The Next Word on the Boss: A Biography

Get ready for the new Bruce book .

Marc Eliot’s “Down Thunder Road: The Making of Bruce Springsteen” is due in June from Simon and Schuster, and Eliot promises it will be the most thorough look yet at Springsteen, the musician and the man.

The book covers Springsteen all the way from his strict Catholic rearing (“I make a link between that early training and the confessional nature of his songs,” Eliot says) right through the recent birth of Springsteen and Patti Scialfa’s second child, Jessica Rae.

Eliot says that Springsteen comes off as neither a good guy nor bad guy, “but different from his public image. He’s not too fast, but he’s an observer who tends to manipulate situations. He’s a smart guy, but no great intellect.”

Eliot examines such incidents as Springsteen almost publicly flaunting the breakup of his first marriage, with Julianne Phillips. “She broke the deal by not wanting to have children,” Eliot says. “He couldn’t change her and she couldn’t change him.”

He also supports Springsteen’s firing of his longtime companions in the E Street Band as a smart move. “In order for him to grow as a musician he had to lose those guys,” he says.

For longtime fans, the real treasure is information Eliot got from thousands of pages of depositions from the bitter, mid-’70s lawsuit over Springsteen’s decision to leave manager Mike Appel to work with Jon Landau. The documents, which Eliot gained access to through Appel, have never been made public before, and paint the picture of an earnest artist caught between a strong father figure (Appel) and the need to grow away from paternal bonds.

“Each principal gave what amounted to a complete autobiography,” says Eliot, who previously authored “Rockonomics” and “Death of a Rebel: The Phil Ochs Story” and is currently working on a biography of Walt Disney. “Springsteen and Landau’s depositions are quite different from the myths propagated by Dave Marsh” in his two Springsteen books, “Born to Run” and “Glory Days.”

Appel has generally been painted as the bad guy of the suit, a figure who tried to exercise control over Springsteen and whose legal maneuverings prevented the singer from finishing the “Born to Run” album for nearly three years. But Eliot says that the picture in the depositions is substantially different.

“Appel became a victim of this PR campaign to make it seem that Landau was a hero and Bruce was being rescued,” he says. “But Springsteen had a hard time leaving Appel because he looked up to him the way Elvis was attached to Col. Parker. He was like Hamlet, caught between the ghost of two visionaries. He got caught in this emotional trap where he wanted to leave his idealized ‘father’ and go with his new best friend.”

Among the incidents detailed: During his deposition, Springsteen, worn down by the grilling, “exploded,” Eliot says. “He made hefty accusations, talking about how if someone stabs him in the neck he’ll stab them in the neck.”

There’s also an account of a fistfight between Appel and Landau on the roof of the Record Plant recording studio during sessions for “Born to Run.”

“There was a battle for his soul going on,” Eliot says. “But out of that came that magnificent album.”

What concerns the author now is that Springsteen is too content with the apparent domestic bliss of his marriage and two children.

“I’m wondering what (the new music) is going to be about,” he says. “Wondering just what it is bringing him down from the mountain. These new songs represent a burst of creativity, and one needs to wonder just where that burst came from.”