The second phase is all about that fame and "Born to Run." As classic as the first two albums now seem, they are collections of wild short stories. "Born to Run," released in 1975, is a novel. Is there an American rock song more classic than "Born to Run" or "Thunder Road"? Is there a song more indelibly linked to its composer? Bruce was a leather-jacketed Holden Caulfield, roaring down the Jersey Turnpike in a burned-out Chevrolet. This is the album that solidified his image and propelled him onto magazine covers. It's about the struggle to be a man, to make it in this world without compromise. It's about masculinity, finding a soul mate and freedom. Like Fitzgerald's Gatsby, he is yearning for the orgiastic light in the final, climactic "Jungleland":

Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal
And then surrender
In the tunnels uptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down
As shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light ...

Is it going too far to see this as an American tragic drama? Perhaps, but the album is as important to Bruce's career as Gatsby was to Fitzgerald's. And whether or not it's literary, it's powerful. When Bruce whispers, "Tonight" in the last line of "Jungleland," it's a spine-tingling expression of animal passion and human fragility.

Which brings us to the core of any rock god's appeal: Bruce is way sexy. And it's not a tight pants, shake your hips, overt kind of sexy, but a primal force he exudes that attracts both sexes equally. He is testosterone and poetry. When he sings, in "Born to Run," "Wendy, let me in, I wanna be your friend/I want to guard your dreams and visions," it's the most romantic phrase one can imagine by a guy in black jeans singing. But then he balances that tenderness with "Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims/And strap your hands across my engines," and you know you're in the hands of one tough dude.

One woman in her 40s, who's been a fan since the beginning of Bruce's career, says, "I so do not want to be Bruce's girlfriend. I don't want to meet him, either. The reason I love him is because he is so damned romantic and deep and gives me faith that a man can be tender and loving and in love."

A man of about the same age, also a lifelong fan and now a father and husband, echoes the passion. "What's important about Bruce, when I listen to his records, but especially when I see him live, is not what I learn about him, but what I learn about myself ... His ideas always seem to shed light on my own struggles ... What does it really mean to 'be a man' in this fucked-up society of ours? What does it mean to be 'tougher than the rest'? Bruce has been struggling to come up with a definition of manhood that's all about commitment, community, family and strength of the sort that makes everyone better off, rather than the zero-sum definition that so much of our culture worships. It's a definition of manhood that's tough-minded enough to be soft-hearted -- from a guy who could kick Sly or Arnold's ass any day of the week."

In this second, fame-laden phase, Bruce struggled with these what-is-a-man issues but did so with the power of the record companies behind him. He released "Darkness on the Edge of Town" (1978), produced by his new best friend Jon Landau. Then came "The River" (1980), a sprawling two-record set that looked to his childhood and the tests of manhood. After that, he pulled back and did the spare, acoustic Hemingway-meets-Woody Guthrie "Nebraska," before launching into the huge "Born in the USA" album (1984) and a marriage to model/aspiring actress Julianne Phillips (1985). Both "Born in the USA" and the marriage were misunderstood. The first was co-opted by Ronald Reagan, who used it as a hook in a campaign speech and brought out Bruce's only negative political statement (No, President Reagan, said Bruce, the song is not a call to patriotism; it's about how rough this country is on vets).

And the marriage -- well, both Bruce and the country went through some growing pains in the 1980s, and die-hard fans still criticize him for marrying "down." What can we say -- rock stars marry models because they can. She was a gorgeous gal who came backstage one night and swept Bruce off his feet; who can blame the guy for wanting it all? "Born in the USA" gained him the devil's-pact popularity of the masses for the first time. Bruce even looked different in this phase: He pumped up from hip Jersey waif to don't mess with me front man.

It also propelled him into his third phase: becoming an adult. He had to deal with fans at concerts who knew him only from "Born in the USA" and weren't familiar with the struggle days. He had to deal with a wife who didn't want children right now (so we hear; he never said as much) and with mainstream success (a Grammy in 1985 for "Dancing in the Dark" as well as the mega-hit status of the album).

We hear his struggle on "Tunnel of Love" (1987), which he dedicated to Julianne (in a line on the notes: "Thanks Juli") but which contained one of the most devastating pieces of poetry about a struggling relationship ever written. "Brilliant Disguise" builds slowly, almost in monotone, as he muses (the black-and-white video shows him strumming a guitar in his kitchen as a camera comes in for a close-up):

Well I've tried so hard baby
But I just can't see
What a woman like you
Is doing with me
So tell me who I see
When I look in your eyes
Is that you baby
Or just a brilliant disguise ...
Tonight our bed is cold
I'm lost in the darkness of our love
God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he's sure of.

So, it was no surprise that in 1989 he split -- with wife and band -- and hunkered down to rediscover his reality.

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