The Syracuse Post-Standard
http://www.syracuse.com/
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Eric Meola once asked Bruce Springsteen about the creative order of songwriting: Is it the music or the words that come first? Springsteen laughed and replied, “Sometimes it’s the one, and sometimes it’s the other.”Amid a desert storm, Meola got a chance to see for himself.
Raised in the Eastwood neighborhood of Syracuse, Meola is an internationally renowned photographer. Yet in weeks such as this — when his photos are a marketing centerpiece for a new Springsteen package called The Promise - Meola responds with good humor to a deluge of calls about his long-time connection to the rock legend and his E Street Band.
It was Meola who captured an iconic image of Springsteen and his bandmate, Clarence Clemons, for the cover of Born to Run, released in 1975, just before Springsteen became entangled in a maddening lawsuit that stalled his efforts to record again. In 1977, finally liberated to put together the album that became Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen joined Meola on a road trip through the West, behind the vague idea of finding a cover image for that record.
“With Born to Run I nailed it, and now that you nailed it, you don’t want to fall down on the next one,” said Meola, who works from Long Island.
They got a cover photo, all right, although its release would be delayed until this year. For the 1978 cover of Darkness, Springsteen went with an intimate portrait by photographer Frank Stefanko, shot amid the yellowed wallpaper of an old New Jersey home. Once Meola heard the factory theme of that album, he understood the choice. He was also told that record company officials worried about using a road scene for the cover of Darkness, fearing it would be too similar to Jackson Browne’s cover for Running on Empty, an album released a year earlier.
Meola’s photos from the road trip through the West were packed away, until now. One of the most dramatic shots becomes cover art for The Promise — a collection of 22 newly released songs that Springsteen set aside for many years, just as Meola did with the photos.
The image portrays a young Springsteen in the Nevada desert, leaning against a rented Ford Galaxie convertible, as a storm boils out of the mountains behind him. At the time, Meola was intrigued by the work of Robert Frank, a photographer who offered black and white portraits of the American experience. Meola and Springsteen went in search of their own vision. They flew to Salt Lake City and then made the long drive to Reno, seeking photographic lightning in the desert.
They found it, literally.
Springsteen, who had spent most of his young life without much cash, paid the way. He was carrying a credit card for the first time in his life, Meola said. Their journey began just a few days after Elvis Presley died, an event that forged a somber backdrop for the trip. Springsteen, who revered Elvis, would sometimes turn onto dirt roads and head toward nowhere, until Meola would gently urge him to turn around.In Nevada, a mind-bending encounter with nature provided Meola with an answer to how Springsteen writes his songs. They drove into the teeth of “this incredible, biblical storm in the desert,” Meola said. He hurried to snap a few photos, before the two men traveled up a hillside to watch as the sky turned black. A few huge raindrops turned into a torrent. Lightning flashed at countless points toward the horizon.
Meola and Springsteen, looking down on it, were stunned into silence.
From Reno, they returned to New York, and to their work. A few weeks later, Meola paid a visit to Springsteen, who was busy with the E Street Band in the studio. As the photographer walked in, he heard his old friend singing lyrics that will always give Meola the chills:
There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground ...
It was the climactic verse of “The Promised Land,” in which Springsteen both confronts despair and rebels against it.
Thirty-two years later, as Darkness is re-released, Meola thinks back to his own question about the way a song is born. Out of lightning strikes and a ceiling of black clouds, Springsteen conjured words that still can blow away the dreams that break your heart.
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