The Boss
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The Boss on Bdw'y
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13-17 minutes
John Silva's World
▼ The Boss on Bdw'y
As we were settling into our seats we found ourselves looking around at faces just as excited as we were. And then the lights went down and there he was.
Mr. Bruce Springsteen.
There were two mikes on the stage. One at front and center so he could play guitar, and sometimes harmonica, to accompany him. The second mike was next to the other main prop onstage, a baby grand piano that he also played while he sang.
What surprised me was how much he talked and how funny he always is. Most of the dialogue was directly from his book, Born to Run, and that dialogue helped to tell the story. Did I say funny? I'll give you an example...He pointed out that he's never had a legitimate job in his life. He's never worked 9-5. Yet he said, "I've been wildly successful writing about the working man."
Everyone laughed including me.
After talking about the young Bruce and the young Bruce's household the first song Bruce played was "Growin' Up."
Magic, people.
Back to funny, he said he spent his whole life trying to get away from his hometown and then wryly mentioned that he now lives 10 minutes from it.
Back and forth he went between acoustic guitar and piano. One time, as he was singing "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" at the piano, he went into an extended tribute to the no longer with us, Clarence Clemons. He said some glorious things about his friend, The Big Man. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
I had gotten a little misty already when he did "Thunder Road" earlier. When he sang the opening lines, "The screen door slams Mary's dress waves," I had a lump in my throat the size of Denver. I was in college when that came out.
I still know all the words.
It was a true one man show. The only man was him. Then all of a sudden after a warm and loving introduction someone came out and surprised all of us. Still a one man show the person was a woman. Patti Scialfa, his wife. And the place went nuts.
They played some songs together which included "Tougher than the Rest" and one of my favorites, "Brilliant Disguise."
"God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of."
She left and it was wrapping up time. Bruce told a great story about the book Born on the Fourth of July and then went into a searing, stark version of "Born In The USA."
Or as he put it his protest song.
He told a few more stories, played a few more songs and ended the night. This was not a concert, this was a Broadway show. The last song?
"Born To Run."
And then Bruce was gone.
I've seen some great shows, this was Special. And all the people in the theater thought the same way. Howard and I were grinning from ear to ear as we left.
The first of two epilogues.
Outside, the security had set up two metal barriers with a driveway between them. On the edge of that driveway was a black Ford Expedition with tinted windows. Just idling. I bet you know where this is going. No sooner had Howard said, "Hold on a minute," when out come Patti and Bruce. He got up on the step of the Expedition and waved to the crowd. The roar coming back shook Broadway.
And then they got in and were driven away.
Second epilogue.
That night the Yankees were playing the Cleveland Indians in the playoffs. They had been down 2-0, this was to come back and even the games at 2-2. As we went across town after the show you could hear cheers from the Yankee fans, gathered around a TV in a raucous saloon, whenever the home team did something great. We'd pass one cheering bar and then go on to the next cheering bar and the next.
They ended up winning that game and that series.
What Does 'Born In The U.S.A.' Really Mean?
Bruce Springsteen onstage during the Born in the U.S.A. Tour in 1984.
Shinko Music/Getty Images
This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem.
If you're listening closely, the lyrics of "Born in the U.S.A." make its subject pretty clear: The 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen describes a Vietnam War veteran who returns home to desperate circumstances and few options. Listen only to its surging refrain, though, and you could mistake it for an uncomplicated celebration of patriotism. You wouldn't be the only one.
NPR's American Anthem series is about songs that Americans embrace in ways that reveal who we are — and of these songs, "Born in the U.S.A." may hold the title for the most historically misunderstood. But as NPR Music director Lauren Onkey explained to Morning Edition, it took time for Springsteen himself to figure out just what the song was meant to say.
"He did a big benefit in the summer of '81 for Vietnam veterans in Los Angeles and met with vets," Onkey says. "After that tour ends, there's a number of places where he's trying to write about the Vietnam veteran experience, so the song grows out of that moment. And it starts out as something just called 'Vietnam.' "
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That early attempt at the concept survives as a rough demo. In "Vietnam," a veteran arrives home and tries to get back his old job, but the administrator who greets him can only shrug:
"Son, understand, if it was up to me ...
'Bout half the town's out of work
Ain't nothin' for you here
From the assembly line to the front line
But I guess you didn't hear:
You died in Vietnam."
The songwriter kept that scene as he set about writing a more haunting, but still muted version — which is where he first added the "Born in the U.S.A." refrain. In its story of one American, Onkey says, she hears the story of many.
"He says, 'I'm 10 years burning down the road / Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go.' Those lines, I think, describe so many of Springsteen's male characters — who are lost, who can't find a home. The systems around them of jobs and connection are unattainable."
But it still wasn't the song we know. In the version that became the title track on his 1984 smash album, Springsteen made one more change: turning up the volume and shouting out the lyrics almost as if for joy. Rarely has a man with nowhere to go sounded so triumphant.
As the musician later told WHYY's Fresh Air, he meant it that way. "The pride was in the chorus," Springsteen said to host Terry Gross in a 2005 interview. "In my songs, the spiritual part, the hope part, is in the choruses. The blues and your daily realities are in the details of the verses."
Springsteen fans will tell you the effect that big chorus had on crowds, whether or not the message of the verses was entirely understood. Take Chris Christie — yes, that one — who saw Springsteen at New Jersey's Giants Stadium decades before he became governor of that state.
"Bruce started every show with a really rousing, anthemic-type version of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' " Christie recalls. "With a bandanna on and a cutoff shirt and the fist-pumping, it felt like a celebration of being born in the USA — when really, it's a defiant song about 'I was born in the USA, and I deserve better than what I'm getting.' I think plenty of people didn't get what it was about, including the president of the United States."
That would be President Ronald Reagan, who referenced The Boss in a 1984 campaign speech, saying: "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."
By playing on the hope, Reagan seemed to overlook the despair. He may have been influenced by a sometime adviser: The columnist George F. Will, noted for his bow ties and conservative politics, tells NPR he saw Springsteen in concert that year.
Bruce Springsteen: On Jersey, Masculinity And Wishing To Be His Stage Persona
The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books
Bruce Springsteen: On Jersey, Masculinity And Wishing To Be His Stage Persona
How 'This Land Is Your Land' Roamed And Rambled Into American Life
American Anthem
How 'This Land Is Your Land' Roamed And Rambled Into American Life
"Max Weinberg, of whom I'd never heard, who was the drummer for the E Street Band, of which I'd never heard, called me up out of the blue and said who he worked for and would I like to come see The Boss sing," Will says. "I thought, 'This is a way to impress my children,' and I said yes."
After the show, Will penned a column praising the hardworking musicians onstage, albeit in political terms. "If all Americans — in labor and management, who make steel or cars or shoes or textiles — made their products with as much energy and confidence as Springsteen and his merry band make music, there would be no need for Congress to be thinking about protectionism," he wrote.
Springsteen's politics leaned well left of Reagan's. After the president praised him, the artist mused that if people misunderstood his music, that was fine — it only made him more popular.
"After it came out, I read all over the place that nobody knew what it was about," he said before performing "Born in the U.S.A" to a crowd in 1995. "I'm sure that everybody here tonight understood it. If not — if there were any misunderstandings out there — my mother thanks you, my father thanks you and my children thank you, because I've learned that that's where the money is."
After the applause and laughter died down, he added: "But the songwriter always gets another shot to get it right."
Over the years, Springsteen himself has been willing to tweak the song's meaning. Christie heard him play an acoustic version in the 1990s.
YouTube
"Much different feeling, much different sound," Christie says. "I can remember, at the show I went to see at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J., a couple of people started to try to sing with him. And he stopped in midsong and said, 'I can handle this myself.' "
At other times, Springsteen dropped the upbeat chorus — singing only the verses, forcing his audience to hear the dark story of the veteran. When the U.S. invasion of Iraq loomed in 2003, he told his audience the song was a prayer for peace.
Onkey says the complexity of "Born in the U.S.A." is why it endures: "It describes the ambiguities and challenges of the country that I have grown up in. And for me, it's a rock-and-roll anthem: This singer, this scream, the sound of the guitar and the scale of the song suggest that rock and roll is big enough and important enough to tell that story."
Maybe the meaning of "Born in the U.S.A." is the distance between the grim verses and the joyous chorus. It's the space between frustrating facts and fierce pride — the demand to push American reality a bit closer to our ideals.
.
Thank you Barbara, whoever you a
re. Thank you Howard. Thank you Bruce. Thank you Yankees. Thank you New York.
And that's how you build a memory... a family tradition.
#JohnSilva
Subscribe to my blog: John Silva's World
Follow me on twitter: @johnadsilva
Like my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/joao.a.desilva
And also visit my website: www.johnsilva.com
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The Boss on Bdw'y
Get link Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Other Apps
13-17 minutes
John Silva's World
▼ The Boss on Bdw'y
Bruce Springsteen On Broadway Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, known for his work with the E Street Band. Nicknamed "The Boss", he is widely known for his brand of poetic lyrics, Americana, working class, sometimes political sentiments centered on his native New Jersey, his distinctive voice, and his lengthy and energetic stage performances—with concerts from the 1970s to the present decade running at up to four hours in length. His artistic endeavors reflect both his personal growth and the zeitgeist of the times.
You want to know how you build a memory? You see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. That's a good start. They say the neon lights are bright on....
As you can guess, there's a story behind this one.
To begin with you have to go back to this spring. Actually you could go back to the summer of '72. Since the tickets were a birthday present for my dear friend Howard you could start with the day I first saw him at the University of Maryland, Go Terps!, way back then.
Or
You could start with the Thanksgiving or Xmas dinner or any special day I had with his wonderful wife and also my dear friend, Barbara. At that dinner she came up with the idea. She was here for a board meeting and since they live in New York, I was lamenting how I hardly get to see Howard now that I'm in Orlando. She listened, smiled, and said, "Let me see what I can do."
That was the genesis.
Cut ahead to a week before his birthday, September 5th, and she texted me with an idea that I had to sit down for. For his present she would get two tickets to Bruce on Broadway, and get this, he and I would go. She would fly me up and I would stay at their apartment while I was there. The next sound you heard was my jaw hitting the floor. Thats a heckuva gift for him, a heckuva gift for me, and a heckuva gift for me and Howard.
And she made it look easy peasy
You know how they yell, "Surprise!" for your birthday? This was a real, ya got me, ya got me, didn't see that one coming, surprise when she pulled it on him at his bday dinner. I saw it all on videotape. It was preceded by my video singing Happy Birthday and for the first time Howard heard me say he was going to see Bruce and I was going to be his date. That right there was a moment in time.
And that's how I found myself on Delta heading north to see La Guardia Airport, stopping at Bklyn my ole stoppin' grounds for a lay over at Aloft, Downtown visit with 1st cousins and then later Manhattan, The Boss and The Silvermans.
Great, not good but great, times were ahead.
I got there on the Wednesday after his Thursday birthday and Howard met me at LaGuardia. We went visiting for a spell.
It was great seeing him. Compound that by the fact we were going to see Bruce that next night and you had two giggly boys on your hands. Saw and hugged, hard, their daughter Sarah. Had a wonderful plate of spaghetti and meatballs at Mamma's (Mama Leone) and then off we went to the William Kerr Theatre.
As we were settling into our seats we found ourselves looking around at faces just as excited as we were. And then the lights went down and there he was.
Mr. Bruce Springsteen.
There were two mikes on the stage. One at front and center so he could play guitar, and sometimes harmonica, to accompany him. The second mike was next to the other main prop onstage, a baby grand piano that he also played while he sang.
What surprised me was how much he talked and how funny he always is. Most of the dialogue was directly from his book, Born to Run, and that dialogue helped to tell the story. Did I say funny? I'll give you an example...He pointed out that he's never had a legitimate job in his life. He's never worked 9-5. Yet he said, "I've been wildly successful writing about the working man."
Everyone laughed including me.
After talking about the young Bruce and the young Bruce's household the first song Bruce played was "Growin' Up."
Magic, people.
Back to funny, he said he spent his whole life trying to get away from his hometown and then wryly mentioned that he now lives 10 minutes from it.
Back and forth he went between acoustic guitar and piano. One time, as he was singing "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" at the piano, he went into an extended tribute to the no longer with us, Clarence Clemons. He said some glorious things about his friend, The Big Man. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
I had gotten a little misty already when he did "Thunder Road" earlier. When he sang the opening lines, "The screen door slams Mary's dress waves," I had a lump in my throat the size of Denver. I was in college when that came out.
I still know all the words.
It was a true one man show. The only man was him. Then all of a sudden after a warm and loving introduction someone came out and surprised all of us. Still a one man show the person was a woman. Patti Scialfa, his wife. And the place went nuts.
They played some songs together which included "Tougher than the Rest" and one of my favorites, "Brilliant Disguise."
"God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of."
She left and it was wrapping up time. Bruce told a great story about the book Born on the Fourth of July and then went into a searing, stark version of "Born In The USA."
Or as he put it his protest song.
He told a few more stories, played a few more songs and ended the night. This was not a concert, this was a Broadway show. The last song?
"Born To Run."
And then Bruce was gone.
I've seen some great shows, this was Special. And all the people in the theater thought the same way. Howard and I were grinning from ear to ear as we left.
The first of two epilogues.
Outside, the security had set up two metal barriers with a driveway between them. On the edge of that driveway was a black Ford Expedition with tinted windows. Just idling. I bet you know where this is going. No sooner had Howard said, "Hold on a minute," when out come Patti and Bruce. He got up on the step of the Expedition and waved to the crowd. The roar coming back shook Broadway.
And then they got in and were driven away.
Second epilogue.
That night the Yankees were playing the Cleveland Indians in the playoffs. They had been down 2-0, this was to come back and even the games at 2-2. As we went across town after the show you could hear cheers from the Yankee fans, gathered around a TV in a raucous saloon, whenever the home team did something great. We'd pass one cheering bar and then go on to the next cheering bar and the next.
They ended up winning that game and that series.
What Does 'Born In The U.S.A.' Really Mean?
Bruce Springsteen onstage during the Born in the U.S.A. Tour in 1984.
Shinko Music/Getty Images
This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem.
If you're listening closely, the lyrics of "Born in the U.S.A." make its subject pretty clear: The 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen describes a Vietnam War veteran who returns home to desperate circumstances and few options. Listen only to its surging refrain, though, and you could mistake it for an uncomplicated celebration of patriotism. You wouldn't be the only one.
NPR's American Anthem series is about songs that Americans embrace in ways that reveal who we are — and of these songs, "Born in the U.S.A." may hold the title for the most historically misunderstood. But as NPR Music director Lauren Onkey explained to Morning Edition, it took time for Springsteen himself to figure out just what the song was meant to say.
"He did a big benefit in the summer of '81 for Vietnam veterans in Los Angeles and met with vets," Onkey says. "After that tour ends, there's a number of places where he's trying to write about the Vietnam veteran experience, so the song grows out of that moment. And it starts out as something just called 'Vietnam.' "
Article continues after sponsor message
That early attempt at the concept survives as a rough demo. In "Vietnam," a veteran arrives home and tries to get back his old job, but the administrator who greets him can only shrug:
"Son, understand, if it was up to me ...
'Bout half the town's out of work
Ain't nothin' for you here
From the assembly line to the front line
But I guess you didn't hear:
You died in Vietnam."
The songwriter kept that scene as he set about writing a more haunting, but still muted version — which is where he first added the "Born in the U.S.A." refrain. In its story of one American, Onkey says, she hears the story of many.
"He says, 'I'm 10 years burning down the road / Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go.' Those lines, I think, describe so many of Springsteen's male characters — who are lost, who can't find a home. The systems around them of jobs and connection are unattainable."
But it still wasn't the song we know. In the version that became the title track on his 1984 smash album, Springsteen made one more change: turning up the volume and shouting out the lyrics almost as if for joy. Rarely has a man with nowhere to go sounded so triumphant.
Youno mp kHz h I Tube
As the musician later told WHYY's Fresh Air, he meant it that way. "The pride was in the chorus," Springsteen said to host Terry Gross in a 2005 interview. "In my songs, the spiritual part, the hope part, is in the choruses. The blues and your daily realities are in the details of the verses."
Springsteen fans will tell you the effect that big chorus had on crowds, whether or not the message of the verses was entirely understood. Take Chris Christie — yes, that one — who saw Springsteen at New Jersey's Giants Stadium decades before he became governor of that state.
"Bruce started every show with a really rousing, anthemic-type version of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' " Christie recalls. "With a bandanna on and a cutoff shirt and the fist-pumping, it felt like a celebration of being born in the USA — when really, it's a defiant song about 'I was born in the USA, and I deserve better than what I'm getting.' I think plenty of people didn't get what it was about, including the president of the United States."
That would be President Ronald Reagan, who referenced The Boss in a 1984 campaign speech, saying: "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."
By playing on the hope, Reagan seemed to overlook the despair. He may have been influenced by a sometime adviser: The columnist George F. Will, noted for his bow ties and conservative politics, tells NPR he saw Springsteen in concert that year.
Bruce Springsteen: On Jersey, Masculinity And Wishing To Be His Stage Persona
The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books
Bruce Springsteen: On Jersey, Masculinity And Wishing To Be His Stage Persona
How 'This Land Is Your Land' Roamed And Rambled Into American Life
American Anthem
How 'This Land Is Your Land' Roamed And Rambled Into American Life
"Max Weinberg, of whom I'd never heard, who was the drummer for the E Street Band, of which I'd never heard, called me up out of the blue and said who he worked for and would I like to come see The Boss sing," Will says. "I thought, 'This is a way to impress my children,' and I said yes."
After the show, Will penned a column praising the hardworking musicians onstage, albeit in political terms. "If all Americans — in labor and management, who make steel or cars or shoes or textiles — made their products with as much energy and confidence as Springsteen and his merry band make music, there would be no need for Congress to be thinking about protectionism," he wrote.
Springsteen's politics leaned well left of Reagan's. After the president praised him, the artist mused that if people misunderstood his music, that was fine — it only made him more popular.
"After it came out, I read all over the place that nobody knew what it was about," he said before performing "Born in the U.S.A" to a crowd in 1995. "I'm sure that everybody here tonight understood it. If not — if there were any misunderstandings out there — my mother thanks you, my father thanks you and my children thank you, because I've learned that that's where the money is."
After the applause and laughter died down, he added: "But the songwriter always gets another shot to get it right."
Over the years, Springsteen himself has been willing to tweak the song's meaning. Christie heard him play an acoustic version in the 1990s.
YouTube
"Much different feeling, much different sound," Christie says. "I can remember, at the show I went to see at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J., a couple of people started to try to sing with him. And he stopped in midsong and said, 'I can handle this myself.' "
At other times, Springsteen dropped the upbeat chorus — singing only the verses, forcing his audience to hear the dark story of the veteran. When the U.S. invasion of Iraq loomed in 2003, he told his audience the song was a prayer for peace.
Onkey says the complexity of "Born in the U.S.A." is why it endures: "It describes the ambiguities and challenges of the country that I have grown up in. And for me, it's a rock-and-roll anthem: This singer, this scream, the sound of the guitar and the scale of the song suggest that rock and roll is big enough and important enough to tell that story."
Maybe the meaning of "Born in the U.S.A." is the distance between the grim verses and the joyous chorus. It's the space between frustrating facts and fierce pride — the demand to push American reality a bit closer to our ideals.
.
Thank you Barbara, whoever you a
re. Thank you Howard. Thank you Bruce. Thank you Yankees. Thank you New York.
And that's how you build a memory... a family tradition.
#JohnSilva
Subscribe to my blog: John Silva's World
Follow me on twitter: @johnadsilva
Like my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/joao.a.desilva
And also visit my website: www.johnsilva.com
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