BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & ANNE MURRAY IN NEW YORK'S CENTRAL PARK, August, 1974

Just over 50 years ago this week I witnessed an unlikely triple bill in New York’s Central Park that backfired somewhat: Canadian MOR/country singer Anne Murray headlining over Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band with Brewer & Shipley as the opening act. This was precisely 12 months before Born To Run would be released, the third time I’d seen Bruce and I was already a fan. Here’s what I wrote for Melody Maker’s Caught In The Act page, dated August 17, 1974.

Three acts with little in common, Anne Murray, Bruce Springsteen and Brewer & Shipley, were together in Central Park last weekend for another concert in the Schaeffer Music Festival series – an unlikely combination, but one that appeared to satisfy the audience that each artist attracted. If Anne Murray was calm but professional, Springsteen was artistic and inspired, and Brewer & Shipley were dull but competent.

It was Springsteen’s night. Although he was second billed to Ms Murray, he received the biggest ovation and at least half the crowd didn’t stay when he’d finished. The concert was running well overtime but that, I feel, was a secondary factor. He’s all New York, full of songs about the city, while Anne Murray is fresh air and country: the Big Apple is her least likely market.

Springsteen has been deemed the future of rock’n’roll by US critics for over a year now, a burden that’s hard for any man to bear. His Central Park performance was probably his most important show to date and he rose to the occasion, bopping and rocking one moment and romanticising about his youth the next. 

In his vest and black jeans, shades and wispy beard, he’s every inch the New York street kid, straight from West Side Story. He could probably get away with singing ‘Maria’ if he wanted, but his material stands up on its own. The utter helplessness he exudes shines like a light in the darkness and if the tough New York Westsiders could ever cry Bruce would be the man to make it happen. 

If Bruce is unclean but emotional, Anne Murray is clean but unemotional. Bruce could harm but Anne is harmless, a true professional who does a good night’s work for an audience that’s less demanding from an emotional standpoint. 

She’s managed by Shep Gordon, who also manages Alice Cooper, another unlikely combination, and I would question his wisdom in teaming up his client with Bruce. Another noteworthy factor about Anne is the high number of gay women she seems to attract. As the audience filtered down after Springsteen’s set, I couldn’t help but notice the female “couples” who took over the seats at the front. To them, at least, she means as much as Springsteen does to those who were filing out into the night.

Though Anne is aware of this phenomenon, she plays it down. She also ignored isolated, uncalled-for yells of “Bruce” during her set that, when stretched out, sounded like boos. Her songs are fresh and crystal clear, her band (including a string section) polished and professional and her songs are delivered in a heavy, rather deep voice that is more noticeable on stage than on her records.

The girls clapped and cheered and Anne did a couple on encores. When it was all over lots of them were waiting at the back with cameras. Although poles apart, Bruce Springsteen and Anne Murray mean a great deal to a great many.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND – Live in Tampa, Florida, February 1, 2023

The Castilles in 1965. 

George Theiss stands at the back in the centre, with Bruce at the front left. 

“We named ourselves The Castilles, after a bottle of shampoo,” Bruce Springsteen told his audience at the opening night of his current US tour. He was introducing ‘Last Man Standing’, a song from his 2020 album Letter To You, inspired by visiting fellow-Castille George Theiss on his deathbed in 2018. George died two days later, making Bruce the last surviving member of his first rock’n’roll band. “It was,” he said, “the greatest adventure of my young life.”

This was the only melancholy moment in the latest instalment of Bruce’s ongoing great adventure, which visits the UK this summer. Daunted by the price of tickets for his Hyde Park concerts*, however, I offset my disappointment, at least partially, by ordering a recording of this concert at the Amalie Arena in Tampa on February 1. Nugs, the online store specialising in live concert streaming, offered the 3CD set of Bruce and the expanded E Street Band for £28, which is several hundred pounds cheaper than tickets, assuming you can find any now.

        I know it’s a poor substitute, but I’m not regretting the purchase, even though it becomes the eighth live Springsteen set in my collection, second only to a score or more live Who albums, authorised or otherwise, almost all of which date from 1969 to 1976 and therefore offer roughly the same sets of songs. The same cannot be said of Bruce, however, as my first dates from 1978, while his ever-expanding catalogue is now at least three times that of The Who, and there’s a few surprises in his current show. 

        Much of this is due to the increasing size of the E Street Band, which now numbers 19, including The Boss. There’s five back-up vocalists (making 10 singers in all), and a four-piece brass section, plus Jake Clemons, nephew of sadly departed Clarence, on tenor. This E Street growth spurt has changed the character of the band insofar as it’s more multi-racial than ever, and now features five women, and also the character of the band’s music, on certain songs anyway, of which more later.

        Some things stay the same, however, like leaping out of the starting blocks at a terrific rate, roaring into a medley, with the first nine songs – yes, nine this time – played back to back, without pause. First up is ‘No Surrender’, which, like ‘Ghosts’ that follows, seems deliberately autobiographical with its references to drums and guitars; an opening salvo that lays down the marker for what Bruce’s show is really all about, a celebration of all that is good about rock’n’roll bands and, especially, playing on stage with one that’s really good at doing what they do. ‘Prove It All Night’, which follows, is a mission statement disguised as a love song. The E Street Band would play – or prove it – all night if they really had to, and ‘you’ can be interpreted as those out there in the audience. Outstanding is ‘Candy’s Room’, an exhausting workout for drummer Max Weinberg, though ‘Kitty’s Back’ strays into jazzy Chicago-style territory and, at almost 12 minutes, rather outstays its welcome. 

        The roar of the long opening medley softens marginally for ‘Letter To You’, the title track from the 2020 album, power-packed yet hinging on contrasts. It’s one of six songs from an album that Springsteen evidently feels the need to showcase on a show that in total features 28 songs in two hours and 43 minutes. Much of it, as ever, features long-standing fan favourites, among them ‘The E Street Shuffle’ and ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ from way back, both re-arranged in part to feature the horns prominently, giving the E Street Band a distinctive new twist, a fatter, big-band resonance somewhat out of kilter with what long time Springsteen watchers might expect. At times it reminded me of the backing that Elvis used for 1958’s King Creole movie and LP, his first to feature anything other than guitar, bass and drums, and how (even at 11!) I wasn’t entirely pleased with this development.

        Still, Bruce has every right to make whatever changes he feels are necessary to retain his spark after more than 50 years of touring, and the brass section is less obtrusive in other gems from the back catalogue, like ‘Backstreets’, ‘Badlands’, ‘Because The Night’ and a thumping, aggressive ‘She’s The One’, possibly designed to bring Bo Diddley back from the dead.  

        The show features two songs, ‘Nightshift’ and ‘Don’t Play That Song’, from Only The Strong Survive, Springsteen’s recent album of soul covers, both performed as elegantly and expressively as you would expect. On both the vocals are enhanced by Curtis King from what Bruce calls ‘the E Street choir’, and the brass section is prominent, in characteristic soul revue fashion. The horn’s greatest incursion, however, comes on ‘Johnny 99’, once a mournful, acoustic-led track in keeping with others from Nebraska, now an all-out, action-packed jamboree. 

        Disc 3 of the set features what, from the setlist above, seems to have been the encores, a further seven songs, all bar the closing ‘I’ll See You In My Dreams’, delivered with the boundless sense of euphoria that Bruce and his group have brought to the final laps of his shows ever since I first witnessed one 49 years ago last January. Included among them are ‘Born To Run’, ‘Glory Days’ and ‘Dancing In The Dark’, with ‘Dreams’ saved to the end as a sort of benediction, perhaps even a promise that as long as fans are prepared to come out and see him, no matter what the cost, he’ll keep playing. I hope he does. 

*https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2023/02/bruce-springsteen-price-you-pay.html

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – THE PRICE YOU PAY

“You make up your mind, you choose the chance you take

“You ride to where the highway ends and the desert breaks

“Out on to an open road you ride until the day

“You learn to sleep at night with the price you pay.”

All is not well in the Bruce Springsteen fan community. Dismayed at the exorbitant price of tickets for his current US tour, which hits the UK this summer, the much-admired Springsteen fanzine Backstreets reacted by announcing its closure after 43 years of loyal service. 

        I, too, am dismayed. The cheapest tickets for two Hyde Park shows in London – both of which are now sold out – hovered around the £350 mark, of which 100,000 were on sale for both shows which adds up to a gross of £35 million for the cheaper tickets. Add to that 5,000 or so tickets for the ‘gold’ area at around £1,2000 (another £12m), plus VIP tickets that when I went on to the site yesterday could cost as much as £8,653 each (yes, really), then what we’re looking at here is around £50 million quid having been banked by the organisers five months before the two London concerts take place in early July. There are also shows in Birmingham and Glasgow, and a further 26 elsewhere in Europe. 

        The cost-of-ticket situation has been much the same in America where, unless I’ve misunderstood the concept of ‘dynamic’ ticket pricing over there, the cost varies according to demand. In other words, the more demand the higher the price, so for Bruce they inevitably went through the roof and this – tickets costing between $4,000 and $5,000 – is what led to the imminent closure of Backstreets (to which I once subscribed).

        The system is supposedly designed to beat touts – by ensuring they must pay exorbitant prices for tickets they intend to resell – and to ensure more money ends up in the hands of the act. That fans most also pay more, however, seems to be an unavoidable consequence. 

        I first saw Bruce in early 1974, two shows in Virginia on the East Coast of America a year and a half before Born To Run was released. Since then I’ve seen him further nine times, albeit not recently, but I’ve seen plenty of shows on TV or YouTube clips and he’s never been less than brilliant, giving his all for anything up to three hours, loads of songs performed with all the expertise, swagger and emotion for which he is justly celebrated. Having acquired every one of his albums either on vinyl and CD, all sorts of live ones too, a few bootlegs and a slew of 12” singles, I’ve kept the faith but I’m disappointed by Bruce’s response to the ticket price controversy. Reacting to fans’ anger, he was unrepentant, flippant even. “I know it was unpopular with some fans,” he has said, “but if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”

        This isn’t very Bruce-like. He’s always positioned himself as a man of the people, supported the Democratic Party and many worthy charities. The word on the street was that the individual members of the E Street Band have always been paid the same as him for shows. On the current tour, I think the band numbers 13 (three guitarists, including the Boss, bass, drums, two keyboards, Mrs Boss, violin and four brass). So, they all have to be paid and with so many on stage the share probably won’t be as equitable as it once was.  

        Whatever. In announcing its closure Backstreets editor Christopher Phillips claims that fans have been “thrown to the wolves, pushed aside in a way that seems as unfathomable as it was avoidable”, adding: “This so-called premium, algorithm-driven model violates an implicit contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans, one in which the audience side of the equation appeared to truly matter – and in fact was crucial.

        “These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result.” 

        I haven’t lost interest but I won’t be at Hyde Park.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – Only The Strong Survive

I remember... I was introduced to soul music through Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band whose 1966 album Hand Clappin’ Foot Stomping’ Funky-Butt… Live! retains a cherished place in my diminishing LP collection, and back then I always headed for the dance floor at the sound of Stax and Motown. That album formed the basis of sets performed by The Black Sheep, the premier band in my home town of Skipton, and no one sat down as they raced nonstop through ‘Ride Your Pony’, ‘Up Tight’, ‘Hold On I’m Coming’, ‘You Don’t Know Like I Know’ and a dozen more soul classics. 

        It was somehow very cool to like soul music in those days and on the cover and accompanying artwork of Only The Strong Survive, Bruce Springsteen looks fabulously cool as he leans against a cucumber-green Pontiac GTO*, its lines as sleek, smooth and retro as the music within. Like the music, this model Pontiac was produced in the sixties, between 1963 and 1974; a classic car to frame 15 classic soul covers, a few well-known, most not so, all performed with affection and enthusiasm, a lockdown inspired left turn from Bruce’s role as leader of the E Street Band, though their horns feature prominently, alongside producer and multi-instrumentalist Ron Aniello and engineer Rob Lebret. 

        It was a labour of love for this trio, of course. Their respect for this music is evident from the attention to detail – the arrangements don’t stray much from the originals – and the depth of feeling Bruce injects into the songs. On Graham Norton’s BBC TV chat show last Friday night, looking a bit uneasy alongside an eye-catchingly underdressed Anya Taylor-Joy, star of The Queen’s Gambit, he explained how soul music was his musical education, and how it has informed his work ever since. Come to think of it, the E Street Band has always played more like a soul revue than a basic rock unit. Nowadays there’s at least ten of them, often more if you count the fluid brass section. The Black Sheep only managed six, but they did have Kevin on trumpet.

        “I remember,” the opening words of the opening title track, sung by his female backing vocalists, sets the scene for all that follows, in this case a nostalgic wander down memory lane to where music made largely within a 100-mile radius of Memphis somehow managed to combine romantic heartbreak with a pulsating beat drawn from gospel churches where praising the Lord was and remains a serious business. The more enthusiastic the congregation, the more likely they were to ascend their stairway to heaven. 

        Bruce’s covers are immaculate, as you would expect, the music uplifting, joyful, a free and easy journey into Bruce’s treasure chest of favourites. There’s no attempt to update or put his own stamp on the original recordings and the emphasis is on Bruce’s vocals. He’s joined by Sam Moore on a couple but on his own for the rest, singing like a soul veteran with a direct line to the spiritual origins of Wilson P, Eddie F, Joe T, Otis R and all the rest of those guys who ushered us on to the dance floor in the sixties.

        Of the songs with which I am most familiar, ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shone Anymore’ doesn’t stray from the arrangement used by The Walker Brothers but loses the theatrics; ‘7 Rooms Of Gloom’ lacks The Four Tops’ silken vocals but adds drama; ‘What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted’ is throatier than Jimmy Ruffin but just as despairing; and ‘Someday We’ll Be Together’, the closer, is chock full of longing, just like Diana.

        Of the rest, I’m now a fan of ‘Nightshift’, the Commodores elegy for Marvin and Jackie, and ‘Do I Love You’, the Northern Soul classic originally recorded by the little-known Frank Wilson, for which Bruce has filmed an energetic video with a gospel choir. But the truth is every track is a winner on a gloriously uplifting side project from the man who simply doesn’t know how to stop.

*I am indebted to my old pal Frederic Manby for identifying the make and model of the car, though he had to consult another car expert, Phil Huff. Frederic and I worked together long, long ago and he went on to distinguish himself as the long-serving motoring correspondent for the Yorkshire Post. He, too, danced to The Black Sheep back in the day. 

LETTER TO YOU – Bruce Springsteen

How galling it must be for Bruce Springsteen not to be on the road with the E Street Band right now, playing the songs from this new album which, unlike his last three, is crammed with the emotional ebb and rip-roaring flow he unleashes on stage. High Hopes (2014) was a collection of unreleased material he’d been sitting on; Springsteen On Broadway (2018) was a faithful record of his solo performances, much of it recitations from his Born To Run book, at a New York Theatre that year; and Western Stars (2019) was another of his style switches, this time into the smooth western pop area favoured by singers like by Glen Campbell and Charlie Rich. 

Letter To You is nothing like any of those. It’s a return to home territory, the glory days of his mid-seventies to mid-eighties style of music, with the E Street Band back in harness, delighted to be on board, churning out those major chords to songs with big words and big choruses that invite singalongs as only this man can. It was recorded at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey in less than a week, or so I’ve read, and that alone makes it crackle. 

As other reviewers have noted, there’s a big black train, an edge of town and a river looming before we’ve even reached the end of the first track. ‘One Minute You’re Gone’ actually opens a bit like those gentle, minimalist songs on Nebraska, a softly strummed acoustic guitar the only backdrop until a bass drum and synth wash fill out the sound before the song gently fades. A chiming Telecaster riff brings in the title track, wherein – perhaps predictably – ‘Letter To You’ is rhymed with ‘true’ and ‘morning sky of blue’. After a fine, twangy solo the band step back for Bruce to sing the final verse over a hi-hat, emphasising the struggle that went into the letter. Opposite the lyrics in the accompanying booklet is a picture of The Castiles, Bruce’s first band, on stage at the Ferndock Surf Shop, with surfboards piled up behind them. Its significance is revealed later. 

‘Burnin’ Train’ is a downhill ride, a rocker in the same vein as ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’, all crashing chords with Max Weinberg’s snare like a metronome until, as usual, it accelerates into double time as the verse launches into the chorus. It’s a perfect stage number, as is ‘Janey Needs A Shooter’ which is slower but no less powerful. Urged in 1985 not to lose heart, Janey is now advised to hitch her wagon to a man ‘who knows her style’, and the man in question has had this powerful song, its tempo not unlike ‘Racing In The Street’, kicking around for a while. 

‘Last Man Standing’ seems to have been the inspiration for this album. It refers in large part to George Theiss who with Bruce was the sole surviving member of The Castiles until his death in 2016 left their leader as the last of the gang. Like ‘No Surrender’, it’s a song about being in a band and the friendships that endure as a result. Structurally the song would not sound out on place on 1987’s Tunnel Of Love, at least until Roy Bittan’s piano enters the fray at the end of each verse. Meanwhile, Bruce recalls the gigs they played before, ‘You pack your guitar and have one last beer, with just the ringing in your ears.’ It’s a lovely tribute to an old friend at whose bedside Bruce held a vigil until the end. 

‘The Power Of Prayer’ is less majestic, a slightly cheesy love song that references ‘This Magic Moment’ and Ben E. King, and ‘House Of A Thousand Guitars’, somewhat similar, evokes memories of – you’ve guessed – playing in bands. In other hands this characteristic subject matter might seem hackneyed but somehow Bruce’s vocals and the E Street men punch out the music with sufficient conviction to erase these thoughts. After half a dozen plays I was singing along in my car to both these tracks, even the line in the latter that went ‘from the stadiums to small town bars’. Only later did I consider that it should have been the other way around but nothing much rhymes with ‘stadium’ while ‘small time bars’ and ‘a thousand guitars’ rhyme well-nigh perfectly.

It was to be expected that Springsteen would have little time for America’s current president though in the past voices have been raised about Bruce letting down his blue-collar fans by siding with the white liberal elite. Nevertheless, without naming him, ‘Rainmaker’ takes a fair aim at the man who, if the polls are to be believed, will fall from grace this coming week. As fierce as anything on the album, no one can be in any doubt about the Rainmaker’s identity. Who else says ‘white’s black and black’s white’ and ‘night’s day and day’s night’? And while we’re at it, there’s two lines in ‘House Of A Thousand Guitars’ – ‘The criminal clown has stolen the throne. He steals what he can never own’ – that seems like a tilt in the same direction. 

‘If I Was A Priest’ dates back to Springsteen’s earliest efforts, and was among the songs performed for Columbia A&R chief John Hammond in his New York office during that audition on May 2, 1972. Like much of the material from this era it features religious imagery and is on the wordy side but the E Streeters take the song by the scruff of the neck and, with whistling Hammond to the fore, turn it into a beast. At 6.51 it’s the longest song on the album, and at the four-minute mark Bruce kills the band to deliver the killer lines before the band crash back in.

‘Ghosts’, another song about the joys of playing in a band, rocks along like the best tracks from The River, even tipping the hat to ‘Your old Fender Twin from Johnny’s Music Downtown’ and ‘your Les Paul’. The ghost of the title is clearly his late Castile pal, but any feeling of naff nostalgia is tempered by the sheer enjoyment, that ‘one, two, three, four’ rush of being up there playing, and maybe even ‘your sister’ is the one who called him home with his drums and guitars in ‘No Surender’.

The penultimate ‘Song For Orphans’ sees the tempo shift back to grind in a song as wordy as those early songs referred to earlier, while the closer, ‘I’ll See You In My Dreams’, rolls along to a folksy, simple melody, atypical of Springsteen. To avoid confusion I’ll mention that it’s not the song first heard in 1924 that Joe Brown sang at the end of the Albert Hall George Harrison tribute concert in 2002, but it offers the same sentiments and a suggestion of hope in this time of turmoil for America.

Indeed, if Letter To You carries a message at all, it’s that hope and dreams are around the corner and, meanwhile, there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia so long as it’s wrapped up in a Spector-like wall of sound with ringing guitars, tinkling piano, that trademark glockenspiel, a wailing sax and thumping bass and drums. Most importantly, it’s OK so long as there’s a heart-felt vocalist singing emotion-packed words like he really means it. I would expect no less from Bruce Springsteen. 

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND, Wembley Arena, June 5, 1981

Live albums by Bruce Springsteen are nowadays easy to find on his website, which acts as an incentive to buy more, albeit judiciously. Wembley Arena, June 5, 1981, one I always wanted, was made available earlier this year and, imported from the US, dropped through my letter box last weekend, thus becoming my sixth live Bruce record but only the second from a series of shows where I was actually present, following on from my first, a quadruple vinyl bootleg of the Wembley Stadium, July 4, 1985, show I acquired that same year. In many ways that better-than-you’d-expect audience recording was negated by Live 1975-85, the triple CD set that came out the following year and offered similar songs, albeit some additional ones and a few in different arrangements.

         This was the first official Springsteen live recording, of course, and I well remember wandering into the Virgin megastore at the eastern end of Oxford Street and slapping down my cash. Much anticipated, it was piled high in the entrance but after a few listens I now feel my new Wembley Arena recording, recorded four years earlier on The River tour, is the superior. There are 31 tracks across three CDs, a complete, uninterrupted show, unlike Live 1975-85. In Neil Cossar’s Springsteen book in the I Was There series, a fan called Jean Stevenson writes of this show (or at least one in the series of six he played at the Arena that week): “I’ve been to hundreds of gigs but seldom have I seen a gig where the artist was there for his enjoyment as much as ours.”

         Listening to these CDs I know exactly how she feels. Bruce is simply electric, genuinely delighted to be in London again and delirious at being up on stage with his drilled-to-perfection E Street Band. The River tour opened in America the previous year, with 75 show over two legs that stretched into 1981, and there were a further 26 European shows before it reached London, so he and the band are fighting fit. Their confidence is reflected in how, instead of keeping it back for an encore, they open up by blasting into ‘Born To Run’, Bruce’s best known song, a brash, in-yer-face start if ever there was one, and this segues smoothly into ‘Prove It All Night’ and ‘Out In The Street’, both played back to back without a breather. The tempo then drops alarmingly for ‘Follow That Dream’, an Elvis song from the film of the same name. Elvis’s version is chirpy and feel good, almost sing-along, but Bruce infuses it with a deeper connotation that chimes with his mission to inspire fans to make the best of themselves, and in this respect its mood is more in keeping with the version of another dream song, ‘Dream Baby Dream’, the Suicide song he released on High Hopes in 2014.

         Similarly, ‘Independence Day’ is prefaced by a mournful rap about Bruce’s unhappy dad and the need to keep your spirits up no matter that the world seems against you. It was a recurrent theme of the shows in this era, as if Bruce felt some moral duty to use his growing popularity to spread a message of hope. I think he succeeded, at least for the duration of this show. Pacing was key to the concerts and from then on the sequencing of songs moves in waves, up and down, fast and slow, profound and frivolous, like life itself.

         This was only the second time that Bruce had visited the UK, getting on for six years since his London debut at the Hammersmith Odeon in November of 1975, so he was on a crusade to impress those in Europe who’d read about him but hadn’t yet had the opportunity to judge him for themselves, and, of course, to promote The River. He certainly succeeded in the latter, playing 12 of the double LP’s 20 tracks, with the rest of the set mostly an assortment from Darkness On The Edge Of Town – but, sadly, no ‘Racing In The Street’ – and Born To Run. A 15-minute ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ is the only nod to the more distant past, extended by effusive band introductions, and there are five covers, including his ‘Detroit Medley’ as a closer, and three songs that might at the time have been labelled curiosities: ‘Fire’ which wasn’t released until 1987, as a single; ‘Bye Bye Johnny’, Bruce’s melancholy Elvis tribute which first saw the light of day on record as a B-side in 1985; and ‘Because The Night’, until then associated with Patti Smith, for whom it was a UK number five hit in 1978.

         That’s 31 songs in all, a long concert by anyone’s standards, split into two halves between ‘Thunder Road’ and ‘Hungry Heart’. I was surprised that the latter was already morphing into a singalong, with the crowd belting out the first verse while Bruce remains silent, but this merely reflects the audience enthusiasm for the show which is palpable throughout all three discs. Indeed, there’s over three minutes of clapping between ‘Rosalita’ and ‘I’m A Rocker’, the first of four encores that add over half an hour to the set.

         Of the covers, ‘Who’ll Stop The Rain’, the CCR song, is a tour-de-force, all swirling organ and pumped-up righteousness, as is ‘I Fought The Law’, a fast and furious reading, the guitar lines more Bobby Fuller than The Clash. ‘This Land Is Your Land’, with mournful harmonica, is a solo spot, Bruce accompanying himself on guitar with no trace of the band, slow and an appropriate overture for ‘The River’ which follows, the band joining in as this song of fading dreams expands and gains pace; ‘Jole Blon’ swings like a roller-coaster, a Bayou waltz turned into an E Street Band romance; and ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, also a solo vocal, is another nod to Elvis and the third in the four-song encore that begins with ‘I’m A Rocker’, Danny Federici’s organ pumping along like Paul Tesluk in Johnny & The Hurricanes’ ‘Red River Rock’, followed by a lengthy ‘Jungleland’ with Clarence in the solo spotlight.

         ‘Come on now,’ yells Bruce, rousing his troops for one final assault, the full-tilt ‘Detroit Medley’, 12 breathless minutes of manic rock’n’roll to bring the night to a close. ‘Devil With A Blue Dress’ is followed by ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’, ‘CC Rider’, ‘Jenny Jenny’, ‘Shake’ (the Sam Cook song), all punctuated by some fine old school soloing, before they leap back into ‘Blue Dress’, then ‘Sweet Soul Music’, a false ending or two during a third flat-out sprint through ‘Blue Dress’ and a thunderous finish.

         This was the first time I’d seen Bruce in the UK, 38 years ago now but I can still remember it well. A friend called Sharon Wheeler who worked for CBS Records had given us two tickets and I was there with my then girlfriend, name of Jenny, who was seeing Bruce for the first time. She loved it, a fan for life, like me. We were up on the side, on the left facing the stage, a few rows back, a perfect view of a perfect show. So as the nights grow dim and the coming winter brings with it a touch of what Bruce was trying so hard to dispel all those years ago, I can think of no better cure than reliving memories of him at Wembley in 1981.

BRUCE - RACING IN THE STREET

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4pSt4kie8

I don’t pay much attention to the age of rock stars but it’s still hard to believe that Bruce Springsteen turned 70 yesterday. I always thought he was a good bit younger than me, certainly more than two years anyway, and when I watch him do his thing his energy befits a man 20 years my junior. Footage of Bruce popped up all over my news feed yesterday, but none of it showed him performing this song which, over time, has edged past the pack to become my favourite from a catalogue that simply refuses to stop growing, and one that holds its place among the shifting playlist of old and new songs I listen to all the time. 

         ‘Racing In The Street’, from 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town, is not really about racing cars at all. It is a metaphor for the terrifying, uncertain prospect of growing up, far more so in fact than the hi-energy but rather wordy song of that name that appeared on Springsteen’s second album in 1973. In this respect it can be likened to the songs that Pete Townshend found himself writing for The Who By Numbers when age was catching up with him, so yesterday, as Springsteen entered his eighth decade, I felt like writing about how much I love this song.

         On first hearing you could certainly be forgiven for thinking ‘Racing In The Street’ was another of Springsteen’s songs about cars, their performance and taking girls for rides in them, subject matter he once seemed lumbered with like Chuck Berry or The Beach Boys. But that’s just the first verse, the sharply detailed opening that sets the scene against a measured but edgy musical backdrop with hints of The Crystal’s ‘Then He Kissed Me’ and, in closing couplets loosely repeated throughout, a clever juxtaposition of lyrics from Martha & The Vandellas’ ‘Dancing In The Street’. This was youthful music for youthful escapades that are abandoned midway into verse two, reluctantly perhaps, since there’s a realisation that they can’t – and won’t – last forever.

         This is when Springsteen looks despondently around him as his peers pack away their dreams, symbolised by the cars in which they race, and he’s conflicted. To stay the same or grow up; to ‘blow ’em off in my first heat’ or ‘start dyin’, little by little, piece by piece’? It’s a dilemma we all face sooner or later, and one that those of us who love our rock’n’roll that bit more than maybe we should tend to defer to our cost. (And perhaps it’s because I waited until I was 44 to marry and have children, far later than average, that ‘Racing In The Street’ resonates in me as much as it does.)

         By the beginning of verse three the weight of his choice, of growing up, of the inevitable, has taken its full toll, and Springsteen is staring into the beyond. Is this all that life has to offer when once I was racing in the street? There’s trepidation when his girl stares forlornly into the night – is he right for me? – but force of will surmounts and as the final verse winds down he’s come to grips with his dilemma and is riding to the sea with his girl to wash their sins – their past – off their hands. Well, that’s my reading anyway.

         But there’s another, more specifically Springsteenish, interpretation I think about when I listen to ‘Racing In The Street’, and this is that the song connects the contradictions of Springsteen the performer. On the one hand, in the earlier lines, there’s the kid with that old Broadcaster who doesn’t want to grow up, who bounces on stage like he was born to rock, singing requests from the audience like that joyous cruise through ‘You Never Can Tell’ that you can’t avoid on YouTube, or getting a girl up on stage to join him for ‘Dancing In The Dark’, or racing through party anthems like ‘Sherry Darling’ or ‘Out In The Street’. This is Bruce the Younger, the kid who worships rock’n’roll and will go to his grave defending it as the most fun you can have with your clothes on, the romantic whose electric guitar has unlocked the door to a personal paradise.

         Then, in the song’s conclusion, there’s the guy who sings about decay and change in ‘4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)’, or hard times in ‘The River’, or injustice in ‘American Skin’, or a life lived on the wrong side of the tracks on Tom Joad, or tragedy in ‘Wreck On The Highway’, or even ‘Badlands’, as powerful a rocker I know about the price you have to pay. This is Bruce the Elder who grew up and got married, had kids and, although he’s banked a pirate’s treasure, tries his best to stay grounded, to retain a conscience, a responsibility that comes with the weight of fame that, like The Beatles, he must carry a long time.

         ‘Racing In The Street’ links these two Bruce Springsteens together for me. Its stately, sombre, minimal piano-driven pace makes it more profound than any of the other ‘serious’ songs he’s written and when, in more recent live versions, it reaches that instrumental coda, all five minutes of it, we are ever-so-slowly lifted up by this repeated surge, rim shots becoming pounding drums, a swirling organ, ringing guitars, a gradual escalation in intensity, crescendo after crescendo like an incoming tide as the E Street Band join him from every angle, rising and rising so as to restate the message of that final verse, that despair can turn to joy, and the question ‘Did you make it alright?’ is finally answered. Yes, we really can grow up and make it alright. It really is the greatest song he’s ever written.

For the record, I listen to four versions of ‘Racing In The Street’ – the original on Darkness…, live versions from 1978 (Agora, Cleveland) and 1981 (Meadowlands, New Jersey) and an embryonic version on The Promise, also from 1978 – and a live version by Emmylou Harris that is suitably reverent but instead of the lengthy coda features a lovely vocalised sign-off. I found the pic with the lyric on Google (credited to YouTube) and the version of ‘Racing In The Street’ on YouTube I attached above is from 2009, Paramount Theatre, Asbury Park, where it all began for Bruce. Happy 70^th birthday old man.