Sarfraz Manzoor - My favourite album: Tunnel of Love by Bruce Springsteen | Music | guardian.co.uk

Listening to Tunnel of Love reminds me of what Bob Dylan said about his 1975 record Blood on the Tracks. “A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album,” Dylan said. “It’s hard for me to relate to that. You know, people enjoying that type of pain.” There is a fair amount of pain in Tunnel of Love – the dull gnawing pain of seeing life stray from the hoped for script. I love how Springsteen’s song-writing refuses to trade in certainties; in Cautious Man he sings about a man who “on his right hand (had) tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear/and in which hand he held his fate was never clear”. When I first heard the album I was a chronically inexperienced teenager who knew of love only what I gleaned from the songs of Lionel Richie and Foreigner; it was through listening to Tunnel of Love that I first learned that boy meets girl was the beginning and not the end of the story.

Rock music can sound hopelessly naïve as one enters adulthood; songs become vehicles for nostalgic time travel. The genius of Tunnel of Love is that its themes have become more pertinent with time; adulthood is after all a process of accepting the absence of absolute certainty and Tunnel of Love is a record riddled with doubt and the impossibility of truly knowing oneself or those to whom we entrust our love: in the words of Brilliant Disguise: “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.” I know of no other album that has better captured the messy three dimensional reality of relationships.

Bruce Springsteen loved my work! | Music | The Guardian by Sarfraz Manzoor 

What would you say if you had a chance to meet your idol? Last Friday evening I met Bruce Springsteen, my musical hero for more than 20 years. During the last two decades my love of Springsteen’s music – an obsession somewhat obsessively documented – has evolved. It began with me as a mere fan travelling the world to attend gigs. That led to my memoir Greetings from Bury Park which described how his music changed my life. Now I am making this into a film with Bend It Like Beckham director – and fellow Springsteen fanatic – Gurinder Chadha.

That was how I found myself surrounded by the likes of Greg Dyke, Rob Brydon and Badly Drawn Boy at a BFI reception for Springsteen ahead of a screening of his new documentary The Promise. A blizzard of flashbulbs heralded his arrival; he signed autographs for the fans and then strode inside. He spotted me immediately. “How you been?” he asked offering his hand for me to shake. I didn’t have time to reply before he continued, “I got to tell you I really loved your book.”

“You’ve read my book?” I said disbelievingly.

“Yes I have,” he said, “and it’s a lovely thing – really beautiful.”

This was very weird indeed: Bruce Springsteen was telling me he lovedmy work. “How did you even know the book existed?” I asked, nonplussed. “People send me copies,” he answered. At this point Gurinder (who, thank God, had been filming the encounter on a Flip camera or no one would have believed it had happened) stepped in and told Bruce that she wanted to direct the film version. Springsteen said that sounded great and with that he was gone.

And how did it all feel? My father died when I was 23 – he only saw me as an unemployed graduate and never knew me as a journalist or broadcaster or anything at all. Having Bruce Springsteen praise my book was as close as I will ever come to having my late father tell me he is proud of the man I have become.

Ridiculously happy here for Sarfraz Manzoor - his book is a great read for any Bruce fan interested in race, music and the modern world. It’s available on amazon.com