Brutal

The book covers Bruce and the E Street Band's careers through 1987 in great detail and spends only a few short minutes covering the reunions since then. The first third of the book, the author spends praising and dissecting the process of becoming the force of nature into which Bruce and the E Street Band developed. However, by the second third, the author also seems to lose his appreciation for and material about which to write and begins to seemingly dissect every single take of every single recording Bruce ever made, both with and without the band. It's clear by the end of the book, that he has an extreme distaste for Bruce, which had at first began as a few well placed jibes and now turned into full on criticism about every aspect of his life, music and professional decisions. In fact, by the time the author gets to Born in the USA, he will only mention the song by its title, and derisively refers to the album only by the abbreviated term, BIT USA. Not flattering, it begins to feel like quite a bit of whining by a disillusioned fan. If you can get past the authors seemingly petulant derision through the last chapters and listen to the history about it instead, it does have a decent amount to offer, but if you're a fan of Bruce for anything other than his early albums, this will not likely please you.

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