“So, Al, is he your favorite singer?”
I hesitated. Stammered, really. “Uh, uh, th-that’s kinda…I mean, there so many different types of music, you know.”
Cheryl had no hesitation. “Yeah, he is.”
We’d just picked up Michael and Julana, at their Commencement Bay apartment by Stadium High. A few months ago, we’d said good-bye to them, as they left for Spain. Their daughter had married a Spaniard, and moved across the ocean permanently. Then Michael got sick, really scary, and they decided, time’s short, let’s retire, and be ex-pats. They were back in town for some more tests, a short visit, before returning to Almonte, their little village by the sea.
Bruce Springsteen, our putative favorite singer, had announced only six weeks ago he’d be coming to Seattle with his “River” tour. When I bought the tickets, our rock-star daughter Annie really wanted to go, so I got four. Then, this week, her band got called to Atlanta to do a guest appearance video shoot for some new Adult Swim show, so she’d miss the concert. Somehow, it felt right to give the tickets to Michael and Julana, especially after all they’ve been through the past year. That they’d never seen Bruce before was certainly a bonus.
“What do you like about him?” Michael asked. “You’ve seen him before?”
“Three times; four times, maybe, I think. Once was when he was here in Key Arena, I think in 1980, when he was touring behind this album he’s doing in these shows, when it first came out.”
“I was down in Shiprock, or something, I think, and you had to go by yourself, with Sylvia.”
This brought back the flood of memories, and I launched into a condensed version of our Bruce Origin Story.
“You know, when I first heard ‘Born to Run’ on the radio, it had the same effect on me as when I’d heard ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ten years earlier. Both of those songs just sounded so big, and different. Each was the first thing I ever heard them play. The Beatles, in February 1964, those first three chords, and Ringo slapping the cymbals all the way through. Then, “Born to Run’, it’s sound was so rich and full. Starts smack with a pile of drums, pounding piano, and the organ and guitar playing the intro melody together. Anyway, that got to me, and I went out right away and bought that record.”
“I heard he was being called the New Dylan. Did you think that was true, that he was another Dylan?”
“Well, I think the reason for that is because he was discovered by John Hammond, the guy from Columbia Records who had first recorded Dylan. But they came from different places. They both had poets’ souls, both kind of lower middle working class guys, but Dylan emerged as a folk singer, someone who felt like commenting on the iniquities in the world around him, a Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger kind of guy. Bruce may tell stories about people like that, but he’s just as concerned with the good times they have as with the hardships they face, in love and in life. Especially in that Born to Run album, where it’s all about starting off in life, finding a partner, and getting on with it. Very life-affirming.
“Anyway, the first time we saw him … today, just as I was sitting on the stairs putting on my shoes, waiting for Cheryl to come down so we could leave, I remembered, “Tickets!” I’d left them up on my desk, and had to go back up to get them. Well, when we first saw him, it was the first time he’d come out to the West Coast. He was getting kind of big back East, but out here, no one had ever seen him or heard of him, despite the fact that his parents were living in San Diego. And then he was on the cover of both ‘Time’ and ‘Newsweek’ in the same week. He just exploded. LA has always been the place that likes to be ahead of the curve, creating the trends, in entertainment, vying with Manhattan over who’s the hippest.
“So all of a sudden Bruce is the Next Big Thing, and has this West Coast tour all set up. But the only place you could see him in LA was some small Sunset Strip club, like the Whiskey and the Troubadour. I think it was the Roxy, THE place back then. It held maybe 350 people, and they only way you got into see him was if you were a music industry heavy. So we were all shut out of his legendary live show.”
“But he was playing at Robertson Gymnasium, at my alma mater, UCSB, 2 hours up Pacific Coast Highway,” Cheryl piped up.
“Right, So we somehow got tickets for that show, and left Venice about three hours before it was supposed to start. We got maybe 20 minutes out the door, long enough to get just past Santa Monica, when Cheryl asked, ‘Do you have the tickets?’ Ooops – forgot ‘em. So we raced back home, got the tix, and drove all the way up the coast. Luckily, Cheryl knew where to go, and we got there before the start.
“But there weren’t any seats left. It was just a small place, really like a high school gym, Folding chairs laid out on the basketball floor, and about 3 or 4 no-back bench rows in this little balcony cantilevered out over the court. We went up there, but there was no room – people were even sitting with their legs dangling out over the edge. We went back downstairs, and the only place we could find was on the wooden platform near the back where the sound guys were set up. We plunked down there, about 60 feet from the stage.
“Suddenly, the place got all hushed, and dark. A harmonica starts playing the intro to ‘Thunder Road’. A spot shines onto Bruce, his back turned to the audience, his Fender slung behind him. He sings the song mostly with just him and the piano player – none of the full band power he’d used on the album. That gave me goose bumps, and I guess I was hooked from the very start.”
“Wow, sounds like it.”
This show we were going to seemed like a chore, at least from where I sat looking forward to it. He was going to play all the songs from “The River”, start to finish, not my favorite album of his. It’s just too long – a double album, and kind of uneven. Although he seemed to think it had a thematic coherence.
After an intro song, Meet Me In The City, he gave a mini-lecture about how The River came at a time when he was leaving young man things behind, and starting out with what he saw as adult life. He wanted the songs to reflect the variety of emotions and experiences which maturing American males might be facing at that time: going out dancing, looking for love, finding it and settling down, settling for a life less than one had dreamed for when young, leaving home and parents behind, and having trouble in a mature relationship.
I just couldn’t get engaged by the start of that album. But by the time he gets to ‘Independence Day’, about how hard it was for him to have any real connection to his father, I started to get into it. That’s followed by Hungry Heart, maybe the first song he wrote explicitly to be a top 40 hit. He started strutting to the edge of the stage, dropped down into an aisle between the stands and the floor, and proceeded to spend the rest of the song touching hands with the crowd, walking through it on a small platform built over the floor crowd, and eventually diving in, to surf on their upraised hands back up to the stage. A magic moment for many, I’m sure.
By the time he got to The River, which starts the second vinyl 12”, I was ready to get back into his magic. The songs got a little smoother, a little quieter, a little more heart felt. The final winding down includes Fade Away (a couple finds themselves losing the love they shared in their youth), Stolen Car (a metaphor for marriage-ending adultery), The Price You Pay (about getting stuck in a less than satisfying life path), Drive All Night, and Wreck on the Highway. The last two are a poignant coupling: in the first, the singer is looking forward to re-uniting with his love, then the closing song dramatizes a single-car crash, with a “girl-friend or a young wife” answering a “State Trooper knocking in the dead of the night, saying your baby died in a wreck on the highway.” Powerful stuff, superior to any recorded version.
Bruce took a pause of maybe 30 seconds to sip some water, and jumped out into the audience again. He grabbed signs folks were holding up, each with a song title. He came back with six or so, flipped through them, showed one to the band and a cameraman, and launched into “I’m Goin’ Down”. The crowd ignored the downbeat lyrics, preferring to bounce and generally dance at their seats. Then, “Badlands! You Gotta Live It Everyday.” As that song slammed back off the rafters, with Bruce shouting every line, I couldn’t help thinking about, “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and the king won’t stop till he rules everything.” Sound like anybody in the news today?
His final set of eight songs finished with Thunder Road. Then, without leaving the stage, he began his “encores”. Local Hero Eddie Vedder ran out for a duet. Obligatory versions of Born to Run and Dancing in the Dark were next, followed by Bruce’s long-time show ending standards, Rosalita and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (for the band introductions), ending with the classic rock finale, the Isley Bros’ Shout.
On the way back home, I reflected on that Origin Story.
“Uh, there’s one other thing I forgot to tell you guys. When I got that first record, I was surprised when Cheryl went out and brought home Bruce’s first two records pronouncing her love for the guy. So I figured, Hey, maybe there’s something here.”
I’d come to this concert thinking that it was a chance for me to say “Thank You” to Bruce for 42 years (and counting) of bringing fun and magic and timeless music into our lives. During the Thunder Road finale, I pulled Cheryl close, and we swayed back and forth together. Swirling in my head was the thought that, when he first wrote this in 1973, he was looking to find someone to just take out for the night. He (the Bruce in the song) wasn’t looking any farther ahead than Mary’s front porch, or a good time on the beach that night. He’s mainly full of himself. He certainly didn’t have a life together in mind – the original lyrics end with “I’m pulling out of here to win”.
But somewhere along the way, the song has morphed into looking forward towards a life together, a recognition that can only come by looking back at a life actually lived. He now sings, “We’re pulling out of here to win.” And that’s the best you can hope for, I suspect, that the girl you meet on the beach one night will leave those other losers behind, head off with you on an unknown adventure, and still be around, enjoying the ride, four decades on and counting.
“Were you tearing up, during Thunder Road?” Cheryl asked as we were back home, at 1 AM after the four hour show.
“Yeah”, I admitted. “I’m still glad thats our song. I’m glad you’ve come all this way with me.”
Bruce Springsteen: 41 Years on Thunder Road from Phil Whitehead on Vimeo.