The Darkness tour was a watershed moment for Springsteen in many ways, among them, granting his first real television interviews on the road. Notably, in New York, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, Bruce invited cameras backstage and spoke with local TV news journalists about his audience and his shows. These interviews wound up as feature segments on local news, which paired the backstage chat with live performance footage.
Our gift to you this year are these three feature interview segments just as they aired in 1978. The video offers the broadcast news appearances in best-ever quality (though still showing some ill effects of being 33-year-old footage as expected). The 16-minute compilation features:
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WABC New York with Joel Siegel (Madison Square Garden, August 21, 1978)
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WDVM Washington, DC “The 9 Muses” segment with Henry Tenenbaum (interview from Richfield, OH, August 30, 1978; footage from Largo, MD, August 15, 1978)
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KABC Los Angeles with JJ Jackson, Bruce’s first-ever televised interview (The Forum, July 7, 1978)
Special thanks to the Dick Wingate Archives for providing the video and the Brucebase Wiki for source info.
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Wow! What a tremendous compilation! I’ve seen a singular version of the KABC J.J. Jackson interview, but it was of much poorer quality. This is excellent stuff! Many thanks to Dick Wingate for this treasure!
However, I would note, just for the sake of clarity (as in the ’9 Muses’ clip description you supplied), on the KABC Eyewitness News clip, the J.J. Jackson interview took place backstage at the Forum after the Forum show, which was on Wednesday July 5th, not the 7th as you detailed. The in-studio Eyewitness News segment aired on the 7th, but the interview and concert at the Forum occurred 48 hours earlier.
Springsteen performed in L.A. for three days, in July, 1978, Wednesday the 5th at the Forum, Thursday the 6th (a guest appearance with Gary Busey doing Buddy Holly) at a San Fernando Valley music club, and Friday night, July 7th, in his legendary show at The Roxy in Hollywood (as anchorwoman Christine Lund mentioned just before she threw it over to J.J.).
I know I’m being kinda picky here, but I thought that needed to be clarified. However, thanks again for the wonderful clip!