Bruce Springsteen: It’s Sign Up a Genius Month
NEW YORK — It’s more than a decade since John Hammond Sr. of Columbia Records signed Bob Dylan to a recording contract. Since then, Hammond has signed a number of other successes and, by his own admission, a number of “stiffs.” Now he has signed Bruce Springsteen, 23, of Ashbury Park, New Jersey, and Hammond says: “He’s much further along, much more developed than Bobby was when he came to me.”
Much about Springsteen reminds people of Dylan — the slept-in appearance, foggy manner, the twang, the lyrics and the phrasing of his songs. It seems only natural that Hammond should have signed him. But to Bruce “. . . it was just plain weird.
“I mean a couple of weeks ago I had just finished reading Dylan’s biography and now I find myself sitting in Hammond’s office with my beat-up guitar, and like the whole thing I’ve been reading about is about to happen to me. But what Mike was doing was even weirder.”
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Mike is Mike Appel, who with Jim Cretecos manages and produces Bruce. Appel and Cretecos’ previous teamwork includes the creation of a couple of gold singles for the Partridge Family. For Springsteen, the managerial strategy is to “. . . start at the top and work down.”
“Mike is a funny guy,” said Bruce. “He’s like a real hyper, and he gets into the whole thing like playing the role. So I’m sitting in the corner with my old beat-up guitar, when all of a sudden Mike jumps up and starts hyping John Hammond. I couldn’t believe it. I had to start laughing. John Hammond told me later that he was ready to hate me. But he asked me to do a song, so I did ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.’ “
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Despite the hype, Hammond signed him and Bruce moved from his free wheelin’ stage into phase two — exploitation. It worked like this:
A member of the press would get a phone call from the publicity department at Columbia and be told he would receive an advance copy of a record by a new artist (not unusual), and after he had a chance to listen to it, President Clive Davis would appreciate a call to get his reaction (highly unusual).
Meanwhile, visitors to the CBS Building encountered publicity personnel and suited executives alike greeting people with the question, “Hi . . . have you heard Bruce Springsteen yet?”
Bruce Springsteen is admittedly surprised by all the attention, but is showing no signs of stress. “Well, shit man, you know, what do I care, I’ll do anything once. If it works it works. But I don’t wanna be concerned with too much of what’s going on with promotion. That don’t seem so important to me, but it’s important to Mike. I trust whatever he does. Anyway it never seemed like I had it that bad before,” he laughed.
“I’ll admit it seems a little weird the way these record company dudes operate. Seems like one dude says ‘hey everybody’s signing up geniuses this month. Genius is going to be good for business, we better lock one up fast.’ But as I say, I’ll do anything. I mean I have nothing else to do. I have nothing else to do at all.”
Bruce was 13 when his hometown cousin in Freehold, New Jersey, showed him how to make the same music on the guitar that the Beachboys, the Shirells, Gary (US) Bonds, the Chiffons, and his other favorites were making on the radio. That was enough to alter his fantasy of becoming a baseball player to a fantasy of becoming a rock & roll star.
The new fantasy stuck, and long after his cousin had gone on to a non-musical career at Freehold Raceway, Bruce continued to do nothing but play music.
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