In 1975, at age 18, working on issues of independence and sexual (im)maturity common at that age, hearing “wrap your legs ‘round these velvet ribs and strap your hands ‘cross my engines” moved me in ways I could never articulate. But I knew that someone who could create that mix of toughness and tenderness, love and fear, was worth paying attention to. Bruce Springsteen still holds my attention forty-plus years later.
When Darkness on the Edge of Town came out, I knew the adult concerns it addressed: manhood, work, marriage, temptation, divorce, faith. Later, like millions of others, his concert CD boxed set inspired me to buy a CD player, and I played it a lot. But I missed his concert in Augusta in the late 1970’s and he never came near here for the next two decades.
Nearly twenty years ago my wife Meg gave me a guitar. The first song I learned well enough to play for anyone else was Springsteen’s “Fire.” “You can’t hide your desire;” I remained moved by his songs of passionate obsession.
Several years ago I finally went to my first Springsteen concert, at Gillette Stadium. It was a musical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual experience. I have a DVD of another performance, an intimate solo one Bruce has compared the Broadway shows to. It sure would be great to attend one of those intimate shows live! At one point he says he wrote some songs to hear the audience sing back at him, “so earn your keep, you bastards!” At Gillette that night I sang as loud as I could, as did people around me, but all I could hear was the E Street Band roaring, while grief and redemption, loss and triumph, sadness and jubilation washed through me. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of people Gillette holds, but when that many people sing, “I believe in a promised land,” you feel the power of music.
A few years later Springsteen returned to Gillette. We didn’t have tickets, but on the day of the show a chance to buy some arose. It required driving an hour in the opposite direction to get them. When you get up into your fifties life seems plotted out to the day or even the hour, and today always seems to include preparation for tomorrow. That day was a spontaneous adventure reminiscent of times in our twenties.
The concert was delayed by nearly an hour because of a huge thunderstorm, without reducing my excitement one drop. The performance was as energetic, the experience as visceral as the previous one. Still, when it was clear the night was nearly over, Meg and I began to consider our three-hour drive home. We started walking out. As we got near the bottom of the exit stairs, the band charged into their long-time encore standard “Rosalita.” We looked at each other, turned, ran back up the stairs, and danced in the concourse, moving with that “stone desire.”
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