The musician Bruce Springsteen knew risked his life every night: “Something that could kill him”
No one wants to go onstage during a Bruce Springsteen concert thinking that their lives are going to be in jeopardy.
The whole point of rock and roll is about having fun at every opportunity, and even if some shows are more fun than others, ‘The Boss’ usually has that magical way of making every person in the audience and onstage feel like they’ve been a part of something that they couldn’t have done by themselves. And while The E Street Band has always been a team effort, sometimes the biggest assets to their sound come from those people who are hidden in the back.
Then again, it’s not like you can’t give Springsteen a little bit of credit here. He was the one who was always looking out for the audience and willing to give every bit of energy that he could to every show. The fact that his guitar would malfunction because of how much sweat was getting caught in the wiring was bad enough, but that was nothing compared to the kind of muscle that the rest of the band had behind him.
Nils Lofgren and Stevie Van Zandt were responsible for creating some of the greatest guitar parts in a lot of his songs, and when you listen to some of their biggest tracks being played live, it feels like a wall of sound hitting you whenever they kick into ‘Born to Run’. But if you think about any great rock and roll song, everyone knows that they aren’t going to feel anything unless they have the right backbeat behind them, and Max Weinberg has always been the power behind the group.
Granted, not everything that Weinberg does necessarily has to be flashy every single time he plays. He studied under Ringo Starr and knew that some of the greatest lines ever written were the ones that simple, and even if it’s the one occasional lift in the track every now and again, Weinberg knows where to put the right drum hits every single time he plays, whether that’s playing delicately on a song like ‘I’m On Fire’ live or making sure every single audience member feels the punch of ‘Thunder Road’.
And when looking at his state these days, Springsteen thanks his lucky stars every day that someone like Weinberg is even still able to play with him at his age, saying, “He’s doing something, first of all, that could kill him. You got to give him credit for pure balls and bravery. He plays from the minute we get onstage for three solid hours, pedal to the metal, until we get off and is doing things that are simply incredible. He covers your ass 24/7, 365 days a week.”
It might seem like a thankless job, but you have to remember how much commitment you have to have to pull something like that off. It’s one thing to join Springsteen onstage for a tune or two, but when you think about the raw hours that Weinberg has put in behind the kit, a lot of his legendary status comes down to the fact that most people could never have that sense of stamina whenever they perform live.
Even some of the greatest drummers of all time normally have moments where they simplify their drum fills every now and again, but Weinberg still wants to hit as hard as he did back in the day. In his mind, there’s no way to work your way around playing hard, and the best that he can hope to do is make the kind of ringing snare that sounds like a gunshot going off whenever it’s being played.
So while Springsteen does look like he’s the one who’s working the hardest every single night, it’s important to look at every single person behind him whenever he plays. He knows that he can push the E Street Band to the absolute brink, but all of them realise that they’re a part of something that’s going to sound much bigger than anything else in the world whenever they perform.
