A smattering of flattery in a recent NY Times meta-review of books about Bruce Springsteen has prompted the “all-American” rocker to issue a response, demythologizing his own image.
In this Sunday’s Times, A.O. Scott writes,

Springsteen’s command of his chosen themes, and the power and sophistication he brings to them, makes criticism largely a matter of saying amen. Books about Elvis Presley tend to traffic in either rootsy antiquarianism or slick mythologizing. Bob Dylan inspires exegetes and soothsayers. Springsteen encourages hagiography. Every fan knows it’s hard to be a saint in the city, and every reader of the Bible (one of Springsteen’s preferred storehouses of phrase and image) has heard that it’s not easy to be a prophet in your own country. Maybe, in Springsteen’s case, it only looks easy; God — or anyone who has been to a Springsteen concert — knows the man works hard. By now, though, 30 years after the release of “Born to Run” landed him simultaneously on the covers of Newsweek and Time, the mantle of prophet and oracle — perhaps even of saint — seems to rest as naturally on Springsteen’s muscular shoulders as the strap to his blond Fender Esquire or Clarence Clemons’s hand.

Springsteen replies:

The merits of my music and performances over the last 30 years I gladly leave to the fans, critics and writers. On the subject of “image,” however, I thought I might be able to provide some simple clarification.
The “saintly, man of the people” thing I occasionally see attached to my name is bullshit. It was perhaps invented, like myself, by Jon Landau … or maybe by that high school kid somewhere who supposedly wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Life, art and identity are, of course, much more complicated. How do I know? I heard it in a Bruce Springsteen song.

Just who is this Jon Landau character, to whom The Boss accredits his musical persona? Slate‘s Steven Metcalf offers,

By 1978, and the release of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the endearing Jersey wharf rat in Springsteen had been refined away. In its place was a majestic American simpleton with a generic heartland twang, obsessed with cars, Mary, the Man, and the bitterness between fathers and sons. Springsteen has been augmenting and refining that persona for so long now that it’s hard to recall its status, not only as an invention, but an invention whose origin wasn’t even Bruce Springsteen. For all the po-faced mythic resonance that now accompanies Bruce’s every move, we can thank Jon Landau, the ex-Rolling Stone critic who, after catching a typically seismic Springsteen set in 1974, famously wrote, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
Well, Bruce Springsteen was Jon Landau’s future. Over the next couple of years, Landau insinuated himself into Bruce’s artistic life and consciousness (while remaining on the Rolling Stone masthead) until he became Springsteen’s producer, manager, and full-service Svengali. Unlike the down-on-their-luck Springsteens of Freehold, N.J., Landau hailed from the well-appointed suburbs of Boston and had earned an honors degree in history from Brandeis.

Though not a Jew himself, Bruce Springsteen is the hard-rocking embodiment of Jewish myth: A Mosaic leader of the downtrodden working class, calling out to the industrial Pharoah, “Let my people go.” He is a Biblical allegory wrapped in the packaging of Americana. And, most amusingly, he is the staggering “kiruv (‘outreach’) for everyman” accomplishment of a Brandeis grad.
Now that’s what I call a creative approach to being an ohr l’goyim (“light unto the nations”).