Bruce Springsteen has been part of my life since 1984. His music followed me through different chapters – sometimes loud and defiant, sometimes quietly in the background. I never thought much about why he resonated so strongly. He just did.
In his music, Bruce never sold fantasies. He told stories. Stories of people doing the best they could with what they had. Stories of growing up, of broken dreams, of love that didn’t last, of being ‘born to run’, of fathers and sons who couldn’t quite find the words. Of lives that didn’t always work out the way they were supposed to.
Over all the years, it all lined up with how I felt about my own life. I didn’t have a straight path. I wasn’t handed answers. There were setbacks, silences, and decisions made in the dark. Bruce’s music didn’t lift me out of that – it gave me permission to be in it. To name it. To survive it.
My dad died in 2008. We didn’t have a dramatic relationship. Just a quiet one. A lot of things went unsaid. Some of them I think we both understood. Others, we probably never did. Over time I’ve come to accept that. To see him more clearly. He did what he could, in the way he knew how. And even if we never had the conversations I sometimes wish we did, I carry his name. And I carry his influence.
Which is why Springsteen’s Independence Day always hits me hard:
Well Papa go to bed now it’s getting late
Nothing we can say can change anything now
Because there’s just different people coming down here now
and they see things in different ways
And soon everything we’ve known will just be swept away
That verse brings me to tears every time. Because that’s what it felt like. Like we never caught up with each other. Like time and pride and habit got in the way. And now it’s too late to fix, only possible to hold.
Years earlier, in 2013, the documentary Springsteen & I had come out. I’d ended up glued to it because of the stories the fans told. Story after story of people from all over the world, each one talking about what Bruce meant to them. Some were in tears. Some were laughing. All of them were raw and honest in a way that caught me off guard. They were crying, and I was crying.
I realised it wasn’t just me. I wasn’t the only one who’d felt something because of those songs. I wasn’t the only one who’d turned to that voice during the hard moments. There was something universal about it, and yet each connection was deeply personal. I found myself feeling emotional in a way I hadn’t expected. Like I’d been part of something all along, and just hadn’t known it.
But then, around 2020, I discovered something that stunned me. His full name is Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (Wikipedia). My name is Alan Frederick Howard. My father was Joseph Frederick Howard. Same three names. Different order. But completely the same.
It wasn’t just an ‘interesting coincidence’ for me. It hit me harder than I expected. Not in a mystical way, but in the way something brushes past you and suddenly everything feels… connected. Like a thread that had always been there was finally being tugged into view.
When I saw Bruce’s name (Frederick Joseph), it felt like a bridge – between the music I’ve always turned to, and the man who gave me my middle name. Between that universal connection I’d felt watching the documentary years before, and something deeply, personally mine.
I don’t need the name thing to mean something magical. But I also can’t pretend it meant nothing. It reminded me that identity is layered. That meaning can live quietly in the background until something clicks. And that maybe, just maybe, the names we carry tell more of our story than we think.
So I’m just paying attention. Not to signs. But to the resonance.
Have you ever had a moment like that? Where something seemingly small struck a deep chord? And if you did – what did it bring to the surface?
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