The exhibit is arranged chronologically. It leads you in gently, it’s all about telling the story and giving context. It begins with the Castiles, and Bruce’s early history. Remember those photos in the Kennedy Center tribute, the ones you had never seen before? Well, when HOF VP Jim Henke went out to interview Bruce for the exhibit, as he was leaving, Bruce handed him a CD. What was on it? Those photographs, now printed out and in a case where you can sit and stare at them for a good 20 minutes.

On the left is a surfboard, one of Bruce’s old surfboards, back when they lived in the surfboard factory. Pieces of Asbury are here, too, like a brass ring from the carousel at the Palace. There’s an address book with Clarence’s phone number in it, and on the opposite page are lyrics. “Senorita Spanish rose, close her eyes and blows her nose, love is just a fire hose.” (I swear I am not making this up.)

You will find yourself reciting the history in your head as you walk through the exhibit, as you see the things you have only seen in books before (like the Castiles’ first business card). Marion Vineyard’s legendary photo album is there, open to photos from a party celebrating Bruce and George Theiss’ 19th birthday. The haircut and the Elvis shades have got to be seen to be believed.

There is a section for Child and the Bruce Springsteen Band and Steel Mill, posters and fliers and photographs. My favorite is a poster for “Bruce Springsteen And His Band Of Elves,” appearing at a Rutgers University Christmas concert.

Then you come to the exhibit for the first record, and THE Columbia sessions tape box is there, and that’s when you start running into the pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of handwritten lyrics. I am not lying when I tell you that I read every single word of every single page. It took us hours, and other people walking through the exhibit thought we were absolutely insane. If you don’t need to do that, it will take you a lot less time to go through the exhibit. And even if you don’t care, I would urge you to pick one or two songs, just a couple, and stand there and read them. Get to know the handwriting, the loopy T’s. He always used spiral notebooks and he always used blue ballpoint pen. I want to read the early versions, see what lines made it, see what he kept, what he reused later. In “Growin’ Up,” our jukebox graduate was a sweet shop graduate in the first version. Plus, random lyrics from “Blinded” show up in the middle.

It’s not like this was news to me and it’s obvious even on “Tracks” that he does this. He finds a line he likes and he’ll keep using it until it fits. But it’s different to just hear finished product than seeing the process that got him to the finished product.

Alongside the early records, up until Born To Run, he also had lists of album title concepts. These are well worth reading, because many of them are very, very, very bad. For Wild & Innocent, for example, he was also considering “Circle of Lions,” “Hungry & Hunted,” “From The Churches To The Jails”. For BTR, there were pages of alternate titles as well as a tracklist that captured the kind of feeling he wanted on each song –

There’s also a prose description of a cover concept: “Flash – a street in day, fantasy on a golf bench in back of Madam Marie’s with big moon over the ocean & clarence in background”. (If you remember, there used to be a minigolf park behind Madam Marie’s. If you don’t, now you know.)

There are cases filled with reviews and photographs and fliers, all carefully preserved in scrapbooks. Some of this is him but most of it is Adele, you will definitively prove it is Adele when you find a letter written to her from Robert Hilburn, apologizing for not sending a copy of his review to her sooner. There are tshirts and jackets and backstage passes. There is one of Clarence’s saxophones, THE saxophone, the one he used on “Jungleland”. One of Danny’s accordions is there.

The Wild & Innocent lyrics went from one extreme to the other. My notes say “Bruce killed a lot of women in early lyric versions”. Scenes that were more violent in the first draft got way, way toned down in, say, the final version of “incident”. There’s a line I noted “at night we stalk the jungle in heat with murder in our ears”. (Yeah, sometimes the lyrics themselves are very, very bad, too.)

There are women’s phone numbers written in the margins in just about every third page. I liked that. I wondered who they were.

The Born To Run jacket is there. It is smaller than you think it will be, it has shrunk, it was likely tortured to death before it ended up with whichever girlfriend finally kept it. I noted this in my blog for the Hall of Fame’s website, but it bears repeating: one minute I’m reading the lyrics about “silver star studs on my duds” and the next minute I’m standing in front of the jacket, THE JACKET, which has silver star studs on the shoulders. (Which, frankly, must have been a pain in the ass and I’m shocked they’re still there, because if you carry anything on your shoulders they are eventually going to get caught in a guitar strap.)

You head up to the second floor now, up a spiral staircase with the lyrics to “Thunder Road” running up the walls as you ascend. When you get to the top, there it is: the Esquire straight ahead of you, with a BITUSA poster right above it. You probably won’t even notice the poster, but it’s there to give context to everyone else who don’t really know or understand what that guitar is. You will want to spend some time with the Esquire up close, and your observations will be different than mine, you will see different things, pay attention to different things. The glue, the wear, the frets just plain worn away. It is good that it is there where we can all see it.

(I can also tell you that the rumored stories about Kevin escorting the guitar there are true. I can tell you that he refused to give the guitar to anyone except Jim Henke, and when he did, he said, “I can’t believe he’s giving you this.”)

Upstairs you have Darkness and The River and BITUSA and Tunnel lyrics to contend with. You also have more guitars and more artifacts. The exact outfit he wore on the BITUSA cover. No seriously, the exact outfit. And looking at the jeans up close, you realize that there was absolutely zero accident that he chose those jeans, and they weren’t the only ones he had, and the holes and the wear and the wash were all carefully considered, and frankly, if my ass was going to be memorialized on a record cover, I would do the exact same thing.

(I know. I spent too much time thinking about this stuff.)

The outfit he wore on the Human Touch cover, down to that — necklace. (I did not think that era was his best look.) I hope you like “Plugged” because it’s running in a loop up here, and you will be there at least long enough to hear it once, probably once and a half. (I heard it FIVE TIMES before I stopped counting). The ticket taker’s booth from Tunnel. The flannel shirt from The River cover. The Kennedy Center medal, some Grammys, his Oscar. I will not tell you everything that is there because there still need to be some surprises. Do go around the corner towards the elevator, because there you will find a handful of Bruce’s favorite signs from the last tour (apparently he has boxes and boxes of them), along with a photo of Terry in costume and behind the ticketbooth you just saw in the other room.

The lyrics upstairs are different and in some ways less interesting. The older drafts of the later albums are more complete, except for “Walk Like A Man” (please make sure you stop to read that one through, as the early draft was very revealing). The “Streets of Fire” early draft bears no resemblance to the finished product. The Darkness titles were very firmly set, there are no lists of grandiose concepts (or they might not be on exhibit, but I’d like to think that the curators wouldn’t let us down).

The biggest surprise for me was the original “Streets of Fire” draft. In the draft on exhibit, the setting is Vietnam: “With a M16 and face in the mud, there’s a soft rain falling in the jungle.” I could be wrong about this, but this would seem to be the first time he wrote about Vietnam directly, in the first person (Lost In the Flood written as an observer). So if you only pick one lyric to read in the whole place, make it this one.

And then there is the table. It’s the table Bruce has done 90% of his writing on. It’s wooden, old like a guitar. It’s going to absorb vibrations. It gets warm and cold – it wears, just like the Esquire. They have it in a huge plexiglass cube with artifacts on the table – lyrics, setlists, album sequencing (there’s a list with three alternate Darkness sequences). There’s an (overdue) electric bill for the Long Branch house, an insurance receipt for one of his cars. I could have sat next to that table for hours, and definitely did sit there for at least half an hour, going through my notes from the first floor of the exhibit, before I moved on. People that worked with Bruce, as they’ve walked through the exhibit, have seen the table and said, “Yep, that’s just what it usually looks like.” Bruce made a joke about all the songs that were in that table. (Which makes me say, GIVE IT BACK RIGHT NOW.)

Cars: there are two cars on display right now, the first car he ever bought, which is in the lobby and you can take pictures of it, and the car he bought with his Born to Run earnings, which you’ve seen in some of the Lynn Goldsmith pictures, in the regular exhibit hall downstairs. It’s not far from Elvis’ car. I like that.

I wish I had taken more notes. I wish I had broken it up into two days, because there is just so much to appreciate. I think about going back. I wonder what Bruce would have thought if he had seen us standing there, debating the choice of certain words or why some lines were left out (although I kind of understand why the main character in Hungry Heart didn’t go out for a magazine in the final version). I am sure he would have thought we were insane too, just like the daytrippers and Girl Scout leaders herding their charges through as we stood there with our noses pressed to the plexiglass. But, after all, that is why that stuff is there and is what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is for.

It’s worth checking out the web page for the exhibit on the RRHOF website as it’s got a Flickr slideshow. Of course, no photographs are permitted anywhere in the HOF except the lobby. But photographs wouldn’t do it justice anyway.

There’s also a news story from me on Backstreets.com, but you’ll have to scroll down to the news from 1/26.

Full posts on the Springsteen exhibit and the rest of the hall in general will be up on the weekend.

I’ll be featured on the New Year’s Day episode. Considering that Dave and I argued so much he needed to edit afterwards, it should be a good one…

I could not love Bruce Springsteen more than I do at this very moment.

an actual duel

I am still trying to find the words to talk about Buffalo. I walked out of the venue Sunday night feeling drained yet exhilarated. I wasn’t bouncing off the walls, dying to start processing and analyzing and taking the show apart, the game of connect the dots, the simple act of keeping the feeling of the show alive by talking about it. It was a quiet, solemn walk to the parking lot, a complete contrast to the emotional explosion that happened inside the HSBC Arena. Two days later, I am wistful and nostalgic and ruminative. I am also over-sensitive, exhausted and emotional. Greetings played on the iPod on the way to work has me unexpectedly crying down 7th Avenue.

I wouldn’t have been able to tell you in advance that I was going to get teary-eyed during the album performance – The River, sure, Wild & Innocent and “Serenade,” guaranteed. But Greetings? Sure, I loved Greetings, and spent hours playing the record with my head pressed up against my speakers, trying to get all the lyrics to “Blinded” & “Bus Stop”. But “Growin’ Up” began and the waterworks were non-stop, absolutely non-stop. Maybe it was a metaphor for the whole tour. Maybe it was a metaphor for my entire life. Maybe I was just tired. I mean, it was the fifth song of the show and I’m going to start crying NOW? Seriously? I am not someone who is buying all this doom-and-gloom, end-of-E-Street talk. But oh yes, I am standing there, crying harder and harder and harder as the song goes on. Too many lines I can quote you that should be tattooed around my wrist, not to mention my freaking domain name (which, to a geek, is in effect a virtual tattoo).

And then the second verse ended, and Roy keeps playing the refrain, and it suddenly dawns on me – OH GOD PLEASE DO IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE is what actually came out of my mouth at that moment – and in the darkness, spotlight on him, just like you remember or you fantasized about – he’s going to start telling a story, for the first time in a very long time.

And here is the story about the Student Prince, and the broken door, the legend we all know. And he’s telling it like it’s a story we all already know by heart, with enough detail so that if you haven’t heard it before, it still makes sense. And he talks about the rain and the wind and the door flying down the street, and the moment of fate that changed everybody’s life. I say ‘everybody’ and I mean it, because if you are reading this your life has been changed by this music on some level.

Bruce says, “I saw this shadow, and I thought to myself… ‘King Curtis? Nah… Junior Walker? Nah…’ He walked up to the stage and said–”
Clarence: “I wanna play with you.”
Bruce: “What could I say? I said ‘sure’.”
Clarence plays a riff on the sax.
“At the end of the night, we just looked at each other…”
The two of them nod knowingly at each other. And then, as though they had rehearsed it a thousand times, they oh so casually strike the pose from the cover of Born To Run.

[I think about how he had to plan this in advance, and think about what it was like when Bruce walked into Clarence's dressing room and said, "Hey, C, how about we do a little shtick during 'Growing Up,' just like the old days," and wonder if they rehearsed it a couple of times, and if they kept a straight face while they were rehearsing it...]

If it is possible to laugh hysterically and cry hysterically in absolutely equal amounts at the same time, that is what I was doing. Exactly. Completely. And standing there saying, I can’t believe they just did that, the biggest inside joke in front of 20k people, some of whom got it and some of whom didn’t and others who just thought that Bruce and Clarence were being cool and then others like the two guys in the row in front of us, two people over, who, judging by the expressions on their face the entire night, probably stood there thinking that this was the hokiest thing they had ever seen in their entire lives. It is priceless. It is memorable. It is a moment affirming my membership in the clan. I cannot believe that just happened.

It’s only the fifth song of the night.

I should back up and mention that the place was going absolutely apeshit from the first note of “Wrecking Ball”. They were standing up on every level, even at the back, almost every person, almost every seat. This was not a show for which ‘sell out’ was defined creatively, this show was SOLD OUT. Every seat was full and there were signs on every single level. “Hungry Heart” almost blew the roof off the venue. People kept their mouths shut (or just went to get a beer) during the quiet songs far more than they did at MSG. People of Buffalo, I am grateful to you for this.

“Lost In The Flood” was utterly stunning, returning to its original arrangement. People say, “Oh, ‘Lost In The Flood,’ he never plays it,” but he has played it and even me who doesn’t go to that many shows has seen it like four times. Even with that, let me tell you that it defined epic, that the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. People knew this song, people knew every fucking word. I suppose if I was rational I could analyze this song as just more over-the-top, playing with the rhyming dictionary excess from the early days of his career. It is a song I never ever thought I would hear. It was thunder and lightning and the charge of the fucking light brigade raining down upon the stage Sunday night.

“The Angel” surprised us all. The rearrangement was compelling and the performance was completely unexpected, just Bruce and Roy, and it worked. People talked but for an arena, this was quiet. This was not Madison Square Garden during “Wild Billy” or “Stolen Car”. (Again, thank you Buffalo.) I would like to see this song rerecorded. (And if you’re wondering about “Mary, Queen of Arkansas,” it had the misfortune of course to come after “Growin’ Up” and I was largely recovering, but I will tell you that it did not get any better. It is still a terrible, terrible song.) “Spirit” into “Saint” was so much fun it should have been illegal. It was the E Street Band that most of us never ever got to see, those two songs in a row. Bruce running behind the stage for “Spirit,” trying to get everyone in the crowd into it, and then just sliding into the performance of “Saint,” the words rolling off his tongue. (Yes, I know about the teleprompter; he still has to deliver the performance.)

There was no acknowledgment of the album upon its completion, just Bruce putting on an acoustic guitar and going into (you guessed it) “Sunny Day”. “Sunny Day” is when I sit down. It is when I take a drink. It is when I run for the bathroom. It is when I catch up on the notes I didn’t want to take during the previous 10 songs. Honestly, I needed the break right about then. It was unexpectedly overwhelming. If I talk about the quality of the performance, I don’t want to make it sound like I think the E Street Band phone it in on a regular basis – but there are nights and then there are nights. Tonight was clearly going to be one of the latter. Before you try to assert that this was guaranteed, I will point to the other last-night-of-tour shows that were somewhat subdued or not all that.

“Promised Land” comes back, and then, there is Kevin walking out with a birthday cake and we are singing Happy Birthday to Miami Sugar Little Steven Van Zandt. We had hoped for “I Don’t Want To Go Home” and there was a big sign behind the stage for “Having A Party,” but instead, we got “Restless Nights,” which was ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AWESOME and makes you want to bang your head against the wall that they never tried to do this before. (Bruce even said as much when it was done.) “Surprise, Surprise” was next and, well, marked another song off of my ‘never heard’ list.

“Green Onions” cued the signs, and OMFG DID EVERYONE IN THE FUCKING VENUE BRING A SIGN? No seriously. Some of the signs were thoughtful, some were silly, some were just plain stupid (although the TURN ON YOUR LOVELIGHT guy was nowhere to be seen). We yell at him to take certain signs as though he can a) hear us or b) give a damn about what we wanted him to take. We have done this all tour, we see no reason to stop doing it now. He takes signs, he yells down the stairs for someone to start getting lyrics on the prompter. Him and Stevie start kicking through the signs and discussing what they’re going to play.

I was bitching all weekend that I didn’t want to get “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. Before you call me a Grinch, I just don’t see what the hell is so special about “Santa”. I am not only old enough to remember when the single first came out, I sat next to the radio for hours with my tape recorder just so I could get a copy of it for my very own. But that was when it was a RARITY. It stopped being a rarity years ago, and I was viewing it as a waste of a song on the last night of the tour when there were so many other possibilities. And that there were so many other excellent Christmas songs that Bruce could play instead of freaking “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”

Like, say, “Merry Christmas Baby.”

My current fantasy for the next two years while E Street is on hiatus is this: The Bruce Springsteen Rhythm and Blues Revue. Sam Moore, Darlene Love, Gary US Bonds, some other people I haven’t thought of yet, a horn section, Roy, Charlie, and I haven’t figured out the rest of the band yet, but there’s gotta be a killer guitar player so that Bruce can just concentrate on singing and shaking his ass. This is my fantasy because, clearly, he has so much fun singing those songs and when he gets to be Jackie or Otis or the second coming of Sam and Dave, he is on his best behavior, he is on his A game. Exhibit A, Higher and Higher; Exhibit B, “Merry Christmas Baby.” It was like those 2003 Christmas shows when he had that jacket on and was working the stage like Jackie Wilson during “So Young And In Love”.

[Fantasy #2 is Bruce going out with Curtis and Cindy and a few more vocalists to form a small gospel choir for a mostly acapella tour of gospel classics. Yes, I have a rich fantasy life.]

Stevie is gathering signs. Someone had an enormous light-up Santa hat and got it down to the stage. Someone else had a folk art-y portrait of what was probably supposed to be Bruce and Santa Claus for “Santa”. He is collecting these from the crowd and positioning them around the stage. “Merry Christmas Baby” starts to end and Bruce signals for it to go around one more chorus. He calls out for more jingle bells; Soozie and Clarence oblige. He calls for it again, which results in Roy playing “Jingle Bells.”

And then they go into “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and it was the best goddamn version ever. I am singing along like it is my most favorite-est song in the ENTIRE WORLD. The entire venue is singing along at the top of their lungs. It was like the biggest Springsteen party in the world at that moment, one big red balloon of holiday cheer floating over Buffalo.

Bruce picks up another sign. It shows up on the camera and I grab the boyfriend’s arm so hard I am afraid I am going to hurt him.
“No… he’s NOT going to do that.”
“Oh, my god.”
“No, he is just fucking with us. He is NOT going to play it.”

Bruce talks about these guys who follow him around – “they’ve GOTTA be Italian” and here is a sign – from ‘Ciccio & Ciccio’ – for

wait

HANG UP MY ROCK AND ROLL SHOES

Yeah, he’s just fucking with us. No WAY that gets played.

There is some fucking around onstage, while they are clearly finding the lyrics and putting them on the prompter – we can see this because we are sidestage in our usual favorite view of right behind Roy, and one of the techs has a prompter in his equipment case, and there are no lyrics there for quite a while – and then they come up and Garry is trying to tell Bruce what to play (because if Garry W. Tallent is in your band and you want to play a random Atlantic Records single fro the 50′s, you should be asking HIM the chords) and people are flashing hand signals for the key like they’re in some kind of E Street gang and I still think he is not going to do it, no way, not on this planet, not in this lifetime, he’s going to find a way to get out of it and play something else.

Um, no. He is actually going to play it.

THISISNOTHAPPENINGTHISISNOTHAPPENING

I’m not even sure how I know this song as well as I do; it has nothing to do with Bruce – by the time I owned a boot with this song on it, it was something I knew – someone else must have covered it that I’ve forgotten about. But it’s not anything I ever thought I’d hear. I’m not one of those people who thinks that it’s a good idea to show up with a sign for a song that Bruce has either never played or played three times and expect that he’s going to say, “Wow, gee, I feel like playing [insert name of obscure demo with title of questionable accuracy] tonight.” However, I dearly thank these Italian nutjobs for making an enormous sign for this song because it will remain one of the highlights of my concert-going life.

The boyfriend and I have never ever discussed this song, really. There is a lot of Bruce Springsteen discussion in our house, probably more than is good or healthy, but what do you want from two people who met on the boardwalk in Asbury Park one winter during the Christmas shows? It kind of looms large in our legend. We are singing this song as though our lives depended on it; he blows out his voice during this song. I am sure the people near us thought we were completely and totally batshit. They are not entirely wrong. We are in Springsteen Fantasyland right now, people, at least my version of it. Random rock and roll covers pulled out of the long-dormant memory banks of the guys who used to play four sets a night of covers on the Jersey Shore. Stuff they love. Stuff they listened to. And, tonight, of course, it is history and declarative statement wrapped into one incredible moment.

While I realize “Boom Boom” isn’t any kind of super rarity or tour premiere, I never got to see it – my Tunnel of Love shows were too early in that tour – and at this rate, I am wondering if someone perhaps has a “Have Love, Will Travel” sign somewhere down there, let’s get it out and have a matching set. It would certainly match with the current prevailing theme. However, I am actually glad that did not happen because I would have exploded into a little puff of smoke. “Boom Boom” was enough – especially when he audibled into “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” and – as the boyfriend put it when he called me about Baltimore (a show he attended but I did not) – Bruce started to get “all summational”. “My Love,” “Long Walk Home,” “The Rising,” and then, of course – “1-2!” and “Born To Run”.

My thing during BTR has been the same for a couple of years now, where I look around the crowd to find the person for whom this is the greatest moment EVER. I love this. I have talked to people who have said things like, “I think of BTR as Bruce’s gift to rock and roll” and I love that this song means so much to so many people. It is still one of my favorite moments ever in the show, it is the moment I want to show to people who have never seen Bruce live before. Now, I know some frequent fliers who get all jaded about BTR, and I think that is just stupid, to be honest. I know, everyone has their own trip and all, and I can make fun of a lot of things Bruce does (we have an ongoing joke with our group of Bruce friends about going to Home Depot to buy some spirit, but they were out, so we bought some paint instead, all from the WOAD rap) but YOU DON’T MAKE FUN OF BORN TO RUN. No seriously. If BTR is too silly or hokey or corny then you need to step back and take a fucking break and stop going to so many concerts.

BTR Sunday night was different, because while it always gives me a lift, and I always sing along, Sunday I took a step back. I watched, I listened, I tried to float above it a little bit to see it from the outside. It is always tremendous to me, it is always inspiring, it is always an unbelievable moment.

“I want to tell you the story about the band,” Bruce says with particular emphasis, and walks around the entire stage several times to get the crowd’s energy up -as though the needle wasn’t already veering into red – for the intro to “Tenth Avenue”. This is striking, because he has already told us one story, and then told us the story another few times during the course of the night. Nothing tonight was solemn – it might have been deadly serious, but none of it was funereal. This was further affirmed with “I’ll Work For Your Love” coming back into the set, with a specific dedication from Bruce to the crowd – and then the message was signed and sealed with “Thunder Road”.

I am not thinking that I might never see this again. I am not thinking that this could be the last time. I am realizing that this is all very deliberate, that this is not what Bruce wants this night to be. They have been very careful to deflect the messages of THE END that the press seems entirely too eager to seize upon or exploit and tonight he has done the same thing with the setlist, with what he has said, with what he has played.

I still wish he would find another song he could use to introduce the band besides “American Land”. Almost every song took a rest this tour – even “Badlands” and TPL – but aside from “Born To Run,” the only song that has been there consistently every single goddamn night is “American Land”. This song is just lightweight and pointless and so completely non E Street and please let it go away next tour. “Mary’s Place” would have been better than the eternal reign of “American Land”.

DITD, Rosie, Higher & Higher. While I think it is time to retire “Rosalita,” I will never ever EVER get tired of the latter. I am still in shock that the song came out. I am still in shock that I was there when the song came out, that I went to Philadelphia twice in two weeks, running down 95 like it was nothing as though I was still in college or something. I will point to everything I said above about the Bruce Springsteen Rhythm and Blues Revue, and how much fun he has playing this material. It is a song that has always meant a great deal to me, but now has a whole other layer attached to it.

The band is out front; one more, we are hoping, we are praying. We are not ready to go home yet. We are not ready for it to be over yet. Will we get “The Last Carnival”? Where is “Blood Brothers”? Instead, he brings out the song that he closed the Kansas City show with last summer, the offering he gave us that they weren’t done yet – “Rocking All Over The World”. There is relief in my heart at this. It’s a great song and an awesome cover and I’ve always loved Bruce’s version and I am glad that this is the tone we are ending on.

The song ends, and the band gathers up front to take their bows. Bruce walks around the stage, making eye contact. At one point tonight he had pulled a THANK YOU sign out of the audience – let’s not get excited or take credit, there were literally dozens of different formats and flavors and sizes of THANK YOU signs out there – and was visibly touched. Then there was the IT’S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL .. BUT IT FEELS A LOT LIKE LOVE banner, which was from the first row in our section (which is why I didn’t see it until he took it) – which, of course, was from Danny’s eulogy.

Danny. We wondered how he could ever do Greetings without Danny; we wondered if he would even consider it; we wondered how he would introduce the guys who played on the record when, well, you know. The guy who’s had that PHANTOM sign you must have seen at the shows was there when the album was finished, waving it in tribute. When we walked out of the show and could finally speak again, we wondered if “Blood Brothers” didn’t get played because Danny wasn’t in the band any more, or if it was because Bruce truly does not believe the band is done yet. I think it was because he was determined that tonight not be a wake or a dirge. It was the retelling of the stories, the retelling of the legends, the stories we all know, but the ones you keep alive by telling them over and over again. It was affirmative, it was celebratory – and this wasn’t from denial, it was from choice. Frankly, I had a better feeling Sunday night than I did walking out of Shea Stadium in 03 or Kansas City in 2008. I don’t know if that means anything, but I’d like to think that it does.

This tour found me in a position I didn’t anticipate, where I more than doubled the amount of shows I had originally planned to attend. It is the luck of living here, as well as the luck of being gainfully employed, but it is also because of the plain and simple fact that this band was kicking ass and taking names. The show was anything but boring or predictable, a complaint that kept more than a few veterans away from the Giants run. The power of the E Street Band at the end of 2009 lived up to the hype Bruce set at that Super Bowl press conference: the band was playing better than it ever had. It was a hallmark, banner year for this band, with unbelievable moments every time you turned around. It was literally an embarrassment of riches. I got to see all six albums. I saw both performances of Darkness (and also got stuck with three BITUSA nights). We got to do all of this at what is still an affordable ticket price, compared to his contemporaries. I could go on, but I think you get my point.

Start the tour savings account now. Because this party ain’t over yet.

–
Visit the entire Flickr set from the show

Born To Run

As I will tirelessly remind everyone, the key to success with the album shows is with how Bruce frames the rest of the show around the album. Saturday night we had a stunning, monumental album performance, with a second half that kept me wondering when it was going to start to get interesting. If I thought I couldn’t forgive him for “Sunny Day” after “Jungleland,” that was nothing compared to enduring “Sunny Day” after “New York City Serenade” on Saturday night (although to tell you the truth I was so stunned that it took me a few minutes to recover and he could have been playing the Mexican Hat Dance – although the Mexican Hat Dance would at least be novel and amusing, unlike – oh, nevermind). I had already gone on record saying that I would be willing to forgive him “Sunny Day” after “Wreck On The Highway,” except that last night he picked up A DIFFERENT GUITAR and was about to play something else completely different, only to call the entire band over for a conference after which they ALL have to switch guitars in order to play – “Sunny Day.”

At least I had a minute to run to the bathroom.

I do not understand Bruce’s obsession with “Wrecking Ball”. Musically it’s an interesting song, but lyrically it’s so weak it’s almost embarrassing, and it’s also completely irrelevant outside of Giants and maybe, MAYBE the Spectrum. Is it because it’s a new song? Do fans love it because this way they get to show everyone what uber-fans they are because they know this brand-new ‘unreleased’ song (‘unreleased’ because it is on freaking iTunes). It gets weaker with every performance he tries to rewrite it for. I just feel like the reception is a gross overreaction. What am I missing?

I liked his decision to go into the album RIGHT AWAY. Part of it, I suspect, was probably because “Hungry Heart” couldn’t sit in its usual spot, but I am sure the rest of it was the 90 minute mountain climb awaiting the E Street Band. I am writing about the album for brucespringsteen.net, so you will have to go read my thoughts on that there. Until that happens, you can read a separate writeup of that.

What I wanted to talk about here was the rest of the show last night. To be honest, I did not expect much of Sunday night’s show once he was done with the album, especially with what happened with Saturday night’s show. Frankly, I was just wiped out, and fine with sitting through a few songs of “Sunny Day”/”Working On A Dream”/et cetera. When he changed guitars and hit a chord that was clearly going to be “Atlantic City,” my thought was, “Well, this is random” – welcome, but random nonetheless. I thought “Badlands” was going to be “Born To Run” – and then we got “Born To Run”. I’m trying to guess how much longer he thinks he’s going to play since we were edging 11 at that point, and instead we got “Seven Nights To Rock.” I am thinking, “Is he trying to kill me?” but given that the 60 year old was showing no signs of flagging, well, I can’t exactly sit down on the job.

The people on the other side of us decide that it’s time to leave right about now.

At some point, someone in the audience held up a sign, and to be fair, it wasn’t entirely clear that Bruce wasn’t about to 1) ask for them or 2) cue “Raise Your Hand,” so I can’t fault them. Once again, he pulls “Sweet Soul Music” out from the audience, which we think is pointless, as there is no horn section tonight, just Curt and Clarence, but no, he decides that TONIGHT he is going to do it.

The audience seems… confused. Perhaps I am a snob. (No, actually, wait on that.) Perhaps I just like to imagine that I live on a planet where all right-thinking music fans would riot at the very idea of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band playing “Sweet Soul Music” again for the first time in many, many years. In the cold light of the next day, pragmatically I’d like to suggest that we were all just TIRED.

I think Bruce thought this was going to be another “Higher & Higher,” where he could just will it to happen and it would manifest itself. It took a few minutes to get Curt onstage, where Bruce held up the sign and said, “Hey, Curt, you know this one?” – and then thank goodness, Roy had the riff (I’m sure Charlie did too) and the ESB launched into the sloppiest, raggediest version of “Sweet Soul Music” you have ever, ever heard. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Arthur Conley was rolling in his grave – well, except from laughter.

(I am just sad we didn’t get “Spotlight on the Big Man… don’t he look great? He’s lost a lot of weight.” I do feel that “Spotlight on the Boss Man… workingsweating his ass off…” did partially make up for it.)

“No Surrender” was fine. “American Land” is what it is. “Dancing In The Dark” was totally unnecessary, except for the four women who climbed onto the platform at the back of the pit. I was actually okay with this example of stupid fan behavior; no one got hurt, no one was going after the band.

Another sign that I didn’t even see him take – “Does anyone know this one?” We are yelling for him to go get Garry out from behind the drums – I’m sorry, an Elvis Presley song? Calling Garry W. Tallent – and they manage to cobble it together, except for the fact that I don’t think Kevin had enough notice to go get it on the prompter, so the audience carried him through the middle verse.

It was sweet. It was unexpected. It was random. It was starting to feel like he was looking to break the midnight curfew.

I know I declared it should be so, but when they started playing the intro to “Higher & Higher,” all I could think was, “Where is he getting this energy from?” I liked that Patti got a verse. I even liked the notion of Bruce taking Patti, Curtis and Cindy out to the back platform, just like he did on Saturday night. It was messy. It was chaotic. It was a little nuts. It was a little silly. It remains the greatest closing number for the E Street Band in many, many years, and if I ever meet the person who brought that sign to Philly, I will buy them a beer.

It was a great MSG night. I cannot stress this enough. People were on their feet all the way up at the top of the venue, even the luxury boxes were packed full of people leaning out over the edge and waving their arms. There were flags of half a dozen countries being held up or hung over the edge of a level. There was dancing. There was loud, very loud, singing. For so much of it, it was very much like how I remember it was, going to the Garden for concerts at the end of the 70s and into the 80s. There were also way, way too many people talking through songs that hundreds if not thousands of people had never ever heard Bruce Springsteen perform. I do not know how to make sense of that. I really do not. There were moments that it was all I could do to try to insert my physical being into the musical notes being played, so I could be surrounded by that and not inane chatter. It is just – so sad.

I felt a little like Cinderella leaving the Garden last night, a little unwilling for the magic to wear off, a little unwilling to go back to mundanity. I can still see (and hear) “Serenade” in my head. I can still feel “Fade Away”. I can still put myself in the emotional spot I was when “Crush On You” started. Not much else matters, in the end.

(Except – seriously, people. Stop fucking talking through everything.)

The title of the record tells you the story: The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. It is the story of Sandy, Kitty, Billy, Rosie, Spanish Johnny and Diamond Jackie. It is an album of epics. It is not an album of half-measures.

This is why there was both a full horn section and a string quartet onstage this evening. Walk tall, or don’t walk at all, as the song goes.

These were the songs you always wanted to hear, the big legends, a million words spilling out. It was an enormous album to wrap your head around the first time you heard it. It was equally enormous to sit there and take it all in as it was being played in front of you.

Bruce took to the front of the stage, a conductor’s baton in one hand. He introduced the record, explaining that it was about both New Jersey and New York, tapped the baton on the mic stand, and turned around to conduct the horn section in the cacophony that opened the record, note for note. Once that had been completed (to his utter satisfaction, judging by the look on his face), he turned around and turned into the boy prophet.

I confess I am not a fan of “Sandy”. I always thought the hubbub around it was just the tiniest bit exaggerated. It is a tough song to place in a set. Tonight it was delicate and lyrical, Roy Bittan handling Danny’s accordion role with aplomb. (Roy was running a marathon tonight, since he had to handle all of Danny’s parts on this record, and there are a lot of them.)

I love “Kitty’s Back” but agree that sometimes a 9 minute free jazz exploration in the middle of a Springsteen concert in a large venue might not be the best way to go. Kitty can lose focus. Kitty can be scattered. Kitty has been none of those things since Curt Ramm came onboard for the album shows and with a full horn section, Kitty’s Back reclaims its rightful place. Watching Bruce facing the horn section, conducting them into their parts, in order, was worth the price of admission. By the end of the song, every person in the Garden was up and paying attention and singing “Oooh, it’s alright” like they sang it a million times before.

I worried about “Wild Billy”. I worried about it something fierce. I worried about “Wild Billy” and how people can’t just sit still and listen to a quiet and unfamiliar piece of music, and I was not wrong. But it was also “Wild Billy” and there’s a tuba on the stage and a little bit of Asbury Park magic was conjured in that moment tonight.

It feels greedy to be able to compare versions of “Incident on 57th Street’; the one I saw sitting behind the stage in Montreal 03, when Bruce played the piano, is up there, but tonight I felt like “Incident” truly stepped up and stretched to its full height, that it got to take up all the space it needs. I don’t think it’s ever not compelling, but tonight it was majestic.

I held my breath as Roy played the piano refrain, knowing what was next, waiting for it – and then, just when people were starting to get a little ansy at so many ‘quiet’ songs, the guitar chords and the house lights and it was the best “Rosalita” you have ever seen. I don’t care where you saw it before and that you met your husband there or you saw God or stood next to Brad Pitt or whatever. “Rosalita” can feel perfunctory. “Rosalita” can feel workman-like. “Rosalita” coming after “Incident” and with “Serenade” still to come kept it focused and on track and truly celebratory. I know it rarely came out of “Incident” live, but it has been hard to find its place in the modern era. You watched the entire Garden go apeshit to “Rosalita” and you thought, “Yeah, I *really* get this fucking song now.” You remember what it used to be like.

And then, Bruce dons a 12 string guitar, and Roy settles in behind the keyboard, and all you can do is pray that the yakking dudes three rows behind you will need to take a leak or get another beer or that somehow Bruce will be able to make enough noise to carry you into “New York City Serenade”. I have never seen “Serenade”: I have always missed “Serenade” by one show. It is still rare enough that it’s not like I feel I was slacking or something, but it did start to feel that I might not ever see it; on the other hand, I was glad that Bruce held his ground on this one, that it didn’t get dragged out anywhere but New York (or Philly, and yes that does make perfect sense).

You wonder how he will find the emotional space. You wonder how the band will recreate it. You suddenly see a spotlight on a string section and you don’t consider it too closely, you just go with it. You close your eyes a little bit to let yourself sink into it more, to hear it better. It is like words washing down over you. It is what you thought it would be like but it is also nothing like you thought it would be like. It is enormous. It is stunning. I was behind Roy, and got to watch his hands on the keyboard the entire time, which was yet another level of astonishment.

By the time it was done, I was ready to sit down and breathe. The aftertaste presented by the infernal palate-cleansing “Sunny Day” didn’t matter, it could have been anything. I just wanted to sit and let it sink in.

I would like to report that the rest of the show was equal to the album, and from a performance perspective, this band has not been this good in a very long time. Every performance from here until the end of the tour will be a 10. However, the setlist – full of hits and crowd-pleasers (with the exception of a stunning “Human Touch,” the best I have seen yet) and “Bobby Jean” AND “Glory Days” seemed to not be as strong as the album at its center. Even the requests (and, seriously, people, requests? At these shows? How greedy do we have to be?) All was forgiven, however, when the horns came back out, along with one Elvis Costello, to sing “Higher & Higher,” closing the loop on the Apollo Theater conversation. This has become the theme song for this tour as far as I’m concerned, and I hope they play it all the way until Buffalo.

I long for the day they get a website with actual pages.

Because The Night

In the lull waiting for U2, the conversation went a little bit like this:
“Um, there’s a piano on the stage.”
“Really?”
“Who’s going to play that piano?”
“Daniel Lanois?”
“Or another bald-headed gentleman who seems to be missing.”
We looked one row in front of us. Roy Bittan was no longer in his seat. He had been in the 10th row. We had been in the 13th row, until Curtis King and Jake Clemons and their guests had moved.
“And those aren’t the Edge’s amps, either.”
I looked. They were tilted back, against the drum riser.
“And look who’s walking across the stage.”
There was Kevin, Springsteen’s guitar tech, ambling by.

In 30 million years, I honestly never expected it. Everyone was blah blah blah Mick Jagger, blah blah blah Bob Dylan, blah blah blah. We knew how early the Bruce setlist had leaked out the previous day and so stayed far, far away from the internet. Seeing Bruce with U2 was on the bucket list, but we didn’t know how it would ever actually come to pass.

However, I will confess to going completely numb when Patti Smith walked out onstage with Bruce Springsteen. I always explain that I have no coherent memory of the first time I saw key artists, because it was all one glorious blur of overwhelming emotion. I was starting to do that again, and even though I didn’t want to take pictures because I wanted to WATCH IT, taking pictures kept me present, kept me grounded in the moment.

Of course, there was a slight problem. Patti was singing her version, Bruce was playing his version, and U2 were playing what they believed to be a version of the song that they were familiar with. They stopped. They started again. They stopped one more time. Bono came over and sang in Patti’s ear. She looked nervous, and a little abashed, but she was also smiling from ear to ear, excited and happy.

I. am. freaking. the. fuck. OUT.

U2 were always okay by me, but that cover of “Dancing Barefoot” sealed the deal. Then there was Larry Mullen Jr. talking about the bands that were important to U2 at the HOF induction. There was Patti opening for U2 at MSG (which I missed because I was broke). But there is a straight line between one and the other. There was never any doubt.

And let’s take the other angle under consideration, which was PATTI SMITH AND BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ON THE SAME STAGE, which is something I fantasized about ever since seeing the photos of the two of them onstage together in Rock Scene back in the day. Things I would have killed or died to be at.

This is the stuff that defines you. These are the things that fill in the colors and the shading, layer upon layer.

She was thrilled to be there. They were thrilled to have her there. I know she only got into the HOF because Michael Stipe put his foot down (or at least that is how I envision it). She should have been there all along.

The song finishes, Roy playing it out – oh yeah Roy Bittan was up there too!! – and then everyone is hugging Patti. But no one hugged her more than Larry Mullen Jr., who gave her a big kiss as well, and whose face looked like a little boy who just unwrapped a bright red tricycle on Christmas morning.

Bruce on “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was beautiful. That song has soul. He still had his soul voice from the day before. The call and response between the two of them was nothing other than epic.

We will not discuss the Black Eyed Peas. I don’t care how much you like them or how fun they are or what Important Musical Person likes them or whatever inane argument you’re going to offer. They are not Hall of Fame material and it was a waste of a song. It was trivial. It was not relevant. The whole point of these shows were, “This is who we are and what we do” and then here are our influences and here are our tributes to other legends. That stupid song was none of those things. (Neither, just for argument’s sake, was “Vertigo,” but we’ll get to that.) In this regard, Metallica did a far better job than U2 did, but we’ll also get to that later as well.

I watch Fergie climb on the back of the drum riser and all I can think is, “Get away from him.” But then Edge hits a note and the look on my face registers with my companion and then we know that the rumors are all true, because there is no way Mick Jagger is not going to walk out on that stage if U2 are covering “Gimme Shelter,” and then before we have a chance to think about it too much, there is Michael Phillip himself, walking out onstage.

I was very glad to have the railing in front of me to lean on at that moment. It was all a little much.

I’ll start at the beginning: It went a little bit like this: On Thursday morning, while counting the hours until we got online for the first show, I started emailing links from eBay to the SO. Then he sent me a link to a pair of tickets on the floor, second section back, but the third row of the second section. We set a price, we bid, we won. (Not naming the price, but we did not pay face.)

I don’t want to say we didn’t belong sitting where we did but boy was it odd. Money does not indicate fandom; in fact, quite the opposite. People there for status, people there for no visible reason we could see (because they sat down and looked bored and annoyed the whole night). I ran into Nils Lofgren on my way to the ladies’ and stupidly blurted, “Hi Nils!” I say stupidly because it came out purely because I have seen the man so often lately that it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to say hi.

We were in the 13th row, and then decided to self-upgrade up to the front row of the section right before U2, placing us in the 11th row. Before you think us greedy, if we didn’t upgrade, someone else would have taken those spots. And once we got there, we realized that the people who had been sitting there probably weren’t coming back, given the special guests.

I will start at the beginning, briefly. Tom Hanks once again gave an introduction which was boring, unnecessary and not very rock and roll; Jerry Lee Lewis was trotted back out, and while he seemed like he had a little more energy, him kicking the piano stool over at the end wasn’t cool, it was just a little sad.

I was ready to dance my butt off to Aretha Franklin. I do not want to tell you that she phoned it in, but she did. Her voice sounded fine, and she had 8 backup singers and a horn section and two keyboard players and a conductor (among others, all of whom she felt she had to introduce *individually* later in the set). Annie Lennox came out and was in fine spirits, as did Lenny Kravitz (who I could care less about). This was like John Legend coming out for Stevie Wonder. They are not Hall of Fame caliber artists and bringing them out for things like this does not make them so. (And I don’t mean to diss Annie Lennox, who I quite like, just the general principle.)

Jeff Beck was next, and while I realize he was filling in for Eric Clapton, and that he is a fine musician, he was boring. Everyone got up and walked around. The entire Garden was constantly in motion. Yes, he brought out Buddy Guy; yes, he brought out Billy Gibbons; yes, Sting came out to try to spice things up. I just question whether this was the best they could do given the short notice. (Which of course begs the question about where certain obvious candidates were, and brings up the contentious relationship many, many artists and their managers have with Jann Wenner and the Hall of Fame, and you wonder what could have been instead of what was.)

Metallica finally woke everyone up. The intro video set the playing field, as the roar came down from the upper level the first time their picture flashed on the screen. 40 year old men with bad mohawks were sneaking their way into empty seats in our section to make out with their girlfriends and give the devil horns at the stage and sing along at the top of their lungs. The hipster next to my SO felt the need to explain Metallica to him, because he was nicely dressed and not wearing an ironic tshirt; we got along much better with the 50-something couple wearing leather jackets sitting behind us who were so clearly fans and loving every second of it.

When we tried to rank the performances from both nights, there was a lot of debate about who was #2, Metallica or U2. And it’s definitely debatable. Metallica were rehearsed. They were excited to be there. James Hetfield was visibly nervous when he spoke. They played the songs that defined them: “One,” “Enter Sandman,” “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. The special guests may not have been chosen by them, but they embraced them wholeheartedly and god did it all make sense. Doing “Sweet Jane” and “White Light/White Heat” with Lou Reed, “You Really Got Me” and “All Day And All Of The Night” with Ray Davies. But the Garden went absolutely apeshit from top to bottom when Ozzy Osbourne walked out onstage for “Iron Man”. It was absolute pandemonium. It was loud. It was raucous. It was PERFECT. “Paranoid” to finish was gorgeous, and I didn’t know how on earth Ray Davies was going to follow that. (His set succeeded because it was short and to the point.)

I will not mention the gratuitous video played during “Enter Sandman,” to which our response was to offer the state bird of New York.

So now we’re back to where we started. Do not get me wrong – U2 were U2. It is ridiculous that there were so many equipment problems (the crowd sang the first two lines of “Vertigo” until Bono’s mic got turned on). But if you look at the strongest sets from both nights, it was where the musicians played the songs that defined them, played covers of influences, brought on their influences, paid tribute to their roots. Yes, U2 did that with bringing on Patti and Bruce for “Because The Night”. But given that the intro filmed showed the entire CBGB’s roster, backed with that Larry Mullen Jr. speech, a Ramones cover wouldn’t have been out of place. The selection of songs seemed unfortunate. It wasn’t “We’re U2, and this is what we do.” Where was “Streets”? Where was “Bad”? “Magnificent” works great in a crowd of U2 fans who know every word. Last night was not a crowd of U2 fans.

I do not mean to seem nitpicky or ungrateful. It just seemed like a lost opportunity for a band capable of working a room such as MSG like it was a tiny theater. It seemed easy. It seemed almost unworthy of them. If I have high expectations it is because the band themselves set them.

And even with that, it was still one of my all-time best rock and roll moments, ever, and a night I will never, ever, ever forget. It accomplished what it set out to do, which was link our rock and roll past and our rock and roll present, to give the music context and deeper meaning. Politics aside, that is the whole point of the Hall of Fame, and with these two shows, for the most part, they succeeded.