Bruce

You never forget your first time. 

The other day I was reminded, vividly, of mine, but more about the whys of the matter will come later. I was about 15 or sixteen, and a total nerd. I spent a lot of time alone reading, and playing solitaire while listening to opera, Midler or Streisand. My social life was to a large degree focused on the boy next door. I had known him all my life and I adored him. We are still close, I still love him and I adore his wife and kids. Before all of that, however, was one afternoon, in 1977…

I think he might have phoned me to come over, or perhaps we just drifted together as we so often did on those afternoons after school. Anyway, I went to his house and he told me that I had to come upstairs with him. I followed him up to the room shared by his older brothers on the top floor. They were not at home; no one was there. We went into the room, he closed the door, and I was happy, as always, to follow his lead. 

“This”, he told me, “is amazing.” We settled in a corner of the room and with a steady hand he placed the needle unerringly in its intended place, and my world changed forever – even though I didn’t know it then – as the first, now-iconic chords of Born To Run filled the room. 

I listened, we listened, and when the song finished I told him to play it again. And again. I could not bring the record home because it belonged to his brother, but I found ways to listen and re-experience Bruce Bliss. I didn’t buy the album first off; I borrowed the album long enough to tape (!) it on my dad’s cassette player which was usually used for Saturdays at The Met broadcasts (also taped by me). I wrote out the lyrics in my journal. One Saturday night, I recorded a radio broadcast of Bruce performing at the Agora in Cleveland. I listened to this tape so many times that I wore it out before I finished high school. There are nuances of those live songs and banter from that Cleveland performance that are etched in my head as surely as some of the songs on Bruce’s albums. 

Live!

I’ve been fortunate enough to see Bruce several times throughout my life. I can muse about how Bruce has remained one of my favorites for more than 40 years before I realize that he has been playing – composing, recording and performing – brilliantly for much longer than that. My first concert in 1981 was the gift of the very generous Jimmy (whose last name I’ve forgotten, and whose beneficence I have not) when in university.

The second or third time I saw Bruce was with my husband (of course, I married a fan! When we drove through Asbury Park in the early 1990s for a wedding in New Jersey, it was a thrill to be in New Jersey!). We bought tickets for the concert off eBay, and for the weeks prior to the concert my husband devoted energy to reacquainting himself with Bruce’s discography – it is easy to fall behind in musical matters with young kids and a busy work life. When he asked why I didn’t do the same, I replied that I would enjoy Bruce’s old stuff and be delighted afresh by the new, that it wasn’t my style to study. He was not impressed by my attitude.

At the cavernous concert venue, our tickets placed us on an elevation left of the stage. I had brought binoculars, the better to the see the sweat on the Divine (figuratively and, now, literally) Clarence Clemons’ brow, the better to watch the magic of Roy Bittan’s hands. We also had an excellent view of the stage and the technician’s booth. As the concert progressed, I used my binoculars to watch the band and, among other things, the sound technician do his thing. I quickly realized that one of the screens in the booth displayed the song line-up as well as the lyrics in real time, which were projected simultaneously onto the stage at Bruce’s feet. I decided to have some fun and pretend that I knew songs that I actually didn’t, memorizing the song title and the first stanza of lyrics from the monitor via my binoculars, singing along (who would be able to hear whatever tune I might concoct?!) with Bruce as if to an old favorite. I figured that my husband would soon realize my ruse and enjoy the joke.

For the next few hours, Bruce (along with his E Street Band) sang, bantered, played to and with the audience like the consummate and generous performer he is. As the opening bars of each song unfolded, I would cock my head knowingly as if searching for recognition of this beloved song that just eluded me, waiting for the penny to fall, and then Boom! There it was! “Oh, I love this song,” I’d exclaim with excitement, “Waiting For A Rainy Day!” And I’d sing the lyrics with ecstatic abandon. New songs, old songs, I knew them all. Once, in order to ‘up’ the authenticity level of my act, I allowed my face to settle into slightly perplexed but still happy lines. “I don’t know this one,” I admitted to my husband. Wouldn’t you know it, after the song Bruce noted that that song he just performed had never been released, but he liked to revisit it now and then. My reputation was sealed, for the moment.

As we walked onto the street after a blazing 3+ hours of concert, my husband said, “You know, I was impressed! You really knew all the songs!” By that time, I felt like I was in too deep to admit what I had done and so said nothing. But the time we went to see Bruce again, maybe eight years later, my husband spotted the booth through the binoculars and discovered that, hey! the lyrics are on the sound console’s monitor! I then admitted what I had done some years before. I think he was amused…

Almost forty years later in 2018, my husband and I (and our binoculars) saw Bruce in NYC for his Broadway show. We were 35 feet from the man. It was wonderful.

(Reminded and) Blinded By The Light…

My husband and I went yesterday to see Blinded By the Light, a charming film depicting the true story of a young man who, as a second-generation Pakistani teenager in a 1980s London suburb, heard Bruce Springsteen and became obsessed with the voice and lyrics that spoke to, and resonated with, his own poetic soul. There was even a crude reference or two to the first time one hears Bruce’s songs and this resonated, in turn, with me as I then recalled my own first time hearing Springsteen. 

The lad in the aforementioned movie has seen Springsteen more than 150 times in real life. Springsteen began to recognize him in the audience and has since become friends with him and his family. I would bet that Bruce would never recognize me or my husband as fans – we are legions, us fans are – but certainly Bruce has been a constant in my life for pretty much forever and being a fan is the one of the few times I’ve ever felt part of a larger movement. Loving Bruce and his music has formed me, and so many years later I still thrill to Born To Run: the volume has to be loud, the bass a respectable level, and if I am driving in a car the experience is as close to heavenly as I remember when I was a young, unworldly and trusting teen.