Guttegarderoben

…er hentet fra forordet til den første av Dave Marsh’ to biografer om Bruce Springsteen(skrevet i 1979):

“I believe that rock and roll has saved lives, bevause I know that it was instrumental in shaping my own. When Bruce speaks of rock reaching down into homes without culture to tell kids that there is anothere way to live, I understand it personally. That is exactly what happened in my house. If this book succeds, it’s because it takes the measure of the life of a bus driver’s son(like Bruce Springsteen) - or a railroad brakeman’s son (like myself), or perhaps your own life - and spells out something of what rock and roll has give to them. We had nothing; rock lent us a sense that we could have it all.

But over the past decade, rock has betrayed itself. It gnaws at my marrow to recall a hundred sellouts, from the rock opera movies that were all glamour and no heart, to the photos of rock celebrities with international jet-set fugitives. The inevitbale result was records that were made not with feeling but because there was a market demanding a product, and concerts performed with an eye only toward the profit margin. Rock became just another hierarchial system in wich consumers took what was offered without question. Asking who was fake and who was for real used to be half the joy of the thing. Losing that option was our own fault, of course, but that doesn’t make it hurt less. Rock saved my life. It also broke my heart. “