Take five minutes and watch “The Rising” on the Live in Barcelona dvd. Watch the reactions of the audience, the hand claps as the song begins, the arms in the air, the synchronicity, the responsiveness to Springsteen’s every gesture, his every word—everyone in the building is part of the song. This isn’t an audience, it’s a congregation, and the message of the show is clear: life is complicated and hard, and at the same time something holy and profound. It’s a journey, over three hours, through the light and the dark.
GREG AND I arrived in Portland around three in the morning. By that point, I think we were navigating mostly on faith, but we drove directly off the interstate and up to one of the main entrances of the Rose Garden Arena.5 Parking the car in a loading zone, we started to wander, with only a vague idea of what we were looking for.
It took no more than a couple of minutes to find it: near the entrance there was a post with a clipboard attached, and a list had been started. Greg and I used the pen affixed to the clipboard with a length of string and wrote our names beside numbers seven and eight.
On the way back to the car, we high-fived each other.6 We had done it—we were going to be in the pit.
Ah, the pit.
When tickets for the Rising tour first went on sale, the Springsteen organization announced that they were doing away with the “jailbait”7 system from the reunion tour and going over to general admission on the floor. General admission with a twist, as I mentioned in the last chapter. Right in front of the stage for every show would be a fenced-off area reserved for the first three hundred or so fans through the door.8
In the absence of any pit policies or procedures from the organization, the fans took over. Lineups were strictly monitored, with people signing in when they arrived, their number in line noted on a master list and marked on their hand in felt pen. You had to be in line for regular check-ins, but in between you could get away to find food or a bathroom without losing your spot. It was, to my mind, an equitable system.9
Greg and I had been planning to spend the night in the car, but he suggested we try the hotel we had reserved for after the show instead. (We had seats for the next show in Tacoma; the plan was to sleep in, drive leisurely up to the Tacoma Dome, and to arrive just before showtime. A chill day.) In one of the earliest check-ins in recorded history, we got our room just before four am, and slept for a couple of hours before heading back to the arena. When we arrived, shortly after six, there was already a crowd.
We spent the day on the concrete outside the arena. It was hot, and there was no shade, but we didn’t care. Greg went off to procure breakfast, and we took occasional walks between check-ins, but most of the time we just hung out. We met fans from all over Canada and the U.S. People we knew from the newsgroup and people we knew by reputation. We met tapers,10 and a guy writing a book about Springsteen who was following the tour from stop to stop. A large contingent had already been to a few shows on the tour (which had only started two weeks before), including the one two days previous in Las Vegas, so we listened to their carefully hedged stories. (They were dying to brag and enthuse, but they didn’t want to spoil the show for newbies like us).
It wasn’t all hearts and flowers. A vocal, simmering group splintered off and started a second line at one of the other doors. Fans arriving throughout the day were frustrated both by the lineup and the limited opportunity to butt into it. Things never descended into an outright clusterfuck (a favored term of my online friend Caryn, whom I met for the first time that day), but they came close a couple of times.
And the run through the arena—after an agonizing wait for the wristbands that would allow us back into the pit should we need to fetch beers, say, or use the restroom—racing the people from the second entrance? That’s something I’d rather forget.
But leaning against the lip of the stage just past Patti’s microphone, none of that mattered. We’d done it. Hundreds of miles. No sleep. A full day in line. Front fucking row.
That was the moment Greg and I started what would become the tradition of calling Peter on one of our cell phones. Without saying hello, we held the phone next to the stage as we pounded it. “Front row, baby,” Greg crowed, before hanging up.11
We spent close to two hours more standing up, waiting. Springsteen is famous for starting shows late. You might think we would have been annoyed, but nothing was harshing our buzz (including the women behind us irritated by Greg’s height).
And when the lights went down . . .
I thought I knew everything I needed to know about Springsteen. I could have told you his biography in chapter and verse. I had seen shows. I could talk bootlegs and alternate takes, setlists from past tours and other arcana. I knew, from bootlegs, exactly the count-off that would herald a particular song. I was steeped. I was informed. I had been a fan for almost twenty years. I knew my shit.
Until the moment the band entered, though, in pairs, up a stairway at the back of a stage, Bruce12 and Clarence bringing up the rear . . . until the moment that Bruce counted into the first song . . . until the moment that the mighty mighty E Street Band came to life with the force of a hurricane . . .
It was only with “The Rising” that I got it, that I understood, deep in my soul, what it all meant to me. I went to a place beyond words, a place of surrender and exultation, a place where everything made sense.
I spent the next three hours transported. I abandoned myself to songs like “Prove It All Night” and “Backstreets.” I thought of Peter when Bruce did “Bobby Jean” and again during “Born to Run,” electric and full band this time, Bruce playing the arena of fans as much as he was playing his guitar.
In only the second week of the tour, with a full album of new material, it was fascinating to watch Springsteen actively conducting the band, gesturing for changes, occasionally disappointed. Everything that would within a few months seem like second nature was in its early stages. Numerous times over the course of the night Springsteen worked the crowd from right in front of us, close enough to touch.
The crowd surged forward at these moments, hands flailing, desperate for the slightest contact. They crushed me against the stage. But I wasn’t part of that flailing. I’m not afflicted by that sort of hero worship. I didn’t want to touch the hem of Springsteen’s garment or the guitar; I wanted the chance to watch him play from inches away. And I got it.13
There were a lot of songs it thrilled me to hear. He introduced “Atlantic City,” one of my favorites, by mentioning that he had gotten married in Portland, not far from the arena. “Thunder Road” was incredible. And “Born to Run”? It may just be the perfect rock song, a roaring engine of escape and consequences.
But to my surprise, the songs I connected with most intensely were all new, or relatively so: “The Rising,” “Into the Fire,” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
It’s difficult to explain. All three songs took me out of myself while immersing me in myself. During “The Rising” I was one of a sea of individuals participating in the call and response, arms in the air in what seemed almost part of a choreographed dance. It felt like church, but not like the United Church services of my childhood. I could feel this in my soul.
“Into the Fire,” with its narrative of heroism and sacrifice, was a potent reminder that there was a place for true nobility, true courage, in the world. All that stuff I was carrying, all that stuff I couldn’t tell Greg in the car, seemed to pale before the reality of life and death.
“Land of Hope and Dreams” brought it home. A train song, based seemingly in equal parts on Woody Guthrie’s “This Train Is Bound for Glory” and Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” it’s a valediction, a journey to the golden valley that awaits all who get on board. And anyone who wants to climb aboard can: the train carries everyone, from whores and gamblers to the broken-hearted.
A Springsteen show can change you. When I say, “You really have to see him live,” I’m not resorting to cliché: those are words of experience.
&nb
sp; Leaving the show that night, Greg and I were spent. It had been a long, long day, and we wanted nothing more than to sleep. We went back to the hotel and collapsed.
When I woke up the next morning, Greg was already awake.
“So, I was thinking,” he said.
“Yeah.” I already knew where this was going. I was already in motion.
We raced up to the Tacoma Dome and got a place in the general admission line. We managed to score a couple of scalper’s tickets for the floor and sold one of our seats. We were meeting friends there, but we figured they would understand.14 We spent another day under the hot sun, eating one of the world’s biggest sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner combined. We raced with hundreds of other fans down a terrifying concrete stairwell and across the arena floor. We ended up almost exactly where we had been the night before, stage left, just in front of Patti.
How could we not? Having experienced that once, how could we pass up the chance to experience it again?
We called Peter. We pounded the stage.
We waited.
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin’ on the end of the line
1. I know, I know. You can’t believe everything you hear. Ironically? It was Bruce Springsteen who taught me that, in his 1985 introduction to his cover of Edwin Starr’s “War”: “Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.” Blindly believing a rock star about his inspiration probably isn’t as potentially lethal, but consider a grain of salt judiciously taken.
2. Look, I’m sitting here with tears streaming down my face, and I’m not sure that I know why. I think it’s this, though: the man is in the upper ranks of rock royalty. He’s richer than Croesus, and his every public appearance is an event. So here he is, in the aftermath of a national tragedy, and what’s he doing? He’s calling people who have lost someone. He’s talking to them, asking about the people they’ve lost, listening to their stories. He’s giving the gift of his music in their memory. He’s giving his time. He’s giving of himself. There’s a lot to be cynical about with Springsteen, especially considering the amount of hype that accompanied the release of The Rising months later, but credit where credit is due: he did more than you or I did, or would have been tempted to do. And it made a difference. Holy fuck. Yeah, I’m verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves.
3. It’s strange to think that Born in the U.S.A. was the last Springsteen album to feature The E Street Band, but ’tis true: Tunnel of Love was essentially a Springsteen solo album, and after that the band was very publically shit-canned.
4. I know, I’m ignoring “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” which is the sort of cheer-inducing pop ditty that the man can write in his sleep. And may have. I file this one with “Hungry Heart”: yes, I know people like it. I’m not one of those people.
5. I’ve tried to navigate that area of Portland in a non-exhausted state and encountered frustration after frustration. That we got to the arena so easily is mind-boggling.
6. Technically, I suppose Greg low-fived my high-five. So what’s that, a median-five?
7. “Jailbait” is the term fans used to describe the policy of having the first seventeen rows of seating on the floor available only by phone, with tickets being picked up in person on the day of the show with proper id. This was to—theoretically—prevent the scalping of the best tickets in the house, to make sure the fans had equal access. The nickname? First seventeen rows: under eighteen. Jailbait.
8. Response to the pit divided fans. Some saw the merit in rewarding the most devoted fans, those willing to spend all day in line to get closest to the stage. Others saw it as unfair, and punitive to those fans who couldn’t take a full day off work to get that close. I was—and am—firmly in the fair reward camp. As someone who had to travel hundreds of miles and miss a few days of work to see a couple of shows, I liked the idea of my diligence being rewarded.
9. Of course, any system is open to corruption, and as the tour progressed, stories began to pile up about multiple lists, multiple wristbands, fake numbers, and “pit pigs,” fans who were front and center night after night. Sic transit Gloria.
10. In the days before everyone could record and film shows with their cell phones, tapers—the folks who would invest in quality equipment to record shows in the best possible sound—got a lot more respect. When it comes to bootlegs, I much prefer to wait for higher quality than to succumb to the siren call of instant gratification.
11. This is, of course, a bit of an asshole thing to do. I know that. I recognized it in the moment, even as I was pounding on the stage. I recognize the assholeness every time I do it. And I do it anyway. Peter would expect nothing less of us. (The only time we didn’t do it was during the Magic tour, when he booked time off and bought flights and tickets to join us for a three-show swing, only to get snowed under with work and have to cancel at the last moment. To call him under those circumstances—despite standing right in front of Clarence in Vancouver—would have been cruel.)
12. As I reread this, I noticed something interesting. Throughout this book, Springsteen has been Springsteen, subject and object, held at a distance. As soon as I lost myself in the memory of that show, though, he became Bruce. This is how fans talk, with an intimacy that belies the divide between performer and audience.
13. Cori’s first question, upon hearing my description of the concert, was, “Did you get sweated on?” Yes. Yes I believe I was sweated on.
14. Greg filled me in on a blank from that night as he was reading this manuscript: “During the Tacoma show, John was sitting forty rows up on the side of the stage in the upper deck, worried that we hadn’t arrived. The houselights came on during ‘Born to Run’ and he turned to his friend and said, ‘They’re in the front row!’”
Dancing in the Dark
Album: Born in the U.S.A.
Released: June 4, 1984
Recorded: January 1982–March 1984
TRY THOUGH I might, there’s no way I can reinvent history.
So it’s like this, and always will be: Bruce Springsteen became a superstar not because of his best albums (like Darkness on the Edge of Town or Nebraska) or his finest songs (like “Racing in the Street” or “Incident on 57th Street”), but because of a hook-laden, synth-based, dance-friendly single written with the sole intention of producing a hit.
Late in the sessions for Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen was harangued by manager and producer Jon Landau, who, upon examining the album’s projected running order, discerned the absence of a breakout single. Springsteen initially resisted, but within a couple of days had delivered the final track, the song that would make him a household name around the world.
The success of “Dancing in the Dark” was fostered not only by its radio-friendliness, but also by the winning rock video directed by Brian De Palma and the seven- and twelve-inch dance remixes that earned the song heavy rotation in clubs over the summer of 1984.
As Springsteen’s popularity picked up steam, new singles followed, including “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Glory Days,” “I’m On Fire,” and “My Hometown.” Eventually, seven of the album’s twelve songs were released as singles, all of them reaching the Billboard Top Ten.1 “Dancing in the Dark” was the big one, though.
It’s the song that changed everything.
It’s the Springsteen song that everyone knows.
Despite this, it’s pretty clear to me that not many people have actually listened to the words.
“Dancing in the Dark” is one of the poppiest, most radio-friendly, danceable and saccharine-sounding tracks you’ll ever hear. But lyrically, it’s one of the bleakest, most unrelenting songs in the Springsteen catalogue. The characters he created for the Darkness on the Edge of Town album—hell, even the narrator of “Point Blank”—have nothing on the sheer, existential dread that is “Dancing in the Dark.”2
Take out the liner notes—or visit brucespringsteen.net—and read the lyrics. Now, read them again.
&n
bsp; Stripped of its poppy veneer, “Dancing in the Dark” is the sound of a soul in torment, a man dragging himself through life without passion, lacking any “spark” to “start a fire” that’s long gone out. If it ever existed.
He lives in a dump, and he’s getting nowhere; he wants to change everything about himself, but he’s utterly helpless. As the song progresses, the tension mounts. He’s looking for love, but more than that, he’s looking for even a single person to glance his way, to assure him that he still actually exists. And there’s no respite, no last-verse cry of defiance, just his growing desperation as he becomes more and more numb to everything in the world.
Springsteen has attempted, to little effect, to reclaim some of the inherent darkness of “Dancing in the Dark” over the last two decades. An acoustic version performed occasionally on the 1992– 93 tour highlighted the words, but it didn’t really work as a song. The hard-rocking, guitar-driven version of recent tours is a welcome relief from the twee synthesizers, but the musical treatment lends the song an air of defiance unsupported by the words.
The song is harrowing, and hearing it done this way casts a new light on the album as a whole. Born in the U.S.A., for all its chart-topping, trend-setting popularity, is almost uniformly bleak, from the traumatized veteran in the title song to the spurned lover in “I’m Goin’ Down,” from the aching loss of “Bobby Jean” to the desperate search for a lover not for passion but for protection in “Cover Me,” from the good-times-turned-bad of “Darlington County” and “Working on the Highway,” to the passionate, nay, psychotic desire of “I’m On Fire.”
“Dancing in the Dark” reaches in to the listener, direct and unadorned. Springsteen’s use of the first person in the verses establishes an intimacy, while the almost accusatory “you” in the chorus lends the song an air of complicity: I’m like this, and you know you’re like this, too.
It’s powerful stuff, and it’s easy to imagine where it came from. Frustrated and tired at the end of a writing and recording process that spanned years,3 Springsteen seems to have funneled his despair and exhaustion into a song he resolutely did not want to write. It’s somewhat hard to imagine Springsteen as being this tortured—but perhaps the glossy trappings of the music are his way of attempting to hide it. In many ways, “Dancing in the Dark” is the song that most closely presages Tunnel of Love, his work in therapy, and the Human Touch/Lucky Town double-punch.
Walk like a Man Page 15
