August 22, 1978—Less than a week before going off to Columbia University for freshman disorientation, I finally saw the musical hero of my high school years. On that Tuesday, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played the second concert in a three-night engagement at Madison Square Garden. His first headline engagement at the Garden, the gig came in the middle of what many fans of “The Boss” still revere as the pivotal tour of his storied career.
How can I make that claim, given the successive triumphs he’s had live over the years? It wasn’t just fan nostalgia for their (and my) bygone youth—it was the singer’s need to reconnect with his true believers following a year-long lawsuit, even to expand that base, that was unique in the annals of Brucedom:
* He was trying to prove that he wasn’t just the product of record company hype as the “New Dylan,” that he’d be around for longer than the Bay City Rollers or even Peter Frampton, two other much-hyped musicians of the mid-‘70s;
* He was moving back toward larger arenas—a move he had shunned for three years under his former manager; and
* He was relaunching his career after an extraordinarily bitter breakup and lawsuit with his original manager and producer, Mike Appel.
As I look online at a ticket stub for that event, showing that orchestra seats were just $9, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. Prices couldn’t have been that low then!
How can I make that claim, given the successive triumphs he’s had live over the years? It wasn’t just fan nostalgia for their (and my) bygone youth—it was the singer’s need to reconnect with his true believers following a year-long lawsuit, even to expand that base, that was unique in the annals of Brucedom:
* He was trying to prove that he wasn’t just the product of record company hype as the “New Dylan,” that he’d be around for longer than the Bay City Rollers or even Peter Frampton, two other much-hyped musicians of the mid-‘70s;
* He was moving back toward larger arenas—a move he had shunned for three years under his former manager; and
* He was relaunching his career after an extraordinarily bitter breakup and lawsuit with his original manager and producer, Mike Appel.
As I look online at a ticket stub for that event, showing that orchestra seats were just $9, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. Prices couldn’t have been that low then!
Maybe I don’t remember it because I was caught up in value—the money’s worth that Springsteen delivered that memorable night. He was a brother in spirit to Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio, who, when asked why he always played with abandon on the field, replied: “Because there might be a kid out there who’s never seen me play before.”
After waiting in our upper-tier seats for a half hour, my older brother and I leaped to our feet as the E Street Band came onstage around 8:30 pm. With the roar of the crowd cascading around them, their short, wiry leader strode to the microphone and asked, “Have you heard the news?” A pause, then more insistently: “Have you heard the news?” Suddenly, he and the band launched into their all-stops-out cover version of Elvis Presley’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight.”
I was acclimating myself to the sonic assault when The Boss upped the ante on what this song would mean for me. “I want you to bring along my rockin' shoes,/'Cause tonight I'm gonna rock away all my blues,” he promised. For the next four amazing hours, my fears—my blues—would be rocked away, too, in what Springsteen once called “the rush moment you live for.” Like everyone else in that capacity crowd, I was wrapped up in that “rush moment” with him.
That night, I understood, because I was living it, why the legend of Bruce was so tied up overwhelmingly with his live performances. A record’s grooves were a wholly inadequate vessel for containing his primal energy.
As exhilarating as “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was, nothing could prepare me for “Badlands,” not even two months of daily listening to the album it anchored, Darkness on the Edge of Town. “Badlands” wasn’t a song, it was an anthem, a summons to reject the “in-betweens,” proof positive that “it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” And, finally loosened from the Appel legal tar baby, he was ready to reclaim the title he’d set down unwillingly for what seemed an eternity—“a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.” Elvis was dead; long live The Boss!
In that 22-song set, 13 tunes lasted more than five minutes, calling on reserves that no other musician in my memory has ever surpassed. My friend Brian remarked, two years later, after seeing him in another concert with me: “The man’s got to be on speed.”
I prefer another explanation. “The ocean was something then,” Burt Lancaster said in the film Atlantic City—and so was Springsteen, likewise a force of nature, unstoppable.
It was the right moment for him, and for us. Nearly two decades later, he remembered in an interview that those four-hour marathons-cum-rock ‘n’ roll revival shows might have lasted so long because they filled an emptiness in his life—one that, since then, had been eliminated by second wife (and backup singer) Patti Scialfa and their children. Not surprisingly, given that he wanted to be with his kids (and sure, advancing age), he cut back to only about 2 1/2 hours when I saw him in the Meadowlands in the '92 tour in support of Human Touch and Lucky Town, No matter—he gave it his all years before, and we were all young enough to go to the wee small hours of the morning, too.
I could go on and on about the way that Springsteen reworked songs everyone thought they knew by heart, such as “She’s the One”; of the unexpected pleasures of an entirely new instrumental, the giddily exuberant “Paradise by the C”; of the interplay with The Big Man, Clarence Clemons; even of how, in the final song, “Quarter to Three,” he snatched a young woman from the audience, carried her to the microphone, and shouted to the delighted crowd, “This is my little sister!” (That would be Pamela, who later appeared in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and dated its star, Sean Penn.)
But let’s just say this: Five years after the heyday of Clyde, Willis, Dollar Bill and Dave D, the Garden had found another champion—and one that wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon. My brother had to practically carry me out of the Garden, but at least I was as delirious as much as exhausted.
Several years ago, a friend of mine told me about one day when she was working at a video store down by the Jersey Shore. A coworker had given her an unusually heavy number of videos to file away. “You did it again!” my friend told the co-worker. “Why do you always do this to me?”
My friend went on and on for a minute in this fashion, while the co-worker motioned for her to stop, even motioning as if to indicate that there was something behind her she might want to be aware of. “What?” my friend asked, in exasperation. “What???”
At this, she finally turned around, only to encounter The Boss, having taken in every word of her tirade. My friend practically reeled at the sight of him.
“I always like it when someone earns what they work hard for,” the rock ‘n’ roll bard of the common man said at last, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
The Boss certainly worked hard on August 22, 1978. I’m convinced that that night, and the other two, before and after, changed his life. It did mine.
After waiting in our upper-tier seats for a half hour, my older brother and I leaped to our feet as the E Street Band came onstage around 8:30 pm. With the roar of the crowd cascading around them, their short, wiry leader strode to the microphone and asked, “Have you heard the news?” A pause, then more insistently: “Have you heard the news?” Suddenly, he and the band launched into their all-stops-out cover version of Elvis Presley’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight.”
I was acclimating myself to the sonic assault when The Boss upped the ante on what this song would mean for me. “I want you to bring along my rockin' shoes,/'Cause tonight I'm gonna rock away all my blues,” he promised. For the next four amazing hours, my fears—my blues—would be rocked away, too, in what Springsteen once called “the rush moment you live for.” Like everyone else in that capacity crowd, I was wrapped up in that “rush moment” with him.
That night, I understood, because I was living it, why the legend of Bruce was so tied up overwhelmingly with his live performances. A record’s grooves were a wholly inadequate vessel for containing his primal energy.
As exhilarating as “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was, nothing could prepare me for “Badlands,” not even two months of daily listening to the album it anchored, Darkness on the Edge of Town. “Badlands” wasn’t a song, it was an anthem, a summons to reject the “in-betweens,” proof positive that “it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” And, finally loosened from the Appel legal tar baby, he was ready to reclaim the title he’d set down unwillingly for what seemed an eternity—“a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.” Elvis was dead; long live The Boss!
In that 22-song set, 13 tunes lasted more than five minutes, calling on reserves that no other musician in my memory has ever surpassed. My friend Brian remarked, two years later, after seeing him in another concert with me: “The man’s got to be on speed.”
I prefer another explanation. “The ocean was something then,” Burt Lancaster said in the film Atlantic City—and so was Springsteen, likewise a force of nature, unstoppable.
It was the right moment for him, and for us. Nearly two decades later, he remembered in an interview that those four-hour marathons-cum-rock ‘n’ roll revival shows might have lasted so long because they filled an emptiness in his life—one that, since then, had been eliminated by second wife (and backup singer) Patti Scialfa and their children. Not surprisingly, given that he wanted to be with his kids (and sure, advancing age), he cut back to only about 2 1/2 hours when I saw him in the Meadowlands in the '92 tour in support of Human Touch and Lucky Town, No matter—he gave it his all years before, and we were all young enough to go to the wee small hours of the morning, too.
I could go on and on about the way that Springsteen reworked songs everyone thought they knew by heart, such as “She’s the One”; of the unexpected pleasures of an entirely new instrumental, the giddily exuberant “Paradise by the C”; of the interplay with The Big Man, Clarence Clemons; even of how, in the final song, “Quarter to Three,” he snatched a young woman from the audience, carried her to the microphone, and shouted to the delighted crowd, “This is my little sister!” (That would be Pamela, who later appeared in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and dated its star, Sean Penn.)
But let’s just say this: Five years after the heyday of Clyde, Willis, Dollar Bill and Dave D, the Garden had found another champion—and one that wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon. My brother had to practically carry me out of the Garden, but at least I was as delirious as much as exhausted.
Several years ago, a friend of mine told me about one day when she was working at a video store down by the Jersey Shore. A coworker had given her an unusually heavy number of videos to file away. “You did it again!” my friend told the co-worker. “Why do you always do this to me?”
My friend went on and on for a minute in this fashion, while the co-worker motioned for her to stop, even motioning as if to indicate that there was something behind her she might want to be aware of. “What?” my friend asked, in exasperation. “What???”
At this, she finally turned around, only to encounter The Boss, having taken in every word of her tirade. My friend practically reeled at the sight of him.
“I always like it when someone earns what they work hard for,” the rock ‘n’ roll bard of the common man said at last, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
The Boss certainly worked hard on August 22, 1978. I’m convinced that that night, and the other two, before and after, changed his life. It did mine.
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