Bruce Springsteen: American Working-Class Hero
GUEST COLUMN
Here in Los Angeles — a city which would seem to be everything that Bruce Springsteen is not — “The Boss Club” opened about nine months ago.
The Boss Club meets every Tuesday night at 10 p.m. at the Imperial Gardens restaurant on Sunset Blvd. The disc jockey plays nothing but the records of Bruce “the Boss” Springsteen. The room is packed with men and women, ages 15 to 40, college students, “yuppies,” and “just plain folk” — all devotees of the Boss.
And when the dance floor is so crowded that everyone is moving almost as one body, and the d.j. has just finished playing “Rosalita” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” and now is in the middle of “Born to Run,” he suddenly turns the volume off. But the singing continues: every single person on that dance floor, every person at the tables, is singing every word, every note, just as the Boss would — an extraordinary weekly communion of artist and audience.
Today there is probably no one else in this country who could inspire this kind of devotion. Springsteen has been praised by Rolling Stone magazine and Ronald Reagan, by conservative columnist George F. Will and labor organizers.
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