Read E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Online
Authors: Clinton Heylin
E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (29 page)
Its inclusion also meant fully half of the 22–song set on opening night was unfamiliar to even the most hard-core fan. Nor did the opening salvo of “Badlands,” “Night” and “Something In The Night” make any concessions. Before the audience could catch its breath, they were in the midst of an enveloping darkness. It was an extraordinarily brave strategy, and one to which he adhered unwaveringly, knowing full well that the emphasis on new songs would draw comment even from regular champions of the great contender. When he gave Philadelphia DJ Ed Sciaky—a rabid proselytizer for five years now—an after-show interview in August he made his intentions plain as day:
Bruce Springsteen
: I…believed in [
Darkness
] a lot. I thought it was more of a difficult record to get into than
Born To Run
was. It was something I spent eleven months doing and I liked it, loved doing it, felt it. I like playing all the songs from it—that’s the most fun of the night. So I said to myself, “Hey, I’m gonna get out there and hustle it”…There’s a stretch where we go from “Darkness” to “Thunder Road,” a stretch of songs that we
do basically in the same order every night because there’s a continuity thing that happens. It makes connections, and gives the rest of the show resonance. [1978]
Such self-belief brooked no argument. The
Darkness
songs stayed a part of the shows, and only grew stronger with each nightly workout. As did his belief in them. He even told Peter Knobler, who had already given the LP a lukewarm review, that this “record meant more [to me] than…the other records. So when I made it I wanted to make sure that I was gonna be true to what was real for me now.” The way he did this was to test the songs each night, all night. He expressed delight that fans were starting to “call out for the new songs…it’s good to see them going down so well” (actually, none of the dozens of audience tapes of the 1978 shows demonstrate any such groundswell of
Darkness
requests). But there was never any doubt that certain songs which did not leap off the record fast became showstoppers, thanks to the right setting—a stage. “Badlands” burst from the side speakers every night—raising the roof and the near-dead. “Racing In The Street” gripped audiences for whom a single viewing of
American Graffiti
was as close as they came to its ostensible subject matter. As for the guitarfest “Prove It All Night,” it made the studio version sound like a demo, and the E Street Band like a revved-up Steel Mill.
The word of mouth, and a crescendo of reviews for those early shows from all corners of the globe (even the home of punk), soon convinced CBS that were they to release (even just for radioplay) live versions of the new songs in real time they might reverse
Darkness
’s downward direction, and send it back up the
Billboard
charts. But Springsteen remained determined to make the record stand on its own two sides. When CBS sent a film crew to a show in Phoenix in mid-June, to capture three songs from
Darkness
and a coupla longstanding concert favorites they could use for promotional purposes, the versions of “Badlands,” “The Promised Land” and “Prove It All Night” all burned with a far brighter flame than tamer studio cousins. But as a driven-to-despair Dick Wingate observes, “The only one he would allow to be released was ‘Rosalita,’ which was from an older album. I don’t think he thought it was great. He [thought he] was a little stiff.”
It was the 1975 live album argument all over again. When CBS responded by taping an equally great show from Berkeley two weeks later, featuring one of the last meaningful performances of “The Promise,” in order to pull
a live version of the nine-minute “Prove It All Night” as a promotional item for radio stations—a common ploy in the era of “official bootlegs”—Springsteen nixed the idea. When talk of a live album reared its head, he said he preferred to leave it to the bootleggers to spread the good news:
Bruce Springsteen
: If I did a live thing, I would do a double album…There’ll probably be one coming out pretty soon [anyway], because we’ve just broadcast on the radio! Most of the time bootleggers are just fans…It doesn’t really bother me…I see where it’s coming from. [1978]
The record company doubtless loved reading that kinda comment—and read it they did, because he said it to a whole host of rock journalists backstage at a west coast show a couple of nights after he informed the same purveyors of hot wax, during a live radio broadcast from The Roxy, “All them bootleggers out there in radioland, roll your tapes. This is a hot one.” That comment—and a similar one he made on another live broadcast from San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom in December—would come back to haunt him. But at the time, live broadcasts of
five
entire shows—each to different regions of the US—were all part of a deliberate ploy to sell Springsteen’s “live rep” first, and album units second. In fact, a lengthy memo from Landau to CBS’s Fred Humphrey that October affirms the strategic significance he and Springsteen placed on these broadcasts:
“I think we both agree that the single best promotional tool used during the last four months has been the series of live broadcasts. Of these broadcasts the one done at the Agora, in Cleveland, makes for the best all-around programming. My idea is that a week to ten days in front of selected dates on the tour, we schedule a tape of this three-hour broadcast in that particular market. In addition, we would naturally ask the participating stations to promote this very unique piece of special programming to the hilt…The one exception to the use of a pre-recorded tape would be our show at Winterland in San Francisco, on December 15. As you know, a live broadcast has already been scheduled and is in the works. Paul Rappaport has lined up KSAN and appropriate stations in Seattle and Portland…The reason for going live in San Francisco is that it continues, despite our best efforts, to be one of our weakest major markets. One of my special objectives in planning this [fall] tour has been to launch a total assault
on this region. I think the extra excitement that comes from doing a live broadcast…as well as the extra promotion we can anticipate from the participating stations, makes this a logical and necessary course of action in this market.”
The Winterland show would be the last of the lot, coming from a tag-on tour at year’s end they added in late September, with objectives Landau claimed were “primarily developmental. Rather than go back to the many markets where Bruce is now a complete superstar, we are concentrating on those markets where we have created a very real excitement, and where, with one more concert coupled with imaginative promotion, we can finish the job.” Making Bruce fulfill his destiny as “a complete superstar” (aka the future of rock ’n’ roll) now required a militarylike precision.
The first of the five broadcasts, coming from The Roxy on July 7, was intended to consolidate the success of the 1975 Roxy radio broadcast, which had played such a large part in taking the west coast along with him on that
Born To Run
ride. At the same time, CBS ensured they got their own tapes of the show, which assumed extra importance because he was saying good-bye not just to clubs like the 700–capacity Roxy, but maybe even, in some territories, medium-sized theaters. In fact, the July 7 date had only become available when Springsteen agreed to scrap three nights at the six-thousand-seat Shrine Auditorium and replace them with a single night at the LA Forum, the eighteen-thousand capacity barn the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Who had made a home away from home for Brit-rock heavyweights (and audience bootleggers).
Having fought to resist the pull of arenas throughout the whole of the
Born To Run
era—even in territories like Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland and New York where it had long been a viable option—Springsteen broke his promise to himself just three nights into the
Darkness
tour, playing two shows at Philadelphia’s Spectrum, the self-same venue Appel had struggled to get him to play in 1976 to help clear the backlog of debt, and the very one he had forsworn on behalf of all such arenas after a disastrous support slot five years earlier. His excuse to Ed Sciaky was that “there were so many people that wanted to come in. After that, it felt good, and it’s been [generally] good experiences.” By mid-August he was back at The Spectrum, warming up for three
nights at Madison Square Garden, shows he insisted he was playing “for all the long-term supporters.” He had evidently forgotten his own astute analysis of the drawbacks of these antithetical-to-music mausoleums, expressed to Paul Williams before
Born To Run
raised the stakes:
Bruce Springsteen
: There’s always something else going on all over the room. You go to the back row, you can’t see the stage, [let alone] what’s on it. You see a blot of light. You better bring your binocs! What happens [when] you go to those places [is] it turns into something else, that it ain’t. It becomes an event. It’s hard to play. That’s where everybody is playing, though. I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know what people expect you to do in a place like that. [1978]
For the July 5 Forum show, he went down to just six
Darkness
songs, though he had added “Because The Night” to the repertoire five days earlier, belatedly reclaiming it for himself—to whoops of approval from the fans. Certain economic issues remained, though, and if Springsteen wasn’t hip to the new realities of the road, Landau was. Throughout that whole west coast jaunt in early July, Landau was slowly but surely assuming the helm, rounding up a retinue in case he decided to make the most momentous decision of his career—assuming the reins of management, and taking Bruce to the next commercial plane. He took some persuading:
Paul Rappaport
: I got to be part of the planning because he was new at it. Some of the questions he asked me he just didn’t know the answer to. I remember being backstage at San Diego Sports Arena, he had this great wrinkled suit—he never had time to get them cleaned—and I remember yanking him, “The rumor is you’re gonna manage Bruce. You really have to do this.” And he was like, “Rap, I’m not a manager, I’m a writer.” “Yeah, but you’re the only guy he trusts.” We could see Bruce was in trouble and needed [good] people around him. And Jon kept saying, “I don’t know.”
Debbie Gold:
By the time they came out to California I knew I had to be…a part of this. And Jon said to me, “If I manage Bruce, you work for me. If not, you work for Bruce.” But still Landau did not make up his mind right away. It was the day of The Roxy show, and I was in Iovine’s room, and suddenly I got summoned. That’s when Landau finally decided
[to manage Bruce]…Landau learning the ropes took the whole first year I was there. It was fascinating. He got some information from [Michael] Tannen, but I watched him soak up information from all the people around him. He asked the same questions to a lot of different people. I watched what he became, and how he used that information. Don’t underestimate that guy!
Lighting man Marc Brickman was one of those who pushed for the man: “Landau kept saying he didn’t want to be manager. But he’d always be around…Finally we went out on
Darkness
and it wasn’t happening, there were [some] problems monetarily. Suddenly we all said to him, ‘Why don’t you be the manager?’ [MOTH] As CBS’s Pete Philbin suggests, one immediate result was a switch to arenas where feasible: “Jon Landau systematically convinced Bruce Springsteen that he was letting his fans down and had to play bigger shows. He provided Bruce with an explanation to change the things he’d said in the past.” [MOTH] If, to Brickman and Philbin, the move in hindsight signaled “the beginning of the end,” initially good vibrations far outweighed the bad. And Springsteen was both the band’s biggest hitter and its premier cheerleader, with reserves of energy that left everyone else in the dust:
Debbie Gold:
I’ve never been on a tour like that. He was so excited about playing, every minute of it. And then when the show was over he’d be saying hello to every reporter, every radio station person. It was a dream for me. And then we’d finally get on the bus and be ready to leave, [the rest of us] half asleep, there would be Bruce signing autographs.
As a farewell to how it used to be, the Roxy radio broadcast was certainly a helluva way to go out. The Forum show had been a fairly chanceless affair, and as Paul Rappaport recalls: “Jon felt we didn’t make enough noise. We didn’t bust this town open…which is why did the Roxy.” The Roxy, though, was the old Bruce going for broke. For the first time, a Springsteen show breached the twenty-five song (and almost the three-hour) mark. Leaving aside the seven songs from
Darkness
, an introductory “Rave On” (after admitting on local TV the night before that he listened to Buddy Holly every night before going onstage) and a wild-in-the-country “Heartbreak Hotel,” there were spectacular E Street reclamations of “Fire,” “For You” and “Because The Night” (from Robert Gordon, Greg
Kihn and Patti Smith respectively). It did what it had to do—it busted the town wide open. His west coast promotion man left the club mid-show just to get some air, and in leaving the epicenter of this media storm caught the zeitgeist in microcosm:
Paul Rappaport
: After three days of no sleep…I finally go out to the street to try and settle myself down just a bit. Wow, who knew what a scene it was OUTSIDE the Roxy! First, there were at least a couple hundred people with their ears pressed against the walls all the way around the club. On the Sunset Strip, where everyone is nightly cruising and the subsequent traffic jam is legendary, every single car had their windows rolled down and was blaring the show over their radios. People were bopping up and down in their seats and pumping fists outside their windows—whooping and hollering. The whole Strip was rocking out to one giant Bruce show. I am telling you it was extraordinary. It was like the whole town was listening.
The broadcast just got better and better. There was a twelve-minute “Backstreets” that was part “Sad Eyes,” part “Cypress Avenue” and part “Drive All Night.”
*
(It was in Seattle, a fortnight earlier, that he had started to slip elements of that song into the “Backstreets” rap: “I remember then, baby, I’d drive all night. I swore that I’d drive all night, baby, I would drive all night just to taste your tender charms and to have you hold me in your arms, I’d drive all night through the wind and the rain…for just one look from your pretty, sad eyes.”) And if that was not enough to take the whole of LA’s breath away, he debuted two songs that took the essence of
Darkness
’s fatalistic worldview to an even more rarefied level, a fully-realized “Independence Day”—for his attendant Mom and Pop—and “Point Blank,” a song no one even knew about before that night, being something written after the sessions:
