POP MUSIC : Hey, Bruce! What’s the Deal? : The expected--and long overdue--Springsteen album didn’t arrive this year. A look at some of the ‘whys.’

B ruuu-ce . . . Bruuu-ce . . . Bruuu-ce !

Bruce Springsteen fans have shouted the rock star’s name affectionately at concerts for years, but now you can imagine a tinge of exasperation:

Bruuu-ce . . . Bruuu-ce . . . Bruuu-ce --what’s the problem?

It’s been more than four years since Bruce Springsteen’s last album was released, and there’s still no confirmation about a release date. But speculation that a release date will be announced soon was heightened last week when a New York radio station played a recording of a song, “Soul Driver,” that is expected to be on the album.

Springsteen fans are accustomed to long waits between albums, yet the wait has never been this long or as complicated by changes in his personal life--changes that have raised questions about the effect of the gentrification of rock’s working-class hero.

Will the many, highly publicized changes over the last four years--from his divorce and remarriage to his breakup of his band and his move from his New Jersey roots to a Beverly Hills-area estate--have an adverse effect on his music?

A lot is being asked because a lot is expected.

Mixing the sensual celebration of Elvis Presley with the introspective social commentary of Bob Dylan, Springsteen became the most acclaimed singer-songwriter in rock in the ‘70s and ‘80s thanks to marvelously crafted albums and passionate stage shows.

Exhibiting integrity in both his music and personal conduct, Springsteen helped restore the idea of a “hero” to rock ‘n’ roll--not an easy task considering how tarnished the concept had become for a generation of fans who had seen so many of rock’s greatest figures--Elvis, Springsteen’s own rock inspiration; Jimi Hendrix; Jim Morrison--destroy themselves and their art through indulgence or simple laziness.

As such, Springsteen’s personal values became intertwined with his songs. To his core audience, he was someone who lived by the codes of honor, decency and loyalty outlined in his songs.

Springsteen was, in fact, such an accepted symbol of classic American virtues by the mid-’80s that both presidential candidates evoked his name during the 1984 campaign.

But the Springsteen image, for many, has been severely bruised since then.

Can he still move us with his anthems of bedrock values and dreams? Can the man behind the gates of an estate still relate to the hometown roots that have been the basis of his music for almost 20 years? Can the man who has fired his band still rely on themes about loyalty and comradeship?

Some of the things Springsteen fans never thought they’d see:

Tabloid photos of him with backup singer (and future wife) Patti Scialfa kissing on a Rome hotel balcony well before there was any announcement of a separation from his wife, actress Julianne Phillips.

His sudden dismissal of the E Street Band, which had been by his side ever since the “Born to Run” days of the mid-’70s and represented the sense of camaraderie he frequently championed in his songs.

The man from the Jersey Shore plunking down $14 million to buy a 4 1/2-acre estate in the Beverly Hills area.

And the questions weren’t just being raised by casual Springsteen fans. The concern struck the heart of the Springsteen audience.

As editor since 1980 of Backstreets, a respected Seattle-based Springsteen fanzine, Charles Cross, 34, has been in touch with thousands of Springsteen fans, and he has heard considerable grumbling in recent years.

“On a personal level, I remain as interested in his work as I have ever been . . . in fact, maybe more so,” Cross said in a recent interview. “I’m not all that concerned with his personal life, but there certainly are a number of fans who disagree with me.

“They see the divorce, the (firing of) the band and some of the other things, and it all adds up to a lot of disappointment. We have had a significant number of people cancel their subscriptions to our fanzine.”

Cross doesn’t believe the high percentage of cancellations (circulation is down almost 66% from its mid-’80s high of 25,000) is a precise barometer of disenchantment with Springsteen, but he does believe that the artist faces a serious test with the new album.

“In some very real ways, he is on trial,” Cross said. “I don’t think the American public is as forgiving of Bruce Springsteen as they were in the ‘80s.”

The Blue-Collar Image

In some ways, it is surprising that it took until the end of the ‘80s for people to begin asking questions about Springsteen and his “blue-collar” image.

There is usually a backlash in pop whenever anyone enjoys the kind of success that Springsteen has had time and again. And, sure enough: The traces of backlash range all the way back to the cries of “hype” when Time and Newsweek put his picture on their covers the same week in 1975, and to the articles during the hugely successful “Born in the U.S.A.” tour of 1984 and 1985 about how the blue-collar hero had become a multimillionaire.

In April, Mike Appel, Springsteen’s former manager, is expected to publish a long-promised, “no-holds-barred behind-the-scenes” book detailing Springsteen’s early career.

But the strength of Springsteen’s music always seemed to silence the doubts about his credibility. Each of his albums--from “Born to Run” in 1975 through “Tunnel of Love” in 1987--was a purposeful and inspiring work that had more in common with the artful aspirations of literature or the cinema than pop music.

One reason Springsteen could be the biggest star in rock and still write convincingly about blue-collar themes was that he never wrote about those themes as some game plan or gimmick--he was from the working class, and much of his social vision was shaped by that experience. He wrote about universal feelings, using his own small-town New Jersey background as a natural model.

Springsteen, who was born in 1949, grew up in a modest neighborhood in the equally modest Freehold, N.J., where his father had various jobs, including factory worker and bus driver. His mother worked as a secretary.

“I don’t know what I’m writing from, but the main thing I’ve always been worried about was me,” he once said. “I had to write about me all the time, every song, ‘cause in a way, you’re trying to find out what that ‘me’ is. That’s why I chose (to write about) where I grew up and where I live, and I take situations I’m in, and people I know, and take them to the limits.”

More than school or community or family, Springsteen found a strength and purpose in rock. “Rock ‘n’ roll was the only thing I ever liked about myself,” he once said.

And it was rock ‘n’ roll that dominated Springsteen’s life for years. He had seen how so many of his own heroes in rock become blinded by fame that he constantly spoke of the need as an artist to avoid “distractions.” For years, marriage and family were ruled out because they represented such “distractions.”

More than any blue-collar themes, it was his devotion to his music--both in the albums and in the live shows--that initially made admirers and critics begin applying such words as integrity and honesty to him.

“Nebraska,” in some ways, was Springsteen’s most important album because it exhibited the greatest integrity.

Where 1980’s “The River” was a sweeping, accessible work that had sold more than 2.5 million copies and earned him enough of a following to sell out multiple nights in arenas around the country, “Nebraska” was a step away from all the mainstream acceptance.

Many performers would have been shaken when the solo acoustic album sold less than half as many copies as “The River,” but Springsteen found it liberating that even a fraction of his audience would accept a work so somber.

In “Born in the U.S.A.,” the 1984 follow-up, he retraced with the E Street Band some of the same themes, but this time in a more accessible way that would enable him to spread the “Nebraska” messages of compassion and obligation to a wider audience. The tour made him a superstar--and as wealthy, no doubt, as anyone in pop, including Michael Jackson.

There was so much Bruce adulation as he filled stadiums around the country on a routine basis that another backlash seemed inevitable. But again the strength of the album’s music and the strength of his performances kept his reputation intact.

The only real aftershock was Springsteen’s marriage.

The Marriages

The groans, from a segment of the rock audience, after Springsteen married actress Julianne Phillips in 1985 wasn’t so much that one of rock’s leading sex symbols had gotten married--but that he had married an actress instead of one of the Jersey girls that he sang about.

But “Tunnel of Love,” in 1987, again neutralized most of the potential backlash. It was a commanding collection of songs, most of them about the complexities of romance, that made the issues of his wealth and blue-collar authenticity seem moot.

The degree of introspection in the album--which was as acclaimed as any of his early works--showed that Springsteen was neither dependent on nor nervously clinging to the youthful, blue-collar tales of his earliest works. On the cover, appropriately, he wore a stylish suit rather than the customary jeans and T-shirt. He was clearly moving on.

Though it was easy to see the album as simply an expression of conflicting emotions about marriage, many fans in the weeks after the album was released began reading it as a warning that Springsteen’s own marriage was shaky.

The suspicions were confirmed in the summer of 1989 when the National Enquirer ran a story under the headline “Bruce Springsteen’s Marriage in Trouble.”

The article indicated that Springsteen was upset because he wanted children and his wife thought the timing was bad for her career. It also said Phillips was furious about reports that her husband was spending lots of time on the road with singer Patti Scialfa.

A few weeks later the Sun, a British tabloid, ran the photo of Springsteen and Scialfa on the Rome balcony. The caption declared, “The pictures that will cost the Boss $75 million.” The figure was half Springsteen’s estimated wealth at the time or what Phillips might receive in a divorce, the tabloid suggested.

Fans wouldn’t have given a second thought to it had other rock stars been caught up in the same situation, but the tackiness seemed a violation of Springsteen’s code of honor.

There was one thing about Springsteen’s new relationship with Scialfa that pleased the hard-liners: She was a Jersey girl.

The E Street Band

Springsteen fans were stunned when word leaked out in 1989 that he had brought the E Street Band era to an end--but there had been numerous signs pointing to a break. Springsteen recorded the “Nebraska” album on his own, and he used band members only sparingly on “Tunnel of Love.”

Perhaps even more telling was the worldwide Amnesty International tour in 1988. By the end of that series of shows, it was obvious that Springsteen was coming to the end of a chapter in his life. For the first time, Springsteen--the man who seemed to approach every night on stage with the passion of someone devoted to make it his best show ever--seemed to be simply going through the motions.

It’s possible that he already knew by the time of the tour that it was time to move in new musical directions, but seeing the progress on the tour of fellow headliners Sting and Peter Gabriel--both of whom had left bands to explore their individual musical instincts--may have added to his resolve.

Ironically, there may have been more cause to worry about Springsteen’s future if he hadn’t broken with the E Street Band because remaining in the format might have meant he was trapped in the image. By breaking the ties, he was free to move musically.

Springsteen spent the first year after “Tunnel of Love” touring and the second year putting his life in order. He and Phillips were divorced, and he began planning his life with Scialfa. Their son, Evan James, was born in the summer of 1990; the couple were married last June 8 and expect their second child shortly.

So Springsteen didn’t really begin working on the new album until late 1989.

The New Album

It looks like the wait is almost over.

Neither Columbia Records nor Springsteen’s management company will confirm it, but there is increasing speculation that the new album will be released in late February or March, with a tour to begin in April. A single would precede the album, presumably, by six to eight weeks.

Why has it taken so long?

Many pop artists record albums on a yearly or 18-month timetable, simply gathering whatever material they have accumulated by that time, heading into the studio and hoping for the best.

It’s different with Springsteen, who writes vastly more songs than he can release.

Rather than write for several months, then record for several months, he tends to keep writing and recording, and an album, in effect, “emerges” from the sessions--a collection of songs that cover a range of emotions or themes that work for him.

During that search for an album that is revealing or satisfying enough, he’ll often put together two or more albums, only to set them aside and go back into the studio. “The River,” “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” were done that way. There are estimates this time that he has written as many as 70 songs, of which only a dozen or so will end up on the album.

The sessions, many of them in Hollywood, featured two dozen or more studio musicians in various combinations. Among them Roy Bittan, the pianist from the E Street Band, as well as keyboardist Billy Payne from Little Feat, drummer Jeff Porcaro, bassist Randy Jackson and drummer Steve Jordan.

Every so often these “completed” albums will spark rumors of release dates, but Springsteen is careful not to announce them because he knows they are always subject to change. Things were apparently so close last spring that photographer Annie Leibovitz had taken some possible album cover shots--traditionally a sign that an album is ready.

There have been descriptions of the upcoming music from several of the musicians who have been in the studio with Springsteen over the last 2 1/2 years. Porcaro described the sessions he worked on as more “rock” than “Tunnel of Love.” Singer Bobby King said he contributed to four tunes that were described as “funky, very R&B.;”

But the most important evidence of the nature of the new album comes from Springsteen’s appearances at two benefits in late 1990 for the Christic Institute at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

It was one of the most dramatic moments in Springsteen’s career--the first formal performances since his divorce and the breakup of the E Street Band.

As he headed for the microphone, his shirttail hanging over his faded jeans, Springsteen seemed ready for a moment of truth. Aware of how his private life had become gossip fodder, he opened the show dramatically with “Brilliant Disguise,” the song from “Tunnel of Love” that dealt with questions of individual confusion and doubt.

He went through other songs, from various points in his career, injecting many of them with a lonesome sigh at the end of some of the lines as he examined the issues of the struggle in life between disillusionment and dreams.

The highlight was a new song, the anxious, philosophical “The Real World,” which summarized all he had sung and said that evening about renewed faith and commitment:

Mr. Trouble come walking this way

Year gone past seems like one long day

But I’m alive and I’m feeling all right . . .

. . . Just you and me

And the love we’re bringing

Into the real world

About the song, Backstreets Editor Charles Cross says:

“A lot of Bruce’s early work talked about the future. This song is about dealing with the present.

“What Springsteen talks about in that song is you are left with personal connections between a man and a woman . . . love, family . . . your world as it is today. To me, there’s a lot more realism than before.”

So What Now?

Some Springsteen fans feel cheated that he has given them just one new studio album in seven years. They see that as a sign he either has other priorities or that he has become too precious about his music.

Even Cross is troubled by Springsteen’s slow pace. “Look at how many records he released from 1975 to 1980, and then at how many from 1980 on, and it’s not a good curve,” he said.

Like many serious Springsteen watchers, Cross has heard numerous tapes that the songwriter has recorded but not released over the years, and he maintains that many of them are equal to “Tunnel of Love” and the “Born in the U.S.A.” material.

Yet, it is his intensity and his high standards that have enabled Springsteen to work at a creative peak longer than anyone else in rock. Presley’s most influential records were made in a three-year period, Dylan’s reputation is based chiefly on the battery of songs he wrote over four years. The Beatles, as a group, never made it out of the ‘60s.

Springsteen’s continued deliberateness can be seen as an encouraging sign--that he hasn’t been lured by all the changes in his life into taking things easier in the studio.

For years, music seemed to be Springsteen’s primary way of validating himself. That’s why he sometimes seemed to regard everything else--including marriage and children--as a threat. It also may be why so many of his songs were shadowed by feelings of isolation and darkness and the promise of a better time.

It wasn’t until the accomplishments of the “Born in the U.S.A.” album and tour that he seemed comfortable enough with himself and his art to be willing to commit himself to a permanent relationship. By all accounts, Springsteen has been “happier”--in the words of one acquaintance--over the last four years than at any time in his life.

Yet he has not rushed back with an album. He has continued to search in his music for personal truths--and that is a task that never gets easier.

In defining his aims as a writer, Springsteen once said, “You have to let out more of yourself all the time. You strip off the first layer, then the second, then the third. It gets harder because it’s more personal.”

A lot has happened in pop since 1987, and it’s difficult to tell the size of the Springsteen audience these days.

There is clearly some disenchantment. The older segment of his audience is now in the 35-plus crowd that no longer buys records as fervently as it once did. And a lot of the young rock crowd probably thinks of Springsteen as some sort of elder statesman--alongside Neil Young or Lou Reed.

Yet the lesson of “Nebraska”-- in which he was willing to sacrifice commercial success for artistic purity--wasn’t lost on him.

The important thing isn’t how many people are screaming, “ Bruuu-ce . . . Bruuu-ce . . . Bruuu-ce. “ What matters is how close again he can come to the new emotional truths that have always enriched his music.

In “Born to Run,” one of his classic early songs about following one’s dreams, Springsteen wrote:

Together we could break this trap

We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back

Will you walk with me out on the wire

‘Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider

But I gotta know how it feels

I want to know if your life is wild

Girl I want to know if love is real

Sixteen years later, he may have found an answer.