Books |
Bruce Springsteen on Broadway
By
Published: Jan 20, 2018
Category:
Drama
The audience is white and aging. And well-heeled; tickets on StubHub for “Bruce Springsteen on Broadway” sell for as much as $3,000. As my friend and I settled ourselves in the 6th row — her ticket, not mine, and thank you, Vicky, again and again and again — I time-traveled to the first time I saw Bruce. Nassau Coliseum. 1978. My friends and I sprang for a white limo and champagne. My date was the woman I’ll always wish I’d married. Bruce had just released “Darkness at the Edge of Town.” If you remember that CD and that year and who you were then, you just got shivers.
You get shivers also when Bruce steps onstage at the Walter Kerr. Black t-shirt. Jeans. Shoes with rubber soles. When the screaming ends, he’s off. No introduction. The opening song is “Growing Up.”
And when you hear these words, with no band behind him, just one man and one acoustic guitar and sometimes a grand piano, and for two songs his wife, you think something you never thought about Bruce: “Damn. He is an amazing rock poet.” The show goes on like that, 15 freshly powerful songs, some passages from his book, some scripted comments. It’s been like that since October. It will go on until June 30. Five times a week. That’s a lot of shows.
Do you know the origin of Bruce on Broadway? It was a secret concert Bruce gave for Barack Obama and 250 staffers in the East Room of the White House, 8 days before Trump’s inauguration. You can imagine the emotions, the memories, the tears in that room. The commitment to decency and sanity and the magical power of music that powered that show also powers this one. This is serious personal business for Bruce — it’s the story of his evolution from a wimpy kid to an icon of enlightened manhood who’s still working out his liberation from his past. And it’s serious national business for him — this evening is a call to be courageous and involved. And it’s serious spiritual business — at the end, he says the Lord’s Prayer and offers a blessing. Now I understand what someone said after seeing Bruce at the hotel in the morning: “He looked like a man on a final mission.”
In the Times, Jesse Green wrote that “brilliant disguise” applies to this evening. Agreed. This show was “written and directed” by the performer. And that raises a question: Is the guy on stage the real Bruce Springsteen or is he an actor playing Bruce? Or has the persona merged with the person so completely that he can’t tell the difference?
Those are questions for after the show. Really, for the next morning, for this two-plus hour performance is a long, heavy trip. I stumbled out exhausted, exalted, and inspired, but mostly stunned. I go out searching for a masterpiece, and I rarely see one. But Bruce on Broadway? Yeah. He was all that.
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To buy the paperback of his memoir, “Born to Run,” click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.
To buy “The Essential Bruce Springsteen,” click here.
