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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
She's still best known as Mrs. Springsteen, but on her new album Patti Scialfa steps out of the Boss's shadow.
Jun 24, 2004 | A lot of people bent over backward last week to treat musician Patti Scialfa, traveling the talk show circuit flogging her record "23rd Street Lullaby," as if she were any other rock chick with an album to sell. In a particularly understated moment, "Today Show" host Matt Lauer thanked her profusely for signing a guitar for charity, and then -- practically on cat's paws -- added, "I want to mention, just very much in passing, that her husband, Bruce, is here and has also agreed to sign the guitar ... so that name will be on it as well." When Scialfa performed on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," O'Brien neglected to point out that his musical guest had spent significant periods of the past two decades recording and touring with in-house drummer Max Weinberg. And on "CBS Sunday Morning," host Charles Osgood previewed a profile of Scialfa by saying, "She's musician Patti Scialfa, playing her music. He's her husband. Meet them both next Sunday morning."
They were all shimmying -- carefully, respectfully, awkwardly -- around the elephant in the room: you know, the one with the best ass in rock 'n' roll? It wasn't until Scialfa hit "The View," and co-host Meredith Viera asked, "You chose music that is pre-Bruce and the E Street Band, pre-kids and marriage ... Why?" that anyone got to the heart of what exactly was interesting about "23rd Street Lullaby," Scialfa's first solo outing in 11 years.
Scialfa, a former busker, bar singer, waitress, backup crooner, and a longtime member of the E Street Band, is mostly known as Bruce Springsteen's wife of 13 years -- or as he calls her at his concerts, the "First Lady of Love." But now, during a summer when her husband has not taken to the road for one of his earthquaking, ass-shaking, moneymaking tours, the most envied wife in rock 'n' roll has released an album that extols the joys of a life alone in New York City -- and the days when she was no one's first lady but her own.
"That time in my life was a very formative time for my music," Scialfa replied to Viera's question, emphasizing the word "music" as if to underscore the point that, yes, she was a professional musician before she shook a tambourine in the "Glory Days" video. "It was a beautiful time; it was very rich and vivid, so I wanted to go back and express that part of myself."
She expresses that part of herself in song and on the liner notes for her new CD, which feature an image from her high school yearbook that lists her as "Vivienne Scialfa," pictures of '70s Patti with shanks of limp hair falling around her face, '80s Patti with leggings and lacy collars and big hair, braless Patti with Urban Cowboy hat and curls. "This record was a way of giving myself some autonomy," she told "CBS Sunday Morning's" Jim Axelrod. "This is my past, this is who I am, this is where I came from."
