ASSAULT ON SPRINGSTEEN: WHAT A BOSS

The cover of the latest issue of England’s widely read New Music Express is provocative enough: a Bruce Springsteen look-alike in the “Born in the U.S.A.” album pose, a wad of bills sticking out of his jeans.

But the story by veteran rock journalist David McGee is sheer fireworks, perhaps the first major debunking of rock’s favorite son. Titled “Blinded by the Hype,” the l-ooo-n-g story is unlike any piece you’ve ever read about the much-praised rock hero.

It’s virtually a mirror-image of Dave Marsh’s worshipful “Glory Days” biography. McGee assaults Springsteen with brass-knuckled fury, describing him as a master manipulator, control freak and mean-spirited employer (fining tour staff for minor transgressions) who, as McGee bluntly puts it, “is in it for the money, whatever else he may pretend.”

McGee’s account is largely based on stories by such former long-time employees as lighting engineer Marc Brickman, guitar valet Mike Batlan and cook/seamstress/superfan Obie Dziedzic.

Among other items:

It claims that Springsteen and manager Jon Landau, known as loyal supporters of union causes, threatened key employees with dismissal if they joined unions.

It accuses Springsteen’s organization of staging a “surprise” benefit appearance at Asbury Park’s Stone Pony club (a charge subsequently denied by an ABC News producer involved in covering the event).

It claims that several roadies were docked $311 in back pay after losing Springsteen’s prized canoe when the star was moving to his new New Jersey home.

It reports that Dziedzic was fined $100 for being late serving Bruce his pre-concert soup and sandwich.

McGee, who served as an editor at Rolling Stone (and its late offshoot, the Record), saves many of his best licks for Marsh, Springsteen’s confidante and biographer, whose much-maligned “Glory Days” is maligned further as “possibly the most thorough whitewash of a major artist’s life and career yet published.”

The piece has such a jagged-edged, often petty tone that you immediately wonder if there’s more here than meets the eye. For instance:

What soured McGee, a longtime Springsteen fan and--during the ‘70s--a sometime pal, on his former idol?

Why wouldn’t any U.S. publication print the story?

Is much of the story colored by McGee’s rivalry with Marsh, an ex-friend whom he fired from the Record (at publisher Jann Wenner’s behest) and who has since enjoyed far more career highs than McGee?

We only ask so many questions because its been so hard to get an answer. McGee didn’t return several phone calls. Barbara Carr, an exec at Springsteen’s press-shy management office (and Mrs. Dave Marsh), refused to discuss the story’s specifics, saying only: “I didn’t know anything about this piece before it came out, and I haven’t heard from Dave McGee in years.”

Marsh bluntly dismissed the piece as “all junk,” terming it “the ravings of a group of lunatics in a miscreant Carnaby Street rag.” (His book, incidentally, is being excerpted in Sounds, a New Music Express rival.)

Marsh acknowledged that “my reporting in the book was remiss if you wanted an exhaustive account of everyone involved in Bruce’s career. But as for the stuff in his piece that McGee alleges I said--it’s just not true. It’s bad reporting based on false premises. I mean, his charges are insane. Bruce--not a friend of the working man? Come on!

“It’s very simple. Either everything you know about Bruce’s life and career is a fake, or this article is not true. Those are your options.”

It’s a sign of Springsteen’s enormous influence in the rock community that key sources--several closely associated with the Boss’s camp--were only willing to talk on a not-for-attribution basis. Even Springsteen associates acknowledged that many of the piece’s details--that crew members were on occasion fined for various minor offenses--were accurate.

“Sure, a lot of its true,” said one source close to the star’s camp. “It’s the way McGee wrote it that’s so weird. He’s taken a lot of petty gripes and blown them way out of proportion. No one ever mentions that when these (former employees quoted in McGee’s story) were very well taken care of when they left the organization. Bruce gave them very lavish presents when they left.

“You have to understand that these guys were around Bruce for a long time, but they didn’t write the songs or perform them. And this gap does occur,” the same source said. “I bet a lot of famous people have this problem--that the people who’ve been there from the start begin to live through someone like Bruce and overestimate their importance in everything. Anyway, these guys got so wound up about it that they became embittered and wound up out of a job.”

Oddly enough, another source insisted that Marsh’s recent squeaky-clean biography may have opened the floodgates for even more backlash. “If Bruce hadn’t been put on such a pedestal, no one would even blink at this kind of silly stuff. I mean, can you imagine anyone caring if someone found out that Mick Jagger was crabby or cheap? Big deal! Marsh’s book was so dewy-eyed that you can almost imagine dozens of writers out there, saying, ‘Hey, I’m gonna get the real story.’ Bruce is just the latest victim of the ‘80s media overload--they love to build you up and they really love to knock you down.”