Meeting Across The River

(I could tell you which river, but then I’d have to kill you.)

Well, I finally had the Bruce Springsteen experience our older sibs used to rave about, pre-“Born In The USA.” I was transported, swept up, taken completely away to another place, a place where America didn’t just talk about heroes, it “sings about them,” as Bruce joked ruefully at one point near the end of the show. Probably a wink to his futile participation in John Kerry’s failed presidential campaign, I figured. I could imagine Bruce thinking, “Woody’s machine killed fascists, but mine didn’t even make them blink.”

But I digress, diverge, divulge…

I’ve seen Springsteen religiously since the “Tunnel of Love” tour (yes, for a guy my age, I came to the party late). And every time I’ve seen him, there were two constants. One, I always had unbelievably shitty seats. For “Tunnel of Love,” a friend flew out from the great American Southwest, and for her efforts, she was rewarded with a seat at the opposite end of the stadium from the stage, top row. Seriously, it was wall behind us. Paid a bundle to see him at the Paramount in San Francisco, horrible seats. “The Rising?” Horrible seats, and guys next to us chanting ‘U. S. A.! U. S. A.!” through most of the show.

The other thing they all had in common was, I never got the Bruce Springsteen magical experience they used to write about back in the early days, when a young Bruce would play 3.5, 4-hour shows, every night to ecstatic crowds of college kids his own age. Everyone raved about how it was so much more than the sum of its parts, a communal this, a shared that... Blab la bla. I was starting to believe it was all hype, or more likely, either something Bruce could no longer muster or I could no longer tap into. All likely scenarios: bleak.

Plus I hit him at a bad time. “Tunnel of Love” was not a stadium-pleasing collection of tunes to be out hawking. Bruce’s marriage was going to shit and he and his music were caught up in that. His reunion show with the E-Street Band, whenever that was, around 2000? Seats were so bad and high up, it felt more like summiting Mt. Everest to a really great soundtrack. I remember the Jumbotron, Bruce’s legs and being afraid to lean forward too far lest I fall to a certain death. “The Rising” show we saw, for me never caught fire. Even “Devils and Dust” failed to produce a sustained “Bruce Moment.”

So maybe going in with diminished expectations this time was a plus. I was no longer looking for the Big O, I just wanted to go see a show. Plus, we did have better seats than had ever been scored before. (Confession: we actually could have had general admission tickets, but I hadn’t seen general admission tickets in so long, I just searched the screen in vain for “Seat” and “Row #” while The Missus bought us our best seats yet. By the time I went, “Oh, wow, general admission – the floor!!” the screen had timed-out.)

Whatever it was, even during a lackluster number or two, the show at least reached a shadow of its mythic status. I was taken away, transported… Bruce seemed to be having a great time, Little Steven had his doo-rag on and shared funny looks with Bruce whenever they dueted, Nils Lofgren demonstrated why Bruce still keeps two lead guitarists on board when he absolutely destroyed the solo in “Because the Night,” Clarence had a golden throne stage right to sit on when he didn’t have anything to do on a song… gee, maybe it’s because Patty stayed home this leg of the tour, according to Bruce, to ride herd on their three teenagers. I don’t know, but it was fun. Bruce seemed looser and flirtier. We were still far enough away that, even on the Jumbotron, I wasn’t sure the chick on stage wasn’t Patty till she picked up a violin for one song. Whatever it was, it made for My Most Excellent Bruce Show Ever.

On his new record, there’s a ‘bonus track’ at the very end, called “Terry’s Song.” I read a couple places how it was about one of Bruce’s oldest friends, a guy I guess he grew up with and kept with him (maybe in some ‘staff’ capacity, like Elvis’ Memphis Mafia?) who recently passed away. It’s a great little mournful acoustic tune, the kind of thing Bruce ought to do a whole album of, like “Nebraska” again. Anyhow, he didn’t do that tune in the Arena last night and probably never will, but he did do the early-career deep-cut “Backstreets,” and I suddenly noticed one of the song’s two main characters was named “Terry” and the context was totally that they were a couple of dead-end kids trying to make their way through a rough old world, but that they were gonna stick it out and hang tough together “till the end.” In spite of all the lofty patriotic and anti-Iraq War themes of his new material, this song seemed to be at the heart of last night’s performance. And maybe that genuine, unforced emotional heft, even more than Patty’s absence, is what kicked the ass of all those other Bruce shows I’ve seen.

Here’s the lyrics to “Backstreets,” © 1975, from brucespringsteen.net:

One soft infested summer me and Terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in
Catching rides to the outskirts tying faith between our teeth
Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house getting wasted in the heat
And hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
With a love so hard and filled with defeat
Running for our lives at night on them backstreets

Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at Stockton's Wing
Where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the Duke Street Kings
Huddled in our cars waiting for the bells that ring
In the deep heart of the night to set us loose from everything
to go running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets
We swore we'd live forever on the backstreets we take it together

Endless juke joints and Valentino drag where dancers scraped the tears
Up off the street dressed down in rags running into the darkness
Some hurt bad some really dying at night sometimes it seemed
You could hear the whole damn city crying blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me Terry
It don't matter to me now when the breakdown hit at midnight
There was nothing left to say but I hated him and I hated you when you went away

Laying here in the dark you're like an angel on my chest
Just another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness
Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see
Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time to find we're just like all the rest
Stranded in the park and forced to confess
To hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
We swore forever friends on the backstreets until the end
Hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets


Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)