You're Not The Boss Of Me (anymore)

For Jeff.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band--"Prove It All Night (live bootleg)" (mp3)

Every time Bruce Springsteen goes on tour, someone will ask me if I'm going to try to get tickets. Every time, I say, "No."

I'll get an incredulous look. People know I like him; why wouldn't I want to go see the greatest live show ever? "Dude," they'll say, "he plays for three hours."

I know. I saw him twice in 1978, and afterwards, I knew that I never needed to see him again.

Some moments are so trapped in time that there is no point in trying to repeat them--in any way, for any reason. My collegiate experience with Bruce Springsteen was like that. Even if I could recreate it, I'm not sure that I would. Bruce was all-night, shout out the lyrics, puke out the window. He could salve the pain of love and raise the glory of salvation. He was the savior and we believed.

Ah, those 1978 concerts--I saw him twice, in Hampton Road, VA and Pittsburgh, PA-- transcendent shows, both of them. From the extended jungle percussion jam at the start of "She's The One" to the doctors carrying Bruce back out on a stretcher to play "Rosalita," the set lists captured the mixture of poetry and frivolity of his early career. The Darkness songs had added weight. He even recaptured "Because The Night" with a searing, extended live version that told the story that Patti Smith's single had not. In Pittsburgh, he sat solo at the piano and fumbled (a little) through "Lost in the Flood," requested by an audience member whose friend had recently died in a motorcycle accident. But at the center of it all was Bruce's guitar, notes bending to capture the pain in the dark new songs.

Of course, I still listen. I was one of the few who likes The Ghost of Tom Joad. For the first three anniversaries of 9/11, my ritual was to sit alone in the kitchen with a six-pack of beer after everyone else was asleep and listen to The Rising with a beatific smile. I like the new CD, too. Good, kind of retro-Jersey, songs. But it sounds muddy to me. Too many instruments and layers, no virtuosity. I mean, Little Steven has got a few chops, but Nils Lofgren, seriously, is one of the great rock guitarists and a distinctive vocalist, but you'd never even know he was in the band, given the stock guitar parts he is expected to play. (For contrast, check out "Moon Tears" by Lofgren's original band, Grin--it's a worthy bookend to Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown") On Magic, even Bruce rarely, if ever, plays lead.

Somewhere between 1978 and now, Bruce went from being a rocker to becoming an artist, from having a hungry heart to living a vegetarian lifestyle. It may sound sophomoric and pointlessly reckless, but rock and roll was meant to fueled by greasy cheeseburgers and amphetamines, not exquisitely-detailed backstage food contract riders and personal trainers.

I used to get angry at critics who would seek to remind us that rock was never supposed to last this long, but every time I see one of the elder statesmen trying to keep repeating youthful posturing, I think those critics were probably right.

But, in 1978, Bruce was it. This was the tour where he seemed to want to remind everyone that he could actually play that guitar he was holding on the cover of Born To Run. I mean, really play it.

All I have to offer as evidence is one song, "Prove It All Night," taken from a beat-up record with most of the highs and lows worn away, a bootleg of Bruce's 1978 show at the Roxy. It is not a great recording, but maybe somewhere in it you can hear what was then that isn't now--how stripped-down the band played, how much Bruce believes every word he whispers or growls barely on key, how his guitar cuts in like a chainsaw (sounding like no other guitar before or since), how after the solos it all drops off to just his voice and the drums, how every second of that 9-minute version of a 4-minute song seems essential. Hell, the opening piano-guitar sequence is longer than the original song. Before his guitar enters, he announces, almost to himself, "Prove it all night. Prove it all night again."

Nowadays, Bruce is promoted and canonized by adoring upper middle class adults who can afford tickets to his shows after a light supper of sushi and wine. Back then, he was unleashed on unsuspecting audiences who had heard his name on the wind, but didn't know what to expect. Then they saw. And heard. And believed.

"Prove It All Night" comes from a bootleg LP purchased at a record store in Upper Darby, PA in 1978 and recently converted to MP3 using a USB turntable I got for Christmas. The original recorded version is on Darkness on the Edge of Town, available from Itunes.