The meaning of Bruce, debated in a new forum

I've been carrying around a Bruce Springsteen question for the last couple of weeks.

How to interpret Bruce's new song, "We Take Care of Our Own"?

Does he mean the title to be an American ideal? If so, how's he scoring us? Or, more opaquely, does he hold up the phrase to scorn a slogan that masquerades as caring but in truth is exclusionary? (The phrase may stem from the words of a white New Orleans resident explaining post-Katrina violence against blacks.)

In other words, should we apply a strict interpretation to these lyrics or a more expansive one? Historic context or first impression?

The National Constitution Center's new Springsteen exhibit, "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land," seems as logical a place as any to ponder such questions. And that was happening Wednesday, as guides well-trained in hashing out the intent of a 225-year-old document debated how to interpret the 12-year-old song "41 Shots" as they prepared for the "Decoding the Lyrics" station.

"It's finding different meanings from their historical context," said Kathleen Maher, a program director at the center who proved a quick study in Springsteen, as she fired tough law-school-type questions at the guides. "Do you think it's a political statement? Is there a racial connotation in this song?"

Wow. Applying a constitutional scholar's rigor to Bruce's decision to leave out the phrase "and she was loose enough to feel" after the "I was to loose to fake" line in a handwritten draft of his song "Spirit in the Night," not to mention his excising of "Cindy" from the "Atlantic City" narrative, in favor of the generic baby, may seem like overkill, but for Springsteen fans, these debates have gone on for years.

Seeing the lyrics in Bruce's funny handwriting (a flourish on every T), his cross-outs and rewrites, the lyrics pouring out in seemingly steady prose as opposed to line by line, makes for a satisfying encounter with Bruce's mind and creative genius.

For me, an only slightly obsessive Bruce fan who has been lucky enough to have seen him everywhere from right up against the stage of a soccer stadium in Glasgow to the upper deck of the Spectrum to (finally) press seats at his first Boardwalk Hall show, the center's show of artifacts, lyrics, and photos yielded a few insights and a nice visit to the life and times of our Founding Boss. And now I know what was on the front of the red baseball cap stuffed into his back pocket on the cover of Born in the USA (REMBASS, short for "Remotely Monitored Battlefield Sensor System").

In the 16 years I've lived at the Jersey Shore, Bruce's Jersey roots and songs have taken on a more personal meaning, sometimes poignantly, like when "Thunder Road" comes on while I'm in the car going the wrong way down that two-lane highway back to a place not far from and not unlike the one about which Springsteen wrote: "It's a town full of losers, we're pulling out of here to win."

Seeing those early photographs from Freehold and Asbury Park were moving to me in a way I doubt resonated for people seeing the show in Cleveland, its first home.

Bruce's dad on a beach blanket, feet in the sand. Bruce and his sister Virginia on a bench on the Asbury Park boardwalk, Bruce's feet not yet touching; Bruce and his sister posing in a Tilt-a-Whirl-like ride, a ride that famously finds its way into the lyrics of "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)." The gleam in his little boy's eye, his joy in the common amusements of his native place, to see him really grounded in a boyhood at the Shore, felt profound.

So too did the artifacts from the pre-E Street Band era, the early obscure bands like the Castiles (after the soap) and Earth (which played covers of Cream and the Doors) and the Steel Mill, in which Springsteen takes a detour into the psychedelic era of San Francisco rock, circa 1971, but returns home, literally and figuratively, to his roots in a Jersey Shore bar band. You see the moment when he decided to make the band - whatever band - about him. "The Bruce Springsteen Band, formerly Steel Mill." It's made plain that Bruce occupied Seaside Heights - a club at Hamilton Avenue and the Boulevard - long before Snooki.

Some of the exhibit is a bit deep into the obscurities. Bruce, it seems, collected hotel keys, and the collection of shirts he wore at various times is a little odd. (I favor the flannel of the Nebraska era to the paisley of the Lucky Town time.) But who can get enough of seeing the pre-buff, skinny-waisted Bruce in photos and film?

I found myself lingering at one point over an exhibit that featured rare early footage of Bruce performing in the '70s, including a solo performance of "Sandy" at the Nassau Community College in 1973. It was cool to see the young Bruce, and the exhibit gives you a faux Boardwalk to stand on.

But really, can it compare to when I saw Bruce, also performing the same song solo, at the piano at Boardwalk Hall, not long after my mom (named Sandy) had passed away, and found myself crying through the entire song? I must have cried four different times at that 2005 show.

Will thinking about Bruce in the context of American history compare to seeing the E Street Band play "The Rising" in Scotland? Will listening at the exhibition on headphones to early Bruce recordings reach deeper than those serendipitous moments in the car when something obscure but meaningful ("Living on the Edge of the World" is another one that gets me on the way back to the Shore) comes on satellite's E Street Radio? For Bruce fans, those moments will trump anything in this exhibit.

But no matter. Given a chance to rehash how the public completely misinterpreted the lyrics of "Born in the U.S.A." (as seems to be happening with the aforementioned "We Take Care of Our Own"), and hang for a spell with the minutiae of all things Bruce, most fans will jump. And, who knows - maybe Bruce will wander in, as he did in Cleveland, on its very last day.

For a behind-the- scenes video of the Springsteen exhibition, go to www.philly.com/brucevid. EndText