Only a quarter of this 600-page brick of a book is devoted to reprinting Springsteen’s actual song words, the rest is the Italian academic author’s detailed critiques – and a great job he does too. Colombati dissects an interesting mix of The Boss’s most iconic songs and hitherto less-heralded album tracks, placing them in the context of not just the musician’s own experiences but also as part of a wider fabric of American culture and politics.
It works as a fascinating companion piece to Born To Run, Springsteen’s own revelatory autobiography published last year; full of insight and historical information, written with passion and a lightness of touch that only occasionally lapses into dense academia.
Film composer Ennio Morricone may seem an odd choice to write the foreword, but he identifies the filmic qualities of the musician’s songs succinctly: “Each verse is a camera shot, each line is a scene.”
