In his beautiful and vulnerable memoir, Bruce Springsteen writes that his father said fewer than a thousand words to him throughout his entire childhood. Maybe âyouâre not greeted with love and affection,â he writes, because âyou havenât earned it.â So for decades, Bruce tried anything to earn his fatherâs love.
In the 1980s, in his thirties, with a few Grammys to his name, Bruce began to struggle with depression. He wasnât exactly sure why. Heâd accomplished more than he dreamed. As an artist, he was beloved by millions and was starting to be discussed in the same conversations as his idolsâElvis, Dean, Dylan. As a son, a man, a human being, things couldnât have been more different. He felt completely alone.
In that loneliness, Bruce picked up the strange habit of driving through his childhood neighborhood. After years of cruising old haunts, Bruce writes, âI eventually got to wondering, âWhat the hell am I doing?â â He went to see a psychiatrist, who didnât need the background story to know that Bruce was sensing that something had gone wrong and now he was trying to fix it. âWell, you canât,â the doctor said. You canât go back. No kid can turn conditional love into unconditional love, absence into presence.
Springsteen writes in the last verse of the song inspired by that trauma, âMy Fatherâs House,â about how his fatherâs house forever haunted him. It stood like a beacon calling him in the night, he sings: Calling and calling, so cold and alone Shining âcross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned
Itâs poignant, haunting, and heartbreaking. From the outside, it looked like Bruce Springsteen had everything; on the inside, he felt like he had nothing. Itâs evidence of our power as parents. No amount of money or celebrity or awards can substitute for your love. Thatâs all they want.