It was a Tuesday. New albums used to release on Tuesdays and even when I was out on the road, I kept decent tabs on upcoming records I wanted to hear. I didn’t buy a lot of music while I was hitchhiking the country. Space was one issue; money was another. Of course, I bought cassette tapes exclusively and my occasional purchases were usually limited to something from the used section of a small-town record store. That cold Tuesday, November 10th, 1986, Columbia records released Bruce Springsteen’s first live album, a deluxe boxed-set spanning ten years of legendary concert performances and I was waiting outside The Blue Mill records and tapes before they opened. That was an album I had to have and I didn’t mind waiting in the early morning high desert cold or laying down a hard-earned twenty bucks to get it.
I was in front of the store an hour before opening time and as I waited, others came along until there was a small crowd of a dozen or so, sipping gas station coffee from styrofoam cups, smoking cigarettes and talking about Springsteen. A few of us bragged about concerts we had been to and I took a little pride that no one else in the group had ever hitched hundreds of miles and worked a roadside diner to see a Springsteen show. Most of the kids hanging around the store had never seen Springsteen live, but it didn’t matter who had and who hadn’t; all of us were itching to hear the record.
In the brief time before the store opened, a few friendships were started, addresses exchanged, listening dates made. I stayed out of those conversations; not because I didn’t like the idea of listening to the live album with other fans, maybe passing a joint around, but because I didn’t want to tell them all that I was camped in a clump of trees next to the Yucca Valley drive-in theater, sleeping on the ground in a roll of scrapped carpet padding.
The Blue Mill opened at 8 o’clock sharp with the jangle of an old tin bell and the creak of an aluminum door frame. We crowded through the door, out of the cold, and the clerk knew what we were there for. He hadn’t even stocked the records in the bins, just had them stacked on the counter and, damn; that was a beautiful stack of boxes. I hung at the back of the crowd. There were plenty of sets for all of us there and when I got up to the counter to make my purchase, I was confused by the box the clerk handed me.
“No, I want the cassettes,” I said, looking at the big square box, scanning the track list, savoring the cover photo, “Not the records.”
The clerk frowned slightly. “Yeah, that’s tapes you’ve got,” he said, “They all come in the same box.”
I was a bit disappointed that the box was so large; it would take up too much space in my duffel bag and I was going to have to trash it. I made up my mind in about a second that the box didn’t matter as long as I had the music and the booklet that was promised with the set. I had never bought a boxed set of records before, or even heard of one, but the nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents sale price seemed like a bargain for three hours of live Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.
I hurried out of the shop, made a quick stop at the Circle K store for a few packs of batteries, and headed for my rough camp. I had been camped out in Yucca Valley for the previous two weeks or so, working for the money to buy the boxed set. There was a hardware store in town that paid cash for laborers to unload and stock their delivery on Wednesday nights and I’d been lucky enough to get picked out of the crowd to work two weeks in a row. Even with the luxury purchase I made at The Blue Mill, I had money left in my pocket for food and coffee and i had cigarettes and pot to last through the week. If I could catch work at the hardware store the following night, I’d have a nice stash of cash to get out of town on, into the lower desert where the nights weren’t so bitter in winter. I knew a truck stop outside of Indio where I could catch a ride to any warm place, but that day I was content to laze at my camp with hobo coffee and live Bruce Springsteen blasting out of my cheap Walkman headphones.
My camp was under two trees, up against a fence that separated the drive-in theater from an alley behind a strip mall. I had scavenged some scrap carpet remnants and padding from the dumpster behind a flooring shop and managed a little shelter that kept most of the misting rain off me. When I slept, I rolled myself up in some carpet padding like a human burrito and I spent the freezing nights warm and dry.
I built a small fire and put water on to boil for coffee, tore the shrink-wrap off the boxed set and jammed Cassette 1 in my Walkman. I opened the booklet, skimmed through the photographs and then flipped back to the first page to follow the lyrics, even though I knew them all by heart.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band…”
There was a smattering of applause, the soft tinkling of a piano and then a voice I knew well; tough and tender, gruff and beautiful, almost a gravelly whisper. I had heard Thunder Road hundreds of times, but never like this; desperate, pleading and haunted. I sat spellbound, watching the fire lick the bottom of my makeshift coffee pot, and the song ended so softly and tenderly that the sudden burst of guitar that followed startled me and I nearly knocked over the boiling water.
It rained all morning long and I sat beneath my hobo tent, sipping hot black coffee and getting stoned and I followed the E Street Band from town to town, track by track through ten years of rock and roll barnstorming.
That first tape made me homesick; all those early songs that were soaked in New Jersey myth. I thought about the friends I had left behind, wondering who was still hiding on the backstreets and which of them had made it out. I changed out the old batteries for fresh ones, slipped the second tape in and I was just stoned enough to dance around my campsite in the chilly rain, shaking my ass and pumping my fist.
I was lost to the music, a prisoner of rock and roll and nothing could stop me while the beat went on.
Then I saw a cop standing on the fence-line, staring at me, almost smiling.
I stopped dancing, flushed red and pushed the stop button on my Walkman.
“Kid, what are you doing back here?”
“Just listening to Bruce Springsteen.”
The cop took a circular stroll around my camp. He frowned at my small fire, shook his head at my carpet remnant tent and asked me if I was on drugs.
“No, sir,” I said, lying about the pot, fairly certain he had smelled it, “Just camping out. I’m sort of homeless”
He asked me for my name, if I was over 18 and lectured me about the fire. “You know you can’t be camping out back here. This is the drive-in’s property. You could get a trespassing charge.”
I was no stranger to trespassing charges.
“It’s just until tomorrow,” I said, “I’m gonna work the truck at the hardware store and make some money to get out of town on.”
I could tell he didn’t like it, but he wasn’t a hard-ass cop and he told me I could spend one last night in my back-alley camp.
“No more fires,” he warned, “You douse that and if I drive past and see it burning again, I’ll run you out tonight.”
Yes, Sir,
“And I want you to clean all this up before you go,” he said, “All this carpet back in the dumpster, all these cigarette butts picked up.”
I will, Officer.
He went back to his patrol car and drove away I put out the fire and the day grew colder, but I rolled myself up in the carpet padding and listened to the third and last tape in a dark, warm cocoon. I should have been miserable, wrapped up against the frigid desert cold, sleeping on the ground in the back of a closed drive-in, but it was one of the best days I ever spent in four years of hard traveling. I played the set again and again throughout the day, took a walk to the Circle K for more batteries and fell asleep that night somewhere in the middle of Cassette 2.
I didn’t get any work at the hardware store the next evening and the cop came back to make sure I kept our deal about breaking camp. I had thrown away the carpet scraps and the cumbersome boxed set carton right along with them, tucked two of the tapes and the rolled-up booklet down inside my duffel bag and loaded the third cassette into my player.
“You make yourself some money?” the cop asked me.
I shook my head. “The guy said I had enough work the last few weeks. He gave someone else a chance.”
The cop slipped his wallet from his uniform trousers and passed me a ten-dollar bill. “I can give you a ride down the Morongo hill, if you want one.”
“I’d just as soon walk,” I said, “I’ll catch a ride pretty easy.”
I stopped in the Denny’s on my way out of town and sipped a fresh coffee, with sugar and cream, as I walked along State Route 62 with my thumb hanging out. The rain fell steadily, softly and I pushed the Walkman’s play button.
“Hello, out there. 1…2…3…4!”
I didn’t mind the rain or the lowering dark. Like Springsteen, I had gotten good at burning down the road.
When the live album came out out, I was saving my money to go away so, bad fan alert, I didn’t buy it. I was working at Sears in Ladies’ Wear. Sears was selling the album and part of its promotion was playing Thunder Road, over and over again. I have very distinct memories of hearing it, (and singing along) as I arranged polyester coordinates and hung bras on hangers.
I was given the vinyl for Christmas, but couldn’t possibly take it with me. My sister taped the whole thing for me, not ideal, of course, but I still had it. I remember listening to it in my bedroom in Hannover and my au pair son (the little boy I was taking care of) coming into my room and asking why the man was so angry.
I guess that about sums it up, right? We are a community... To pinch from our beloved hero, a little band of broken people who've found other people who's broken bits fit ours in some way.
I was talking with Kate, a good friend of mine, on Wednesday, telling her about a friend when she asked me who the friend was.
Me 'oh one of my Bruce buds' I replied, 'she lives in New Jersey',
Kate 'ah, so you met her when you were there?'
Me 'no, never met her'
Kate 'but you said she's a good friend'
Me 'well, yes she is'
That's it really, some of you I have met, some of you I doubt I will ever meet, but we are all linked in love and friendship by this man.
This thread is turning out pretty damned nice.
You are an awesome dude and I'm glad I know you. The Bruce fandom has such a wonderful collection of folks. Steve and Buddha's stories were fascinating to read as well, you've led such interesting lives and it's touching to read how Bruce has impacted you. I feel like his music has provided something to all of us. Love you all.
My brother and I found the vinyl box set in an abandoned house. The box was in pretty bad shape but the records were fine. We kept it because we couldn’t afford it.
My story come's from a year or so after the box set came out. I was in the pub with a group of friends talking about our Desert Island Discs (the 8 tracks you would choose if you were stuck on a desert island, for those of you outside the U.K.) My original Bruce bud was one of the friends and we both chose Thunder Road as our first pick. At exactly the same time we both qualified our choice by saying 'from the live album, of course'.
My friend died 20 years ago, but I think of him so often and every time I hear 'Ladies & Gentlemen....'
They don't have to be heavy emotional stories. I don't think mine is. Our stories are a patchwork quilt.
I too don't have a moving emotional story to tell about the box set. I was working at a record store when it came out—in fact, I was working that day. So I had to work my entire shift, selling set after set after set, before I could get home with my own copy and listen. (Not exactly the most gripping of hardships.)
I don't have a moving emotional story to share, but I do remember the day I first got my hands on and heard the box set very clearly. It's because that event turned me from a casual Bruce appreciator into the rabid fan I am today.
Like many of similar age to me (born 1970), Bruce really came into my awareness via the BITUSA phenomenon. I remember a friend taping that album for me and really liking some of the deeper cuts like No Surrender, Bobby Jean and Downbound Train which was enough for me to seek out more. I found The River album in my mum's collection and liked a lot of that as well, to the point where when I came across the Blinded By The Light book at the local library I borrowed it to find out more.
That book left me hankering to hear some live Bruce, because that seemed to be a big deal and the heart of the matter.
Records were really expensive in Australia at the time. A normal vinyl album was around 16 to 20 Australian dollars. When the box set arrived with great fanfare here, it was around 50 Australian dollars from memory. No way a high school student such as myself was getting my hands on that too soon.
In 1987, I was in Year 12 which is our last year of high school, the big graduation year. I was quite studious (read 'straight and nerdy') and disciplined in my approach to school. We had exams in the middle of that year and in organising my studying I would allow myself 3 or 4 hour breaks just to regroup.
On one such break in mid 1987, I wandered down to a local department store. There, I found a pile of the Bruce box sets in the music section. Priced at well under half their normal value... about 22 dollars from memory. Finally, I could afford this sucker and grabbed it eagerly.
I got back home and while my nerdy student self was telling me to get back to the exam study, I thought I could at least listen to one side or maybe a whole single disc. So on it went.
I can to this day clearly remember sitting in my parents lounge as Thunder Road started, listening to that piano, Bruce's voice washing over me, reading along with the incredible lyrics in that wonderful booklet. And when it finished, standing up, walking to the record player, and putting the needle back to the start. And doing so again another time. Because this was absolutely the greatest song I'd ever heard to that point in my life.
And here I am today.
@Buddhabone and @SteveInJoburg, thank you for baring your souls. This is what I come to the forum for. I love talking Bruce, but even more than that I want to hear about what this music has meant in our lives. I've cried some at work reading those posts and that's okay. Beautiful posts. I love you both.
Here come those tears again...
On the spectrum of Springsteen's fans, we are the radical sentimentalists. 🙄
@Jerseyfornia @Buddhabone @SteveInJoburg
You are all so special and I thank you for sharing the most painful experiences with us.
This forum is a blessing, I'm so grateful to be a part of this. Love you all...
Hugs Steve.
I think I may have told an abbreviated version of this story on the old GL. But, in the spirit of this, another of @Jerseyfornia's fine threads and @Buddhabone's beautiful post above, here it is again, more or less.
I did not have as difficult a relationship with my father as some, but it wasn’t easy, especially in my teen years. As I’ve grown older I’ve tried to make sense of it, sense of why my dad was angry and bitter so much of the time. In public, with friends, he was the life of the party. The guy with the smile and the joke. At home, in private, we always walked on eggshells. The relationship he had with his dad, well, that was very similar to Bruce. And my dad was born only a few years before him, something which has been more and more significant to me as I’ve gotten older too. My grandfather was a good man. An old world gentleman, in the truest sense of the word. But having an eldest son who was a greaser, a drop out and who knocked up a teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks, well, we all know that story has played out a million times in a million cities.
My grandad died in 1984 from lung cancer. Never smoked a day in his life. At the time, my older brothers were in the army, my mom away for work, just my dad and I at home. I went with my father to see grandpa at the hospital. I left the room to get a cooldrink and he passed away. That night, my dad was making us dinner in the kitchen and I realised he was standing crying at the stove. First and only time in my life I saw him outright cry.
I was not a particularly good student in high school. I don’t think I was overly stupid, just lazy and a serial daydreamer. I was an introvert and a nerd. In 1988, I was 16. I used to cycle home from school, listen to records and read books in my room. If my dad and I spoke, it would inevitably lead to a one sided argument, me too scared to talk back. One day my dad came in, and I was playing the box set. I had bought it the year before, a beautiful American vinyl import version which I was incredibly lucky to find on sale brand new, and which I still have to this very day. Bruce was talking, it was the intro to The River. My dad stopped what he was saying and listened. Right through the intro, into the song. Then he left. A few days later, he came into my room and asked me if I would play it for him again, from the beginning, which I did. He sat on the chair in my room, not saying a word. I didn’t either. My dad had taught us, when you listened to music, you LISTENED, you didn’t talk. When it got to the ‘that’s good’ part, I saw tears brimming in his eyes. I never said anything. He listened to maybe the first or second verse of the song and left.
In his last years, my father and I did not speak. I was angry with him for many things, all of which did not mean anything anymore, once he was gone. In December 2013, two months before I was due to see Bruce Springsteen for the first time in my life, I got a text to tell me that my father had hanged himself. He was at the time, for all intents and purposes, homeless. I hadn’t known. I drove the 600 kilometers to Durban where he was staying at the time to stand in a cold, wet city morgue and identify his body. I could see the marks on his neck, and I’ll never forget that even in death, he was frowning. I looked at the face I hadn’t seen, at that time, for some years, and saw how the one I saw in the mirror every morning was almost identical, save the short, stubbly grey hair. He would have been 70 the following June. A week or two before he died, I had decided to try and bury the hatchet, contact him and get him up here to Joburg to celebrate his 70th, trying to locate some of his old drinking mates to surprise him. I still wonder to this day, had I called him, would it have made a difference?
Anyway, every June 8th, I play Independence Day in memory of my father, and the Live box set will always have a significance to me and memories I will cherish of him sitting and listening to Bruce talk about his relationship with his dad, so relatable to my own father and his own dad. Generations repeating pointless mistakes over and over.
On the 28th of January 2014 I was in the same room as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for the first time, and they played The River. The emotions I went through that night, well… When the video backdrop played near the end of the show in tribute to Clarence, not all of the tears streaming down my face were for the Big Man.
This crying is becoming a habit. Thanks Adam for that very moving and heartfelt post.
I remember a review of the box in backstreets mag. The person said it was fantasicamagorical.
Yes, it was.
Rick, you are wonderful and you know how I feel about you. That story, jesus. I see you there. a piece of myself with you. We are brothers.
I remember working at my father's college calling alumni raising money. I was and am still a slick talker on the phone. I was good at it. It was my first job. My mother had lost her mind and decided to let everything go in the summer of 1984, we spent that summer going from relative to relative before we settled with our father on the east side of Los Angeles near cal state LA where he taught teachers to teach art. Born in the USA was a tentpole for me that summer. I got tickets for the shows at the sports arena. One of the last times my Mom and I were together until 1999 was the Halloween show, I had become a die-hard but had not heard the bootlegs yet. That would be later. I spun out in 85 and spent most of 86 watching TV and looking at old Playboys. What else can you do when your world is upside down, feeling like you were born down in a dead man's town. I had my cassettes of the first 6 records taped off KLOS 95.5. I played them and they made me feel less alone. I slowly became a teenager by summer of 86. I had school, my cassettes, and my job. When the box set was announced I was insane with anticipation. The day finally came and I bought a vinyl copy for the house and that same cassette version for my new walkman. Each day I'd play it as I'd walk down our hill and then up another to Wilson high school. Each day I'd come home and my Dad would be drunk on Gin angry at me for simply existing. After the fights, I'd go downstairs and blast Adam Raised a Cain. I'd cry missing my mom during backstreets. Little did I know she was in Oxnard detoxing from her addictions. That live record was a story. I read backstreets magazine and obsessed with the possibility of hearing those shows that were recorded. I became a tape collector, I first listened to the whole Roxy show and then Stockholm 81. Through the fire I was reborn. Bruce Springsteen made me closer to whole. I will play that boxset today, years later, while my lovely wife helps her patients, and my son remote learns. I wouldn't have made it out of the storm without Bruce.
Thanks to all of you who support my fascination. I am here thanks to all of you.
Beautiful JF. Thank you.
And yes, I also now want to go listen to that box more than I ever have before.