Showtime! Concert #12-Asbury Park Beach, New Jersey Part 2

Sunday, September 15, 2024 Entry #108

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, seeing Bruce on the beach in Asbury Park. This is something we are going to be talking about the rest of our lives.”-Alexandra Jardvall, who came from Sweden for this concert

Welcome back to my report on Bruce Springsteen’s epic performance at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival on the beach in Asbury Park. My angle here is the many, many moments where our current locale was the front and center material in this homecoming concert.

Springsteen introduced his song “Local Hero” with the humorous story about the time he saw a “black velvet painting” of himself hanging in the window of a store in Freehold, the nearby town where he was born (see more on this incident in Entry #65).

The next song I need to talk about isn’t explicitly about New Jersey, but it’s hard to believe its heart-rendering story wasn’t based on a subculture that Springsteen learned about in his growing up years here. In any event, “Racing in the Streets” is one of my very favorite songs, and one I had not yet heard Springsteen sing on this tour. It’s an tour de force ballad, and Roy Bittan’s extended piano solo at the end of the song was absolutely breathtaking. When Springsteen sang the searing line, “Tonight my baby and me we’re gonna ride to the sea and wash these sins off our hands,” he poignantly pointed over to the nearby ocean.

At the beginning of the encore sequence of the concert, Springsteen returned to the subject of Asbury Park’s revival, a commentary he began during “Growin’ Up.” Then, he told the story in a humorous way, Rip Van Winkle style (“Streets were empty, buildings were empty, nobody on Ocean Avenue, nobody anywhere. And then, I fell into a dreamy sleep, and when I woke up, I said “where did all these fucking people come from?”), but now Springsteen wanted to inspire us with the reality of the situation.

“Wow! I’m feeling fucking old tonight but in a good way! I never thought I’d live to see this sight nowhere in my lifetime! The band was here on that little street corner when nobody was here, and I didn’t know when I would see folks in this good town again. I just want to take a moment to thank all the people who have invested themselves to bring Asbury Park back to life…I want to thank the LGBTQ community for all they did for Asbury Park in the last 25 years…God bless Asbury Park!

It was wonderful that Springsteen gave props to the LGBTQ community for upping Asbury Park’s “cool quotient,” but he was also being humble. After riots hit the town hard in the early 70’s, Springsteen’s growing fame made him a global ambassador to the possibility that Asbury Park, the oceanside musical proving grounds for The Boss after all, could still be a vital and compelling place to live, work, and play. Springsteen never forgot this town, he continued popping up to play live music here, and he contributed money and other resources to revitalization efforts. Springsteen originally wrote “My City of Ruins” (See Entry #71 for a report on the life of that song that took on an entirely different meaning after the attacks on 9/11/2001) in 2000 for a benefit concert to assist Asbury Park, which was continuing to suffer through cycles of crime, poverty, and disrepair.

It is interesting to me to think about Springsteen’s “Born To Run” persona, someone desperate to liberate himself from the constraints of his home. And, Springsteen’s battles with his father and his urge to bust out are well-documented. But that place was Freehold. For Springsteen, Asbury Park, though it was mere miles away, was the first place he escaped to. It was a locale that brought mostly positive aspects to his life-independence, friendships, boardwalk, beach, and especially the passionate learning and honing of his craft. Asbury Park gave birth to what his glorious life would eventually become (not to mention the place where he fell in love with his wife), and it has therefore escaped the ambivalent and baggage-laden way he often describes his nearby birthplace.

So, Springsteen hung in there, Even when he rehearsed for his 1999 reunion tour with the E Street Band at the fabled Asbury Park Convention Hall and his beloved boardwalk was all but abandoned, a comeback was in the works. And, this town did have a revival, which was made clear by the current, ecstatic facts on the ground where tens of thousands of us currently stood together.

“It was local artists who’ve picked up the pieces these last 20 years or so years-songwriters and painters and poets who began moving to Asbury Park in the 2000’s and slowly reignited its soul. The LGBTQ+ community also embraced the resort-turned -ramshackle town and forged its reputation as a place for love, tolerance and creativity…Sea.Hear.Now is…about the city in which it is housed, and what is the most demonstrative transformation any New Jersey town has undergone this century. The fact that Asbury Park can support this enormous, multi-day, multi-stage event each year (since 2018) is a culmination of its cultural revolution. It is a bold, booming thing to behold.”-NJ.com

I can attest-it was definitely bold and booming! There was Life everywhere (and “it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive!”)-on the stage, in the crowds on the beach, and among the people watching and listening from boats on the ocean. It was reported that Springsteen’s voice could be heard a mile away, quite a metaphor as he sang so many songs written in, around, and about this area. Bruce Springsteen couldn’t escape this place even if he wanted to and conversely, on this night, there apparently wasn’t anyone in Asbury Park that could escape Bruce Springsteen!

I was too entranced to take any videos when Springsteen played “Meeting Across The River,” really the only song from the Born To Run album that Springsteen rarely plays (so of course he played it tonight!), and followed that with the song that comes after it on the album, the always transcendent “Jungleland.” I know I was not the only fan pinching myself to make sure this was truly our current reality.

Springsteen shouted it out again, “Asbury Park!” His was the voice and face of pride, joy, and triumph, as NJ.com. wrote, “For the band and fans alike, the magnitude of Springsteen playing Asbury Park was mutually understood, respected, and capitalized on for maximum Jersey-to-the-core impact.”

To be honest, though many fans adore it, I never really liked Springsteen’s cover of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl.” Too shmaltzy for The Boss, IMHO, and it might be the only song I switch off when it gets played on E Street Radio (I realize this isn’t the most popular opinion, especially among local Springsteen fans). But, I will admit, when he closed with it and I heard the line. “Down the shore everything’s all right,” I totally understood.

As Stan Goldstein wrote about this particular performance of “Jersey Girl,” “The perfect song for a perfect night, a night of pure magic on the beach at Asbury Park.” And about the entire experience, this veteran of countless Springsteen shows and sightings said,

“Just an incredible evening. It was surreal. There were cheers, tears and just amazement by the 35,000 people in attendance who witnessed a legendary performance. When the greatest shows in the history of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are discussed, the September 15, 2024 show in Asbury Park is going to be right at the top of that list.”

Springsteen. 35,000 of us on the beach. A 3 hour, 15 minute concert. Asbury Park. It’s over. Damn. At some point near the end of the concert, Springsteen acknowledged that “some of you have been out here since 8 a.m.! 4 a.m.!” Hey, that’s me (including a crack of dawn train ride from New York City)! It was time well spent, Boss. Time so incredibly well spent.