Monthly Archives: November 2012

Colin Rafferty

Elizabeth and I took our first road trip a few months into our relationship. As the miles went by on the interstate, I changed CDs, one hand on the wheel while the other one slid the discs into and out of the 24-disc wallet I’d used for a decade.

Elizabeth fidgeted in her seat, a move that I’d come to recognize as signifying agitation and discomfort.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You keep changing the music,” she said. “On trips, I just leave the same CD in the whole time.”

“The whole time?”

“The whole time.”

***

As we went on, from dating to engagement to marriage, I learned this about Elizabeth: she would listen to the same CD, sometimes the same song, over and over and over. For me, a former record store employee with a music collection that overtook an apartment wall, music was about discovery, the chance to hear something before anyone else, the chance to love a band or singer-songwriter at ground level, to say you heard them first.

But Elizabeth taught me there was beauty in repetition. Listening three times in a row unlocked nuances in albums I thought I already knew. A fourth listen made the experience transcendent; a fifth sent it back down to its most human core.

Elizabeth loved Bruce Springsteen more than any other artist. She’d go through phases with single albums; for a long time, she played Born to Run. (Once, as the CD started over, I reached for the eject button. Over piano and harmonica, Elizabeth grabbed for my hand. “You don’t fuck with ‘Thunder Road,’” she said.) On a trip to Arizona, she discovered our rental car had satellite radio, and we listened almost exclusively to E Street Radio. For birthdays and anniversaries, I bought her CD copies of the albums she’d grown up listening to, and we’d listen to them together, arguing about whether the live version’s energy surpassed the studio version’s precision. We decorated our first Christmas tree while the video of Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75 played, Springsteen in his stocking cap our version of Saint Nick.

***

Bruce Springsteen Darkness on the Edge of Town

For our second wedding anniversary, I bought her 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen’s first album after his breakthrough with Born to Run.

Elizabeth loved the album, and it took up permanent residence in our car. We sung along wherever we went, sometimes skipping ahead to our favorite tracks: “Badlands,” the album’s opener, with its “whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa” lead-in to the chorus; “Racing in the Street,” a sad lament of lost hopes and dreams denied

. “Candy’s Room” was my favorite song, because the rush I felt when Max Weinberg’s drums kicked in as Springsteen sang, “We kiss / my heart’s pumping to my brain” reminded me of the first time Elizabeth and I had kissed, a moment all nerves and passion, the kind of chance for glory that so many of the songs strove for and never found.

Going by number of plays, the final and title track, “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” was Elizabeth’s favorite. Springsteen had followed his “four corners” approach, in which each side started out bright and hopeful, and then closed with that hope unraveled. In the dark, as we drove home, hope twice unraveled, Elizabeth would softly sing. “Now some folks are born into a good life / Other folks, they just get it anyway, anyhow,” she whispered over Springsteen. She claimed she had no talent for song, but as the miles of the interstate slipped by on our return to our home, I loved the sound of her voice more than anything else in this world.

***

I got the phone call about her brother at a departmental end-of-semester party on a Wednesday afternoon. Unconscious, the voice on the other end said. We don’t know what will happen. By the time we’d gotten packed and shuttled the dog to the kennel, we knew that we were driving down to say goodbye to him, that at the end of that road from Virginia to Alabama was a bed surrounded by machines to be switched off one by one.

We loaded our suitcases into the trunk and laid the garment bag with a black suit and black dress on top of it. I sat in the driver’s seat, and as I turned the key, I pressed the button to switch from CD to radio. I knew that whatever we listened to for the drive would forever be the Music We Listened To On the Way There, and I wanted not to ruin the album for Elizabeth.

From the passenger seat, her voice tiny, she whispered, “Thank you.”

We drove, our soundtrack the top-40 stations of the Southeast, I-95 to I-85 to I-20, hoping to stay ahead of a winter storm coming in from the west. We listened to music that would vanish in six months. I had never been more grateful for the disposability of pop music. We pulled into the hospital parking lot at three in the morning, and in the moment between shutting off the car’s engine and opening the door to her waiting father, there was a brief moment of silence, the first I’d heard in hours.

***

We sold that car a few months ago. We hadn’t really driven it since it developed some problems that no mechanic seemed able to diagnose, and we’d bought a new car. I cleaned out the old car, pulling out the detritus of a hundred trips. Dozens of maps, brochures from historical sites and national parks, stale Cheetos. I found four pens between the passenger seat and door, lost as Elizabeth worked on trips while I drove.

Under the center console, I found Darkness on the Edge of Town, the CD case sticky with spilled soda. Springsteen still stared out from the cover, white T-shirt and black leather jacket, window behind him. We hadn’t listened to it since the day before the phone call, seventeen months earlier.

We haven’t listened to it since, either.

Colin Rafferty lives in Virginia, where he teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Mary Washington. Recent essays have appeared in Witness, Utne Reader, and elsewhere. He’s currently at work on a series of essays about the Presidents.

Share on Facebook

Bruce Springsteen, Palace Theater, Albany, NY, 1978

Bruce Springsteen’s show at the Music Hall in Boston on December 3, 1975, is what I remember the most. I still think it might have been the best concert I ever witnessed from over 1000 shows I’ve attended and photographed. I was an admirer since Greetings from Asbury Park was released. I did see him as “the new Dylan” with all the words and content. I connected to it the same way I did to Dylan. My college buddies didn’t care for it, even made fun of it and ridiculed me for liking it. One day there was a contest by DJ Ellen at Midnight on WQBK in Albany to win a copy of the just released LP. All you had to do was call up. Nobody did for over an hour. I was working in my darkroom in my apartment and finally, after many pleas from Ellen over the air, I just called up and claimed the album. Boy, am I glad I did.

Bruce Springsteen, RPI Fieldhouse, Troy, NY, 1978

My friends dissed it entirely – “trite, too wordy, stupid, immature” is what they thought. Walter, Don, Larry, and Dennis are the same guys that couldn’t stand Jackson’s “Late For The Sky” or Neil’s “Harvest” and preferred the first Led Zeppelin, Mott The Hopple, Slade and NY Dolls. This was eventually funny because one night a few years later they called me from their new digs in Swampscott, Massachusetts and offered me a ticket to Bruce at the Music Hall the next night. They had scored tickets and Dennis had to work and couldn’t attend. I dropped everything and headed to Boston.

I remember Bruce ending that show being carried off the stage on a stretcher by medics after collapsing on stage [damn, it seemed real], only to throw back the sheet at the curtains, leap up and go full speed ahead into another string of songs

. When the show finally ended the doors opened to the streets of Boston, but many fans held their ground and kept making noise. As the hall was emptying out and with the house lights on, Bruce came bounding back again and shouted, “Don’t believe everything they tell you” and launched into second extended encore. Fans ran back into the theater accompanied by others who had not even been to the show but saw the pandemonium on the street and the open doors and ran in. He manically plunged into his Detroit Medley and played another 30 minutes.

Bruce Springsteen, RPI Fieldhouse, Troy, NY, 1978

When the show was announced for Albany in 1978 I had started shooting music concerts for local publications, but learned that no photographs were allowed and cameras were not permitted to any Bruce show for this tour. I don’t recall much about the show, except stuffing a Leica M4 in my jeans and my companion hiding a 135mm lens in hers. I think the tour had started the night before in Buffalo and was heading to Philadelphia and Boston after Albany. The show was mildly disappointing to me, since I was unfamiliar with the new Darkness album material that had not been released yet. I still wanted to see the 1975 Bruce! I snuck taking my photos and got one really good one of Clarence and Bruce, shoulder to shoulder, jamming. The next day I called the Village Voice to offer the photograph, but they said their photographer would shoot the show in NYC. Knowing that no photographers were being given credentials and people were being searched for cameras I just sent the photo to the Voice anyway. The next Thursday when I got the paper up in Albany my picture was published. It was my first nationally published photograph and the beginning of my business RockShots® which has continued on to now, photographing music concerts for the last 35 years.

Martin Benjamin Village Voice Photo Pass

Later in the fall, The Darkness tour came back through, playing at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the RPI Fieldhouse on November 12, 1978. The night of the show I felt bummed I wasn’t going so I just grabbed my camera and drove over to Troy, NY and bought a $5 ticket from a frat guy selling lots of them outside the arena. With my Nikon FM camera and 200mm lens under my jacket, I just walked in. I never went to my seat. I just kept heading up to the stage from all angles where the same guy would scream at me from the edge of the stage to stop, move back and go away [Jon Landau?]. I managed to photograph the show from much closer, figuring if I got thrown out it was worth the $5. I shot the whole show. I remember it more vividly than the May show in Albany. Bruce was flying around the stage, leaping in the air over and over, and the show had much more energy. Maybe it was a bigger stage than Albany, or it was just much later in the tour and the performances had skyrocketed. I knew the material by then and it did blow me away.

Bruce Springsteen, RPI Fieldhouse, Troy, NY, 1978

This summer I photographed Bruce in Fenway Park, and that concert was a throwback to 1978 – a nice touch for everyone attending, but especially to me, over thirty years later.
For me, the two best Bruce shows, out of about 8 or 9 I’ve seen, are ironically the first and last ones – December 3, 1975 at the Music Hall in Boston and August 15, 2012 – the second night in Fenway. Not that any of the others ones were ever disappointing, but the bookends 38 years apart were, by far, the best for me!

©Martin Benjamin

You can view a selection of Martin Benjamin’s original photography here:
www.martinbenjamin.com

Share on Facebook

David Levenson

“Those jokers in the front row were so close I thought I’d have to introduce them with the band”.
The quote was from Bruce Springsteen in a review printed in the Detroit Free Press Oct. 5. 1975, the day after I had witnessed the single greatest live event of my life.

Thanks to my job as a ticket taker at the Michigan Palace and my father’s insistence that we see Bruce live, we ended up as one of the lucky few sitting in that front row. From the moment Bruce literally flung himself into the audience and on top of my father, I was hooked. Thirty-seven years and more than thirty shows later, I’m still hooked.

Original 1978 Bruce Springsteen Painting by David Levenson

I had been studying and practicing art since early in high school when I saw Bruce again in February of 1977. Once more in the front row, I decided to shoot some photographs that I could use as reference for a painting. My earlier works had been encouraging, and in fact I had already sold six portraits to the rock-soul group WAR who I had been a fan of since 1973. Not even the fact that one of the members of the group had bounced two checks on me could deter me from a career in art!
The reasons for doing a portrait were obvious to me. Bruce was the one artist-musician who captured everything I thought an artist should be. He was passionate, hard working, dramatic, moral, and topped it off with a tremendous sense of humor.

The ’77 show supplied me with enough good photos to compose my painting of Bruce. I started working on it later that year while attending college at Wayne State University in downtown Detroit. I wanted to have it completed by the next time the E Street Band came through town.
The “Darkness on the Edge of Town” tour had begun in May of 1978 and it wad announced that the band would play the Masonic Temple auditorium on September 1. This would be my best opportunity to show Bruce my work. After phoning around, I finally located the bands hotel, the Renaissance Centre, along Detroit’s waterfront.

On the day of the concert I went to my parents’ home to borrow their car so that I could transport the large painting to the hotel. My dad took one look at the clothes I was wearing, raggedy jeans and a paint stained shirt, and demanded that I put on something nice if I expected to meet Bruce Springsteen. My protests unheeded, I relented and ended up wearing a pair of dress paints and a freshly pressed shirt.

It was late afternoon by the time my friend Leo Yassy arrived to help me get the painting to the hotel. The crate I had constructed for transport was over 65″ long and stuck halfway out of the trunk. As we pulled into the hotel parking space another auto backing out rear-ended my dad’s car, smashing the crate in the process. Leo screamed at the driver of the other car while I stood by in shock, staring at the mangled crate imagining the damage inside to my painting. However, my fears were groundless because luckily, the painting was unharmed.

We finally hauled the 75lb. crate into the hotel lobby and word spread rapidly that there was a great Springsteen painting waiting for the “Boss” to see. One by one, members of the band and crew filed down to the lobby to get ready to depart for the nights show. They each shook my hand and told me how much they liked my painting.

Bruce and Jon Landau were the last to come down to the lobby. I was sure that by that time they had heard I was there with my painting. As Bruce finally arrived in the lobby, he could see the painting propped up against the wall as he approached.

“How come you’re so dressed up,” he asked as he shook my hand

. I could only laugh to myself.
We talked for a short time and he told me how good he thought my painting was. He asked if I was coming to the show that night and I informed him that I had been unable to get tickets. Bruce immediately responded, “Don’t worry about that”.

Note From Jon Landau

Jon Landau approached me as Bruce and I were finishing our conversation and asked me if I was selling the piece and, if so, for how much. I had not been prepared for this question. Without time to think, I responded,” $500.” Landau said he would need time to think about it. He told me that he would leave me four tickets at the box office for the nights show. At that time I was to come around to the side of the stage to see if he would be interested in purchasing the work. I was walking on air.
I phoned two more friends to meet me at the Masonic Temple for the concert. When I arrived at the box office, my tickets were waiting along with a note from Jon Landau informing me that they were not interested in purchasing the painting, but Bruce and he greatly appreciated my showing it to them.
The seats and the show were fantastic. I was feeling great about the whole experience. One of the roadies who had been at the hotel saw me at the show and told me that Bruce never buys artwork of himself. That eased my disappointment.

Three months later I entered the painting titled “Religious Rock” in an art show at the Detroit Artists Market. Within days Stuart Eisenberg, an attorney and Bruce Springsteen devotee, purchased the painting. It was my first painting sold out of an art gallery.

Having lived in Chicago now since 1980 I occasionally find myself coming back to Bruce as a subject matter for my work.

Hopefully with each new canvas I have captured another facet of what Bruce Springsteen has meant to me.

Limited Edition Bruce Springsteen book, The Light in Darkness.
IF you have ever considered buying this book, Now is the time.
The book focuses on Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce’s iconic 4th album
and 1978 tour. Jam packed with over 100 fan stories and 200 original classic
photos from the 1978 tour, including a full 16 pages dedicated to the 1978 Cleveland
Agora concert, this book is a must have.
With less than 35 copies left, now is the time to order this collectible book.
And to sweeten the offer, we are offering savings on Shipping anywhere in the
world. The perfect gift for the Springsteen fan in your life.
Save Now- Order Your Copy Here: The Light in Darkness

Share on Facebook

Darkness on the Edge of Town: A Concert Revisited

Your admission to this story is a ticket to a time machine. If you’re a latter-day Bruce Springsteen fan who became an aficionado of the man’s music and live shows in the decades following the ‘Darkness’ tour and you think you have an idea of what one of his live shows is like, sit back: you’re about to discover the exciting truth. If you were there in ’78, you are about to be transported back to a brief moment in time.

The ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ Tour: “History is Made at Night”… That was then. This is now.

Sound engineer Bruce Jackson during sound check.

SOUNDCHECK – Do you hear what I hear?

Much has been made on recent tours about the varying quality of sound at Springsteen concerts from venue to venue, and sometimes within the same venue in different locations. The ‘Darkness’ tour was distinguished for the now-legendary two-plus hour sound checks, where Springsteen himself would tour the arena while the E Street Band played in order to judge the sound. Much of this practice was no doubt a vestige of his initial reluctance to play hockey arena-sized venues in light of his audience intimacy and sound concerns, but in truth, the sound on that tour was great – it had to be, as the spoken song intros and stories played a major role in that tour’s message. You had to be able to understand what was being said.

OPENING ACT - Getting in the Door.

We all know the progression of ticket acquisition. Some of us remember Ticketron, sleeping out on the sidewalk the night before an on sale date, box office lines, then the advent of jammed phone lines, onsite venue scalper transactions, and, ultimately, internet sales

. In 1978, you found out about a Springsteen appearance through your local FM radio station. You had no idea where the tour was the week before, or the week after your show. Tickets for the August 1978 shows at Madison Square Garden were made available via lottery by clipping a coupon in an ad that appeared in the New York Times Arts and Leisure section in late June. The coupon was mailed and you crossed your fingers that you would win the jackpot. Three weeks later two tickets arrived in the 8th row, Clarence’s side of the stage, for night two of the three show stand. Yes, things were different back then.

THE FANS - Same cast, different demographic.

A stateside Springsteen show these days probably has a median age of about 38, with half the audience above, and half below that age. In 1978, the median age was about half that. Looking around a Springsteen concert in 1978, you saw an audience of people ranging from about 16, to about 28 years of age. There were the “veterans”, and by “veterans”, you’re talking about people who went back as far as the Upstage Club, and instant converts, in many cases people who had been dragged to the show by someone who had already seen the light. The conversation in that era used to go something like this: “Do you like Bruce Springsteen?” “No, not really.” “Have you ever seen him live?” Nowadays you’ll hear someone at a show wax poetic about the ‘River’ tour, and it’s a true oracle moment for a younger fan. I’ll never forget a conversation I heard during intermission at the Garden in ’78. It was between two guys who were comparing notes from the Upstage Club and the Student Prince in Asbury Park, back when Springsteen was essentially a guitar slinger sitting in with jam bands. To put it in perspective, ten summers ago we were all at the Meadowlands for the reunion tour shows. “Ten summers ago” in 1978 put you on the Jersey shore in 1968 in the era of the Bruce Springsteen Band, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, and Steel Mill.

THE FIRST SET - Just waitin’ to get blown away.

The best way to describe what you felt when the band walked out onto the boards and ripped into the opening number (whether it was ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’, ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘High School Confidential’, or ‘Badlands’) is to harken back to the old Maxell tape ads, where the guy puts a Maxell tape into his stereo and the sound that comes out of the speakers blows his hair and his scarf back, and sends his drink skidding across the table through the sheer force and power of its volume and energy. Much has been written and said over the years about the sense of desperation and emotion driving Springsteen on that tour – it’s all true, and then some. Trying to explain it can sometimes seem as daunting a prospect as the challenge put forth by John Sebastian in the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” in that “It’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.” Bruce and the E Street Band, compared to now, played fast. And they played loud. Not “The Who loud”, but loud enough to trash your ears for a day after the show, regardless of your rock show-going experience. The opening set was heavy on ‘Darkness’ album material, and the songs were augmented, enhanced, and accessorized in a way that doesn’t happen these days. The organ/piano intro to the title track, the extended harmonica/piano intro to ‘Promised Land’, the now-legendary piano/guitar intro to ‘Prove It All Night’, the extended piano coda to ‘Racing in the Street’, the ‘Not Fade Away’/'Mona’/'Gloria’ lead-in to ‘She’s the One’, along with the instrumental break in the middle of it – these flourishes made the songs even more special, and these types of reworkings are not seen much anymore. By the time ‘Jungleland’ closed the first set, some first-timers in the crowd thought the show was over, such was the quality and quantity of what was delivered in the opening set.

THE SECOND SET - Are you ready for round two?

About ten songs long, the second set usually included “story time” in the midst of ‘Growin’ Up’, where we would learn that Springsteen was once a teenage werewolf, had contact with aliens, and as the product of a Catholic school upbringing, got to meet God himself in choosing a vocation, where he was told to “Let it Rock!” by the Big Skipper on a Clarence-organized trip to heaven. Second sets often opened with the unreleased instrumental gem ‘Paradise by the C’, and, later in the tour, with another as-yet unreleased song, ‘The Ties that Bind’. This, in and of itself, is illustrative, that Springsteen would play songs with which the audience was unfamiliar, including Springsteen-penned songs like ‘Fire’ and ‘Because the Night’, which became show staples and highlights even though they were associated with other artists. By the time ‘Rosalita’ closed the second set, and you’d screamed yourself hoarse during the band intros, you were wondering if you had anything left for the encores.

THE ENCORES – Don’t make me have to hurt you!

The encores are really the third set, and by the time the show proper ended with ‘Rosalita’, it was hard to imagine that the energy could be taken to another level. It was, of course…the usual midsummer encore was ‘Born to Run’ (with a heartfelt “thank you to the fans for sticking with the band during the tough times”), ‘Because the Night’, and ‘Quarter to Three’ (those were the three encore songs for the three night stand at Madison Square Garden). The ‘Detroit Medley’ would work its way into the rotation for the fall, along with an occasional ‘Raise Your Hand’ or ‘Twist and Shout’. The feeling as you left the building was one of utter exhaustion. You had nothing left as a fan, and it almost seemed as if Springsteen was on a mission to outlast you, to prove that he had more energy than the collective reservoir of the assembled mass. If the first set was your apps and the second set was your main course, the encores were dessert. The arc of the show was no accident, and by its end it had peaked, leaving people high-fiving each other on the way out, “Broocing” themselves in the street, and literally sharing in a communal celebration of what they had just witnessed.

THE RIDE HOME - Can you believe that leap he made from the speakers?

The ‘Darkness’ era had no online chat rooms, instantaneous set list dissemination, or Internet vehicles upon which to discuss Springsteen’s music or career. Your ride home was your debrief, and in that ride home, one of the major topics of discussion was the physicality of a Springsteen show. He was on top of the piano during the ‘Thunder Road’ outro before stage-sliding into Clarence. He was ten rows deep into the audience during ‘Spirit in the Night’. He was on top of the speakers, on top of the drum kit, and careening across the stage during the encore ‘Quarter to Three’ or ‘Detroit Medley’. His leaps at the end of songs could be measured by their verticality. In short, he was a force of nature, with energy emanating from his very being as if he were supercharged by lightning. Springsteen had been away for three years, and in that primitive media era, he may as well have been on the dark side of the moon. The sense of desperation, release, exhilaration, and resurrection engendered by the album’s release and its subsequent tour were once-in-a-lifetime occurrences for the man and his fans, and comprised a 7-plus month moment in time never to be repeated.

Anthony Fischetti, New York

Celebrate the Holiday Season with Bruce Springsteen.
Discover the Limited Edition Bruce Springsteen book, The Light in Darkness.
The Light In Darkness is a collector’s edition, we are almost sold out. Less than 225 copies remain. A great companion piece to The Promise box set, it focuses on the 1978 Darkness on The Edge of Town album and tour.
Read about the iconic concerts from fans who were there- the Agora, Winterland, Roxy, MSG, Capitol Theatre, Boston Music Hall, The Spectrum and over seventy more!
A perfect gift for the holidays.
Click Here to Order Now: The Light in Darkness

Share on Facebook

In modern popular culture, you know you’ve “made it” when you can be referred to by just your first name and it is assumed it is yours they’re talking about.  In the 70s, there was Farrah and Mick.  In the 80s, it was Michael, Ronnie, and Bruce.  Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen Britney, Paris, and Tiger.

Bruce Springsteen has played over a thousand shows over the last four decades, nearly all of which will live forever in the hearts and memories of the fans who were there, as those nights have been to known to change, or even save lives.  As fans talk about those shows, shows are referred to in a multitude of ways, such as by their date (“That July 18, 2003, show had a phenomenal encore”), their placement within a lengthy stand (“I thought the last night of the Los Angeles shows in ‘81 was better than the first”), by the venue and year (“The best version of ‘Incident’ ever was the Main Point ‘75”), or just by the city and tour (“That Detroit Darkness show had some cool chestnuts in the set list”).

However, there are a handful of shows that are so well-known and legendary that they are referred to simply by one name:  Agora, Passaic, and Winterland.  These shows have become part of a Springsteen fan’s vernacular and used as a point of reference when discussing just about every aspect of Bruce’s career.

To make sure we’re all on the same page:
1. Agora: The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH, August 9, 1978
2. Passaic: Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, September 19, 1978
3. Winterland: The Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA, December 15, 1978

In addition to all being from the same tour, the legendary Darkness on the Edge of Town tour of 1978, they were also broadcast live on the radio.  And they weren’t broadcast just in the city of origin, but throughout the surrounding areas — the Agora show was heard throughout the Mid-west; Passiac was heard up and down the Northeast, and Winterland was broadcast in Northern California up through Seattle, Washington — all areas that had supported Bruce in the first five years of his recording career, including the extended time between the Born to Run album and its 1978 follow-up, Darkness on the Edge of Town.

There were two other radio broadcasts in 1978:  July 7 from the Roxy in Los Angeles, CA, and September 30 from the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, GA.

However, the Roxy didn’t receive its proper due because it was never properly represented on a vinyl bootleg, but the bootleg CD is considered one of the best around; and the Southeast United States was hit by a wave of thunderstorms on the night of September 30 that caused interference in the radio reception.

And what has became evident is that more than just a handful of the thousands of listeners at home were recording the broadcasts to be listened to over and over again.  It didn’t matter if the recording was made using expensive, state-of-the-art stereo equipment or by holding a Radio Shack cassette player up to the speakers of a transistor radio, those tapes were treated like gold by many of those home-tapers.  There have been countless stories posted to various online Springsteen forums over the years of how people played those tapes until they literally disintegrated.

But not everyone rolling tape on each of the broadcasts were doing so for completely altruistic purposes.  Within months, vinyl copies of each broadcast were available for purchase at independent record stores and mail order outlets that advertised in the classified section of Goldmine magazine and similar publications.  This development enabled even more fans to hear these amazing shows in the same outstanding quality — give or take some vinyl degradation — as they originally aired, which was quite a change from most bootlegs at the time.  We’ll pass on the ethical discussion concerning these non-sanctioned releases at this time, though.

Over time, the titles given these original vinyl pressings quickly became part of the Springsteen discussion.  The Cleveland, OH, show from August 9 was released with the title, “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”; the September 19 show in Passaic, NJ, “Piece de Resistance”; and December 15 from San Francisco “Live in the Promised Land.”  Some fans didn’t know the dates of the shows, but just the title of the vinyl bootleg.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that the first bootleg CD releases of these shows in the early 1990s carried the same title.

In addition to the great sound on those vinyl bootlegs, the packaging of those releases bordered on professional quality.  Each was released in a cardboard box, much like the one in which “Live 75-85” was initially released, with cover graphics that, while not fancy, were certainly beyond the black and white inserts included with many bootlegs of the time.  And “Live in the Promised Land” featured a small poster featuring a photo of Bruce and Clarence taken at the actual show.

Between the excellent sound quality and the solid-if-unspectacular packaging, these vinyl bootlegs became the unofficial and de facto Springsteen live albums, and remained as such until “Live 75-85” was released in late 1986.  And as live albums go, you really couldn’t do much better than those releases; the 1978 tour was Bruce at his most intense, emotionally baring all each night, and then releasing all that angst in a ten-minute version of “Quarter to Three” that neither Bruce nor the crowd wanted to end.  And the recordings of those shows, whether they were on vinyl or cassette (or, later, CD), were treasured like the Holy Grail.

While most items treated like gold are put away in a safe place, the tapes of those shows were played repeatedly, until the songs and, more humorously, the between-song banter had became burned into the collective memory of Springsteen fans worldwide, even if each fan was listening separately.  That shared, but separate, listening experience has become a bond for Bruce fans over the years; who else would know about Dominic, Eddie, and Matty, to each of whom Bruce dedicated a song during the Passaic show, or that vomiting in your girl’s purse was allowed during “Sherry Darling” in Cleveland, or that Bruce revealed himself to be a private detective during the December 15 broadcast and was searching for the girl who jilted him after they ran away together?  And, of course, there’s Kid Leo’s intro from the Agora:  “Round for round, pound for pound, there ain’t no finer band around,” a description of the band that described them in 1978 and still describes them today.

Then, of course, there are the songs, many of them in their definitive arrangement: the surging start to “Badlands,” the slow harmonica intro to “The Promised Land,” Danny’s sad but beautiful organ before the band kicked into “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” and, of course, the extended piano and guitar jam that segued into “Prove It All Night.”  The album may have been nearly perfect, but Bruce improved upon them on-stage, and it’s those live ‘78 performances from the radio broadcasts that many fans hear when they play those songs in their heads.  Even songs unreleased by Bruce at the time — “Fire,” “Because the Night,” and “The Fever” — were performed in what easily could have been their definitive arrangements.

For many fans, these songs weren’t just the definitive versions or their favorite versions of the songs, they were The Songs.  The songs just didn’t sound “right” when heard from any other source, including the album and subsequent live performances.  Hearing “The Ties That Bind” when the piano after the opening drum beats was replaced by guitar was jarring; if the fading music of “Racing in the Street” didn’t include Bruce talking about driving in the dessert and an old Robert Mitchum film before segueing into “Thunder Road,” something was missing; and if “Streets of Fire” opened with anything other than that searing guitar solo as played in Passaic, well, then, the world was just off-kilter.

One particular trait of Springsteen fans is their evangelical desire to spread the Gospel of Bruce, and the tapes of those shows were always Exhibit A when a non-believer was met.  We could safely speculate that thousands of copies of those radio broadcasts were made in dorm rooms or basements in the months and years after the original broadcast dates.  Now whether or not Passiac, Agora, or Winterland converted thousands of non-believers into Bruce Tramps is another story, but it is hard to imagine that no further copies of those tapes were made.

Or maybe it’s not another story as to whether those copied tapes converted fans.  Less than a year after the Darkness tour ended, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were added to the already-lengthy list of performers at the Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and what had been shaping up to be the bastard cousin of Woodstock turned into Bruce’s coming out party to the rock world.  The media attention generated by Bruce’s participation far out-weighed what the shows had been receiving when the Doobie Brothers and Crosby, Stills, and Nash were the headliners.  Bruce and the E Street Band played two of the five nights, with the “Bruuucing!” from the audience leaving both Chaka Khan and Bonnie Raitt wishing his mother had named him something else.  Of course, 13 months prior to the MUSE shows, Bruce sold out three nights at the same venue by himself, but things were clearly on a different level when Bruce was the media focus of the multi-artist bill.  The resulting live album and concert film from MUSE also contributed heavily to Bruce’s popularity growth prior to the release of his fifth album, but the momentum from the Darkness tour, and the radio broadcasts, put him squarely in the position to explode.

And explode he did.  Through his first four albums, Bruce’s highest position on Billboard’s singles charts with one of his own songs (the Pointer Sisters hit the Top Ten with “Fire” and Patti Smith hit the Top 20 with “Because the Night”) was 23 (with the “Born to Run” single) although both the Born to Run and Darkness LPs peaked in the Top Ten on the album charts.  However, in the fall of 1980, the lead single from “The River” album, “Hungry Heart,” hit the Top Ten on the singles charts, the first of nearly a dozen times that would happen over the ensuing decade.

From a touring standpoint, the explosion was even bigger.  Most of the 1978 tour was spent in mid-sized arenas and theatres, only playing the major arenas on the East Coast.  However, the 1980 tour was booked in major arenas nearly all across the country, often multiple nights.  In May 1978, Bruce played three nights at the Boston Music Hall, but in December 1980, he played two nights at the Boston Garden.  He played two nights in Pittsburgh at the end of the 1978 jaunt at the Stanley Theatre, and he played two more nights there in 1980, but at the Civic Center, the same place the professional hockey team called home.

In the 32+ years since the Darkness tour, several generations of Springsteen fans have discovered the world of “fan-based recordings” through one path or another.  If the fan has already seen a live Bruce show, their first show to track down is the one(s) they’ve seen, but next on the list are the 1978 radio broadcasts, with the stellar sound quality and amazing performances.  And when a fan, especially one just discovering Bruce’s music, hears the “Prove It All Night” with the long guitar intro or experiences (there’s really no other way to describe it, even through “just” a recording) the emotionally raw “Backstreets” interlude for the first time, they’re hooked.  It’s not difficult to see why these particular shows — the Agora, Passaic, and Winterland — have played such a huge role in the Springsteen fan community.

While we’ll never be able to quantify how much of a role those radio broadcasts had in the wave momentum that took Bruce from Northeast Cult Artist to Top Ten Rocker, it’s a component that certainly cannot be ignored.

Flynn Mclean

Discover the limited edition Bruce Springsteen book, The Light in Darkness.
The Light in Darkness is a collector’s edition, we are almost sold out. Less than 30 copies remain.
A great companion piece to The Promise box set, it focuses on the 1978 Darkness on The Edge of Town album and tour

.
Read about the iconic concerts from fans who were there – the Agora, Winterland, Roxy, MSG, Capitol Theatre, Boston Music Hall, The Spectrum and over seventy more!
Click Here to Save on Shipping and Order Now:
The Light in Darkness

Share on Facebook

It was in high school in the early 1990s. A friend of mine and I had pooled our resources and bought an interesting import CD at a local record show in the Florida panhandle. It was called Smalltown Boy and it featured the kind of performance that seemed to go against everything I knew about Bruce Springsteen, which was admittedly very little. I had only recently started to listen to his studio albums, borrowing them from my friend’s older brothers who got them from the Columbia Music Club. Needless to say, this album was different than anything I had heard so far. First of all, I only recognized the names of about half of the songs listed. Secondly, there was an immediacy to these performances on the disc that brought you right into the venue, a seemingly small club that might be just around the corner. But it wasn’t; it was in a strange place called Bryn Mawr, which for all I knew was a small Welsh community. The fact that there were a few audio distortions in the recording made the sound seem even better, like tasting a bit of salt in between licks of an ice cream cone. It really emphasized how live and real it was. And then there were the stories, the asides and the songs I’d never heard before. This was our own little treasure, our forbidden fruit, and a secret Bruce Springsteen that was miles away from the flag-waving muscleman that most of my friends associated him with. The person I heard on this CD was greasy and funky, had friends with funny names, told stories about ducks and metal flake upholstery, sang for his girlfriend’s sister and had the coolest band introductions I’d ever heard in my life.

This left me in a daze. How could this live performance be so different than Bruce’s public persona? It was so odd, so grungy and so wonderful. How did the guy that did that forced looking “Dancing in the Dark” video do this as well? I didn’t have an answer, but another question did arise. What else was in this unknown world of Bruce Springsteen waiting to be discovered?

Record shows were few and far between in our region, but I noticed that there were a few interesting advertisements in the Record Collector magazines that I saw on the shelves in the local bookstore. They tantalizingly listed more of these recordings. That first one had whet our appetite and now were we were ready for more. The first problem was money. We were merely high school kids and these were expensive, generally twice as much as any normal CD in the mall. On top of that, there were so many listed, how would we know which ones we should take a chance on? They seemed to be from all different eras and sources. I had heard rumors of bad recordings and short discs and we really didn’t want to waste our money when they cost so much

.

But this only made us want them more, it added to the quest, the exclusivity of it made us drool in anticipation as we started the search for treasure among the trash, a big monetary risk for an unknown reward. To the rescue came a borrowed copy of “You Better Not Touch,” a guide to these recordings that was featured in Backstreets Magazine. We carefully sifted through those pages, making notes and eventually choosing a few of them to hopefully buy. Hopefully, I say, because the process was a little bit intimidating. These were sold by overseas merchants, and it involved going to the post office to get an international money order, sending a ridiculous amount of money to a stranger and hoping for a response.

Once the money was in the mail, there was nothing to do but wait. There was no guarantee that we’d ever receive anything back. It was like a big black hole that you threw money into, and for some inexplicable reason, expected to receive CDs from in return. It sounded like a scam, but we were hooked on the first one, so we sent off our order. Truly, the waiting was the hardest part. Each day you would wonder if the mailman had stopped by yet, hoping there was a package with exotic looking postage on it.

And one day, there was!

It was part of a larger order, with other eager students in class getting discs of their own favorite bands. My friend had chosen Live In The Promised Land and I went for Pièce de Résistance. We took them home and listened.

I think we both knew very quickly that things had just moved to another level. This was no longer a funky cat telling funny stories and playing lovable rave-ups. This was a guy that was playing the greatest rock and roll that I had ever heard. It wasn’t just that he was playing the songs from his latest LP in front of an audience, but he was playing songs off of an incredible album, supercharging them to a state that seemed to send the whole audience (and this listener) into the stratosphere.

It starts with those 10 songs off Darkness on the Edge of Town. This album describes to me what it’s like to mature into an adult; it reassures that being a man isn’t about machismo; it explains that there are principles that people have, which they must stand up for. It’s about knowing that this is a cruel place to be, but that there’s a way through it, even if it’s not going to be pleasant.

When Bruce made this album, he was letting us know that he knew one of the secrets of the world. When he toured behind it in 1978, he let us know what that secret was. And what I heard was an explosion of rock and roll. It was filled with fury and passion, with parts of pure joy and goofiness. The songs from the album were performed in a way that wouldn’t be possible again. He was living these songs every night on stage and more importantly, off it, not looking back at them as he does today and channeling the hungry person he was when he wrote them.

When he sang back then, he hadn’t yet made it through the badlands, so everything took on a more desperate tone. To me, these are the most powerful versions of the Darkness on the Edge of Town songs, embellished from the album, with searing guitars and sweaty sax, with grunts, yelps, screeches and screams. All of this was the basis of the show, these already incredible songs being done in a way that spoke right to your soul, that showed someone looking for what you were looking for, struggling to find it, and knowing that the struggle is part of the answer.

From the first cut off the first disc, “Badlands,” the band charged with such incredible energy. Bruce is either singing or something is escaping from deep inside, I can’t really tell. The song ends with a scream, not something gratuitous, but a necessary exhortation, where nothing in the English language would do. It should be said that there is nobody that can do this like Bruce, growling out conviction and excitement with nary a word.

Then comes a great moment as the wind down of the first song melds straight into the ferocious guitar of “Streets of Fire.” You’ve just walked through a one-way door. It’s like you’ve only ever driven a golf cart before, and now you’re in a hotrod. The gas pedal has been pushed and all you feel is the acceleration in your back. It’s scary and it’s powerful, and you want to feel it again. These concerts seemed to be filled with these specials moments that make you just shake your head at how spot-on they are. This is how rock and roll should be.

Darkness on the Edge of Town is all its title suggests, but with more, with a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s bad now and it’s going to stay that way for a while, but it can change. The final “HUUHH,” is absolutely visceral and it can’t be any other way. It’s Darkness on the Edge of Town; there are no other words that need to be said, just a knowing nod is enough.

Bruce slaved over these lyrics, getting exactly the phrasing and images he wanted, so there’s nothing I can say about them except that they hit me right in the gut. They’re primordial and they say things that I always knew, but couldn’t express. The brilliance of the writing comes to the forefront, the nuance, what is said and left unsaid, what he tells you and what work is left for you, it is all expertly crafted.

It cannot be emphasized enough: The Darkness album is not the same without the Darkness Tour, and the tour couldn’t have been what it was without those amazingly written songs. And it’s not just those lyrics, but also the way they are sung. The reason a great song becomes a great performance is the way the singer communicates the message to you. The audience has to believe what they’re hearing. It can’t sound fake or made up and it can’t sound contrived or phony. It has to be authentic, and that’s the only way Bruce knows how to be. There’s no question that he is living these songs and that he’s singing from his own experience. We’re back to the music, and after asking the crowd for the latest baseball score, he then moves on to “The Promised Land,” with its harmonica, and he has hit upon something special.

And then the big one, the one everybody talks about. The one that tears your eardrums in half while you want to turn the volume up even higher. It’s “Prove It All Night,” and the way it was performed in 1978 was like nothing ever before or since. If you’ve heard it, you’ll never forget it.

There’s a big debate amongst fans about which one is the best, as it was played a little differently every night. There’s no wrong answer here, but for me, my favorite is from the Winterland show. It never stops. It never stumbles. It sways back and forth perfectly. It pierces your head. And unlike the way other shows from that tour were captured, the guitar is way up front in the mix, slicing away and not buried in with the rest of the band. There’s a point where it sounds like he puts the guitar right in your face. It sounds ludicrous but it’s true. And then another one of those moments comes. Just as the intro fades into the song, the audio is full of distortion; it’s too loud. It cannot be contained by the recording medium as the madness of the intro turns into the song we thought we knew. It’s like you slipped under water and you’re drowning for just a moment, and then your head pops back up and you gasp for air. If this were ever released officially, I would never want that moment to be cleaned up.

The first break comes and it’s: huh, Huh, HUUUUH! Let’s go! I can’t express how marvelously those five syllables come out. Clarence blares out the solo, then Bruce turns on his chainsaw for a quick burst of pure energy. How can anyone sit in their seat and listen to this? I feel nothing but raw adrenaline and this is years after the fact. What were those poor souls who were in the building feeling? How did they cope? How did they process what they were hearing and seeing? Bruce roars through the last verse and then melts more faces with the outro solo and Danny’s organ. It’s hard just to put into context; it’s so off the charts for me. All of this and we’re still in the first set of the show. The amazing “Racing in the Street” comes next, the Geronimo story and then “Thunder Road.” It’s moving enough that you understand why Bruce kisses Clarence right smack on the lips. It can’t be explained and it doesn’t need to be because it’s all right there, aural evidence that you’re experiencing something significant disguised as a rock concert.

Later I expanded with the shows from the Roxy and the Agora, each having their own different brilliant moments, those moments. With the opening drums and guitar of “Summertime Blues” at the Agora, it sounded like the band is sitting right in the room in front of you. The story of “Growin’ Up” showed the full cosmic irreverence of the band. With the Roxy, it’s the cocksure attitude of “Rave On” opening the show, the off-the-cuff “Heartbreak Hotel” and the lovable “Paradise By The C” that dares you not to shake your butt, contrasted with a heavy “Adam Raised a Cain” and the jungle-like “Mona/She’s the One.” And “Backstreets,” every time there was “Backstreets.” The emotional build up and release. You couldn’t just play that song at any arbitrary time, you had to be ready for it, you had to know you could make it through, because this wasn’t any bubblegum pop song playing in the background on the radio. This was a monumental piece of drama, ready to draw tears from your eyes and make you feign you had something caught in your throat. Fortunately you know that “Rosalita,” “The Detroit Medley” and “Quarter to Three” were likely not far behind, ready to give relief.

You’d think that it can’t get much better than this, but it does, because then came the video. I can’t actually remember how this came to be in our hands. After memorizing these broadcasts, seeing what was happening was like a blind man opening his eyes for the first time. I remember seeing the joy on Bruce’s face with Clarence hanging over shoulder, the happiness that can’t be contained as he rambles through “Sweet Little Sixteen” or busts out the opening solo. The unbounded charisma and the nose picking. You can’t teach this stuff. Bruce is all over the stage. It’s like those dynamic 15 minutes from the No Nukes movie, but for three hours. Someone throws a Duke St. (Kings) hat and Bruce catches it mid-step while on top of a huge stack of speakers and wears it around. I mean, who is this guy?

This is a taste of why Darkness on the Edge of Town album and tour resonates so much with me. I write this as someone who was late to the party, who wasn’t there, and who heard all of this secondhand and in diluted form. And it still knocks my socks off every time. The incredibly moving and relatable songs that were whittled down to a dangerous blade. The powerhouse versions. The levity of the covers. The long shows and the unreleased songs. The stories, both ridiculously campy and honest, and the manic, heart-stopping endings. I can only imagine what it would have been like in person.

There was an order of CDs that disappeared into a black hole, that we never received back in our high school days. I never worried about it though; as after we got those first two records, I knew we had already gotten more than our money’s worth.

Josh Auzins

Celebrate the Holiday Season with Bruce Springsteen.
Discover the Limited Edition Bruce Springsteen book, The Light in Darkness.
The Light In Darkness is a collector’s edition, we are almost sold out. Less than 225 copies remain. A great companion piece to The Promise box set, it focuses on the 1978 Darkness on The Edge of Town album and tour.
Read about the iconic concerts from fans who were there- the Agora, Winterland, Roxy, MSG, Capitol Theatre, Boston Music Hall, The Spectrum and over seventy more!
A perfect gift for the holidays.
Click Here to Order Now: The Light in Darkness

Share on Facebook

Libro The Light in Darkness
208 páginas, papel alta calidad, más de 200 fotos

. Edición limitada.
El autor del excelente libro “For You”, donde recopilaba cientos de historias contadas por fans de Springsteen junto a cientos de fantásticas fotos inéditas, ha vuelto a repetir, sólo que ahora superando el listón. Su libro está ahora totalmente dedicado a la gira de 1978, de álbum Darkness on the Edge of Town, probablemente la mejor gira de Springsteen y de la historia del rock.
Para esta ocasión Lawrence Kirsch ha compilado cientos de fotos inéditas de la gira, de muchos conciertos, junto a las historias más apasionantes contadas por los propios fans que asistieron a esos conciertos y tuvieron la suerte de vivirlo en primera persona. Un libro fascinante que nos transporta a una época memorable y ya irrepetible.
COMPRAR: The Light in Darkness

Share on Facebook