The Boss opens up about his depression

When Bruce Springsteen’s first marriage fell apart, the rock legend — a multimillionaire about to turn 40 — received a surprise offer: his father asked him to move back temporarily into their tiny home. “The old man finally wanted me around the house,” Spring-steen, who ultimately declined the invitation, writes in his new memoir, Born to Run.

Springsteen’s late father Doug — who worked a string of unstable blue-collar jobs, struggled with drinking and mental illness, and only hesitantly late in life acknowledged his failings to his son — looms as a reflection both for the artist’s life and for the state of America in Born to Run, published on Tuesday.

The Born in the USA chronicler of working-class America describes his childhood fear of his father in their poorly heated home in Freehold, New Jersey and also reveals that he has spent years himself in treatment for depression.