I didn’t get around to blogging this, but I’ll copy/paste it in here from the socials:
My son Josiah just texted me to call my attention to a Bruce Springsteen bootleg recorded in 1981 on ‘The River’ tour. Margaret and I, and my stepbrother Matt, went to see Bruce from Pittsburgh, where I was working in a computer graphics start-up. Margaret and I were getting married the following summer, so I sent a note ahead to the concert venue, inviting Bruce and the band to come to our wedding next June. I didn’t expect much of it, but I wanted at least to signal our gratitude and appreciation for his music.
The night of the concert, we made the drive from Pittsburgh to the outskirts of Cleveland. It was a typical early-peak Springsteen set, three hours and winding down by heightening everything. During ‘Rosalita’, he introduced the band; then they introduced Southside Johnny, whom Bruce noted had never appeared onstage with the E Street Band before (‘Oh… gonna bring out, it’s funny for all the time we´ve been playing, this friend of ours’s never been on stage with us at a show so… it’s my pleasure to bring out Southside Johnny to do a song….’, a song written by Miami Steve, standing right there); then, in the encores, after ‘Jungleland’, he paused.
‘I want to thank everybody for coming down to the show tonight. I want to thank all the folks in Cleveland for their support for so long. This is… this is for Mark, and Peggy, and AKMA, and Margaret…’ and the band kicked into ‘Born to Run’.
We couldn’t believe our ears; we wouldn’t have believed it, but Matt assured us that he heard it too. Forty-five years ago.
So, last Saturday Si messaged us to ask about the family legend — ‘Random question. What year was the Springsteen concert y’all went to where he dedicated born to run to you?’ I answered ‘30 July, 1981’ cos that’s what I thought was the right answer. Si messaged back, ‘Trying to hunt down the moment…’ and went silent. My heart sank; it was extraordinary enough an occurrence that it was plausible that it had been a folie à trois, a shared moment of misprision. Then — ‘Ah! Wrong recording. It was a two day set at Richland, y’all were on the 29th.’
(Si was right).
Si sent us a link to the Internet Archive…
I never expected to hear those words again; I’m weeping. It was real then, and it’s real all over again today. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, Josiah. Thanks to everybody who has come down for our show, and all the folks who’ve given us their support for so long. And Cheers, Mark and Peggy, wherever you are.
This is such a great story! It fulfills fantasies of being a tad closer to our heroes, musical or otherwise. I offered in my memoir that such recollections are part of normal life review as we grow older. They generate nostalgia and joy that has its own therapeutic effect. Thanks for telling us about this. ❤️
To quote a song Bruce has covered, ‘Come on, we got to keep the fire burning / Come on and dream baby dream…’. Thanks for your comment, Sam, and thanks for some really important things I picked up from you back in college days.
Great post AKMA loved reading about a story I had only heard about well after the concert. Hope Matt is doing well all these years later
This is very cool. I had a relateable feeling of “did that really happen” when a snippet of video surfaced of me playing with the Born Again Pagans in front of a few hundred people at our annual university music festival when I was 21. Little baby me, pulling out some blues kicks on my acoustic guitar. Also made me weep.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0o1v-np9tdw
That’s you, to the right of the sax player? And were you the one in the very first segment?
(I think there are no audio or video records of me during my undergraduate years, thanks be to heaven. I collaborated with a classmate on a film project called ‘Two to Nothing’ that depicted — if I remember accurately — mini narratives of two people becoming caught in absurd, desperate situations who then spontaneously vanish. I don’t think I appeared in the film, though.)