Letter #2 Did You Really Have A Pet Dinosaur?

Dear Bruce,

When I was a kid of about ten years old I was in a record shop, always an adventure by the way, and I was going to buy your debut album 'Greetings From Asbury Park N.J.' and the guy behind the counter was having a conversation with a customer about you. Now, I know it's rude to listen in on what other people are talking about but something the customer said really struck me and more than forty years later it still makes me chuckle for my childlike naivety in believing what adults say. The customer said something like, "Oh, that Bruce Springsteen is a bit like Dylan in that he has a Thesaurus by his side when he writes". I have to confess I had no idea what a Thesaurus was but it sounded kind of like a dinosaur!

I bought the album and was trying to imagine how a pet dinosaur could help you in your songwriting! I tried really hard to figure out if there was any dinosaur references in the lyrics but not having a lyric sheet and Google decades away from being invented I struggled. I could have sworn that having a pet dinosaur must have given you magical powers of some sort as you wrote about in 'Growin' Up':

Well I stood stone-like at midnight suspended in my masquerade And I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch I strode all alone into a fallout zone, came out with my soul untouched

Of course I also did my research by going to the local library (not the mobile one because they didn't have many books on dinosaurs) but in all the books I could only find the usual bunch of dinosaurs who all seemed pretty much extinct! This led my ten year old mind to the conclusion that the Thesaurus must be native to New Jersey/New York and that they were so rare that it wasn't highly publicised who actually had one!

I'm sure you can imagine the horror of the shattered illusion when I got to Secondary School (High School in the States) and discovered a book in the school library called a Thesaurus and it was absolutely nothing to do with dinosaurs at all! This shocking discovery now made what that customer had said a few years before make sense because it was all about words and in your song 'Blinded by the Light' you used so many that I lost count!

It still makes me chuckle though the thought of you possibly trundling around the streets of Freehold taking your dinosaur for a walk before sitting down for the night, guitar in hand, pen and paper on the table ready to create yet another classic song. Take care of yourself. All the best.

Doug

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