Sunday, February 5, 2023 Entry #22
The lasting power of friendship is already emerging as a powerful theme in the concerts on this nascent tour, and most poignantly, the thread runs through some of Springsteen’s oldest songs to his very latest. First up is the opening song, “No Surrender,” from Bruce’s 1984 blockbuster album, Born In The USA. It’s a rebellious romp describing youthful friends who swear “blood brothers against the wind,” who “made a promise we swore we’d always remember.” Next up, Springsteen plays a new song “Ghosts” in which he describes the mystical feeling that a friend who has died is still present in his life, present now as a ‘ghost,’ as Springsteen portrays him, “moving through the night, a spirit filled with light.” (“I hear the sound of your guitar/Comin’ from the mystic far/Stone and the gravel in your voice/Come in my dreams and I rejoice”). This friend is defined mainly by his guitar (“Your old Fender Twin from Johnny’s Music downtown/Still set on 10 to burn this house down!”) and his clothing (“Old buckskin jacket you always wore/hangs on the back of my bedroom door/Boots and the spurs you used to ride/Click down the hall but never arrives.”). As a side note, this friend, remembered in the 2020’s sounds a whole lot like a person Springsteen is describing in one of his earliest songs that he wrote as a very young man, “If I Was A Priest,” re-recorded decades later on the same album that “Ghosts” appears on (the friend in this wordplay song is playing the part of Jesus in a cowboy allegory wearing a “buckskin jacket, boots and spurs so fine.”-sound familiar?). Later in the tour, “Priest” would eventually find it’s way onto the setlist a few times, further connecting these two friends, likely at least modeled after the same person. After a few more songs, the theme continues as the band takes a break, leaving Springsteen alone on the stage with his acoustic guitar. Before starting to play and sing, Springsteen recites the only extended “rap” of the concerts thus far, the one about his late friend George Theiss which I transcribed in the “Showtime! Concert #1-Tampa” entry. The song is “Last Man Standing,” and we learn more about this early friend of Springsteen through clothing-notably again, a cool jacket and footwear (“Snakeskin vest and a sharkskin suit/Cuban heels on your boot” and “Thrift store jeans and flannel shirts”) and of course through music (‘kicking in the band, taking the crowd on a mystery ride, even after the gigs, somewhere deep in the heart of the crowd, the sound still ringing in his ears’). After this tender moment, we are suddenly transported again to a friendship’s beginning all the way back to the epic, verging on operatic 1975 song “Backstreets.” As you can see in the video I took at the Atlanta concert that starts this post, Bruce strikes quite a pose with his guitar as the grand piano and drum roll introduction fills the arena. Then, The Boss sings extra-passionately about the depth, drama, and adventures we all remember from our very consequential and heartfelt youthful relationships. (“One soft infested summer, me and Terry became friends/Trying in vain to breathe the fire we were born in/Catching rides to the outskirts, tying faith between our teeth/Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house/Getting wasted in the heat.”). Finally, at the very end of the night, Springsteen plays another newer solo song about a deceased friend called “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” Like in “Ghosts,” Bruce has this friend’s clothes, old guitar and also his books and records. Later in the tour, Bruce has been interjecting this image of filling his life with the meaningful mementos of his friend who has died into “Backstreets.” as well. During the refrain, “‘till the end,” Springsteen has been gently touching his heart and intoning, almost like a mantra “I got all your old books, and I got that box of your 45’s, the guitar you always kept by the side of your bed, and I got that picture of the two of us sitting on your porch on your wedding day. And the rest, I’m gonna carry right here.” With this addition, Springsteen is clearly connecting the deceased friend from “Ghosts” and “I’ll See You In My Dreams” (“I got your guitar here by the bed/All your favorite records and all the books that you read.”) to that young and vital friend from “Backstreets.”
The ‘friends’ in these songs, “No Surrender,” “Ghosts,” “If I Was A Priest,” “Last Man Standing,” “Backstreets,” and “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” are a likely collection of real and imagined friends, maybe an amalgam of a number of Springsteen’s friends. They run in a direct path through these songs Springsteen has obviously carefully chosen, allowing us to feel the course of the friendship from youthful exuberance to painful mourning, as losing a friend is a singular kind of grief. That young friend in “No Surrender” promised “no retreat,” and in Backstreets they swore “forever friends!” Sadly, Springsteen by now has a number of friends who are no longer on this earthly plane, but Bruce is still standing strong. So, in these later friendship songs, Springsteen adamantly renews those young promises in his friends’ names and spirits now that they are gone. “I make my vows to those who came before!” In part to honor all his friends who have died, Springsteen is doubling down on the “No Surrender” cry that “I’m ready to grow young again!” In these concerts, Springsteen is making it extremely clear that his ‘heart is still pounding when he hears the neighborhood drummer sound,’ still cutting a place of his own with these drums and these guitars (“No Surrender”). He is still ‘shouldering that Les Paul and fingering the fretboard, turning up the volume on those crashing, slashing chords and letting those spirits be his guide’ (“Ghosts”), still ‘set on ten to burn the house down, counting the band in, kicking it into overdrive, and by the end of the set, leaving no one (rather everyone) alive!’ (“Ghosts”). As Little Steven said in a recent interview, “This tour combines a theme of mortality with a proof of vitality.” “I’m alive! (Even when so many of his compatriots sadly are not) I can feel the blood shiver in my bones!” Bruce Springsteen sing/shouts in joyful defiance in “Ghosts,” and he is again ‘high and hard and loud deep in the heart of the crowd,’ (“Last Man Standing”), living and laughing with his friends, being propelled on against all odds by their ghosts, who live on in Bruce Springsteen’s tender heart, indomitable spirit, life-affirming music and in his dreams.
Day 8
"I Make My Vows To Those Who've Come Before!"