The Boss is back

rock and roll is alive and well

The first time I experienced Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live was at the Towson Center in 1976. We had recently opened the 5,000 seat field house and they were the first rock band to play the venue. Many of the students did not know their music. Born to Run had just come out.

This show was not an immediate sell out. You had to physically go to the box office and buy a real ticket. It took a little effort. The manager of the student center asked me to help him get Bruce’s music in front of the kids…I was the new technical director on campus for events. There were no ipods…or wireless speakers to help us spread the gospel.

I found a Kustom tube amp with 12” speakers on wheels…and we moved it around the student center, plugging it in and playing music from a cassette tape.

It worked and the show sold out. ( we were early influencers)

The morning of the event came and we set up the stage which was rented and came off of a semi truck. The building manager hired Towson football players to help set up the stage. ( as a side note…none of them returned after the show to help tear it down and get it back on the truck).

The one 40’ truck with the band gear, sound & lights arrived and we went to work, helping their road crew. Their road manager told us that “neatness counts”. It was a very clean & precise band set up….but their band gear was beat to hell. It was held together with wire and gaff tape. My friends who played in Lounge Bands wouldn’t be caught dead playing stuff this beat up.

Then the tour bus arrived…it was a 1950’s model Greyhound with wood paneling on the side. It too was beat to hell. It looked like it would have a hard time getting back to Asbury Park from Baltimore.

One of my crew was a girl. Age, around 20 who was about 5’2”. Bruce’s crew chief was skeptical and he tested her by having her lift a 50 pound Ampeg SVT bass amp head up on top of a speaker cabinet as tall as she was. She passed and they let her stay.

They did sound check…and the promoters opened the doors. The room filled up. I was tired. It had been a hard working 12 hour day, pushing boxes off the truck…pulling heavy feeder cables…lifting bulky tube amps and speaker stacks. I grabbed a Heineken from the trashcan full of iced down beer backstage and sat down next to the Front of House (FOH) sound mix and lighting controls. The house lights dimmed and we were all taken on a rock roll journey to the places Bruce had written about in his dreams and nightmares.

It was powerful, but controlled. It had rage…and tender love. We were all transported to Bruce’s world together. Most of us for the first time.

The Lighting Director (LD) knew the music by heart and he did lighting cues manually (there were no computers with 1000 cues stored in them…or moving lights) these were all hand gelled PAR 64’s…he did lighting cues that followed Max’s drumsticks around his drums. The lighting just elevated everything and focused your eye where it should be in every moment.

When the show ended we all knew we had witnessed R&R genius. It was sheer visual energy and aural magic. The lights came up and the audience went home. We went back to work. Taking down the truss, the lights, speakers…putting it all away in their rolling boxes and back on the truck….and then the stage. No football players returned, so my crew at 2 in the morning started to take down the heavy stage platforms and risers. As the sun rose, the semi pulled away…and the driver offered to take our girl stage hand with him. She declined. She now lives happily in DE with her “Lion”.

Last night my wife and I got to experience Bruce and the E Street Band…many of them the same musicians from almost 50 years ago….and we could have dinner and drinks…no 12 hour setup this time… and just enjoy the show… in Camden Yards with about 25,000 people. The stage is a LOT larger with 3 huge LED video walls. But it felt as intimate as it did with 5,000 in a much smaller arena.

We scored the tickets in a fluke 2 days ago. The stage was dead ahead at eye level.

The stagecraft was brilliant. The show was lit for the big screens…a lot of crisp white light. The video director knew the show, the same way the LD did 48 years ago. The cameras were exactly in the right place all the time.

Bruce doesn’t jump into the audience and body surf any more…but this is no nostalgia act. This is a straight ahead, no nonsense, take no prisoners rock and roll band.

“Miami” Stevie van Zandt is still the pirate ships chief mate, with more guitars than most music stores…Roy Britton plays brilliant piano and Max Weinberg is the best “not a Ginger Baker type player” in the drum world.

Jake Clemons has taken over his dad’s chair on sax…and this apple did not fall far from the tree of the hard driving soloist.

When Bruce wants to take the show totally off the chain, he hands the keys to the Corvette to Nils Lofgren…this elf…dives in with the wisdom of an elder, but the energy and abandon of a teenager. I had the good fortune to document him up close about 20 years ago on a shoot….I was amazed at his energy and skill then and now.

Bruce brings it back to the roots with his harmonica and you can feel the ghosts of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf prowling the stage.

I’m grateful that we have artists like this…who just keep going. Doing what they do. I’m energized and inspired…Bruce is 3 years older than me. Let’s keep rocking baby.

Peace to all