Being a teenager in Luton in the 1980s was gruesome enough without the added complication of Pakistani parents who functioned as an in-house anti-fun squad. But for Sarfraz Manzoor, salvation came when he was 16, in the prosaic location of his school common room.The year was 1987. The sounds of Debbie Gibson, Duran Duran and the Pet Shop Boys wafted from the radio, ear candy to a generation of voluminous-pantsed youths. To Manzoor, these provided little relief from the agony of his particular disaffection. But one day, a classmate lent him a cassette tape of the music of Bruce Springsteen .“I was like, ‘Isn’t he the guy who makes millions out of pretending to be working class?’” Manzoor says. His classmate responded: “Bruce Springsteen is the direct line to all that is true and meaningful in the world.”From extras.The first song Manzoor listened to was a live recording of “The River”, with its striking, incantation-like spoken introduction. He had never heard anything like it.“It wasn’t music about escapism but about confrontation – confronting what it’s like to grow up in a town that has problems, to have issues with your parents,” he says.Unable to afford to buy the records, he went to the library. “I was borrowing the albums and photocopying the lyrics and studying them. I would come home from school and go upstairs and put on Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town and play it all night.”