BORN IN THE USA AND CHARLES R CROSS

Once I felt that Dave Marsh might not do the interview, I tried to find someone else to do Born To Run. I had already written the questions, so I figured I might as well do it. Born to Run is the last interview I'll do where I write the questions before the interview has been booked. Won't be doing that again.

I found a Bruce Springsteen fan magazine called Backstreets. It's been around since 1980 and was started by a fan from Seattle who printed 10,000 four page leaflets and handed them out free at a Springsteen concert. Unfortunately, most of them winded up on the floor. Nowadays, that first issue is worth over a hundred dollars. From those meager beginnings, Charles R Cross and his staff, developed a fanzine widely regarded as one of the best fanzines around.

I emailed Charles from Backstreets about doing the interview and told him how I admired the work that had been done to elevate the magazine to what it is today. That is what I aspire to do on my project. I also said that I would like to interview him for the Bruce song Born in the USA. I backed out at the very last moment about asking him for Born to Run.

He emailed me back for more information, which I sent and then replied that Born in the USA does not have as interesting a story as other Bruce songs. I agreed and told him that I had already penciled in Dave Marsh for Born to Run. And that I was holding out for Dave to do the interview. Charles then replied that it might not be such a good idea to have another Springsteen podcast when I have so few podcasts to begin with. I felt that way but had emailed Charles anyway about the other Bruce song. I guess I was drawn to the Backstreets story. It turned out to be a good idea anyway because Charles has also written books on Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. They both have a connection to Seattle.

He told me about writing those books so I mentioned that a Jimi Hendrix song could make a good podcast and that I liked either Purple Haze or All Along the Watchtower. But that Watchtower seemed more interesting because of the Bob Dylan connection and the amazing transformation the song did at the hands of Jimi Hendrix.

Charles went on to say that there are some good stories in his book, Room Full of Mirrors about Jimi's obsession with Dylan. It made me feel good about the decision of which song to pick for podcasts and that I kind of know what I'm doing.

So all in all it was a good correspondence I had with Charles even though I never emailed him back. We left off with him letting me know that he was working on a new book and that we should resume our connection in April. I agreed and told him that hopefully our website would be up and running by then. It is not so I did not approach him again. I'm embarrassed because the website's not up yet.

Hopefully, I have not tarnished the interest Charles had for being interviewed by us. I will contact him again one of these days. Hopefully sooner rather than later.