Along Pinball Way

It is a familiar mix--the gaunt but unmarked face and the insinuating nasal rasp. He slouches buzzing over his guitar, his voice dry as locusts. Then, without warning, Bruce Springsteen rears back and uncorks a geyser of white hot sound. Cataracts of electrically charged fragments of sound lacerate the air, scattering intimations of Dylan and colliding with the fierce rhythms of Springsteen's own wild fusion of rock, jazz and folk rock.

"The best thing anyone can do for me is not to mention Bob Dylan," said Springsteen last week at Gertie's in Dallas. "I've been influenced by everybody from Benny Goodman on: Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Fats Domino.

When I was nine and saw Elvis Presley on TV, I knew that was where it was at."

Musically as well as physically, however, Springsteen's striking resemblance to Dylan invites comparison. Both men forged a style of electrified folk demanding powerful back-up bands. Like rock musicians of the '60s, Springsteen dips back to the '50s for the blazing chord colors and nagging syncopations inside his walls of throbbing sound. Yet he has invented no personal mystique, he entertains no holy illusions about himself, he avoids social commentary. "I like to write songs you can dance to," he says.

The intense personal warmth permeating Springsteen's songs is rooted not in social anger but in the pure passion to make music.

His first two records--Greetings from Asbury Park, TV., and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle--have been the subject of vaulting claims of the discovery of a 1970s successor to Dylan.

Spanish Johnny drove in from the underworld last night With bruised arms and broken rhythm and a beat-up old Buick but dressed just like dynamite, He tried sellin his heart to the hard girls over on Easy Street, But they said, "Johnny, it falls apart so easy and you know hearts these days are cheap."

While other songwriters are heading for country creeks and watermelon vines, Springsteen celebrates urban lowlife. His songs are ambitious mini-operas populated by punk saints and Go-Kart Mozarts in scenarios laced with schmalz and violence. His territory: the streets of Harlem, tenements, the funky world of the boardwalk's pinball way with its dusty arcades and machines. Bursting with words, images rush along in cinematic streams of consciousness:

Well the runway lies ahead like a great false dawn, Fat lady, big mama, Missy Bimbo sits in her chair and yawns, And the man-beast lies in his cage sniffin 'popcorn And the midget licks his fingers and suffers Missy Bimbo's scorn Circus town's been born.

Offstage Springsteen's lyric virtuosity reduced to a mumble in hip, tough dude tones. "We had a bathroom with a big gaping hole in it that looked right out into this convent. I used to tell kids that during the war an airplane crashed into it. To save face, y'know?" Thus he describes the Freehold, N.J., home where he was born in 1949. Home life was not easy, and when his folks went West prospecting for better jobs, Springsteen remained behind. At 16 he was commuting to Greenwich Village to play guitar in cafes. Self-taught, Springsteen also became proficient on the piano and harmonica--"If a guy can fix a radio, he can find his way around a TV, y'know?"--and soon he was forming bands of his own. He was "discovered" for recordings by John Hammond, the archetypal artists-and-repertory man whose finds include Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan.

A loner, Springsteen's lifestyle is music. "I love traveling and performing, love being on the road. The thing I don't like is the business side." Home is a rented apartment in Bradley Beach, N.J. If the commotion over his music has sometimes flattered, sometimes irritated him, he shows no ill effects. He remembers calling his mother in California to tell her he had signed a big record contract.

"Oh, yeah?" she said. "What did you change your name to?"

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