It’s only fair, given my diatribe at having been let down by E-Street Fans in Sunderland
(https://www.lesleya.com/blog/looking-for-the-upside), only fair that I come back to balance the books. One of my sort-of upsides in the Sunderland debacle was there’s always Wembley.
And there was. What should have been my second Springsteen gig of the year turned into the only one I’d actually make it to…and…well…what can I say?!
It was BruceSpringsteen and the “the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking,booty-shaking, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking, death-defying, legendary E Street Band!”
That’s an outro by the way, delightedly rapped by the man himself in salute to his 18-piece band near the end of the show – not the first time I’ve heard it, but it still makes me smile – and you cannot understand the power of it until you hear x-ty thousand delirious fans joining in with that E STREET BAAAANNDDD.
An outro, because they don’t do intro’s…no Wembley, now please welcome…or any rubbish of that ilk. The band just slowly come on stage and take their places, each getting a roar from the crowd as they are recognised, getting louder and louder until The Boss picks up a guitar, walks up the mic, counts in the first number and barely pauses from breath for the next three and a quarter hours.
I could tell you that we were way back in the stand, when I’d rather have been in amongst it on the pitch. I could tell you that sitting down for most of a Springsteen gig is just plain wrong. I could tell you that the sound was a bit fuzzy in the opening numbers. I could tell you that the number of times I actually looked at the stage rather than the big screens were few.
I could tell you all of those factual things – but I would also need to tell you how irrelevant they are. Facts and truth are not always the same thing. The truth would include the fact that I bopped about in my seat until I just had to get up and dance. Truth would be how I belted out tunelessly every lyric I know. Truth would be that I know Springsteen concerts as something akin to a religious experience.
To be fair, a few reviewers have also referred to the preacher-like presence of the man on stage, especially as he’s getting older, just like the rest of us – but it’s not that. It’s what Emile Durkheim called collective effervescence. It’s being in the presence of 90,000 people who are all there for the same reason while also being there for 90,000 different reasons.
We are there for the man and his poetry, for the stories that speak to us, for the man and the band and the music, the being part of 50 years of rock music magic, we are there for an old-fashioned good time. We are also there for the songs that weave through our personal lives…the ones that bring back the memories, good and bad and whatever else, the moments when we 'lived our lives in the songs we heard on the rock and roll radio" (to misquote Alan O'Day's words for Helen Reddy)
I’m not a music journalist. This is not a review. I’m a fan. This is just me self-indulgently re-living my latest connection to a man I will never meet, but who has been part of my life in all sorts of ways since about 1979 and will continue to be so until the end.
And maybe beyond because, as he sings in a number that will almost certainly continue to be his concert sign-out for a long while yet, “Death is NOT the end…up around the river bend...I will see you in my dreams.”
If you’re bored already, feel free to cut out here – that’s alright. Not everyone gets it. Two people have told me over the last few days that they wanted to slap people who asked them who Springsteen is. Nah – just pity them – they don’t know what they’re missing. And besides, if everyone loved him (them – the band included) as much as we do – we’d never get tickets. And it is funny when those not in the know as who the support act is. Em…hmm! No.
It’s one of those “if you have to ask the question” questions…as in “if you have to ask the question, you’re not going to understand the answer”. It’s all good.
Me, I’m still buzzing. Two days later. And it’s not about ‘being in the presence of a hero’. It’s not about a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’d need to go back to count up the gigs, and I know I have my fingers crossed for as many again…though I’ll never match the Norwegian we were talking to on the train afterwards who said “85”. I’ll confess concert-envy at that, though we also wondered if the E Street Band is valid grounds for divorce in Norway. His wife wasn't with him.
It is about the whole experience, and all experience is about moments, so maybe that is the way to tell it. Fragmentary. Things I will always remember and things I will probably forget and no idea which are which. So here we go. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Wembley, 25th July 2024, in moments and fragments…
The day, sometime last year, when Mike messaged me to say I’ve just bought two tickets for Wembley – do you want to come? Stupid question. Only one possible answer. And I’m still slightly astounded that this particular friend thought (thinks) enough of me to do that. Even more astounded that on the night someone should ask if we were married, which is humorously on every level of not-in-a-million-years, love my buddy as I do, missing the point. But also: I choose to take that as a compliment. It implies that we are so easy in each other’s company that the bond is visible, whatever its shape might be.
Mike had never seen The Boss live. He knew the drill. He knows the music, at least some of it. The music has spoken to him – he has his own reference points. Even so, about four or five songs in, grinning all over his face, he turns to me and says Doesn’t he ever pause…? And I’m thinking, ach, we’re only about 20minutes in…maybe in a couple of hours.
The solo moments – Bruce’s or those of Jake, or Little Steve, or Nils, or Max – had us turning to each other and whispering (or yelling) words like wow, or awesome, or more often not actually saying anything because it’s a given…this is music at its best. This is rock music, but (and?) it is also technically accomplished music – guitarists, percussionists, horn-sections, vocalists, keyboard-players displaying consummate skill.
And loving every moment of it. Not one of them is going through the motions. They understand what they are giving us and what we are giving back.
The generosity on stage always touches me. There is no posturing. There is no disappearing into the wings to do whatever some lead members do when someone else has the limelight. There is looking into the limelight wherever it is shining in the moment and staying in the moment, staying in the music and loving it.
The emotion on stage – the passion for the stories being told – through the words and the music – oh what can I say, you get it or you don’t. There are songs that will still bring me to tears. This week they didn’t, but the montage film of Clarence Clemens and Danny Federici did.
I remember The Big Man not only in his E-Street persona. I have a mix tape (remember them?) on which he sings A Man in Love. The man that sent that to me, back in 1983 or 84, is also wherever musicians go when they leave the earth. Clarence and Clive, they’re entwined, but only in my head. One of those 90,000 different reasons.
Jake Clemens filling his uncle’s boots in a way we thought was impossible. I’d have loved a longer solo from him in Tenth Avenue Freeze Out – but he got show-cased elsewhere and one of the loudest shouts of the night. Especially from me. I love the band, but you know, we all have our favourites… Bruce, Little Stevie, Jake…not necessarily in that order.
Max Weinberg and Anthony Almonte performing a percussion dual, or duet, depending on your
view-point, that would have had Clive whistling for more, if he wasn’t so focussed on (a) figuring out the technicality of it or (b) bruising my leg black by joining in. I hope he was listening in. I hope he loves that I’m still showing up for the band.
The house lights coming up for Born to Run… and every single person in the stadium on their feet. And all the memories of all the other times…Newcastle, London, Manchester, Coventry…memories of an un-named, never quite got it together Norwich band rehearsing in the back room of The Black
Boy in Aylsham trying to master it.
Each of the songs from Letter to You. The title track, and Last Man Standing, and See you in my Dreams. I have to take a deep breath for all of these – because they were written specifically for me. They were timed and released specifically for me. I wept the whole way through this album the first time I played it… and then I learned to dance to it, and flow rope to it, and breathe my way into and through grief I had denied, by listening to it and dancing to it and flowing rope. I found my way out the other side.
So, when I stand among thousands of people taking from it whatever they do, I know I’m not
alone.
And sometimes I cry, and sometimes I smile, because grief is like that.
I know I am not the only person who believes that. Probably not even the only person in that arena on Thursday night who believes that.
The way in Letter to You, Bruce sang the phrase “all the sunshine…” and looked out into London drizzle and smiled or did I imagine that – did I imagine a soft smile ripple through the crowd, before he continued “and rain”?
Walking down Wembley Way afterwards. It was as slow and relaxed and still joyful as it had been on the way in. The procession was managed (thank you guys!) by old-fashioned stop/go boards and people really not wanting the night to end. A low-key Tannoy was playing The River… the song that got me into The Boss – guilty confession, I had to go back later to fully understand the best album ever released by anyone, ever, Born to Run, ok, penance done! - but The River, that I got immediately on first listening – and it is still the one I’m most likely to sing to myself. It was playing softly overhead. Someone behind me started singing. I can’t find a note, let alone hold one, but you know…it’s like church or the shower, sometimes you just have to sing anyway. I joined in. Others too. When they interrupted for some kind of public service announcement that we paid no attention to, folk were keeping the beat, because when the music kicked back in, so did the fan-choir.
We met a girl from Halifax – who had no idea how she was getting back to her hotel and didn’t
much care as she declared “I have just had the best life of my life!” She hasn’t. I know, because that is exactly how I felt cramming onto a train from Newcastle Central to Darlington back in 1985, when I was the age that she is now. Obviously, life gifts you better moments than a Springsteen concert – not many to be honest, but maybe some – and in any event, to say that any one concert is the best is to decry what comes next.
It's like catching up with old friends. The band has moved on and so have you. There isn’t a best. There is only a latest. And if the latest fills you with as much joy as the first, well…really…what else is rock music supposed to be about?
Those who know me, know that my deepest core value is gratitude so: THANK YOU!
Thank you, in no particular order, to…
Deb Smith,The BBC, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Clarence Clemens,
Jake Clemens, Clive Monen, little Nick, the E Street Band (in all its incarnations), Patti Scialfa, every producer and tour organiser, all the back-street guys that do the work of putting on a tour: the drivers and caterers and security guys and crowd managers and transport folk who let us get
home again. To the technicians: sound and lighting. To the folk who make the instruments and those who taught all those people to play. To wherever the inspiration comes from – and whatever it is that makes us connect with it. To Mike who got me to this one. To the friends I went to other gigs with. To the radio station that woke Clive in the middle of the night with Born to Run and sent him out to pick up his sticks again, without which we would not have had what we did. For all the ways in which music ripples through our lives. And because I’m a poet: for the words. I salute the idea that when words fail, music speaks…but really…it’s the story-telling that keeps bringing me back.
And thank you to the 90,000 who made Thursday, 25th July, 2024 such a fervent, joyful moment.
