[Joy] is perhaps the real secret of Bruce Springsteen's art. Springsteen loves the world: the pimps, hustlers, humbug, tomfoolery, switchblade knives and kisses under the boardwalk. If American art is really made up of Redskins and Palefaces, as Philip Rahv once suggested, then Springsteen is the wildest new Indian around. He's the kind of artist Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac and Otis Redding would have joined hands over. (p. 63)

Robert Ward, "The Night of the Punk," in New Times (copyright © 1975 by New Times Publishing Company), Vol. 5, No. 5, September 5, 1975, pp. 61-3.