“It remained with me for a long time”: The one concert Bruce Springsteen called a nightmare
For most musicians, there’s always a certain bittersweetness that comes with touring and live performances. There’s always an element of trepidation, particularly if uncertainty about audience reaction settles in early. For Bruce Springsteen, however, not much else really captures the energy of going out there and having hundreds or thousands of people responding to the music, eliciting a high that’s hard to come down from hours after a set finishes.
Aside from earning a moniker as ‘The Boss’ and epitomising the everyday working-class American, Springsteen’s legacy is almost always brought back to basics during performances as his music speaks for itself. Each show is filled with raw energy that can’t be replicated elsewhere, fuelling the fire in his heart and reminding him why he ever picked up a guitar in the first place.
It also doesn’t matter where Springsteen is performing; even during sets miles away from home, he establishes common ground with the pure adoration of the magic of music itself, a gift he emits as he peers out into the crowd and sees nothing but fans in need of one perfect moment. And he’s more than happy to give it to them; after all, what’s better than experiencing his own doing in real-time?
Springsteen lives up to that mantra to this day. For instance, during one recent set in the North East, things seemed worse for wear when it started pouring down, which didn’t set the scene for a particularly fun rollout. However, Springsteen reminded everybody of the power of unity, yelling out to the crowd and keeping the energy high. Afterwards, he reflected, “Standing in front of me, in the rain, I realised; these are my people.”
But Springsteen’s live experiences haven’t always been that electric. Being a legacy act, he can enjoy sets as they come, knowing that most fans have already enjoyed his music for decades. However, before he was ‘The Boss’, at least on a universal scale, some of his sets were difficult to execute, mainly because some venues had already taken it upon themselves to craft a reputation and build expectations, which made the musician feel uneasy.
This occurred during the build-up of one of his shows in London during 1975’s Born To Run tour. As Springsteen and his band pulled up beside the venue, they were presented with an excessive amount of promotional material outside and inside the venue, including one on the entrance that read: “FINALLY!! LONDON IS READY FOR BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.” When he entered the building, he encountered more garish posters, some adorned with headlines like: “THE NEXT FUCKING BIG THING! The kiss of death!”
Springsteen recalled the “nightmare” in his book Born to Run, noting how the experience stayed with him for a long time because it felt overwhelmingly “presumptuous” and put him in a negative mindset just before he was about to go on stage. “[It was] Something heavy to push up against,” he later told Rolling Stone. “It was a nightmare of a mind-fuck, so it remained with me for a long time.”
Although he eventually reflected on the performance and could finally face watching the footage, his relief, realising he didn’t sound all that bad, was long eclipsed by the earlier spiral. However, it did make him realise that, from then on, he only ever wanted his music to speak for itself, and he would never, ever need the embellishments of marketing materials to oversell his appeal. After all, this musician could stand in front of any crowd and make them feel at home, regardless of any preconceived ideas.
