Broooooooooooooooooooce!!!!!!!!!

So my second non-comedy Saturday night was spent watching mainly Bruce Springsteen night on BBC4. There was a fabulous documentary on the making of Darkness on The Edge of Town which just had me spellbound.

It also took me right back to a very special point in time in my life. Darkness was the first Springsteen album I bought and I bought it because I had heard two tracks - Prove It All Night and Candy’s Room - and fell in love with them on first hearing. The fact that it was Mick Jones from The Clash playing them for me in his hotel bedroom at the Holiday Inn in Liverpool back in 1978 may have influenced me. I know it influenced Pete Wylie who was there at the same time!

For the record, there were no shenanigans taking place! I was there to see The Clash play at Eric’s and having already interviewed them for my fanzine The Ligger, had been invited to the hotel to chill out before the gig.

As I was typing those words it hit me how mad that sounds! It really was innocent. I was 17, a virgin, and drank a diet coke and nobody made any untoward suggestions - bastards!

Anyway, Mick had got a copy of Darkness and played us those two songs, and that was it for me. When I got back to Preston I hit Brady’s record store and bought myself a copy. I played it to death, over and over and loved every single track. From there of course, I went back and bought Born To Run, The Wild The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle, and Greetings From Asbury Park NJ. I found Born To Run very easy to love and Jungleland was just a mini movie in my head as I listened to it.

What helped as well I guess was that Mr Springsteen was never too shabby on the eye. He still isn’t! So I listened to the albums, swooned over his photograph and waited for the day he might come to the UK and play beyond London.

Over time, I moved to London, then to Birmingham and onto Canada for a brief post-Dexys spell. It was there that I got my chance to see him. In the Toronto Star I spotted and advert for a trip to Buffalo, just over the border in the US, to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on The River tour. This was 1980 and that double album was driving my aunt mad as I played it at every opportunity. I dashed to the tour company’s office and handed over about $100 for the bus and the gig ticket.

It was a long old schlepp but my god it was worth it. It was one of those big old enormodomes that are common even here now, but at the time it seemed as big as my old hometown of Preston. I think the local ice-hockey team played there most of the time. We were in our seats at least an hour before showtime and I was entranced by this noise that reverberated around the entire stadium. It sounded like boo-ing but of course, it was 10 or 15 thousand people all chanting Brooooooce! Amazing.

I knew very little about what to expect. I had heard that they did long shows, but after years of punk gigs anything over 45 minutes was long! I was wondering who the support act would be, and as the lights dimmed got the biggest shock as I realised we were straight into the main course, no support for Bruce!

Four and a half hours later he left the stage for the final time, after a series of encores. I was spent. It was deep winter outside but I was soaked in sweat from dancing and singing along the entire time. It was magical

I saw Bruce Springsteen many more times after that, in Toronto, at Manchester Apollo (!), Birmingham (where I even got to meet him and get a much prized autograph) and several Wembley gigs, and they were all awesome experiences, but none of them really came close to that very special first time.

Thank you BBC4 for rekindling those memories!