Several months ago, I first read that Bruce Springsteen was setting out to do a one-man show on Broadway. My immediate thought was, “I would really like to go to that, but I doubt I’m going to make it to New York anytime soon.” There was a period where you could sign up for the “Ticketmaster Verified Fans” program, which, somehow, determined who was an actual fan and who was a reseller (not entirely sure how this works, and not really sure it does, but that’s for another article). I almost signed up for that, but didn’t. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
Fast forward to March, 2018, and my wife gets an offer to speak at a conference in Brooklyn. One first thought, and, yes, it might mean I’m a terrible person, was, if I offer to come along as “moral support,” it means I have an excuse to get to New York. This means that I’m going to see Bruce. Once we book plane tickets and figure out the days we will be around, I started obsessively looking for tickets. Obviously, the entire run is sold out on Ticketmaster. I went to StubHub and found a single ticket in the back row of the balcony for $900. I start reaching out to friends in the business to see if there is any internal magic that can happen. And, yes, this included having one of the chief board members of the company I work for call up the CEO of Ticketmaster to see if there was any shot of buying tickets. When that proved fruitless, I almost gave up. There was a lottery where you can sign up for the opportunity to buy one of “at least 26 tickets.” Even though my odds were 1:300,000 or so, I decided to sign up. Somebody has to win.
Not me.
On the morning of Thursday, April 12th, I wake up, determined to see Bruce that night. I decided to deal with the devil, and go to the secondary market. I notice a trend. There are three pairs of tickets in Left Mezzanine that are dropping in price $5 roughly every 15 minutes. I try hard not to be fixated on my phone, but I refresh so often, hoping for Magic. At about 2pm, I see a pair of tickets in my price range, try to snag them, and they are gone. Dammit. Then, at 4:15pm, as I’m drinking a cup of coffee in a courtyard in the Cloisters (I highly recommend this museum), I spot another pair at roughly $20 more than my budget. I decide to throw caution to the wind, and snag those tickets. Then I walked into a room full of tapestries with images of people murdering unicorns. Not even viewing a historical account of the elimination of an entire species was going to bring me down.
I guess you want to know about the show?
We arrived to the theater about 15 minutes before showtime, and my first assessment was that the room was even smaller than I’d imagined it. Our seats in the back of the mezzanine were about as close as the back of the Fillmore, so it seemed. When Bruce walked on stage at 8pm on the dot, the room felt even smaller. The entire room swelled with chants of “Bruuuuuuuce,” and with every elongated U, Bruce felt like he was moving closer to us.
He opened the show, acoustic guitar in hand, not with a song, but with a story, thus setting the tone for what would not be your typical acoustic set, but a finely scripted one man show, where the one man would play music to help push forward the story. That story, however, is the life of Mr. Bruce Springsteen.
He spoke about his life, growing up, and such. Many of the early stories were pulled straight from his 2016 autobiography, Born To Run, and he even made the less interesting early chapters come alive in a wonderful new way. He made a few wisecracks about his own reputation early on: “I’ve had a long career of writing songs about the working man, working five days a week. Yet, I never worked that way in my life before this show. I hate it.” And, “I always sang about running away, getting far away from your hometown. I live 10 minutes from where I grew up.” All joking aside, he then told us how most of his songs were written about his father, and not about Bruce himself. These stories about growing up, what he learned from both his father and mother, learning about his father’s struggle with depression, were all told while weaving in and out of song. The first four songs of the night, the only time he really stayed clear of the “hits,” were the way he told us the story of his childhood, leading up to the time his family moved to San Mateo, CA without him. Springsteen stayed behind, living at a surfboard shop while trying to make it as a singer in bar bands.
The beauty of seeing a performer like this in such an intimate room is that everyone in the house has some sort of deep relationship with the performer. “Thunder Road” was the first moment where this came through, with more than a few folks in the crowd mouthing along in unison. Nobody dared sing along, of course. Also, nobody dared to pull their phone out until the very end.
The next song was the song that really cemented my love of Springsteen. Once, I saw Sleater-Kinney perform a cover of “The Promised Land.” That performance was especially amusing, because people in the room were doing the “Bruuuuuuuuce” chant, and guitarist Carrie Brownstein asked why people were booing, before drummer Janet Weiss chimed in to inform her that it was “Bruce,” not “boo” that people were chanting. But I digress. Bruce’s rendition was a beautiful moment, and the only time Springsteen played a song off Darkness On The Edge Of Town.
Which now brings us to the first and second time during the night that a performer moved me to tears. Springsteen told a story about meeting with veterans suffering from PTSD, and how that inspired the classic, and oft misunderstood “Born In The USA.” He then performed a blistering, delta blues inspired reading of the song. He pulled out a steel string guitar and a slide, and let out a blistering solo that was about as loud as an acoustic guitar can get, before sing-speaking the dark lyrics of the song. The song was presented as the protest song it was always meant to be. He then sat down at the piano and started pounding out the jump blues chords of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” which is always a celebration; when he got to the line about “the big man joining the band,” though, he digressed into a warm, heartfelt tale about his deep friendship with his long time sideman and collaborator Clarence Clemons. Clemons passed away a few years ago, and Bruce was clearly still working through the passing of the man who helped define the sound of the E Street Band, Springsteen’s long time back up band. It was such a lovely and heartfelt tribute that even somebody unfamiliar with the music of Springsteen and the importance of Clemons would have been moved to tears.
There was really only one time that I was disappointed in this show. Springsteen talked about how he fell in love with his wife’s voice, and went on about what a great singer and songwriter she is. He then brought his wife, Patti Scialfa, out to the stage to sing. But Bruce didn’t give her the opportunity to sing her own songs! She was still relegated to singing harmony to Bruce. I would’ve loved to hear her on her own.
Springsteen, for the most part, steered clear of direct political messages. Well, that is until he hit a moment near the end when he brought up the “March For Our Lives” and spoke, at length, about the beauty of the movement, the bravery of those kids, and how we need to remember who we are and what we value, despite all that’s going on around us. Not once did he mention the president by name, but he didn’t need to. Instead, he hit us with the double header of “Land of Hopes & Dreams” and “The Rising,” two somewhat modern songs from the Springsteen canon about the power of the common person, using love as a driving force, not hate. This was the third time I teared up.
The fourth time I teared up was during “Dancing In The Dark,” another song that is usually quite joyful. However, he opened it up telling us about his 92-year-old mother, who is battling Alzheimer’s, but doesn’t seem be letting that bring down her joyful outlook on life. His story reminded me of my own mother, who is dealing with health problems on top of looking for reliable, safe housing for two years (by the grace of God, my parents moved into an apartment just two days before the show). Realizing that my own mother has kept her sense of humor alive and well during this time has amazed me. Feeling something similar channel through Bruce was especially lovely. Of course, Springsteen also used this song to allow himself to ham it up, stopping to check his hair during the line “check my clothes, my hair, my face,” and repeating the line “looking for a reaction” multiple times until he was happy with our reaction.
The show ended far too early. The two hour and fifteen minute set was much shorter than the usual Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band 3 ½ hour long marathons. He closed with a rousing sing along of “Born To Run,” during which I was slightly distracted not so much by people pulling out their phones for the first time to take video, but by the security waving their lights around. It was kind of a sour way to go, and it would have almost been better if security just let it happen during the closing number. Still, it was a beautiful performance that I’ll be holding on to for quite a while.
Setlist:
Growin’ Up
My Hometown
My Father’s House
The Wish
Thunder Road
The Promised Land
Born In The USA
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Tougher Than The Rest
Brilliant Disguise
Long Walk Home
The Rising
Dancing In The Dark
Land Of Hopes & Dreams
Born To Run
