David Senra

He met somebody that thought and believed and loved music like he did.

I'd finally met someone who'd felt about music the way I did, needed it the way I did, respected its power in a way that was a notch above the attitudes of the other musicians that so far I'd come in contact with.

Somebody I understood and I felt understood me.

With Steve and me from the very beginning, it was heart to heart and soul to soul.

It was all impassioned, endless arguments over the minutia of the groups that we loved.

The deep delving into the smallest details of guitar sounds, style, image, the beautiful obsession of sharing with someone who was as single-minded and crazy as you were.

A passion that you simply could not get enough of.

These were the things that you could not explain to outsiders.

So he skips his high school graduation because he's playing music.

He doesn't care about anything else but music.

He knows what he's going to do in his life.

He starts the band, and this is the band, he says, that would initially call itself Child, then morph into Steel Mill, then the Bruce Springsteen Band, and eventually become the core of the original E Street Band.

Now, it's right around this time where he feels his mom abandons him and his sister.

His dad is deeply depressed, decides to move from New Jersey to California, and this is how he describes this.

My mom and pops were bound by an unknowable thread.

They made their deal a long time ago.

She had her man who wouldn't leave, and he had his gal who couldn't leave.

Those were the rules, and they superseded all others, even motherhood.

This was how it began and this is how it would end.

My father was able to draw from my mom, a saving and selfless mother, her own ambivalence about family.