Eleganza thinks Bruce Springsteen’s fab—that the incomparable energy and zest and passion that he brings to the concert stage justify his being thought of, along with Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, as one of the three greatest American rock ’n’ rollers ever.

Examining the sleeve of his latest album, though, Eleganza is tormented by the realization that it’s high time The Boss quit looking like a grease monkey and started dressing in accordance with his stature as the greatest American rock ’n’ roll figure of the last quarter of the 20th century thus far.

In many ways, it’s heartening in spades that, even after very nearly a decade of wealth and fame, Springsteen continues to think of the American working class as noble, and to dress as though he’s still part of it. But visually isn’t one of those ways, not when it means posing for his latest album cover in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and cruddy motorcycle boots, and what’s the whole point of this column if not that rock ’n’ roll’s nearly as much a visual as a musical medium?

One could make a very strong case for it being nothing less than the moral imperative of America’s pre-eminent rock ’n’ roller to look amazing, rather than humble. God knows both Elvis and Dylan looked amazing—the latter especially after he went electric, went to England, and went shopping on Carnaby Street—and that neither was any less a son of the working class than The Boss.

Tom Wolfe has observed that the downtrodden and dark-skinned with whom we campus radicals of yesteryear expressed our solidarity by dressing like hoboes and migrant workers and AWOL GI’s would have been caught dead in our hobo, migrant worker, and AWOL duds only over their dead bodies. Which leads one to wonder if The Boss wouldn’t be celebrating the American working class a lot more effectively by putting on the dog a bit than by posing in clothes one might wear to speed up the suspension on a buddy’s Le Baron for the cover of an album for which he was probably advanced more bucks than you or I will earn between us in the next decade.

I’m advocating neither that he do a George Benson or Sylvester Stallone or Boz Scaggs and take to wearing custom-made shirts—let alone suits—that cost more than a real grease monkey grosses in a week, nor that he turn into Liberace or Michael Jackson or Elton John and cover every inch of himself with sequins, feathers, neon lights, or bunting. Somewhere between the two approaches, there’s one that the Boss’ll find just right for his incandescent self.

In view of how busy he is, I know he’s unlikely to go shopping on his own. That’s where you and I come in. If each of this column’s loyal readers were to contribute just $1 to the Eleganza Spruce Up Bruce campaign, we could at least buy him a decent pair of $40 pink suede brothel creepers— provided producer/manager Jon Landau could be persuaded to kick in about $35. And I’ve no doubt that he could be, since, in the days when Rolling Stone wasn’t merely worth reading, but well worth reading— and I and the late Lester Bangs ruled the record review section, and no one would have dared mention Sylvie Simmons’s name in the same breath as my own unless he were intent on being branded a numbskull—Jon and I were as close as two young Jewish men who’ve never actually met, but who’d chewed the shit on the transcontinental telephone for hours and hours and hours and hours on end, could be.

I mean, all right, so in all the years he’s guided The Boss’s career, Jon has never quite found the time to give me a ring and ask if I might be interested in front row/center seats to his wondrous protege’s Los Angeles performances. But I’m sure that’s only because I’ve always neglected to set the answering maching.

TURN TO PAGE 63

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40

While we’re on the subject of The Boss, I’ll have to confess to finding Born In The USA a major, major embarrassment, my adoration of “Dancing In The Dark” notwithstanding. I mean, I gave up years ago on the guy ever writing songs on anything other than two-and-a-half pet themes, so the fact that the lyrics are all utterly predictable doesn’t depress me very grievously at all. (And, to be fair, I’m greatly relieved that there’s nothing as preposterous as The River’s “Drive All Night,” or whatever it was called, in which he offered his willingness to travel great distance just to buy his lover some shoes—shoes—as a symbol of his devotion. “Kind of you, Boss,” I could always picture her saying, “but 1 usually go to bed barefoot anyway, so why not just wait for morning?”)

But Jesus, how many times in a career can a guy write the exact same music? Aside from its bigger/more ambient drum sound and the use of synthesizers, I defy anybody to tell the difference between this year’s album and 1980’s The River. Indeed, I can’t think of a non-heavy metal album I’ve heard in the past 18 months with a lower incidence of melodic invention. And I’ve heard Culture Club’s Colour By Numbers.

In view of which incredible stasis, the guy has no excuse for not dressing sharper. I mean, after 1958 and 1966, respectively, all of Elvis’s and Dylan’s changes have been for the worse, but at least they never make you suspect they’ve simply overdubbed an ambient snare drum, a synthesizer, and a new vocal on instrumental backing tracks from half a decade before, for Pete’s sake!

Most of the foregoing, of course, goes too for John Cougar Mellencamp, whose penny loafers are only marginally less an affront to all rightthinking Eleganza readers everywhere than Springsteen’s grease monkey costume. John recently went shopping at the graphics gallery at which the missus is employed, and didn’t leave until he’d spent more on a sexy Nagel than I’ll make ridiculing all your favorite stars and trying to bring heavy met&l to its knees in these pages in the ’80s, so don’t tell me he can’t afford pink brothel creepers of his own, and very possibly even ones with zebra-skin print laces.

By the time this appears in print, it’ll be old, old hat, but as I write this, it’s impossible to watch MTV for longer than five minutes at a time without seeing Tony Carey’s “A Fine, Fine Day.” I know Tony’s an actual Indian and everything, but I’ve still got to admit that I’m positively dumbstruck that anybody can actually wear his hair like that in 1984.

Just as I’ve been shocked into speechleSsness in recent weeks by the sight and sound of Great White and Ratt. Every time I think I know how alienated I can feel from rock ’n’ roll, that which I’ve loved longest in my lifetime, I see a new video that makes me realize that I haven’t yet begun to feel alienated.

Take Great White’s “Substitute.” Please take Great White’s “Substitute”! 1 pray that there’s a reader out there somewhere, anywhere who can explain to me what even the most incorrigibly numbskulled teenage angel dust casualty in the most forlorn outskirt of the boondocks could see in these guys. The lead singer’s ugly, but smug, looks idiotic in his 1971 haircut, and sounds exactly like the guy in Quiet Riot, which is to say like 10,000 mosquitoes in pain, and his backing’s the musical equivalent of a just-add-water,-heat,and-serve frozen meal—everybody in the band plays exactly what you’d expect him to, bar in and bar out, lick after lick after lick.

Sure, the video’s got some pretty girls in garter belts and black stockings tottering around on high heels, and I’m the last guy who’d complain about that, but it’s the music and the stance whose appeal I’m absolutely incapable of detecting.

And Ratt! Let’s say, just for the sake of debate, that Aerosmith wasn’t a terrible idea, that they didn’t just recycle old Yardbirds and Stones moves, that they might even have been bearable in very small doses except for the fact that the singer obviously regarded himself as really profound, fabulous and wicked and so on. Once having said that, though, how does one justify Ratt’s recycling of the recycling, complete with an even uglier singer—one who moves real poorly and who, in his recent interview with MTV, uh, “personality” Mark Goodman, not only looked like a very hideous drag queen after a very hard night, but gave you the impression that he meant to?

And how about Billy Idol? The most recent poll of this magazine’s readers made clear that most of you perceive him as a punk. In fact, he is to the Sex Pistols what Conway Twitty was to Elvis, the Monkees were to the Beatles, Grand Funk was to Hendrix/Cream, Kiss was to Alice Cooper, and Motley Crue is to Kiss. He’s the new wave/punk Fabian, a zero-talent little nobody who’s parlayed a pretty face into superstardom—and proved in the process that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

What I want to know is why he’s always sneering and throwing punches at the camera. I suspect it’s because he’s contemptuous—and understandably so—of anyone who’d waste his or her time watching him. If you have a different explanation, I’d love to hear it. Simply address it to Eleganza’s What Makes Billy Sneer? Contest, in care of this magazine, enclose whatever you can spare for, uh, handling. If your entry is adjudged the most feasible, you’ll win a free long-distance telephone conversation with Sylvie Simmons, pending her acquiesence, or an autographed copy of The Kinks Kronikles, Morrow/Quill’s “funny, outrageous, and uniquely insightful history” of the second-longest-lived group in all of rock, and one you’ll want to start asking your bookseller for right now to create the illusion of widespread reader anticipation.

I think I’ve done enough damage now, and so will say ta-ta ’til next time.