Glory Days: Dispatches From an Academic Conference on Bruce Springsteen (Part 1)

Photos by Mark C. Austin

Anyone remember the first year of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions? I think it was 1986. Pete Townsend noticed all the tuxedos everyone was wearing. “I see that rock and roll has become respectable…what a bummer!”  

That sentiment comes to mind when I try to describe to people what I’m doing this weekend at Monmouth University attending an academic symposium on Bruce Springsteen.

Jointly presented by Monmouth, Penn State-Altoona and Virginia Tech, the four-day event (“Glory Days; a Bruce Springsteen Symposium”) will feature over 100 speakers, roundtable discussions, film screenings, and to save the event from becoming a complete snoozer, three nights of rocking at the famous Stone Pony in Asbury Park, a venue unalterably tied to Bruce even though it wasn’t built until after he had moved out of town.

People may seem confused about how impressed they are when I tell them about it, but this is an event custom made for second-rate writers like myself. I’ll admit it; I missed the boat on rock journalism. I came into this game just as the job opportunities and freelance gigs started seriously drying up.

I’m lucky that I have an editor at my hometown paper that pretty much lets me write about whatever I want, even if he tends to cut my stories way too much. (“What do you mean you can’t run seventy column inches on the Drifters?”)

But thanks to the populist, egalitarian spirit of Springsteen’s music it would be a miscarriage to have a weekend of just university types talking. Symposium chairman Mark Bernhard, director of continuing education at Virginia Tech, has seen to it that ordinary people will do the talking as well.

There will be several high school history, civics, and English teachers, a clergyman or two, a medical doctor in addition to the other kind, at least one police officer.

Bernhard admitted when he proposed the first Glory Days symposium in 2005, he got nothing more than some chuckles from colleagues. But the idea won support, was deemed academically viable by his superiors. An initial call for papers was greeted with a flood of responses from folks with papers to present.

“I was more than pleasantly surprised at the response,” he said on Thursday, as conference attendees were getting ready for tours of the Jersey Shore, including music landmarks like the Upstage and Student Prince locations.

The result was something quite more than a fan convention, and not your typical academic yawner. “We like to call it an educational gathering. And this is not just academics talking to academics.” This time, organizers planned strategically for a broad cross-section of presenters. “We’ve got people who don’t even have bachelor’s degrees.”

No odds makers have yet placed any bets on the man himself showing up. At the inaugural symposium in 2005, everyone was abuzz with the possibility. This weekend, Bruce will be in town (to the best of our knowledge) enjoying some down time between his 60th birthday on Wednesday and a multi-night stand at Giants Stadium beginning Wednesday and the Spectrum in Philadelphia beginning October 13.

Bernhard, as with the 2005 conference, made contact with Springsteen’s management and extended an invitation. “But I would think it might be weird for him to show up at an event where people are talking about him like this,” he admits.

But miracles do happen, and if I was a betting man I’d say it will happen Friday night when Gary U.S. Bonds plays at the Stone Pony, or maybe Saturday night at that same venue, when Joe Grushecky and Willie Nile are scheduled to play. Original E Street Band drummer Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez will be around, so there may be something in the air that Bruce won’t be able to resist.

But part of me is hoping he doesn’t make an appearance, and is pretty happy that the chances are slim. You think it’s bad when Bruce leans into the crowd to get some kid to sing the chorus of “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” imagine a gaggle of fifty-something, balding professors, each with a couple Heinekens in him.

True, the people presenting this weekend are more than likely fans first and writers, teachers, and thinkers second. And that is as it should be. That will keep things from getting completely stale. “There is a very, very, very slim chance, so I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up,” Bernhard says.

But we’re grownups too. I don’t want to see what happens to us if Bruce decides to show up Saturday morning when some hack is prattling on about how resolving the conflicts with his father was what really lead him into political action…oh wait, that will be me.