COUNTY FAIR

Bruce Springsteen couldn’t be sitting there. Could he?

The question came to me in the summer of 1982, as my then-fiancée and I sat in a field at

the Monmouth County Fairgrounds in Freehold, New Jersey. We were waiting for Sonny Kenn

and the Wild Ideas, a local band that she followed around the Jersey Shore, to start playing.

Sonny was already a guitar hero by the time Bruce debuted with Freehold’s Castiles in

1966. His band at the time, Sonny and the Starfires, had even been the opening act for rocker

Jerry Lee Lewis.1 Since then, their fortunes had diverged.

Bruce had released five albums for Columbia Records and was getting ready to put out

his sixth, “Nebraska.” He had scored four top-40 singles -- “Born to Run,” “Prove It All Night,”

“Hungry Heart” and “Fade Away” -- and played to millions of fans with the E Street Band.2

Sonny worked at a musical-instrument store in Red Bank by day and played in Shore-

area bars and clubs at night. With the Wild Ideas, he released an independent single with two

original songs, “All American Angel” and “Turn It Up.” It went nowhere.

There was no reason to expect Bruce to be anywhere near the fairgrounds, let alone

sitting next to me and my fiancée. Yet when I looked to my left, I saw someone who looked

mighty familiar. He wore blue jeans, a flannel shirt and a yellow cap that said CAT -- short for

Caterpillar, the farm-equipment maker. He was chatting up a woman I didn’t recognize. Nobody

was bothering him, and I didn’t either.

A few minutes later, as dusk set in, the concert started. Sonny and the band made their

way onto a trailer-like stage at one end of the field. When the lights came up, there they were.

And there was Bruce, jamming with them.

They played Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally,”

Berry’s “Carol,” Sam Cooke’s “Shake” and an early hit for Wilson Pickett, “Land of a Thousand

Dances.”3 Sonny and his band didn’t usually play songs like those. Their sets featured originals

and covers like “Jack the Ripper,” by Link Wray. But that night was different. Bruce was there.

Based on what happened that evening -- July 23, 1982 -- it wasn’t a complete surprise to

learn that Bruce wrote and recorded a song called “County Fair” the following year.4 These lines,

included in the third verse, rang true to my experience: “At the north end of the field they set up

a stand / And they got a little rock and roll band / People dancin’ out in the open air.”5

While there isn’t any record of Bruce playing at the Monmouth County Fair again, he

easily could have attended the event when he wasn’t on tour. He owns a house in Rumson that’s

about half an hour’s drive from the fairgrounds, now known as East Freehold Park. He also has a

house, recording studio and horse farm in Colts Neck, just 12 minutes away by car.6

Assuming that Bruce made the trip at least once wouldn’t be unreasonable. He has

returned again and again to Freehold, where he lived, attended school and found his musical

calling in the 1950s and 1960s. He has revisited his hometown just as regularly in his lyrics.

“Springsteen is not just from Freehold, but is of and in it,” Kevin Coyne, the town’s

historian, once wrote. He drew a parallel between Bruce and William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize-

winning writer whose works were often set in his native Mississippi -- “the ‘postage stamp of

native soil,’ as Faulkner called it, in which he found the whole world.”7

Notes

1 Anders Martensson and Jorgen Johansson, Local Heroes: The Asbury Park Music

Scene. New Brunswick, NJ (Rutgers/Rivergate, 2008), 28.

2 Joel Whitburn, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 8th ed. (New York: Billboard

Books, 2004), 593. “Born to Run” peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, followed by

“Prove It All Night” at No. 33, “Hungry Heart” at No. 5 and “Fade Away” at No. 20.

3 Brucebase, 21 Aug 2009 <http://www.brucebase.org.uk/bbmain.htm>.

4 Brucebase: On the Tracks, 22 Aug 2009 <http://www.brucebase.org.uk/intro.htm>.

The version used on The Essential Bruce Springsteen compilation’s bonus disc was recorded,

along with an alternate version, at his Los Angeles home studio between mid-January and mid-

February 1983. Another version with the E Street Band was recorded in April or May 1983.

5 Springsteen, “County Fair,” The Essential Bruce Springsteen, Columbia, 2003. Aug. 22,

2009 <http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/CountyFair.html>.

6 Addresses obtained from Bob Goldsborough, "Which celebrity's house is this?" Big

Time Listings, 28 Aug. 2008, 21 Aug. 2009 <http://www.bergproperties.com/blog/which-

celebritys-house-is-this-house-38-a-three-bedroom-1601-square-foot-town-house-at-17943-

magnolia-boulevard-in-los-angeles-encino-area-which-closed-in-late-march-for-425k>. Travel

time calculated on MapQuest <http://www.MapQuest.com>.

7 Kevin Coyne, "The Faulkner of Freehold." Asbury Park Press, 14 March 1999. 21 Aug.

2009 <http://freeholdnj.homestead.com/faulkner.html>.