But somehow “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town” didn’t deliver. People who love Bruce (and I count myself among them) love him so much that all they want is more great music from him, more reasons to love him more and they usually get what they want every few years, at just about the moment when withdrawal is kicking in and a fresh shot of “Bruce Juice” is (and to Springsteen fans this is not hyperbole) necessary. There may be some truth to this, but I think that to view Springsteen’s new albums’ failure to dominate the charts as reflexive kill-the-rock-star schadenfreude is to deny his fans their due. In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, such criticism was referred to as an anti-Springsteen backlash, the idea being that certain people might take a perverse pleasure in seeing the Boss fail. (A few weeks ago, Springsteen kicked off his first American tour since 1988, and sales have increased slightly.) In response to this poor chart performance, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover of a black-and-white silk screen of the Boss looking ashen and anguished, and asked the question “What Ever Happened to Bruce?” But after the initial hysteria, and after all the diehard fans did their buying, the albums slipped slowly down the charts, until finally “Lucky Town” bottomed out at No. 3 on Billboard’s album chart, and both albums have been certified platinum. Bruce Springsteen has for more than two decades been playing to an audience that has grown ever larger and more devoted and fanatical with each new album, but the bloom may now be off the rose, for sales of his two recent simultaneous releases, “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town” (Columbia), have sagged well below expectations.

Don rich telecaster