Don’t Make No Difference What Nobody Says

I’ve written about my high school speech coach, unwitting mentor, and fellow Springsteen fan Mike Woolley before…

Mike Woolley looms large on the south side of Chicago.

Part of it is literal; the guy’s like seven feet tall, and maxes out at about 300 pounds. (Even as a “vegetarian,” his meal of choice was a cheese pizza, french fries, and cold beer.)

The other part of it is more ephemeral, but no less substantial. For years as a high school teacher, first at an all-boys Catholic school at 115th and Cicero and now at a public school in the south suburbs, he’s helped shape tens of thousands of fragile teenage minds, in ways he probably doesn’t even realize. Whether organizing rowdy debates in his U.S. History class or leading a ragtag shaggy band of smart-ass outsiders in IHSA regulation speech competitions, the man made an impact. Still does.

I learned a lot from Mike Woolley, but today we’re talking about music, so I’ll tell you what he taught me about what I should be listening to, and what I shouldn’t, and why that matters.

I don’t remember the first time I heard a Bruce Springsteen song, but I remember that Woolley loved the Boss, had since he was a teenager himself. He used to talk about some short dude sneaking in behind him to attend a gig on the River tour. So when I found my way to Springsteen, part of the appeal on some level was in trotting down the same path Woolley himself trod down as a lad.

If I had to trace my Springsteen devotion to any one person, it would have to be Woolley. And he HATED “Hungry Heart.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2fTuW3__oU?feature=oembed&w=459&h=344]

When it would come on the radio, or come up in conversation, he painted it as some kind of fundamental betrayal of everything Springsteen stood for. (I hope I’m not misinterpreting his views; it’s been a few years. Fortunately he’s just now getting around to learning e-mail so I think I have a few years before he finds this and argues with me.)

He’d do this bit where he’d sing the opening lines, “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack/I went out for a ride and I never looked back” but in this really annoying peppy way, while swinging his arms back and forth as though he were auditioning for a spot on the Lollipop Guild.

Was it too “pop”? Was it too easy? Did it represent Springsteen’s breakthrough into chart success and thus, a turn away from his diehard fans?

I have no idea. But I do know that I cannot hear this song, which I happen to think of as one of Springsteen’s better efforts at marrying a pop sensibility to a dark lyrical edge, without thinking of this seven-foot-tall man flailing about and mocking the Boss.

Thanks, Coach.

P.S. I’ve set up a Formspring account so as to field questions on the urgent matters of the day, such as whether the extended intro on “Prove It ‘78” qualifies for inclusion whence one calculates the precise tenths of a second by which one show may or may not be longer than another show. Or, y’know, anything really.