Thursday, April 4, 2024 Entry #81
“Addiction” may not be too strong a word for my seemingly insatiable desire to attend as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as possible on this tour. What I am feeling is not a need for an illicit substance or a material item. However, it is indeed a craving, one for being immersed in joy-the unrestrained, pure, life-affirming, thrilling, emotionally cleansing, and communal kind of joy-that courses through me head-to-toe when Springsteen and his band are onstage and I am in the midst of his audience.
I am hardly alone in observing and embracing this phenomenon. There are the obvious ones, my fellow touring fans who travel the world to see Bruce and whose total number of Springsteen concerts attended completely dwarf mine. But, if you read reviews of the tour, ranging from those in the numerous personal blogs like this one to major articles published in national publications, all seem to use some combination from my list of superlatives above trying to capture that sense of unbridled happiness the writers feel reporting on Bruce Springsteen concerts. In fact, I could write an entire post centered around the amount of articles out there about this tour in which journalists admit that the joy they felt covering the show brought them to tears.
Springsteen himself acknowledges that providing such a sensation is one of his primary performing goals:
“I am dedicated to the delivery of joy, to making people feel alive and young again. Not a lot of rock bands concentrate on joy. It’s one of the nice things our band has under its belt to deliver at night.”
Having this type of experience is so meaningful and important to me (dare I, a rabbi, say spiritual?) that regardless of the fact that I consider myself to be a highly social and extroverted person, my preference on this tour has been to go it alone. Now, as I have written, because of the all-day General Admission routine, I have met and engaged with lots of folks, including new friends whom I have seen at multiple concerts. However, this is different than making plans to attend a show with a companion, feeling responsible for them, worried they might not understand the singular focus I bring to Springsteen concerts. It is also true that one of the absolute highlights of the tour for me so far was when my son Gabe and I attended the Bruce concert in Washington D.C. last year (his first time seeing Springsteen-see Entry #51), so maybe I’m totally off-base with this going solo stuff. In any event, I was 90% excited to be with my dear friend Steve in the pit in LA, but 10% anxious for the reasons I have outlined. Steve has been following Springsteen as long as I have, but he hadn’t seen the Boss in some time, and our enthusiasm levels (not for seeing one another, but for the concert) were not quite a match-I mean, I was the one who drove all the way from St. Louis for the privilege!
Yet, it became quickly and eminently clear to me that I had nothing at all to be concerned about when it came to Steve. We had a blast during the long hours of lead up to show time. It took just one glance at him when the concert finally began for me to know instantly that Steve was getting it, viscerally internalizing the exhilaration that I had been experiencing all these months. Far from feeling “responsible” for Steve, I loved the groove we fell into, occasionally signaling to one another our awe at the spectacle unfolding directly in front of us. Weeks later, when I reached out to Steve to ask for his reflections to use in this entry, his response was as validating as I assumed it would be.
Steve started out recounting his experience by acknowledging that prior to the day of the concert, though he knew he would enjoy the music and our time together, he had started to wonder if the expense of it all wasn’t too much of an “indulgence:”
“But as I was quickly reminded when they let general admission folks into the cocktail patio just outside the Kia Forum, indulgence is actually a necessary part of life. It’s defined in a myriad of ways. And, to share it with one of my closest friends would certainly be unique. Indulgence, perhaps. One could also argue it was a necessity.
And then they let us in. We moved comfortably to five feet from the front of the stage. The joy I felt standing on the precipice of a Springsteen experience unlike any of the other half dozen times I’ve seen him washed over me, leaving the cost of the ticket floating out to sea, never to be considered again.
And then Springsteen took the stage. 3 1/2 hours of rock ‘n’ roll religion. There are no superlatives that have not been written or expressed about Bruce Springsteen, his E Street Band, or the music they create. And after this particular show, in the company of an extraordinary friend, there was no question as to why every adjective, every adverb describing his greatness, soulfulness, musicianship, and storytelling that has been used has frankly never been enough to capture the experience I had. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of concerts, yet I have never been so blissfully wiped out as I was after this one. How the f@*k does this man do this for months on end?
Thank you, brother Randy for an indelible memory that will be with me every day from that point forward.”
-My friend Steve
One of Springsteen’s legendary songs about friendship, “No Surrender,” contains the verses, “I’ve seen young faces grow sad and old, and hearts of fire grow cold/we swore blood brothers against the wind now I’m ready to grow young again.”
Upon reflection though, I don’t actually think what Steve and I shared at the concert was a rejection of our advancing ages. Both of us have adult responsibilities that we embrace, we each recently lovingly took on the terribly sad obligations we faced upon losing a parent.
In my estimation, the Bruce Springsteen experience isn’t about escapism, it is about the redemption, renewal and transcendence he transmits that leave us feeling better equipped to navigate our current life’s circumstances, whatever they may be.
Here is Springsteen himself on the subject:
“I have built up the skills to be able to provide a transcendent evening…not that you’ll remember just that it was a good concert, but you’ll remember the possibilities the evening laid out in front of you, as far as where you can take your life, or how you’re thinking about your friends, or you wife or girlfriend (husband, spouse, partner), or your best pal, or your job, your work, what you want to do with your life. These are all things, I believe, that music can accommodate and can provide service in.”
Furthermore, though there are clearly many ecstatic moments, this specific tour also purposefully carries heavy themes of loss, mortality, and legacy (See Entries #11 & #22). Springsteen masterfully toggles between and weaves together seemingly contradictory emotions throughout his current performances. It is not possible to attend these concerts and pretend that sadness and loss have been just washed away. It is likely, however, that most fans will come away feeling fully ALIVE (as Springsteen challenges us, “Is there anyone alive out there?”) in spite of, or even triumphantly because of the fact that we all go through valleys as well as peaks. The artist is quite self-aware about this work:
“No matter how dark the message can get-and on this current tour, that message can be very dark indeed-our intention is to exhilarate,”
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Springsteen sometimes exhorts the crowd to “raise your hands,” but most often, as in this picture I took at the LA Forum, our arms are spontaneously raised up anyways as in an especially fervent worship service. This seems to me to be a signal that we are ready to testify to Bruce and to one another that we will from now on reach higher to overcome than we had before.
My friend Steve and I have known one another since we were kids, yet it is a friendship that draws from that deep well of longevity while not getting frozen in a long ago time. As one Springsteen concert review in The Guardian (headlined “A Bruce Springsteen show makes you feel like the best version of yourself.”) noted:
“On stage, the singer becomes the 26-year old he once was, while fully remaining the 73-year old he now is. And the magic works on the audience. Watching the show, I’m inhabiting my 15-year old self and the 63-year old man I am today-and all the years in between…’Nostalgia’ doesn’t quite capture it…instead, (it) is an invitation to reflect on, and cherish, a whole life: the performer’s, but also your own.”
Because Springsteen’s vibrancy in concert gets transferred to those of us fortunate enough to be in attendance, and we are brought along on his ‘mystery ride.’ Furthermore, I do believe there is a mutuality between performer and audience going on as well and our response fuels and widens Springsteen’s own transformation.
This was one of my breakthroughs from this particular concert. Steve and I did indeed temporarily “feel young again” listening to and watching Springsteen together. However, the more permanent effect we exited the Forum with was what the experience brought to our friendship in the here and now, a powerful glimpse of how our connection in our “mature years” could continue to be a positive force for both of us going forward.
Thank you for that Boss, and thank you brother Steve!
Day 4
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