Here's everything we learned about Bruce Springsteen and cars from the Vanity Fair profile
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Bruce Springsteen is about to turn 67 and has been rocking his Fender Telecaster and turning in marathon live shows for decades.
He's also now publishing a 500-page autobiography about his life, his music, and his long association with the state of New Jersey, and the open road.
The title is, naturally, "Born to Run," same as Springsteen's best-known song and album.
The September Vanity Fair has Bruce on the cover, astride a motorcycle, and a profile inside by David Kamp.
We dived in immediately to see what we could learn about this poet of the asphalt and his thoughts about that icon of American freedom, the automobile:
Young Bruce was a crummy driver
Kamp has read the book already, and from it he plucked this nugget: "[Y]oung Bruce, for all his romantic association with cars and the road, was a terrible driver who didn’t manage to get his license until he was in his 20s...."
Luckily for his fans, he was better at helming the E Street Band than he was behind the wheel!
But that hasn't stopped him from using cars as his go-to metaphor
“One of the points I’m making in the book is that, whoever you’ve been and wherever you’ve been, it never leaves you,” he tells Kamp, who credits the Boss with "expanding upon this thought with the most Springsteen-esque metaphor possible."
Says Springsteen to Kamp: “I always picture it as a car. All your selves are in it. And a new self can get in, but the old selves can’t ever get out. The important thing is, who’s got their hands on the wheel at any given moment?”
Chew on that for a second. It's actually some interesting, hard-earned wisdom.
Read the entire VF profile here.