Bruce Springsteen may be on tour in Europe, but he took some time out to pay tribute to a dear friend Monday.
Springsteen, who is far from home, currently between two dates playing the Decathlon Arena in Lille, France, shared a heartfelt remembrance of Carl Virgil “Tinker” West.
West, the Boss’ manager at the very start of his music career — at the end of the ’60s to the early ’70s — was 89 when he died this week, Springsteen said in an evocative message posted on his website and social media accounts.
He called West “simply one of the most important people of my young life.”
West, a surfboard designer, or shaper, managed Springsteen’s early band Steel Mill, which was initially named Child.
“In 1970 when I had nothing, nowhere to live, was broke with nowhere to go, he recognized my talent and took me in,” Springsteen said. “We lived together in one tiny room of his Wanamassa, New Jersey Challenger Eastern Surfboard Factory. His mattress was on one side of the room and mine was six feet away on the other.”
Springsteen, 75, did not hold back in painting a picture of the man in all his flaws.
Springsteen on the big screens in France this past weekend. Sébastien Courdji | Getty Images
“He was a natural born misanthrope,” he said of West, his friend from out west. “He was not an easy man to know, live with, or be around. He was from California and was an old school frontier individualist asking no quarter and giving none. If you weren’t being useful he didn’t want you near him. If you visited the surf shop for more than ten minutes he’d shove a broom in your hand and tell you to start sweeping. He wasn’t joking.”
West was the kind of person, Springsteen wrote, that couldn’t have possibly had parents: “I believe he sprung near full grown from the mountains, valleys, and waves of a primitive and unknowable California.”
He went on to recount his many cross-country drives with West to various gigs.
“He also insisted I, without skills or license drive my share,” he recalled. “That’s how Tinker taught you something. He just made you do it.”
Springsteen concluded the tribute by sharing his final tender encounter with his old friend.
“The last time I saw him he was in the hospital, near the end, dying from throat cancer,” he said. “He smiled when he saw me, and I kissed one of my errant father’s goodbyes. I hung out for a while, he pulled me close and his voice raspy and nearly gone whispered ‘We sure had some adventures didn’t we?’ I answered ‘we sure did.’
“When I was about to leave, I saw something I never thought I’d see in this life or the next. He cried. I loved him.”
Find Springsteen’s full message in the post below.
Stories by Amy Kuperinsky
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter/X, @amykup.bsky.social on Bluesky and @kupamy on Instagram and Threads.