Bruce Springsteen became a womaniser, a body builder and a rock god – all to prove his scornful father wrong. Helen Brown reviews his candid memoir

Catholic guilt, the “steel swamp” of New Jersey, the grindstone graft of his parents’ lives – young Bruce Springsteen felt he was “born to run” from it all. And he did escape, in a sense, into the life of a rock star. But if there’s one thing he wants you to learn from his strikingly honest new memoir, it’s that you can run all you like from the environment that made you, but you can’t hide.

Today, he feels able to credit his New Jersey childhood and the poetry of Catholicism for the electrical charge of his songs about otherwise uncelebrated blue-collar lives. And his parents’ work ethic continues to drive him, sweating and triumphant, aged 67, through live shows that can last four hours. But, as Springsteen devotees will already know, the heart that drives those lightning-bolt shows is dark and brooding.