Today will be a three-post mega-update. The reason for this is because Hurricane Sandy struck earlier this week, and, while I was able to prep on Monday and write an update early, I was not able to prep for Tuesday because I was without internet and power. I already knew that I was going to write two for Halloween. Turns out it will just be three today. This is the third and final.
This is going to be a personal anecdote about Bruce, coming from me, who many know as the nuttiest of the Springsteen fans. Of course many don’t really know any other big Springsteen fans, but what the hell? I mean, I don’t know many people who have seen the same artist more than a baker’s dozen of times. My brother has seen Bob Dylan twenty plus times. My buddy Erik has seen Bruce twenty plus times. My friend Greg has seen Dave Matthews a whole bunch, I believe. But I don’t know many who know people as devoted as Springsteen fans (of which, I am actually a novice), and for all my excitement and fandom for Bruce, I’ve never met him. I’ve never met anyone in the E Street Band. I’ve never even met fill ins like Charlie Giordiano, Jay Weinberg, or Jake Clemons. I’ve never met Southside Johnny, Vini Lopez, or the rest. In fact, when I went to the concert at Giants Stadium with Erik where we moved from the spot where Bruce crowd surfed, I figured I was doomed to never get a chance to slap Bruce’s sweat coated, shirt covered back while he was belting out some hits. I was wrong. This is my Bruce anecdote.
It’s strange, really, that I counted wanting to touch Bruce Springsteen as a personal goal of mine. I mean, it’s not like he’s some faith healer who will cleanse my spirit with just a little human touch. No, I just feel a connection to his music. I feel like he’s teaching me things – about writing, about living, about being a sensitive, strong, reserved, thoughtful, passionate man – despite having never met me. I know he has this affect on others. My feelings are not unique, nor do I feel like my life will be unfulfilled if I never get to shake his hand and say, “Other than my own father, no one has taught me more about being a man than you. By the way, you’re a month and a half younger than my mother.” Ok, maybe I’d leave that last part out. But my life would not be any less rich if Bruce never gets to know what he’s done for me, because he already knows. He’s not omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent. He’s just heard it before. Just add me to the list of men whose lives are forever changed because we listened to the oeuvre of Bruce Springsteen. So, when I watched as the people we surrendered our non-pit GA spots to hug a sweaty Bruce, I thought, “That could’ve been me if I wasn’t an idiot.”
We left the show in that dream we always leave the show in – just happy, but we also left the show thinking about how we didn’t get to touch Bruce. Erik was going to stick around the next morning, then fly in the following weekend for the next show, the one that my wife (then girlfriend) would be at. I was excited to take her to a full E Street Band show (she’d only previously seen Bruce solo and acoustic, introduced by John Glenn on the oval at Ohio State), and excited to see Bruce again (naturally.)
This time, we made no mistakes. We knew where we’d stood, and the night before, we’d tried to push our way to the stage. It didn’t happen. We got stuck behind who I can only assume was either three midgets on each others’ shoulders, Rik Smits, or both. Erik, being only about 5’7” if he’s wearing his lifts, was shut out. We decided, this time around, we weren’t going to get shut out, and that we were going to watch the show from the front of the rear GA section, where we’d have a gap of about eight feet in front of us before the next person. Plus, Bruce might come over to say “hello!” He’d recently begun crowd surfing, so why not give it a try? I told my girlfriend, “If he comes our way, I’m handing you my phone, and I will need you to snap a photo of us!” She looked slightly amused, as though we’d dreamed the previous concert’s near miss, but agreed.
Then, the time came. I actually can’t remember the song. I was so laser-focused on Bruce that I can’t remember anything else. But, Bruce laid back in the crowd, and let the crowd surf him back from the stage. He got back there, played to the crowd on the mini-stages, and then hopped down, facing away from us. I handed my girlfriend the phone, with the camera app open. Everything slowed down. You know how they say, in a car crash, things slow down? Or when something happens that requires rapid fire reactions, you can see everything hyper-clearly? I could feel my heart beating in my ears at this moment. My favorite artist of all time, someone I’d spent countless dollars supporting and indulging myself with his work, reading book after book after book of Bruce Springsteen biographies, learning as much as I can about the man, and here he was, a hundred yards away, maybe less. History had shown he would run right to where I was.
He faked my way. My palms were sweaty as he took a few steps our way. He then stopped, pivoted, and ran back the other way. There was the other side, holding him as he sat back on them and sang. A cone of silence fell around my ears, everything was muffled and my heart sank. I saw my phone creep back in to my field of vision. Here, your dream is being returned to you.
The rest of the concert went without incident, no pun intended. No more Bruce crowd-surfing. Erik and I followed the rest of the concerts, and in December in Buffalo, Bruce said to the crowd, before quitting the stage that the band was going to go away for a while. In fact, this was the last time the band as we knew it then, down Phantom Dan, would take the stage. Clarence would record some tracks for the Wrecking Ball album, suffer a massive stroke, slip into a coma, and die before the band could make it back on the road.
I was devastated. What would the future look like for Bruce Springsteen? There were rumors – always rumors – about a new album. I saw Bruce in October 2009, and not again until April of 2012. I recounted the story to anyone who would listen – my near miss. They say never meet your idols? Try never screwing yourself out of the chance to touch your idol. That’s way worse.
On April 4th, 2012, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination (that doesn’t really play into it, but I don’t like mentioning the date April 4th without saying that it is the day he was assassinated. Also, U2 got it wrong – he was assassinated in the early evening of April 4th, not morning. Otherwise, Pride is quite good…) I saw Bruce again. Erik and I went to the IZOD Center in East Rutherford (you may know it as the Continental Airlines Arena…) and stood in line for the wristband pit. We met up with Erik’s friend Brian, who is one of the “lost count around X” kind of guys. He is also owner of one of the biggest Bruce bootleg collections, lossless recording, in the world. He has a network. He appears, albeit briefly, on the Live in New York City DVD during Out in the Street. He’s our Bruce guy. He recognizes, and gets recognized, by people at the Bruce shows. He gave us some advice – he said, unless you’re in a place to be up against the stage, you might as well float to the back of the GA Pit – there’s more room, you’re closer than the GA floor, and there’s a chance you’ll meet someone famous (at my show in August, Pat Riley was there – meaning, former Lakers player, Knicks coach, and current Miami Heat team president. That Pat Riley. I’ve also seen Edward Burns at multiple Bruce shows, including the Oval at OSU, and three times in East Rutherford in the GA section. I’ve also watched Jeff Ross live tweet the show from the other side of the GA barrier. It was way more interesting to watch Bruce.) without being mashed up with a bunch of other guys. Brian is wise.
So, we took that advice, floated to the back, and saw a great show. Again, without remembering the song, Bruce ran around to the troth between the GA section, and the GA pit. Erik and I positioned ourselves so we could slap his arm. We succeeded. Then, I saw that the crowd was forming a human hand bridge to transport Bruce from the back of the GA pit to the stage. He’d discovered it was way easier to get out there by his own two feet, and have the crowd send him back with their adoring hands. I pushed my way in, and waited. He sang, danced, teased the crowd, shook hands, high fived, and then leaned back. He started making his way back. As a man of about 6’1”, and probably 165 pounds, he is not huge. Certainly not Clarence Clemons size, anyway. But, as he progressed, I realized, I was going to be able to surf him over me.
Thinking quickly, I pulled my phone out, and readied the camera. Every time I’d ever tried to take a picture with it, when I couldn’t see the virtual button, I tapped haphazardly on the screen, never taking the picture I thought I was taking. But, I was going to try. I had only about six percent battery left, too. This was going to be interesting.
Bruce plodded along, slowly. It actually thinned out near me. Then, before I knew it, there he was. Someone tried to put a Yankee hat on him. As soon as he felt a hat slipping over his sweaty mop of course salt and pepper hair, he slapped it off. He didn’t see if it was a Yankee hat or not, he just knew that it could be a hat that says he supports al Qaeda, or was pro-choice or pro-life, or some type of thing he didn’t support, or didn’t want to publicize his support for. That, I realized, was media training. I reached up, and felt his sweaty shoulder on my palm.
There it was. I touched my idol. He was looking behind him, out of the corner of his eye, like someone was tapping his shoulder. There were dozens of hands holding him up as he surfed backward. I reached my hand out, and aimed the camera at him, tapping wildly at where the virtual shutter button was on my phone screen. I had no idea if anything was taking. I realize, now, that if you press the “+” button on the side of an iPhone 4S, it snaps the picture, too. Good to know.
As I held the phone up, a few people decided to ditch their literal support of Bruce. His right shoulder started to dip. It may not have been the worst thing in the world if he had fallen right on me. My left hand was holding his left shoulder. My right hand instantly shot hard for his right shoulder, as he started to come toward me. His head was right next to mine, and I slammed my right hand, iPhone and all, into his right shoulder. He gave one of those Bruce Springsteen-esque “whoa!” utterances that you’d expect him to say into the mic after an ill-advised “I’m sixty two goddamn years old power slide across the stage” move. I shouted “I know!” as if we were all of a sudden going to have a discussion about how some other schmucks almost dropped him, but I totally had him, and oh, by the way, sorry about your shoulder, Bruce! I’ll ice it down for you later! He progressed as the people behind me took his shoulder over for me, and I put my hands on the middle of his back, and pushed him along, then his butt, and then his legs. He was past my reach now.
I looked over at Erik. I always know that, when it comes to Bruce, there’s never a worry that my response is going to be completely over the top, or that he’s going to tease me for being a giggly schoolgirl. He was screaming the words “so awesome!” over and over again. I high fived him. Erik and I do not high five, almost out of principle, but this situation called for it. “Money! Fucking Money!” I shrieked, like the aforementioned giddy schoolgirl. I stuffed my phone back into my pocket.
We walked over to Brian, who we’d been standing next to a the back of the pit, in our float spot. He said, “did you touch him?” He was almost like a proud father – his little Bruce disciples were all growns up, and we’d had our first Close Encounter of the Bruce kind. We said, “Oh, yeah! He surfed right over us!”
“Get any pictures?” Brian asked. I had completely forgotten about my phone. Also, the song was still going on. I opened my phone. There were some blurry pictures, and one that was clear as a bell. I’ll include it at the end of this post. “Holy shit!” I said. I passed it around. Erik restarted his “So awesome!” choruses. Brian’s eyes bulged, “Send me that! Send me that!” He was legitimately excited.
I only had two percent battery left. I needed to find a way, with very little cell reception in the IZOD center, to secure this photo in cyberspace – the cloud, as it were. At that moment, and until the rest of the show, I would only own this photo in one space. If a water main burst, and I was soaked from head to toe, I might lose this photo forever! I decided to text it to my wife. It never went through. When we got out, I plugged my phone in to Erik’s car, and emailed the full size photo to myself. I had to. I couldn’t lose it!
I passed it around, showed everyone I could that I’d held up Bruce Springsteen. Just like with the Copenhagen post, lots had to go right. We had to not win the lottery for the pit, but rather come in nearly dead last to comfortably float to the back of the pit. We had to know to position ourselves. Bruce had to decide to crowd surf. And my fidgety finger had to somehow magically find the shutter button at the exact moment that Bruce was looking in the direction of my camera, with a look of terrified joy at the revelry in his honor. I tweeted it to greasylake, sent it to Backstreets, and to my wife, who passed it around the newsroom at her job, one of the major national radio news organizations. She showed a friend of hers, who instantly texted it to his friend, who’s response was at the time, and a year later, when I met him in person, “That’s so awesome. I want to punch you.” Actually, I was introduced to him as “This is the guy with the photo!” and he knew instantaneously, “Shit! You took that photo! That’s incredible!” All of a sudden, I was the Bruce master.
There are far more important photos to me, many of them from my wedding day. There will be far more important photos to come when my family grows, and I can take memories of my progeny myself. But this one has a great story to go with it. It is the exact moment I can be sure that my idol knew I was there. He may not have known I was the person holding up his left shoulder, or that I was about to hold up his right shoulder, and maybe prevent him from doing a few windmills with my dreaded iPhone to the shoulder blade, but he knew that my phone and hand were there, and it’s a great feeling. Here it is:
Thanks for reading. I’ll meet you all in a land of hope and dreams.
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