Bruce Springsteen
His new songs were slower yet more vivid, although the time to work out the art designs within the deadlines became rigorous. I worked long hours into most nights. They recommended I go back and listen to an earlier album of his entitled Nebraska, that older album of music with all his new songs played a multitude of times. I could practically recite each verse myself. I painted with a technique using an airbrush that helped depict strife, worked well. I came away with concepts they liked, focusing on a style that captured the feeling of a hollow future – of life long gone, both in the lyrics and his haunting tone. I attempted to seize these sensitive ideas, this emptying of the inside, the day-to-day discord for common folk across our land. They became a sense of his lyrics, people trying to hang on to strands of hope longing for something else – an American Dream not really meant for them. I felt I was listening to starker versions of Nebraska, more scaled back. The art was well received. This painting went on the tour book for his venues around the world.
I worked off the energy from his new songs and studied this piece of art Bruce shared with me – an unusually large-scale folk art painting done on burlap that shown his aesthetic vision. The scenes displayed minimal figures around the time of the Work Projects Administration, WPA, or 1930’s dustbowl.
All these new songs he sent together became his album The Ghost of Tom Joad, modeled after Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath. It was a stripped, down America. Perhaps Bruce’s vision was the reality of the new world order, stuck out of gas on hopeless highways of immigrants, and personal stories of struggle in hard times, USA.
I weaved different motifs into the work, ranging from depression, evangelists at baptisms to prisoners and families on bread lines. It all came together with imagery rich in folklore, between his narrative and a musical sensibility for the tour book. The theme matched the blue-collar industrial steal-workers and farmers, turned drifters from that dust bowl era.
My painting stayed minimal, monochrome. I had created a stencil technique to capture a stark light. The outcome hit a nerve; the art said a lot with a little but without detailing too much of the literal. They asked for me to change one small detail of a figure, a dead body, stiff, nestled on desolate railroad ties to nowhere. I reluctantly agreed thinking, the idea of more hope could help, depicting two figures instead under a blanket walking up the tracks.
While waiting for Bruce to decide on the tour book, I started on three cd/album cover designs for his new LP; I think they commissioned around sixty cover designs from other artists as well. I went with a depiction of a guy shot by the mob, left for dead, on a gurney in a coroner’s office, which I derived off an actual mob-hit in Florida.
A corpse might seem dark as a choice for the album cover yet Bruce liked that version the best out of the three I submitted, actually out of the full sixty versions in all that they commissioned. This cover version was the one chosen. Although at the time they loved it, and Bruce’s art director felt the need to come over to my studio, beaming to give me the good news personally. I guess I was too tired or jaded to appreciate that moment, how my artwork was going to grace the next album cover of the biggest recording star in our country.
Here is what happened next, how I missed a big break.
There was one small catch: I could only get on Bruce’s next album cover if I could secure the rights to the AP photo I had utilized for reference in the design stage. If so, it was a go. However, without the rights secured, the cover design was dead as the person on the cover.
It should have been simple. All it meant was a visit to a small newspaper down south. At the time, the idea of flying to Florida to look up the photographer seemed excessive, especially something a simple phone call could settle. I made several calls, no luck, plus I felt the art looked different enough than the photo, but the fact was, they told me, when people sued Bruce Springsteen, it was not for six million, however rather sixty million dollars. So I had better research the rights. I had more trouble than I realized searching out the newspaper that ran the story from just the photo.
Sadly, after calling the Associated Press over and over, there were no leads without the name of the article it got to the point where although Bruce loved the cover, they went with another artist’s work to move on.
The upshot was they still wanted to see more and more artwork ideas. I kept busy creating icons and branding for the tour used in his apparel, back-stage passes, etc. I worked on a steal-gear motif to match the industrial era, which ended by branding the entire world tour. The design depicted the spacing of letterforms inside cogged wheels, so one set of gear teeth married inside the other, his first name separated from his last in each gear. The logo was also stitched into Bruce Springsteen’s signature blue jean workman shirt and silk-screened onto T-shirts for concert merch. The gear motif was then used as backgrounds in the tour book pages though out.
They asked if I would work on some stage set designs for the concert venue. This style of commissioned work went on for a while.
Next, he wanted his stories and songs illustrated for a coffee table book. I created an array of new compositions but they switched ideas on the book direction, which turned into a book of photographs, with Bruce on the road.
When they gave me passes to Bruce Springsteen concerts, he often goes into his poetic-preaching sermons, which seems to cue all the yokels to grab a beer. I enjoyed his earnest warning signs, perhaps meant both for entertainment and for the youth.
When I was coming out of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. I headed down to SoHo to exhibit my artwork, the experience of an early introduction into the fine art world and time spent cutting my chops, paying dues helped out tremendously with the amount of artwork I had done for Springsteen a decade later. The paintings and logo icons to the stage sets and other commissions were a real thrill. I was paid to listen to some great music, which I was inspired by and gave me a greater understanding of how he worked. Springsteen utilized my art with his art, to become part of his story-telling. That is something I will always cherish. I suppose his nickname, the Boss, rings true for me.