys are from, and makes small talk. Then the visitors retreat to the stands to watch the game.
But Bruce's team doesn't have enough players. So Springsteen asks the Cleveland boys if they want to play. Do they ever.
GLORY DAYS
"These guys weren't very good softball players," Kluter says of Springsteen and his band mates, "and I'd played before. So I hit, like, three home runs and we swept a doubleheader. I remember crossing home plate after a homer and Bruce was on deck and he slaps me and he says to me, 'You're absolutely amazing!' I says to him, 'I'm amazing? You're the amazing one!' Ever since then, he called us The Cleveland Boys."
Springsteen fans will recognize the reference. For years, Bruce dedicated songs to "The Cleveland Boys" at shows all over the nation. During a nationally broadcast radio concert from the old Cleveland Agora in 1978, he even stuck his microphone in their faces during the song Jungleland and had them finish a lyric. As recently as 1992, he dedicated Growin' Up to them during a gig at the Coliseum. At Northeast Ohio's biggest rock weekend ever -- the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 -- drummer Max Weinberg puzzled national journalists by volunteering praise for "The Cleveland Boys."
But back to 1976.
After the softball game, Springsteen invites the boys to return to Jersey for another game the following weekend. On that return trip, they are joined by another Pepsi driver, Johnny Kusznier, who will become the fourth Cleveland Boy. (Ironically, Erdman, the Akron guy who started the whole thing, couldn't go.)
When they arrive, Springsteen asks where they're staying. They claim they don't have a room. So their idol invites them to spend the night at his rented house.
The place is fit for a superstar: big white house with a pool out back and a black Corvette in the driveway. But it has virtually no furniture, and the only room with carpeting is the music studio. So around midnight, Springsteen leads them to the studio, tosses them pillows and blankets and lets them snooze next to his guitars and half-written songs. "He doesn't know us from anybody," Kluter says, laughing and shaking his head in amazement.
Since those early encounters, The Cleveland Boys have seen more than 100 Springsteen concerts. They spent a whole month in the late '70s riding on his tour bus during a West Coast swing. By the time Springsteen rocked the Richfield Coliseum in August 1978, he and the boys were tight. And after a raucous summertime concert, they dragged him off to a private party.
Says Kluter: "We're standing behind the Coliseum and he's about to get on the bus to go back to Swingo's (a former downtown Cleveland hotel). And I says, 'Why don't you come down and have a beer with us?' He looks at the bus and looks at us. He says, 'OK.' So he comes with us. I'm driving, right? And I slide off Black Road and hit a tree. Just nudged it a little bit. Nobody got hurt."
Pals in another car got them back on the road, and they proceeded to the Royal Knight, a now-defunct shot-and-beer joint on State Road in Parma. The bar was the Boys' usual hangout, and it fit in with Bruce's stated desire to avoid crowds. About eight people were in their group as they rolled in and sat at the end of the bar.
"Nobody's there," says Kluter. "He ordered a Pabst and a peppermint schnapps. So he knocks it back, and knocks back a couple more. And then some phone calls start being made. And
within an hour, the bar's full."
ON THE ROAD
Springsteen had been hoping for a more subdued scene, but he went with the flow -- at one point even agreeing to autograph the wall of the women's restroom. After three hours of merriment, it was time to head to the hotel. So Bruce hopped into the black Malibu with Kluter
and Juhasz, and Kluter popped in a cassette tape.
Because Springsteen had allowed The Cleveland Boys to plug tape recorders into his equipment during concerts, they owned a slew of recordings that had never been released. Even Springsteen hadn't heard this one. "Spirit in the Night was on," notes Kluter. "Bruce says, 'Jim, this sounds good!' We're going down 77 and he's waist out of my car singing Spirit in the Night."
By the time we made it up to Greasy Lake
I had my head out the window and Janey's fingers in the cake
I think I really dug her 'cause I was too loose to fake
I said 'I'm hurt' she said 'Honey let me heal it.'
Not everyone was amused. When the hammerheads arrived at the hotel at about 1:30 a.m., bandmate "Miami Steve" Van Zandt noticed right away that Bruce was uncharacteristically loose. So he pulled Kluter aside and read him the riot act.
"He says, 'Let me tell you something,' " recalls Kluter. " 'Without him, I don't have a job. He's my livelihood. Without Bruce Springsteen, there is no E Street Band, Jim.' I said, 'I get your point, Steve. Sorry.' "
How do we know any of this is true? If you doubt it, you didn't see Springsteen walk out of the University of Akron's E. J. Thomas Hall after his 1996 solo concert, when he spotted Kluter and immediately wrapped him in a big bear hug. Onlookers were stunned - including the security guards who had blown Kluter off when he tried to get backstage. Who was this normal-looking fellow who had been milling about with all the other hangers-on?
Just a regular guy. An average, blue-collar, fun-loving guy, like all the other Cleveland Boys. A guy who has to work hard just to get by. A guy who gets discouraged from time to time, but knows the sunshine will eventually return. A guy, in other words, just like the guys in Springsteen's songs.
One member of the foursome, Spratt, moved south long ago and has vanished from the radar screen. As for the other three:
+ Kluter, 50, with combed-back hair and a straight-ahead demeanor, quit his Pepsi job after five years and since 1982 has been a partner in a cleaning firm, York Building Maintenance, in Cleveland.
+ Juhasz, 48, tall, with glasses, dark hair and a mustache, has spent the last 17 years as a mail carrier. He lives in Strongsville with his longtime wife, Mary -- who went along on many of the Springsteen adventures and is unofficially classified as a Cleveland Girl.
+ Kusznier, 51, with piercing blue eyes, a shaved head and a goatee now flecked with gray, is still driving for Pepsi, working in Twinsburg and living in Parma. And he hasn't grown an inch -- he's still "The Little Man," as he was dubbed by Springsteen's saxophonist, Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons.
MIRROR IMAGES
Today, the relationship among the Cleveland Boys is eerily similar to the relationship between Springsteen and his E Street Band mates: After a long hiatus, they have reunited with gusto.
In Springsteen's case, after 10 years of performing as a solo act or with unknown session musicians, he has mounted a massive world tour with his old band, a tour expected to hit Cleveland late this fall. According to Entertainment Weekly, the series of shows, which began in Europe in April and moved to the States in mid-July, is the hottest ticket of the year in any musical genre. The magazine also said concertgoers are guaranteed to leave "with an unshakable sense of awe."
As for the Cleveland Boys, after 15 years apart, they reunited briefly last month at the urging of the Beacon Journal. The separation was not a matter of bad blood; they had merely drifted apart, increasingly consumed -- like Springsteen -- with wives and children and changing priorities.
Their reunion on a sunny summer afternoon at Kluter's place also merits rave reviews. An easy camaraderie was evident only minutes after they gathered. The conversation was frequently punctuated by belly laughs. The room glowed.
That's not to say nothing has changed. The Cleveland Boys are staring back at half a century. Two of their three alma maters -- Lincoln High (Kusznier) and West High (Juhasz) in Cleveland - no longer exist. They look at old photos of themselves and see scrawny kids literally half their age. They hold up old T-shirts and marvel that the shirts once fit. The long-ago concerts have begun to blur together. Their lives, like Springsteen's, are a long way from where they were in the '70s. But that doesn't mean the same feelings don't remain.
Springsteen addresses the subject in his song Blood Brothers, written during his solo days, probably with the E Street guys in mind. It's a look at deep friendships that have been buffeted by time and life:
We stood side by side
Each one fightin' for the other
We said until we died
We'd always be blood brothers.
Now the hardness of this world
Slowly grinds your dreams away
Makin' a fool's joke
Out of the promises we make.
And what once seemed black and white
Turns so many shades of gray
We lose ourselves in work to do
And bills to pay.
And it's a ride, ride, ride,
And there ain't much cover
With no one runnin' by your side
My blood brother. . . .
But the stars are burnin' bright
Like some mystery uncovered
I'll keep movin' through the dark
With you in my heart
My blood brother.
Bruce and The Boys still have a bond, as evidenced by the post-concert hug in Akron. But making connections is increasingly difficult. As Bruce's fame and fortune grew, so did the layers between him and his fans. "There are so many buffers now that most of your messages don't even get delivered," says Kluter. "Sometimes it's so hard that I don't even bother."
Other things change, too. When Juhasz revisited the Asbury Park boardwalk last year, "the place looked like Sarajevo," he says. And Jersey boy Springsteen now lives mostly in Los Angeles.
SKEPTICS ABOUND
Today, with Springsteen an official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icon and The Cleveland Boys still regular guys, even they have a hard time believing how close their relationship once was. Close enough to have his home phone number, and call him up just to chat. Close enough to get fistfuls of front-row tickets to any concert on the continent. Close enough that The Boss once showed up at Juhasz's birthday party at the Family Trio Restaurant on West 130th Street in Cleveland. Close enough that, on another night, Springsteen and the whole E Street Band came to a party at Juhasz's house, parking their gigantic tour bus right in front of his little three-bedroom Parma bungalow.
As Springsteen became increasingly larger than life -- culminating in the incredible media and fan frenzy surrounding the Born in the U.S.A. tour of 1985 -- these stories sounded fishier and fishier to new acquaintances. "I don't even bother telling anybody," says Kluter. "People don't believe you."
Believe it. Look at the old photos of Springsteen being carried around on Juhasz's shoulders, photos taken during the era when Bruce would jump into the crowd in the middle of a concert. At the Coliseum, he would ride out to the 15th row on Juhasz's shoulders and return to the stage on Kluter's. The act looked completely spontaneous, but, like most good theater, it was actually prearranged.
Springsteen leaves little to chance. "He's all business," says Kluter. "Some people had five-minute sound checks. He'd do hour sound checks. He'd walk up in the cheap seats to make sure the sound was cool."
The backstage atmosphere was similarly workmanlike. No mind-altering substances. No group gropes with groupies. During intermissions in his 3 1/2-hour marathons, when The Boys would
head backstage to hang out and eat The Boss' food, they'd see an exhausted performer working on a halftime revival. "He'd go in there and take off his clothes except for a jockstrap and just sit in this big bucket of water with ice in it," says Kluter. "Just get soaked down.
Then he'd dry off and put on some new jeans and another T-shirt and play for two more hours."
Springsteen was uncomfortable with the trappings of fame. He'd usually rent a car rather than ride the provided limousines. Kusznier tells a story about a night in New York when a record company sent a limo to take the star home and The Boss promptly turned it over to The Cleveland Boys.
That mind-set is what makes his music so effective, says Kluter. "He talks to the common man. He relates to me. I'm sure he relates to you, too.
"He's pulled me out of a few jams mentally. (Listen to the music and) life becomes simple again. You do what you gotta do, and it's not that complicated. Don't make it worse than it is. You do the best you can. Basically, he says, if you can look at yourself in the mirror, man, you're OK."
A couple of The Boys still occasionally travel to see The Boss --Kluter plans to catch a show in Chicago later this month -- and they always try to attend his local shows. Kluter and Juhasz spent 45 minutes with him after his 1996 solo appearance at Cleveland's Music Hall. And they insist Springsteen is still the same guy. "There's no baloney about him," says Kluter.
He's such a regular guy, notes Kluter, that people sometimes mistake his basic shyness for smugness. "Just because you're a star doesn't make you an extrovert or doesn't make you somebody that you're not."
Still, as Kluter knows firsthand, even an introvert can be an occasional flamer. So if you see a dark-haired, 49-year-old guy hanging out the window of a car this fall, don't panic. It might be The Boss letting off a little steam.
Thunder Road, indeed.
BORN TO SCHMOOZE
HOW FOUR TRUCKERS FROM CLEVELAND MANAGED TO MAKE IT INTO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S INNER CIRCLE
Sunday, August 8, 1999
Section: BEACON MAGAZINE
Page: 4\
STORY BY BOB DYER
So how, exactly, did a tipsy Bruce Springsteen come to be hanging out the front passenger window of Jim Kluter's beat-up, four-door Chevy Malibu, heading north on Interstate 77 toward Cleveland, singing along at the top of his lungs to a bootleg concert tape of his own song Spirit in the Night?
The tale will take some telling. But it's worth the effort. It hasn't been fully told before, mainly because Springsteen's local buddies are so protective of his image.
Actually, the rock legend's Northeast Ohio pals are beyond protective. They are the musical equivalent of the Dawg Pound: ferociously loyal, absurdly committed, relentlessly grateful for his talent and companionship. Even if he hasn't been around much lately.
The long-ago adventure was so out of character for Springsteen -- who doesn't smoke, doesn't touch drugs and rarely drinks to excess -- that his pals are a bit uncomfortable talking about it even 21 years after the fact.
But let's take this story from the top. It really begins a quarter century ago -- in Akron.
Cleveland resident Jim Kluter, then 25 and driving a Pepsi delivery truck, is having girlfriend troubles. So he calls Pat Erdman, a buddy since fourth grade, and unloads his tale of woe. In an effort to lift Kluter's spirits, Erdman invites him to his apartment on Dodge Street. They talk about women and jobs and hopes and dreams and all the other stuff single pals talk about at age 25. Then, as Erdman leaves for work, he tells Kluter to go to the turntable and play an album he just bought -- The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, by some guy named Springsteen.
Kluter is immediately enthralled. For two days, he listens almost constantly. He feels as if Springsteen is talking directly to him.
By 1976, Kluter has become so obsessed with Springsteen that he decides he has to meet him. Over the Fourth of July weekend in the year of the Bicentennial, he and two Cleveland buddies, Joey Juhasz and Bill Spratt, travel to Springsteen's old stomping ground, Asbury
Park, N.J., to try to track him down.
Kluter, now 50 and sitting in his Brecksville condo, howls with laughter at the audacity of youth. Keep in mind that Springsteen had already made the covers of Time and Newsweek. He had already been the subject of one of the most famous sentences in the history of music criticism -- "I have seen the future of rock 'n' roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen." And these guys were truck drivers from Ohio.
But the trio flies to Newark, rents a car and stakes out the Stone Pony, a Springsteen haunt on the boardwalk of the funky Jersey seaside town. Sure enough, the following evening, "The Boss" shows up to jam with the house band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. The guys are not able to hang out with their hero that night, but they learn he will be playing in a celebrity softball game the next day at a local high school.
When Kluter gets to the school, he walks over a rise, sees Springsteen playing catch and goes straight up to him. "I says, 'Hey, Bruce! I love you!' and I hugged him."
Springsteen laughs, asks where the guys are from, and makes small talk. Then the visitors retreat to the stands to watch the game.
But Bruce's team doesn't have enough players. So Springsteen asks the Cleveland boys if they want to play. Do they ever.
GLORY DAYS
"These guys weren't very good softball players," Kluter says of Springsteen and his band mates, "and I'd played before. So I hit, like, three home runs and we swept a doubleheader. I remember crossing home plate after a homer and Bruce was on deck and he slaps me and he says to me, 'You're absolutely amazing!' I says to him, 'I'm amazing? You're the amazing one!' Ever since then, he called us The Cleveland Boys."
Springsteen fans will recognize the reference. For years, Bruce dedicated songs to "The Cleveland Boys" at shows all over the nation. During a nationally broadcast radio concert from the old Cleveland Agora in 1978, he even stuck his microphone in their faces during the song Jungleland and had them finish a lyric. As recently as 1992, he dedicated Growin' Up to them during a gig at the Coliseum. At Northeast Ohio's biggest rock weekend ever -- the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 -- drummer Max Weinberg puzzled national journalists by volunteering praise for "The Cleveland Boys."
But back to 1976.
After the softball game, Springsteen invites the boys to return to Jersey for another game the following weekend. On that return trip, they are joined by another Pepsi driver, Johnny Kusznier, who will become the fourth Cleveland Boy. (Ironically, Erdman, the Akron guy who started the whole thing, couldn't go.)
When they arrive, Springsteen asks where they're staying. They claim they don't have a room. So their idol invites them to spend the night at his rented house.
The place is fit for a superstar: big white house with a pool out back and a black Corvette in the driveway. But it has virtually no furniture, and the only room with carpeting is the music studio. So around midnight, Springsteen leads them to the studio, tosses them pillows and blankets and lets them snooze next to his guitars and half-written songs. "He doesn't know us from anybody," Kluter says, laughing and shaking his head in amazement.
Since those early encounters, The Cleveland Boys have seen more than 100 Springsteen concerts. They spent a whole month in the late '70s riding on his tour bus during a West Coast swing. By the time Springsteen rocked the Richfield Coliseum in August 1978, he and the boys were tight. And after a raucous summertime concert, they dragged him off to a private party.
Says Kluter: "We're standing behind the Coliseum and he's about to get on the bus to go back to Swingo's (a former downtown Cleveland hotel). And I says, 'Why don't you come down and have a beer with us?' He looks at the bus and looks at us. He says, 'OK.' So he comes with us. I'm driving, right? And I slide off Black Road and hit a tree. Just nudged it a little bit. Nobody got hurt."
Pals in another car got them back on the road, and they proceeded to the Royal Knight, a now-defunct shot-and-beer joint on State Road in Parma. The bar was the Boys' usual hangout, and it fit in with Bruce's stated desire to avoid crowds. About eight people were in their group as they rolled in and sat at the end of the bar.
"Nobody's there," says Kluter. "He ordered a Pabst and a peppermint schnapps. So he knocks it back, and knocks back a couple more. And then some phone calls start being made. And
within an hour, the bar's full."
ON THE ROAD
Springsteen had been hoping for a more subdued scene, but he went with the flow -- at one point even agreeing to autograph the wall of the women's restroom. After three hours of merriment, it was time to head to the hotel. So Bruce hopped into the black Malibu with Kluter
and Juhasz, and Kluter popped in a cassette tape.
Because Springsteen had allowed The Cleveland Boys to plug tape recorders into his equipment during concerts, they owned a slew of recordings that had never been released. Even Springsteen hadn't heard this one. "Spirit in the Night was on," notes Kluter. "Bruce says, 'Jim, this sounds good!' We're going down 77 and he's waist out of my car singing Spirit in the Night."
By the time we made it up to Greasy Lake
I had my head out the window and Janey's fingers in the cake
I think I really dug her 'cause I was too loose to fake
I said 'I'm hurt' she said 'Honey let me heal it.'
Not everyone was amused. When the hammerheads arrived at the hotel at about 1:30 a.m., bandmate "Miami Steve" Van Zandt noticed right away that Bruce was uncharacteristically loose. So he pulled Kluter aside and read him the riot act.
"He says, 'Let me tell you something,' " recalls Kluter. " 'Without him, I don't have a job. He's my livelihood. Without Bruce Springsteen, there is no E Street Band, Jim.' I said, 'I get your point, Steve. Sorry.' "
How do we know any of this is true? If you doubt it, you didn't see Springsteen walk out of the University of Akron's E. J. Thomas Hall after his 1996 solo concert, when he spotted Kluter and immediately wrapped him in a big bear hug. Onlookers were stunned - including the security guards who had blown Kluter off when he tried to get backstage. Who was this normal-looking fellow who had been milling about with all the other hangers-on?
Just a regular guy. An average, blue-collar, fun-loving guy, like all the other Cleveland Boys. A guy who has to work hard just to get by. A guy who gets discouraged from time to time, but knows the sunshine will eventually return. A guy, in other words, just like the guys in Springsteen's songs.
One member of the foursome, Spratt, moved south long ago and has vanished from the radar screen. As for the other three:
+ Kluter, 50, with combed-back hair and a straight-ahead demeanor, quit his Pepsi job after five years and since 1982 has been a partner in a cleaning firm, York Building Maintenance, in Cleveland.
+ Juhasz, 48, tall, with glasses, dark hair and a mustache, has spent the last 17 years as a mail carrier. He lives in Strongsville with his longtime wife, Mary -- who went along on many of the Springsteen adventures and is unofficially classified as a Cleveland Girl.
+ Kusznier, 51, with piercing blue eyes, a shaved head and a goatee now flecked with gray, is still driving for Pepsi, working in Twinsburg and living in Parma. And he hasn't grown an inch -- he's still "The Little Man," as he was dubbed by Springsteen's saxophonist, Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons.
MIRROR IMAGES
Today, the relationship among the Cleveland Boys is eerily similar to the relationship between Springsteen and his E Street Band mates: After a long hiatus, they have reunited with gusto.
In Springsteen's case, after 10 years of performing as a solo act or with unknown session musicians, he has mounted a massive world tour with his old band, a tour expected to hit Cleveland late this fall. According to Entertainment Weekly, the series of shows, which began in Europe in April and moved to the States in mid-July, is the hottest ticket of the year in any musical genre. The magazine also said concertgoers are guaranteed to leave "with an unshakable sense of awe."
As for the Cleveland Boys, after 15 years apart, they reunited briefly last month at the urging of the Beacon Journal. The separation was not a matter of bad blood; they had merely drifted apart, increasingly consumed -- like Springsteen -- with wives and children and changing priorities.
Their reunion on a sunny summer afternoon at Kluter's place also merits rave reviews. An easy camaraderie was evident only minutes after they gathered. The conversation was frequently punctuated by belly laughs. The room glowed.
That's not to say nothing has changed. The Cleveland Boys are staring back at half a century. Two of their three alma maters -- Lincoln High (Kusznier) and West High (Juhasz) in Cleveland - no longer exist. They look at old photos of themselves and see scrawny kids literally half their age. They hold up old T-shirts and marvel that the shirts once fit. The long-ago concerts have begun to blur together. Their lives, like Springsteen's, are a long way from where they were in the '70s. But that doesn't mean the same feelings don't remain.
Springsteen addresses the subject in his song Blood Brothers, written during his solo days, probably with the E Street guys in mind. It's a look at deep friendships that have been buffeted by time and life:
We stood side by side
Each one fightin' for the other
We said until we died
We'd always be blood brothers.
Now the hardness of this world
Slowly grinds your dreams away
Makin' a fool's joke
Out of the promises we make.
And what once seemed black and white
Turns so many shades of gray
We lose ourselves in work to do
And bills to pay.
And it's a ride, ride, ride,
And there ain't much cover
With no one runnin' by your side
My blood brother. . . .
But the stars are burnin' bright
Like some mystery uncovered
I'll keep movin' through the dark
With you in my heart
My blood brother.
Bruce and The Boys still have a bond, as evidenced by the post-concert hug in Akron. But making connections is increasingly difficult. As Bruce's fame and fortune grew, so did the layers between him and his fans. "There are so many buffers now that most of your messages don't even get delivered," says Kluter. "Sometimes it's so hard that I don't even bother."
Other things change, too. When Juhasz revisited the Asbury Park boardwalk last year, "the place looked like Sarajevo," he says. And Jersey boy Springsteen now lives mostly in Los Angeles.
SKEPTICS ABOUND
Today, with Springsteen an official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icon and The Cleveland Boys still regular guys, even they have a hard time believing how close their relationship once was. Close enough to have his home phone number, and call him up just to chat. Close enough to get fistfuls of front-row tickets to any concert on the continent. Close enough that The Boss once showed up at Juhasz's birthday party at the Family Trio Restaurant on West 130th Street in Cleveland. Close enough that, on another night, Springsteen and the whole E Street Band came to a party at Juhasz's house, parking their gigantic tour bus right in front of his little three-bedroom Parma bungalow.
As Springsteen became increasingly larger than life -- culminating in the incredible media and fan frenzy surrounding the Born in the U.S.A. tour of 1985 -- these stories sounded fishier and fishier to new acquaintances. "I don't even bother telling anybody," says Kluter. "People don't believe you."
Believe it. Look at the old photos of Springsteen being carried around on Juhasz's shoulders, photos taken during the era when Bruce would jump into the crowd in the middle of a concert. At the Coliseum, he would ride out to the 15th row on Juhasz's shoulders and return to the stage on Kluter's. The act looked completely spontaneous, but, like most good theater, it was actually prearranged.
Springsteen leaves little to chance. "He's all business," says Kluter. "Some people had five-minute sound checks. He'd do hour sound checks. He'd walk up in the cheap seats to make sure the sound was cool."
The backstage atmosphere was similarly workmanlike. No mind-altering substances. No group gropes with groupies. During intermissions in his 3 1/2-hour marathons, when The Boys would
head backstage to hang out and eat The Boss' food, they'd see an exhausted performer working on a halftime revival. "He'd go in there and take off his clothes except for a jockstrap and just sit in this big bucket of water with ice in it," says Kluter. "Just get soaked down.
Then he'd dry off and put on some new jeans and another T-shirt and play for two more hours."
Springsteen was uncomfortable with the trappings of fame. He'd usually rent a car rather than ride the provided limousines. Kusznier tells a story about a night in New York when a record company sent a limo to take the star home and The Boss promptly turned it over to The Cleveland Boys.
That mind-set is what makes his music so effective, says Kluter. "He talks to the common man. He relates to me. I'm sure he relates to you, too.
"He's pulled me out of a few jams mentally. (Listen to the music and) life becomes simple again. You do what you gotta do, and it's not that complicated. Don't make it worse than it is. You do the best you can. Basically, he says, if you can look at yourself in the mirror, man, you're OK."
A couple of The Boys still occasionally travel to see The Boss --Kluter plans to catch a show in Chicago later this month -- and they always try to attend his local shows. Kluter and Juhasz spent 45 minutes with him after his 1996 solo appearance at Cleveland's Music Hall. And they insist Springsteen is still the same guy. "There's no baloney about him," says Kluter.
He's such a regular guy, notes Kluter, that people sometimes mistake his basic shyness for smugness. "Just because you're a star doesn't make you an extrovert or doesn't make you somebody that you're not."
Still, as Kluter knows firsthand, even an introvert can be an occasional flamer. So if you see a dark-haired, 49-year-old guy hanging out the window of a car this fall, don't panic. It might be The Boss letting off a little steam.
Thunder Road, indeed.