Photo credit Darren Quinton/Birmingham Live
I’m sure I’ve told the backstory of my getting into Springsteen many times before. I started writing it out again, but I think that was just a warm-up exercise, because I am still not sure how to hold onto Friday night’s experience. To quote another of my favourite songwriters this is the latest version, it may not be the best version, but it’s the latest version.
Those of you familiar with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and The Listening Path, will know that there are rules about Artist’s Dates. They are inexpensive solo expeditions intended to refill the well. This one broke all the rules. This trip was not solo and, yes, it cost a bit. But boy did it work! I am still buzzing and bubbling two days later. My well is overflowing, and watering some very parched ground. If what follows is incoherent, you know why. And no apologies for the fact that this might be a long read.
When I started to tell people I was doing this, quite a few of them said: that must be costing you a bit. My response was yeah, but it has to be done. And that is how it felt. It had to be done. I had an opportunity to breathe the same air as The Boss, to see him in the flesh, to be close enough to get some of that energy… Not doing it was literally unthinkable, as in the thought did not enter
my head. The only questions were when, where, how? And the prayer was simply please.
I will just say that I recognise, that when some people are struggling to heat their homes and buy food, I am extremely fortunate to spend a few hundred quid on a two-day trip to watch a gig. I get that. But I will also say that the first time I sent off for Brucie tickets back in 1984, I could not afford it – but we were doing it anyway. If I didn’t eat for a couple of weeks to pay for it, that wouldn’t matter. We’d cross that bridge later, in the meantime I trusted the bank to honour the cheque that would overdraw my account. They did – and we went to St James’ Park, Newcastle.
I’ve seen The Boss live on a number of occasions since. There is not a ‘best gig’ because every show has been different. Springsteen doesn’t reinvent himself in the way that, say, Bowie did, but every album, every tour is a development from the last and a reflection of what is happening in the
world and in his own life at the time. I might be wrong, but I feel that there are two passions that drive the man. One is the glory of being on stage, which anyone who plays in a band, however, local will recognise, being the focal point, being able to absorb that loving energy and reflect it back, that must be something. But I also think that at heart he is a writer. A story-teller.
To ask Springsteen who he would be if not who he is, is just plain daft. He was never not going to make it. But at the same time, there is an answer to that question: he would have been the writer he is – and maybe it would have come out in short stories (which is what all his songs are) or in novels – but it would have come out, and he would have been just as loved.
By now, if you didn’t know already, you will have gathered that this is total hero worship territory. The only redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood turned out not to be true.
Enough history.
Fast forward to 2022. We were still recovering from the lockdown years when it was announced that Springsteen was going out on tour. I waited and waited for confirmation of UK dates.
My attempt to get tickets was anti-climactic. Social Media was full of the usual complaints about Ticketmaster, and by contrast using AXS which is where the official Springsteen organisation email sent me, seemed so easy. I logged into the waiting room when it opened, was on to the purchasing page inside of ten minutes, job done. I got a receipt, and a message that tickets “might not” arrive until about 7 days before the concert. That ‘might’ left me uncertain as to whether I actually had tickets or not. So much so that I spent most of the following year not believing that I had them, and
that they were real, and that I was going to see Bruce live on stage again. The first time I felt secure enough to buy train tickets was when I got their ‘don’t panic’ email about a month ago.
Even then, even when I’d received the downloadable and printable actual get me into the ground tickets, I was doubting. I only really believed it when that little scan light went green and I clunked through the old turnstile into Villa Park. I actually turned back to look at my brother (a late addition to this ‘Artist Date’) and said ‘it works’. Then I texted a friend to say I’m on the pitch, it’s happening.
That little green light that brought the smile that has scarcely left my face since was roughly two and a half hours before the man would walk out on stage. Two and a half hours in which I did nothing other than soak up other people’s joy at being there. I read t-shirts, and remembered which tours I’d seen the band on, and which I didn’t recognise. I regretted letting go all my old tour-t-shirts when I moved house, even though they’d be in the loft for years, and no-way would I ever have fitted into them again. Some of them, I know, where worn and faded almost as much as some of those I watched in the stadium last night. Others were unbelievably small compared to my current proportions. All of them were worn with pride.
We chatted to people. Briefly. As they walked by, or bumped into us.
Time passed. We hit 7p.m. and I started to pay more attention to what was happening on stage, and wonder about what was going on backstage, and began to get a little impatient – as if I didn’t know this lost time would just be added on at the end.
The day before I’d been asked which song, if I’d a choice, would absolutely HAVE to be on the playlist. I came up with lots of things I really wanted to hear. It was only later that I realised the song I’d played most over the last two years, the one that had spoken most to me in my new life, the one I really want to play to someone else (and probably won’t) is Tougher Than The Rest.
Bruce chose not to sing that. I choose not to worry about it – because much of what did ring out over Villa Park was a huge chunk of the soundtrack of my life.
The other song that I battered the neighbours with, when I first moved in here, and was still trying to figure out who I am now was No Surrender. “Ready to grow young again” has become one of my more recent mantras. I tell people that I quote my Dad all the time. I probably quote Springsteen songs just as often. On Friday night I worked out that one sure way of growing young again (for me anyway) is three hours of Bruce and the E-Street Band live under a summer sky.
When you hear people ask about warm-up acts, you know they don’t get the gig. Yet. They will. The E-street Band don’t need a warm up act. They haven’t got time for a warm-up act. Nor have we. By the same token, the man doesn’t feel the need to come out and start chatting to the audience. He knows why we’re here. We’re here for the music and the stories…and all of the stories are in the music.
The noise builds as the band walk out and take up their positions, cheers get louder as the long-standing members of the band hit the stage, Max Weinberg, Nils Lofgren. Jake Clemons gets a whoop that is meant as much for the late Clarence as it is for him and he accepts it with a knowing smile, a respecting the ancestors nod, Little Stevie (who probably hates being called that) Mr Steven Van Zandt, trademark bandana firmly in place, and then The Boss…straight up to the mike,
One, Two, Three, Four…Well we busted out of class… and we’re up and running, and I’m already grinning, bopping, singing, and marvelling at the strength and energy of the guy who is going to keep this up for the next three hours.
He literally does not stop. If he’s not singing, he’s dancing with the band, conducting, reaching out to those audience members close enough to touch…and through them to the rest of us. One lucky young lady went home with a harmonica. Wow. And I’m prepared to believe that every single person in that stadium was just as pleased for her as her mum.
Part of me hopes she treasures it for the rest of her life. Another part of me hopes she takes it and learns to play it. I think I know which Bruce would prefer.
The friend who asked me what I wanted to hear, also asked me to come back with the play list…so here it is – at least what I can remember of it, and not necessarily in the right order. Like I said this isn’t a review, it’s what I’m taking away from my first Springsteen gig post-Clive, except I think he was also there. If not, I’ll go down to the beach tomorrow and tell him all about it.
No Surrender – favourite lines: we learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school… and obviously I’m ready to grow young again.
Ghosts – one I’m less familiar with from the Letter to You album that I have two copies of – one still shrink wrapped for when I’ve worn the first one out. He wrote this album because of the people he has lost. It is one of my favourites because he released it when I was still unexpectedly mourning the people I’d lost. It’s the album I flow rope to most often.
Prove it all night – a simple classic, but then..
Letter to You – it might be a new one, but the crowd have clearly taken it to heart. This is Bruce’s amazing ability to tap into the world as it is and reflect it back to us in the way we wish we’d been able to write it. For the writers and soul-workers among us it is also the reminder to just sit down and write the letter. It might just matter.
Promised Land – I too believe. I just think I might have found it, especially right at that moment.
Kitty’s Back, Night Shift, Mary’s Place, E Street Shuffle, Candy’s Room – these are not in my know-all-the-words heartland, but the music itself speaks, the energy of the crowd and the look on the man’s face keep me moving and smiling. And then…
The River I had said that I most wanted to hear Tougher Than the Rest, but when the harmonica starts intoThe River, I know this was the reminder, this took me back to the beginning, and it’s the one I sing to myself when I’m out walking alone miles from anyone. Is a dream a lie, if it don’t come true, or is it something worse…? This was the first time he’d sung it on this tour. This one was for me.
Then he does stand quietly at the microphone and talk to us. He tells us a little of his own back-story and the loss of all the members (one by one) of his first band...a gentle lead into Last Man Standing…which he sings even more slow and gentle than he does on the album. It’s a homage to the people he has lost, but one we can all claim. I lost my godmother this week, my Mam’s last surviving sister. We’re all getting older.
Except that the joy of a Springsteen concert is that the young ones are coming along and loving it too. I suspect the youngest was the one still in the belly of the woman leaning up against the barrier not far behind me. I wonder if she was actually hoping to go into labour during the show. That would be a story to live up to.
Backstreets, Because the Night, Wrecking Ball – songs that tell us that not all that much has changed since the very beginning. The Rising as full of hope as ever, and as simple as a song can be.
Badlands just had to be in there. Let the broken hearts stand as the price we gotta pay It’s hard, but we’re hardened, most of us, we understand these stories.
My Hometown
Then the lights go on. The football pitch bright-white-flood-lights. The sun has barely gone down and we’re bathed in argon glow. Normally when the house-lights go on, it’s the signal that you’ve had your lot, go home now. No. Here it is the sign that this isn’t just about what’s happening on stage, it’s the reminder that it is as much, maybe more, about what is happening off stage…what is going on in the lives and hearts of the 30 thousand who have shown up tonight…that we are as much a part of this show as anyone else.
We shift into upbeat poppy stuff, with the most misunderstood song ever: Born in the USA.
In the next forty minutes we get the run of hits that non-fans (like my brother) remember Glory Days, Born to Run, Bobby Jean, Dancing in the Dark...
Every one of them a memory. Every one of them stepping stones in my life.
Somewhere in there I’ve missed out Thunder Road. I won’t say it’s an all time favourite, I’ll just say I want it played at my funeral. It’s an early song, a self-consciously literary one, but we’re well into it before the crowd starts to be uncertain of what comes next and Bruce has to take over again.
Then came what he called the important bit: Tenth Avenue Freezeout came with a backscreen tribute to Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, missed by more than just the boys in the band.
Eventually the lights go out, and the band leave the stage, to heart-felt acclamation. Bruce walks back on, in the dark, with a harmonica stand round is neck, and simultaneously returns to his roots as a folk singer AND steps into his 'now' as a man in his seventies who has lost too many people…and sends us off with a thoughtful rendition of I’ll See You in My Dreams. If it never ceases to surprise me how much noise 30,000 people can make, it also astonishes me how quiet and respectful they can be.
We all have people that we will see in our dreams…and we all want to believe that death is not the end.
They say you should always leave them wanting more, it takes something special to leave them feeling replete.
Thanks, Boss.
