The northlondonhippy

Last night, Mrs. H and I went to see Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band at Emi­rates Sta­dium, here in north Lon­don. There’s nobody bet­ter live and they don’t call him the Boss for nothing.

I’ve been a Spring­steen fan for decades, around three to be pre­cise. I got into his music back in 1978, when he released his fourth album, “Dark­ness on the Edge of Town”. I was 15 years old.

The first time I saw Bruce live was 1981, on “The River” tour. It was at the Mead­ow­lands Arena in New Jer­sey and he played for some­thing like 4 hours. I was exhausted, just watch­ing, but he kept on going with a level of energy that amazed me. It still does, he did 2 and 1/2 hours on Sat­ur­day night and he’s push­ing 60 now!

The fol­low­ing year, 1982, I met Spring­steen for the first time. I lived on the Jer­sey Shore at the time and saw him in a bar in Asbury Park one Sat­ur­day night.

The bar was called “The Fast Lane” and I’m pretty sure its gone now. It was a small live venue, which usu­ally was home to bands on the local cir­cuit as well as the occa­sional name act. I saw the Stray Cats there, Dave Edmonds, Mar­shall Cren­shaw to name a few from the 80s that might be known to you, or not.

I was there one Sat­ur­day night in the sum­mer of 1982 with a friend of mine. We were get­ting drinks at the bar, when I saw a guy on the other side who looked a lot like Bruce, until I realised it was Bruce.

You have to appre­ci­ate that I was a huge fan, espe­cially at the age of 19, liv­ing in NJ, rid­ing around in my car, play­ing Spring­steen cas­settes all the time, wor­ship­ping his music and being star struck.

I worked up the nerve to go over and just say hello. Bruce was sit­ting on his own, the crowd all cool enough to give him some space, except for me. I went over and shyly said “excuse me, Mr. Spring­steen, but I just wanted to say hello. I’m a mas­sive fan”, blah blah blah!

Yes, I called him Mr. Spring­steen and I blath­ered on about how amaz­ing I thought his music was. He told me to call him Bruce and asked me to sit down. We chat­ted a bit, I asked him about stu­pid things, like his gui­tars, his new album (he was record­ing the tracks that would become “Nebraska” around this time) and he was incred­i­bly cool and down to earth. He just seemed like a nor­mal guy. He actu­ally shared a few minor, per­sonal things with me, that I won’t repeat here. Noth­ing amaz­ing, just the sort of crap peo­ple talk in bars.

Bruce got up to go to the bar and asked me if I wanted a drink. He brought me back a Heineken beer. How cool is that?

Even sad­der, I kept the bot­tle. I think I still have it, some­where. I ended up hang­ing out with Spring­steen for a cou­ple of hours that night.

After that, I ran into him at least once, every week­end through the entire sum­mer. I didn’t hang out with him again, but when­ever he saw he, he always made a point of say­ing hello, as if he remem­bered me. I doubt he ever knew my name, but he knew my face.

The cool thing about see­ing him every week­end was that he usu­ally jumped up on stage with what­ever band was play­ing and led them through their final set. I saw him with loads of local bands, mainly in three dif­fer­ent venues; the afore­men­tioned Fast Lane, The Stone Pony — also in Asbury Park, and Big Man’s West, in Red Bank — which was owned by the Big Man, Clarence Clemons — Springsteen’s sax player.

Bruce would mainly do clas­sic rock songs, like Twist’n’Shout, but occa­sion­ally he would do some of his mate­r­ial and in one case, played a song of his pub­licly for the first time. The song was “Light of Day”, which was the name of a film and the title track from the sound­track album — star­ring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett, about a fam­ily with a rock band.

The thing about Bruce is see­ing him in a sta­dium or a bar with 100 peo­ple, is he gives the same level of per­for­mance. You can see how much he gen­uinely loves what he does and why when he is not tour­ing or record­ing, he’s still out jam­ming in the same bars I saw him in, which are really the same places he started out in back in the late 60s and very early 70s.

And see­ing him live last night, just a few tube stops from my north Lon­don lair brought back mem­o­ries of a much dif­fer­ent time in my life. I was a much dif­fer­ent per­son back then. I knew very lit­tle about life or the world. I pre­tend I know more now.

It was just dumb luck that I lived in the same area as my favourite rock star, who at the time was the biggest thing in the world. Some­times, I still have trou­ble believ­ing it myself.

It’s funny how cer­tain songs evoke times and places in your life and they can stir long dor­mant emo­tions. Some­times I feel so dis­con­nected from my past, and then some­thing pops up from my sub­con­scious and reminds me of where I come from. I haven’t writ­ten much here about my NJ con­nec­tions and past because of that dis­con­nect, whether inten­tion­ally or not. Maybe I should more often.

Any­way, back to Sat­ur­day night’s gig. Bruce still has it and remains one of the best show­men you will ever see. He can work a crowd and have them din­ing from the palm of his hands. He’s still fit and agile too, criss cross­ing the giant stage and exe­cut­ing one of his patented knee slides across the stage at the end of one number.

The E Street were also as tight as ever, though it made me sad when Bruce spoke of his recently departed key­boardist, Danny Fed­erici, who passed around a month ago. He ded­i­cated “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park) to him.

The sta­dium was packed and I think it was nearly sold out, though I heard rumours of stand­ing tick­ets still being avail­able on the day.

My biggest issue with the entire thing was the fact that I couldn’t have a cig­a­rette for sev­eral hours. Towards the end of the gig, I could feel myself going into a homi­ci­dal rage and I know it was because I needed some nico­tine. Emi­rates Sta­dium, home of Arse­nal, is an open-air venue, so I don’t really under­stand why they don’t allow smok­ing. It’s really stu­pid and puts me off ever going there again.

The smok­ing ban puts me off doing lots of things. I barely go to bars, pubs or restau­rants any more because of it, the same for many of my smok­ing mates. And when I do go out for a meal, instead of dessert and cof­fee, I quickly ask for the bill, so I can head out­side and light up. It must be bad for busi­ness, as I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Here’s the setlist from the show I saw:

May 31, 2008
Lon­don, Eng­land
Emi­rates Stadium

Out In The Street
No Sur­ren­der
Dark­ness On The Edge Of Town
Gypsy Biker
Radio Nowhere
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Growin’ Up
Down­bound Train
I’m On Fire
Because The Night
She’s The One
Livin’ In The Future
Mary’s Place
The Promised Land
Back­streets
The Ris­ing
Last To Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands

Jun­gle­land
Born To Run
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

(cour­tesy BruceSpringteen.Net)

By the way, if you want to keep up with my musi­cal likes and dis­likes, find me on Last FM — my login is the n_londonhippy and I scrob­ble all my tracks!

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