Bruce Springsteen cries the disappearance of the former manager Carl Virgil

Through a long message shared on social networks and on his official website, Bruce Springsteen gave his last farewell to Carl Virgil “Tinker”, promoter of concerts and known for having held the role of managers during a large part of the first career phase of the New Jersey songwriter through his Blah Productions company.

“Carl Virgil” Tinker “West, who disappeared this week at the age of 89, was simply one of the most important people of my youth”, writes Springsteen at the beginning of his post, before telling:

“In 1970, when I had nothing, no place to live, I was in green and without a destination, he recognized my talent and welcomed me with him. We lived together in a tiny room of his Challenger Eastern Surfboard Factory in Wanamassa, in New Jersey. His mattress was on one side of the room, mine about two meters away, on the other. He was a misket. to live or pass by time.

The message then goes on to remember the moments of Springsteen shared with “Tinker”:

“I went through the country several times with Tinker, the first time at twenty years old, on its chevrolet truck with the platform of the 1940s, with all our bandwidth equipment under a tarpaulin on the back, looking for fame and luck to the west. The truck was old and gigantic, with a hard and difficult change, but he insisted because we were driving straight to Big Sur, the only date of the tour, without ever stopping. Also claimed that I, without any experience or driving license, guided my turn.

In the following years we passed on to an old station wagon Nomad, and every Christmas we found ourselves leading west, crossing dried deserts and snowfreters in the mountains. I went to find my parents in San Mateo, once a year, and Tinker headed San Francisco to see someone … who, I can’t even imagine it. Did my old friend parents parents? I can’t believe it. I prefer to think that he had already been born an adult between the mountains, the valleys and the waves of a primitive and unfathomable California.

After I had a huge success over time, Tinker never asked me for anything. It has always remained alone, at work, out of the system, independent. And I always felt satisfied when I received the best of his compliments: “Springsteen, you don’t joke”. No, I wasn’t joking. And not even Carl Virgil West did it.

The boss then told “the last time I saw him”, explaining: “He was in the hospital, close to the end, sick of throat cancer. When he saw me he smiled, and I greeted one of my missed fathers. We remained a little together, he pulled me to him and, in a ruclea voice and almost disappeared, he whispered to me:” We lived, Eh? ” lived all right. “When I was about to leave, I saw something that I didn’t think I would ever see, neither in this life nor in another. He cried. I loved him.”

In addition to Springsteen from March 1969 to February 1972, the year in which he signed with Mike Appel, Carl Virgil “Tinker” was manager and phonic of the Child, Steel Mill, Friendly Enemies groups, Dr. Zoom & The Sonic Boom. “Tinker” also played the contributions, both as a member of the friendly Enemies and with the Bruce band. He was the owner of the Challenger Eastern Surfboards, first in Wanamassa (NJ) and subsequently to Highlands (NJ), and put his space for the tests available to the first groups of Springsteen. In 2015, West was included in the New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame.