ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Springsteen never made another album like ‘Born to Run,’ and other questions only his first manager Mike Appel can answer.

Today, many on the right view Springsteen as an aging corporatist tool fully owned by the Democratic Party for election year benefit concerts, who occasionally releases albums on the side. But back in 1973 through 1975, on his second and third albums, The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run, Springsteen was making remarkably supple and innovative music. And then he changed managers, and became, as Slate(!) dubbed him a decade ago, “Bruce Springsteen, bullshitter:” “Thirty years later, and largely thanks to Landau, Springsteen is no longer a musician. He’s a belief system. And, like any belief system worth its salt, he brooks no in-between. You’re either in or you’re out.” Reluctantly, I’m out, but I do love — and miss — his mid-‘70s work.

(Via the Brothers Judd.)