NEVERMIND THE 12-INCH, HERE'S THE ENTIRE SHOW
Darkness Tour 1978 VOL. 2 begins with July 1, Berkeley, California
Earlier this year, Nugs.net offered a slick box for sale, to house all of Bruce Springsteen's Live Archive CD sets released so far from the Darkness tour. Custom-sized to fit eight concert releases — all five radio broadcasts, plus The Summit in Houston and second shows at both the Capitol Theatre and Winterland — the box traps and keeps eight digipaks, totaling 24 CDs. It's a hefty chunk of amazing audio from 1978.

Good thing they printed VOL. 1 on the lid, though. Already, Darkness tour documents in the Archive series have outgrown that container thanks to today's new entry, Berkeley, July 1, 1978.

Straight out of the gate, this one generates excitement as a performance that fans have never heard in full from a beloved era. Though a portion of it made the rounds among collectors — a soundboard, no less, but only about half the show — and an audience tape exists from the prior night at the same venue, a complete recording from Berkeley 2 has simply never circulated. Until the appearance of today's 21-track set, we hadn't even been sure of the entire setlist.

Much attention has been paid to the five 1978 broadcasts and rightly so: they are, without exception, phenomenal and even legendary performances. These recordings, each now an official Live Archive release, converted many a fan and cemented Springsteen and the E Street Band's live reputation (as well as the Darkness tour's rep as a live peak). Few would begrudge the space they've occupied in the Archive series, even if we'd already heard fine recordings countless times. A professional, top-notch release is an honor each deserves.

But an unheard Darkness show scratches a different kind of itch.

Randy Tuten's poster for the summer '78 Bay Arena shows, one in San Jose and two in Berkeley

When Springsteen and the E Street Band hit California in late June of 1978, the seven-month Darkness tour was only a month old. Word of Springsteen's live act was still spreading, particularly outside of the Northeast hotbed — none of the aforementioned broadcasts had occurred yet — and the band was playing small theatres, with crowd size ranging from 2,000 to 5,000. Following a swing through the Pacific Northwest, including a hop over the border to Vancouver, B.C., the tour came down the coast to hit San Jose before two nights at the Berkeley Community Theatre.

This early in the tour (Bruce hadn't even graffiti'd his billboard on the Sunset Strip yet, that was a few days away), the setlist was still in its Model A stages. In fact, only one song differentiates this July 1 setlist from June 30 in Berkeley — though it's a notable one, with "Because the Night" replacing "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" in the encore.

Despite that switch, this is really the first Archive release to present the early-'78 setlist, hitting the ground running with "Badlands" (no "Good Rockin' Tonight," no "Rave On," "Oh Boy!" or "Summertime Blues") with "Night" and "For You" among the opening numbers. A week later, as the first broadcast went out from The Roxy in Los Angeles, the set would loosen up and further evolve, but here we welcome the early iteration of the show, including… let's get right to it… "The Promise."

The Darkness on the Edge of Town outtake (and quasi-sequel to "Thunder Road") didn't make the album, but it was a fan favorite thanks to performances in '76 and '77 and remains a crucial cut in the Springsteen catalog. Following a single full-band performance in May, on the tour's opening night in Buffalo (5/23/78), "The Promise" became a consistently moving showcase for Springsteen alone at the piano. Bruce played it more often than not in the first couple months of the Darkness tour, including both nights in Berkeley. In crystal clear sound, this solo arrangement of "The Promise" is without question the crown jewel of today's release.

"I'm gonna do this for my Pop," Bruce says to introduce it, with both of his parents and his little sister "Pammy" having come up from San Mateo to see the show. The piano practically sparkles, and even at its softest, every nuance of Springsteen's yearning vocal is right in your ear.

Well now my daddy taught me how to walk quiet
And how to make my peace with the past
And I learned real good to tighten up inside
And I don't say nothin' unless I'm asked

Within a month, the song would drop out of the set completely, not to return for 21 years. These lyrics about his father don't appear in most incarnations of "The Promise": not in its 1999 release on 18 Tracks, nor in the title track of the 2010 album; not in '76/'77 performances, nor those in recent years. They're exclusive to 1978. And as Bruce sings of being "far away from home" — here where Douglas Springsteen and rest of his family resettled less than a decade before — and learning "to walk among the remains," you'll feel what a treasure it is not only to have "The Promise" '78 in the Archive series at last, but this specific rendition.

Though this set marks a debut for the concert as a whole, selections from it have been part of the historical record. Just days afterward, KMET-FM broadcast "Prove It All Night" and "Paradise by the C"; not much later, a wider audience heard them on the syndicated radio show King Biscuit Flower Hour and beyond.

Writing for Rolling Stone (the August 24, 1978 cover story, RS272), Dave Marsh described Springsteen staying "up all night mixing tapes recorded at his last concert," which is this very show:

…Jon Landau, Bruce and I disappear into Springsteen's room to play the Berkeley concert mixes. There are two mixes of an eight-minute rendition of "Prove It All Night" that shatters the LP version, and one mix of an unnamed, shorter instrumental, often called "Paradise by the 'C,'" which opens the second half of his concerts. Even on a small cassette player, it's clear that something considerable is going on.

(Marsh also notes: "in a couple of the songs that did not make it onto Darkness, particularly 'The Promise' and 'Independence Day,' he has chronicled his preoccupation with fathers as thoroughly as did John Steinbeck in East of Eden, the film that inspired 'Adam [Raised a Cain].'")

Above and right, sleeve sticker and label mock-up for the live 7/1/78 "Prove It All Night" 12-inch that almost was, which would have clocked in at 7:45 on the A-side.

Brother Dave is right about "Prove It" — in fact, this very recording of the song was seriously considered for an official release as a 12-inch.

Who knows why the idea was nixed; who knows why the Berkeley recording wasn't tapped at all for Live/1975-'85; but today we finally reap the reward of that show being so well captured on multi-tracks nearly 43 years ago.

The tape boxes reveal that Jimmy Iovine was brought in to engineer the live recording, and a new Plangent Process transfer gives us the best playback possible. A track sheet for the tapes shows tracks 23 and 24 designated to the audience itself, left and right, and with that venue ambience balanced just right in the soundscape of Jon Altschiller's mix, this is simply a fantastic listen.

Dig those dynamics in "Spirit in the Night," after "we closed our eyes and said goodbye" — silent enough to hear isolated whoops in the crowd, then a quick crescendo to a wild, wild night as the band kicks back in and Clarence Clemons unleashes torrents of saxophone. "Prove It All Night" sure sounds like it would have lit up the request lines: it may not have the lengthiest or most dramatic of '78 intros, but it's still a tight, potent example of the form. With "Because the Night," spurred by the success of Patti Smith's single, finding its place in the show after just one earlier tour performance, it's got in-progress lyrics for your brain and a minute-and-a-half of hot guitar for your ears, before a novel, abrupt finish.

The shiver-inducing intimacy of the "Promise" vocal, something almost magical, materializes throughout the show: in "Racing in the Street," in "Growin' Up," even in "Fire." But there's just as much magic in the urgency of "Thunder Road," of "Darkness," of "Backstreets" complete with a "Sad Eyes" interlude. Marsh was right, "something considerable is going on" here for sure. And after Bruce lets loose his familiar cry in "Quarter to Three" at the end of the night — "I'm just a prisoner… of rock 'n' roll!" — he then adds, "and you got a life sentence!"

Guilty as charged. Which is why we'll happily fill up another box with these babies as long as they keep putting them out.

- June 18, 2021 - Christopher Phillips reporting

DEATH IS NOT THE END
Big Man: Real Life & Tall Tales co-author Don Reo remembers his wondrous friend Clarence Clemons

Ten years.

The number just doesn't compute. Ten years? A full decade that C has been gone?

Impossible. I still expect to see his name on the screen when my phone rings.

He's got a new dirty joke to tell in that deep, rumbling voice that may or may not have been his true sound.

He was a magic man. A shape shifter. A mystical seer. And a world-class boulevardier.

Ten years.

He never saw our 45th President.

He never experienced a global pandemic.

He didn't see the E Street Band record Letter to You.

He would've been so proud of Jake.

He missed many things he would've loved and many he would've hated.

Time passes.

Life moves on without us.

I'm not one to mark the anniversary of someone's passing. It's usually a dark place to go and can fill the day with pain and sorrow. We who are left behind can only mourn, regret, and get lost in what could have been. As Yeats said, "The world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

But this anniversary is somehow different.

Different because Clarence occupied so much space, the hole he left is big.

Bigger than the sky.

Too big to ignore.

And, to borrow a phrase, Clarence did not believe that death was the end. He truly believed in that beautiful reward.

So this is not a lamentation. The time for tears has passed. Instead this is an elegy to someone wondrous. A song to a giant. A celebration of the spirit of our friend who has gone on ahead of us carrying the light. Showing each of us the path out of the darkening trees and down to the river.

The river.

The beautiful river.

This is my favorite chapter from our book. It came from several relaxed — you could say languid — conversations that found us aggressively conserving energy and discussing what music meant to him.

"Music is God's first name," he'd say. "Laughter is His last name."

The words that follow are all Clarence's, and the story they tell is his story.

Dive in.

The River

To me music is like a river. I have lived my life beside the river. Every day I get up and I look at the river. I watch it and notice when it rises or falls. I see how the wind affects the surface and ruffles it, and how the lack of wind leaves it looking like a mirror. I follow the water as it flows over rocks and around obstacles. I have studied the river my whole life. I know it as well as I know myself.

Most days I swim in the river. Sometimes I float on it, looking up at the trees and the sky. Other times I dive beneath the surface and try to become the river. I feel it all around me and I feel like part of it. I find it difficult to distinguish between the water and myself, and I don't know where one begins and the other one ends. And then I am the river.

At night I sit beside it. I sit in the dark and listen to it and I feel like the Rain King and I listen to it and I close my eyes and I listen to the river. Some nights it's just noise. A nice noise, a peaceful noise, but just noise. But then something will happen. Something will move beneath the surface and the noise becomes something else. It's discordant like John Cage or Harry Partch, but then it sounds like music almost and it's Captain Beefheart and then Frank Zappa, and the noise turns beautiful and annoying all at the same time, and that's good and so unexpected that it makes me laugh out loud in the darkness.

But on other nights the river sings, and it can sing anything. It's a choir. It's the Edwin Hawkins Singers singing "Oh Happy Day," and it's all gospel all the time until it turns into opera and classical piano and violins and Wurlitzers and Hammonds and big church organs and Al Kooper on "Like a Rolling Stone" and Dave "Babyface" Cortez and whoever played organ on Del Shannon's "Runaway," and suddenly there are a million different voices and a million different instruments, and I can hear each and every one of them and they're all good. I can make out Speedo and Ivory Joe Hunter and some group singing about white port and lemon juice and Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson and Son House and Garnett Mims, and then the Darktown strutters dance by in the shadowy light, followed by the Viscounts playing "Harlem Nocturne" and "The Touch," and the Rockin' Rebels' "Wild Weekend," and then Hank Williams and Johnny Rodriguez and Mickey Newbury from a depot in Frisco, and the music just washes over me and makes me feel whole.

I can't be separated from the river. I cannot be away from it. It follows me; it changes its path to be with me and to stay with me and to define me. It is my purpose and it flows through my soul and it always will, and nothing in this world, including death, can stop that.

- June 18, 2021 - photographs by Don Reo

A FAIRYTALE SO TRAGIC
"We gotta do Dustland one day"
Bruce Springsteen's collaboration with The Killers, a revisitation of their "Dustland Fairytale" in a re-recording called "Dustland," is out today. In addition to the video above, you can find the track on multiple digital services here.

A letter from frontman Brandon Flowers shared by The Killers on social media provides liner notes for the single:

February 29, 2020
JFK terminal 2
Destination: Salt Lake City, Utah

I'm a little more anxious than usual about tonight's flight. Universal just sent out an umbrella email to all artists: "Continue promotion AT YOUR OWN RISK." There's a new virus going around, and it's shutting down the promotional run for our latest and greatest — Imploding the Mirage. We're dead proud of the record and can't wait for the world to get a load of it. But what was meant to be a rocket launch, stadium shaking, saliva-inducing tour run was about to come to a screeching halt. There's plenty of time before boarding, so I get a burger at Wendy's and call Tana. She's excited to get her husband home early. And I have to be honest, I'm a little relieved to be getting home early myself.

Around the time I find my gate, I start getting some texts from a number I don't have marked in my phone. "Watching Glastonbury. You guys have become one hellacious live band my brother! Love the gold suit! We gotta do Dustland one day." Signed off with: "Bruce."

Now I've got 3 options here:
1. Some cold-blooded monster is playing a cruel trick on me.
2. It's Bruce Hornsby. But I haven't talked with him since 2015ish.
Or
3. It really is Bruce Springsteen (I forgot to put both Bruce's numbers in that phone).

So I google the area code. It's from Freehold, New Jersey, and I'm still not convinced. So I text Evan (Bruce and Patti's son who has become a buddy of mine) and get verification that the number really is coming from his old man.

And then, Covid Happened. We were sorry that we didn't get to tour it, but genuinely happy that we were able to release Imploding the Mirage as some sort of consolation. This is what we do, and this is what we have to offer. A joyful record about unity and perseverance. Our interpretation of that promised light that lives just beyond the boundary of sorrow.

I have always sought to find and reflect that elusive light in my songs. It's a trait I inherited from my mother Jean. She died from a brain tumor back in 2010 at the age of 64… Sixty Four! I'm turning 40 next week and I'm starting to realize just how young that is. Too young. She was married to my father Terry for 44 of those years. Dustland was written in the middle of her battle with cancer. It was an attempt to better understand my dad, who is sometimes a mystery to me. To grieve for my mother. To acknowledge their sacrifices and maybe even catch a glimpse of just how strong love needs to be to make it in this world. It was my therapy. It was cathartic.

That's where Bruce comes in. Before I really became a fan of his, I was in the business of stadium-size everything. Larger than life EVERYTHING. Certainly larger than the lives of Jeannie and Terry Flowers. But Bruce has written a lot about people like my parents and found a whole lot of beauty in otherwise invisible people's hopes and dreams. Their struggles, and their losses.

I'm grateful to him for opening this door for me. I'm grateful to my parents for their example to me. Now go find something new out about your dad, give your mom a big hug, and for god's sake listen to Bruce Springsteen.

- June 16, 2021

Nick Mead, director of Who Do I Think I Am?, with Clarence Clemons - photograph by Jo Lopez

A HELPING HAND FOR NICK MEAD
Film director Nick Mead met Clarence Clemons in 1998, when he cast the Big Man in his feature film Swing. But many E Street fans will be more familiar with the Mead/Clemons collaboration that came later, the documentary Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?

The pair traveled to China together and worked together on a film about the journey. Clarence got to be there for the premiere of an initial cut at the 2011 Garden State Film Festival, and in a note of gratitude to his filmmaking partner he called the whole experience "one of the greatest things that I have ever done."

After the Big Man's death nearly ten years ago, Mead worked long and hard with Virgil Films' Joe Amodei to complete the film for an official release, reworking it as a loving, posthumous tribute to its subject.

We found out today that Nick has been hospitalized following a motorcycle accident and is now facing multiple surgeries. A GoFundMe campaign has been organized on his behalf by his friend Brian Samelson, who writes: "Nick is the type of guy that is always there for others — but now others need to be there for him. Nick could use a hand as this accident has left him unable to work with a long road of rehab ahead."

When Nick asked if I'd appear in Who Do I Think I Am? to share some thoughts and memories of The Biggest Man I'd Ever Seen, I imagined it would entail an hour or so in front of the camera and nothing more. I was right about the camera time… but I didn't anticipate the rest of the weekend in Washington DC, as Nick and I clicked: we went barhopping, trading Clarence stories and raising more than one glass to him; had a late-night Japanese feast with Nick's son in Georgetown; even took a trip to the Library of Congress together (along with our buddy Shawn Poole) to listen to some rare Springsteen material on file. We became fast friends — not something that I've found happens often, later in life, but then you don't often meet someone who directed videos for Motorhead. Over the years, in addition to sharing some cool footage with us of Clarence and others, Nick contributed a four-page story with beautiful photographs to our Big Man tribute issue.

I'll stop before this reads like an obituary, because it's not. I've got every hope that Nick is gonna pull through. But I'm feeling for him, my thoughts are also with Cynthia and the rest of his family, and I hope that, if you were moved by his film about Clarence and you're able to swing it, you'll consider donating to the GoFundMe campaign.

As of today, until he's back behind a camera, all proceeds from our sales of Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am? will also be donated to the campaign, a "Helping Hand for Nick Mead."
- June 15, 2021 - Christopher Phillips reporting

The next episode of the @BruceArchives online series ‘Soundstage’ will feature @StevieVanZandt talking about his forthcoming concert album/video, ’Summer of Sorcery Live at the Beacon Theatre.’ Tune in next Thursday 6/24 at 10am ET. https://t.co/mMxnMrLYtW pic.twitter.com/n26Hf9pohL

— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) June 15, 2021

"DUSTLAND": A FREEFORM RADIO FAIRYTALE
DJ Rich Russo on the impending release of Bruce Springsteen's collaboration with The Killers on "Dustland" — coming Wednesday, June 16 — and the magic of radio.

In November of 2008, my radio show Anything Anything was in its infancy on New York's now-defunct WRXP. It was my third-ever show on the radio. A few days prior I had picked up The Killers' third album, Day & Age, and I was blown away by track 5, "A Dustland Fairytale."

Channeling what freeform radio legend Vin Scelsa would often do with a song he loved, I played "A Dustland Fairytale" a few times back-to-back. I went into a long, somewhat rambling diatribe about The Killers and the song, how special it was, and the importance of a landmark statement song and the third album. I continued playing the song and talking about it.

Unbeknownst to me, the label guy and someone from the Killers' team were together, driving back from somewhere on a Sunday night, and they were tuned in. They heard me play the song a few times and heard my thoughts about it, and then they told the band.

After a few months went by, they were discussing the third Day & Age single and video, and they agreed on "A Dustland Fairytale" — because of that Sunday night freeform guy on the radio in New York.

The song was only released as a single in the U.S., while the rest of the world was given "The World We Live In" as the third single from the album. Soon after, The Killers performed the "A Dustland Fairytale" on The Late Show with David Letterman with a full orchestra, and it made the top 40 on the Billboard Alternative chart.

At this point I was still unaware my radio show had anything to do with all of this. I was just happy that a song I loved from the moment I heard it — and one I was the first DJ to play — was getting wider exposure.

But soon the legendary Leslie Fram, who was the Program Director at WRXP, called me and filled me in, telling me that Brandon Flowers was going to call into my show on an upcoming Sunday night.

I was skeptical. We had a fun staff at WRXP, and I was thinking, I'm being punked — because I was the new guy on the radio, and we were always playing jokes on each other. If Brandon Flowers is going to call the radio station, he's going to call Matt Pinfield, who he's close to (Matt was the inspiration for The Killers' song, "All These Things That I've Done"). There's no way Brandon is calling my show. It has to be a joke, some sort of rookie DJ hazing ritual.

Now it's a Sunday night in August of 2009. "A Dustland Fairytale" has been out as a single over the summer, and it's been doing well. The Killers are playing in the area soon. I'm on the air doing my show, and an email comes in with "Brandon" in the address, with an mp3 attached, saying to play it after we talk. Greg, my board op, has downloaded the mp3; he's not saying what it is, and I'm sure he's in on this joke as well.

While I'm playing Bruce and E Street's version of "Thunder Road" from No Nukes, the hotline lights up. Greg tells me there's a call — it's Brandon Flowers. I tell him to patch it through after the song ends, while I roll my eyes, anticipating being the butt of this now-elaborate joke…

Well, the song ends, and I take the call… and it really is Brandon Flowers! We talk about Bruce bringing him on stage to do "Thunder Road" at Pinkpop, and of course about "A Dustland Fairytale." And the mp3 he sent over is an exclusive live version of "A Dustland Fairytale," from the soundboard, that he has given me to on my radio show.

Twelve years later, it's wild that this has come full circle: my favorite artist (who is also now a fellow freeform DJ!) Bruce Springsteen is doing a version of my favorite Killers song with them — a song that quite possibly might never have had mass U.S. exposure, if it wasn't for a freeform DJ giving it a few spins back-to-back on a Sunday night way back then.

Here's a clip of that call with Brandon:

- June 14, 2021 - Rich Russo continues to host Anything Anything weekly, now on multiple affiliate stations up and down the East Coast (and streaming online via TuneIn.com), and DJs on Little Steven's Underground Garage, SiriusXM channel 21 - Find archived episodes of Anything Anything on Mixcloud

The mind is poison
Castles in the sky sit stranded, vandalized
With drawbridges closing…@Springsteen joins @thekillers down in "Dustland," out where the dreams all hide, coming next Wednesday, June 16 https://t.co/mvb3Ekwrl7

— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) June 11, 2021

"THERE ARE THINGS WE'RE WORKING ON…"
Broadway talk opens the door to other project updates as Bruce calls in to SiriusXM's E Street Radio
His latest DJ set isn't Springsteen's only new appearance on E Street Radio this week. This morning, as fans far and wide prepared to virtually queue for this summer's Springsteen on Broadway, the man himself called in to chat live on-air.

"It's going to be quite a thing," Bruce told host Jim Rotolo of the upcoming St. James Theatre run — referring as much to the mere fact of it, after the long lockdown, as the performances themselves. Life has "only felt remotely normal recently," he said as the world works to move past the pandemic, "so I'm just looking forward to standing in front of an audience, and I'm looking forward to the audience just being there… seeing them there. I'm glad to be working."

The call only lasted about as long as "Drive All Night," but with a lot of tantalizing information in those eight minutes, touching not only on Broadway but on a variety of upcoming projects.

Some tea leaves to be read, and other highlights, straight from the Boss's mouth:

2022 E Street Band tour — but while you wait…
[Springsteen on Broadway] will give me something to do this summer, so I won't be just lazing around at the beach [laughs]. Jon [Landau] originally mentioned [a return engagement] to me, and I said, "Well, I don't know." Because I knew we were going to tour with the band next year. So I said, well, maybe I'll just take the time off.

But then Jordan Roth, our producer from Broadway, called — literally the next day, very strange — and asked if we'd be willing to go back for a limited amount of shows. Just for the opening of Broadway. So I started to think about it.

Then I had a friend who got so enthusiastic about it to me that he talked me into it. Sitting on my couch one night, I said to him, "Aaah, I don't know if…" — "Are you kidding me?"

So the next day I said, "Okay, we'll do some shows." And so it really came around kind of casually. It'll be nice to be back there again and hope we can lend a hand [as New York theater comes back].

Broadway revival
I have the script; I haven't looked at it; I haven't done any rehearsing [laughs]. But the truth is, I didn't rehearse much the first time! My recollection is we played a few dress rehearsals, I played it once down here at Monmouth College, but that was all I did. It's not something you can stand there and sort of talk to yourself in the afternoon [laughs]... I'm not going to tell myself those same stories. Part of it is the element of spontaneity, even though the script is relatively fixed.

But I've got it set up for Monday, actually: I'm going to start freshening up the script and going through it again to see if I'm going to make any changes — any small changes — or not. It's pretty much going to be the show that it was, because that's what people expect and that's what I have.…

It lasted for 236 shows pretty much the way it was. It got a little longer, which means I probably added things; I would like to tighten it up a little bit, if anything. I would like to get it a little closer to the way it was when I initially debuted it on Broadway than it was towards the end.… But it'll be ready [laughs].

Life… right now
[From My Home to Yours] has been fun… keeps me digging into music, which I've found to be very satisfying. It keeps me finding new things — new groups, and old things that I didn't know existed or hadn't heard — so the radio show continues to be enjoyable. And then Patti and I had our 30th anniversary last week, so that was a big thing!

Vault projects
There are things we're working on. We have something that's going to come out in the fall; I don't know if it's been announced yet [It has not. —Ed.]… I've got projects I've been working on, basically, that are slated for release either next year or in the fall. Not new records, but things that fans I think are really going to be interested in.… I think these are things that the fans will have fun with, coming up. We've worked on a lot of things from the vault… well, I'll let it be a surprise.

Greetings from Bloomington
I worked on three songs on John [Mellencamp]'s album, and I spent some time in Indiana with him. I love John a lot. He's a great songwriter, and actually we've become very close. I've had a lot of fun with him. So I sang a little bit on his… terrific record that I think is coming out in the fall.

Killers in the sun
I did a nice thing with Brandon Flowers, with The Killers… they're a terrific band, and we did something together that I think is going to come out soon. Like, in a week or so! So I've been staying busy.

6/11 update: partial audio

- June 10, 2021 - updated June 11

RECAP: FROM MY HOPE TO YOURS VOL. 23, OLD BONES
"Old bones… Hell yes, I got 'em!"
One of the greatest aspects of Bruce Springsteen's artistry is the major role he's played in establishing the template for a long-term career in rock 'n' roll. Burning out versus fading away turns out to be a false choice.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the age of 30 would be considered the natural end of a rock star's power and glory — or at least their relevance. Certainly can't trust 'em after that. But in recent decades, along with the staying power of the genre itself, there have been more than a few major rock figures, Springsteen chief among them, demonstrating that you can stay healthy, stay active, and continue producing great music well into your later years.

Volume 23 of Springsteen's SiriusXM series From My Home to Yours, new this week and going out to "senior citizens from coast to coast and around the world" on E Street Radio, celebrates the triumph of an extended, rewarding life over a tragic, early death. "Old Bones" also explores the complex emotions and issues — orthopedic and otherwise — that inevitably accompany the aging process.

”Old bones… Hell yes, I got ’em!" Springsteen declares at the top. "And they speak to me every day. They snap, pop, or crack inside my knees. My knees have a language all of their own — and I listen to them."

Crackles and pops aside, Springsteen clearly prefers old age to the alternative. "Hell, I'm 71!" he exults, after spinning a song called "Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age." "Anybody who wants to do something about that, you know where to find me!"

Artists tackling the theme in Vol. 23 range from American and British indie acts like Guided by Voices and The Would-Be-Goods to first-generation rockers Jerry Lee Lewis (accompanied by the late, great country music legend George Jones) and Carl Perkins, with old-school crooner Murray Ross in the mix, too.

As he so often has done in this series, Bruce shines a spotlight on the "father of [his] country," Bob Dylan — especially apropos since Dylan recently celebrated his 80th birthday. This time around we get to hear Dylan performing one of his originals, another artist covering a Dylan song, and finally Dylan covering one of Sinatra's classics to close out the show.

Springsteen's contemporaries Elvis Costello, Joe Grushecky, and John Mellencamp get some love as well. Bruce offers some insights on the Costello/McCartney composition "Veronica": "a beautiful song about Alzheimer's… inspired by Elvis’s own grandmother, who experienced severe memory loss." The selection is especially moving given what Bruce has said onstage (and likely will say onstage again) in Springsteen on Broadway about his mother's struggle with the disease. Bruce spins Grushecky's "I Still Look Good (For Sixty)," a song that he's performed live with Grushecky a few times over the years. (Which brings to mind John Eddie's "Forty," but maybe that number's too far in the rearview mirror to make the cut here.)

Before playing "my good friend" John Mellencamp's "Don't Need This Body," Springsteen confirms that he "played on a few of Johnny's tracks on his upcoming record… we had a great time out there in Bloomington."

Despite that aforementioned shift in rock 'n' roll — best not to die before you get old after all — country music is the dominant musical genre in this setlist. Of the episode's 15 tracks, four of them feature some of country's honky-tonk heroes and heroines, new and old: Moe Bandy, Lefty Frizell, Toby Keith, and Kitty Wells (with "her lovely interpretation" of Dylan's "Forever Young."). Add in George Jones — as well as his duet partner Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, each of whom also made significant forays into country music — and you're looking at just under half of the setlist featuring performances by country musicians.

The penultimate track is Springsteen's own "Kingdom of Days," one of the most beautiful songs ever written and recorded about the joys of growing old alongside someone you love. Along with the rest of this stellar episode, it echoes what Bruce wrote so concisely, eloquently, and insightfully in his Born to Run autobiography:

"The rock death cult is well loved and chronicled in literature and music, but in practice, there ain't much in it for the singer and his song, except a good life unlived, lovers and children left behind, and a six-foot-deep hole in the ground. The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit."

Playlist:

1. Guided by Voices - "Old Bones"
2. Toby Keith - "As Good As I Once Was"
3. Murray Ross - "Old Bones"
4. Jerry Lee Lewis featuring George Jones - "Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age"
5. Carl Perkins - "Class of '55"
6. Bob Dylan - "Restless Farewell"
7. Moe Bandy - "Till I'm Too Old to Die Young"
8. John Mellencamp - "Don't Need This Body"
9. Elvis Costello - "Veronica"
10. Lefty Frizzell - "I'm An Old, Old Man (Tryin' to Live While I Can)"
11. Joe Grushecky - "I Still Look Good (For Sixty)"
12. The Would-Be-Goods - "Too Old"
13. Kitty Wells - "Forever Young"
14. Bruce Springsteen - "Kingdom of Days"
15. Bob Dylan - "Young at Heart"

- June 10, 2021 - Shawn Poole and Christopher Phillips reporting

It’s been years since we got to say anything like… tickets to 30 @Springsteen shows on sale tomorrow! (6/10, noon ET). St. James Theatre seat locator, for preppers. (Chart not specific to #SpringsteenBroadway; we don’t know all seats will be sold) #springsteen pic.twitter.com/m0WmPWxs5C

— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) June 9, 2021

See our Tour/Ticket Info page
for full schedule, further details and links

- June 9, 2021

BIDDING ALL DAY IN MY BUDDY'S GARAGE
Little Steven & Friends launch Garage Sales & Tales to benefit TeachRock
Got a chunk of change burning a hole in your pocket? Looking to donate to a great cause and acquire something special for yourself or — Father's Day being just around the corner — someone else? Little Steven and his crew have some offers you might not want to refuse.

Beginning tomorrow, Thursday, June 10, at noon ET, and continuing through noon next Wednesday, June 16, Garage Sales & Tales will offer music, sports, and pop-culture fans the opportunity to bid in an online auction of unique items donated by Stevie Van Zandt and some of his friends, all to benefit TeachRock.

On the auction block will be rare and unique items signed by Van Zandt and other such notable figures as Aerosmith, Troy Aikman, Warren Buffet, Alessia Cara, Cheap Trick, Bob Dylan, Mickey Hart, Reggie Jackson, Daniel Jones, Ang Lee, Metallica, Paul McCartney, Frank Robinson, Martin Scorsese, Pete Souza, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Stefanko, and Masahiro Tanaka.

Of particular interest to Backstreets readers will be the various articles of clothing (including custom-made sports jerseys) donated by Stevie, as well as books and tour merch signed by Bruce.

In addition to the online auction items, virtual raffle tickets will be available to purchase at a cost of only $10 per ticket for a chance to win the "Asbury Park Mystery Box."

Valued at $3,000, the box contains items donated by Little Steven, Danny Clinch, and "maybe others… Only the winner will know! Feel lucky?"

The Garage Sales & Tales website also will feature a series of video shorts presented over the week-long online event. Each short will be hosted by Little Steven with Danny Clinch. Here's the full schedule of shorts:

• Thursday, June 10 - Little Steven and the Story of Garage Rock
• Friday, June 11 - Metallica's James Hetfield: "For the Love of the Garage"
• Saturday, June 12 - Nicole Atkins' Garage in Neptune
• Monday, June 14 - Tom Morello's Electric Sheep
• Tuesday, June 15 - Danny Clinch's Garage Laboratory

Visit teachrock.org/garagesale, where the garage door goes up tomorrow at 12pm ET. All funds raised will support the important ongoing work of TeachRock, the organization founded by Little Steven along with Bono, Jackson Browne, Martin Scorsese, and Bruce Springsteen. TeachRock continues to offer free lesson plans and online resources to teachers of classes K-12, successfully reaching and engaging students by integrating popular music and its history into all subject areas.
- June 9, 2021 - Shawn Poole reporting

"HIGHWAY '81 REVISITED" CONTINUES WITH PART 3
On this day in 1981, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's monumental European tour for The River came to a close.

The last concert of the run was June 8, 1981 in Birmingham (don't mind the date on the pass at right, printed before the schedule change) after nearly three months overseas and a month of shows in the U.K. alone

Mike Saunders has been taking a deep dive into that U.K. leg for us, and today to mark its end we have Part 3 of "Highway '81 Revisited: Bruce Springsteen's Longest U.K. Tour."

In Part 1 Mike covered the six-year interval between the '75 Hammersmith shows and the band's '81 return, the rumors and near misses as U.K. fans remained on standby. In Part 2 he explored the reschedulings that kept them waiting even longer. In today's new installment, 'steen is seen, as the papers would have it: the wait is over and the concerts begin.

Read HIGHWAY '81 REVISITED Part 3:
From Newcastle to Brighton

- June 8, 2021 - photograph (Brighton, 5/27/81) by Tony FitzPatrick

ENCORE! ENCORE!
Springsteen on Broadway revival, June 26 - September 4
As 2021 dawned, Springsteen said he had some surprises up his sleeve for the new year —  today's news of a Broadway return engagement certainly qualifies:

Says Springsteen: "I loved doing Springsteen on Broadway and I’m thrilled to have been asked to reprise the show as part of the reopening of Broadway."

The much-lauded, Tony Award-winning Springsteen on Broadway originally ran for more than a year at the Walter Kerr Theatre, from October 3, 2017 to December 15, 2018. The Thom Zimny film premiered on Netflix as the curtain came down for what we thought was the final time.

Since there was no tour for Western Stars (or, of course, for Letter to You, which released mid-pandemic) Broadway remains Springsteen's most recent performance series.

While we all await "the biggest party you've ever seen," as Bruce has looked ahead hopefully to a potential 2022 band tour, we imagine reviving Broadway will allow him to stretch his performance muscles again as the world continues the process of reopening this summer.

Proceeds from Opening Night, June 26, will be donated to a group of local New York and New Jersey charities including the Boys and Girls Club of Monmouth County, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, Community FoodBank of New Jersey, Food Bank for New York City, Fulfill (Monmouth & Ocean Counties Foodbank), Long Island Cares, NJ Pandemic Relief Fund and The Actor’s Fund.

The St. James Theatre, like the Walter Kerr, is part of the Jujamcyn Theatres company; in terms of seating capacity, it's nearly twice the size, holding 1,710 as opposed to the Walter Kerr's 975.

Audience members will be required to provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination in order to enter the theater.

Ticket sales begin on June 10 at noon Eastern, via SeatGeek.com (no Ticketmaster Verification this time). For show dates and ticket links, visit brucespringsteen.lnk.to/broadway with further details at jujamcyn.com/SpringsteenFAQ.
- June 7, 2021

As @NJArtsDaily reports, "New fan-made documentary explores @Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' triumph" https://t.co/vJ8GcZswOq Heck of a way to celebrate the album's anniversary (released 6/4/84), and a perfect weekend watch… if you've got 7 hours! #springsteen #BITUSA37

— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) June 4, 2021

SEA.HEAR.NOW FEST READY TO RUMBLE
Patti Scialfa booked for September 18 in Asbury Park
Danny Clinch's Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park is back on for 2021, after having to cancel last year's event. Daily line-ups have now been announced for the two-day festival on September 18-19th, and it confirms good news for Patti Scialfa, as well as fans excited to see a rare center-stage performance from the First Lady of E Street.

The festival is bringing back many of the artists who were on last year's bill, and that will include Ms. Scialfa on day one, Saturday 9/18, sharing the top of the bill with Patti Smith and her band, Avett Brothers, Lord Huron, and headliners Pearl Jam.

Clinch tells Variety, "To have Pearl Jam playing on the beach in Asbury Park is just incredible. This has been a long time coming for us.... we're so grateful to them and all the other artists on the lineup to have stuck with it. Very few people returned their tickets, and all the Pearl Jam fans are super excited that this will be their first U.S. show in more than three years.”

Late last summer, Patti was lamenting the 2020 cancelation in an interview with Rolling Stone, after telling writer Andy Greene that she was itching to play shows of her own:

I was all ready. Danny Clinch holds this festival in the summer, Sea. Hear. Now. It's in Asbury Park. He asked me to play, and it was going to be big, something like 10 or 20,000 people on the beach. I was going to come out and play a 45-minute set. I went, "What a great way to get going!" It was booked, and I was on the list. Then it was just done.

Like most of our plans for 2020. But after playing it as it lays for a year, live music is coming back, to Asbury Park and around the world. Visit seahearnowfestival.com for further details, the full line-up for both days and ticket options still remaining.
- June 4, 2021

This Just In: The Live Archive series will not land on First Friday this month as our next release is still in the oven. We promise to serve it up to you as soon as possible.

— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) June 2, 2021

PUTTING A FOOT TO THE FLOOR FOR DARKNESS
Let's look back, actually — at 1978's "most antcipated album"
On this day in 1978, Columbia Records released Bruce Springsteen's fourth album — his "samurai record, all stripped down for fighting" — Darkness on the Edge of Town. Above, we present the label's advance marketing plan (known as their Buyways) for "the most anticipated album of 1978."

"Don't Look Back," the Darkness outtake that eventually surfaced 20 years later on Tracks, came very close to making the final album sequence, only to be stripped at the eleventh hour; above, you can see proof positive. Coincidentally, "Don't Look Back" was the final song Springsteen debuted in 1977, joining compositions like "Rendezvous," "The Promise," and the track that did make the cut, "Something in the Night."

The exact reason for "Don't Look Back" being left off isn't known. But Dick Wingate, who was Springsteen's product manager at Columbia from 1976 to 1978, noted that one late-in-the-game change — a decision to include a guitar solo in "The Promised Land" — could be one clue. "That required remastering, and once that happened, 'Don't Look Back' was no longer in the sequence." It could have been a technical decision to preserve sonic quality, or a thematic one.

Another curiosity is the sequencing, which probably wasn't final by the time Wingate met with Springsteen in Los Angeles to discuss how Columbia would — and wouldn't — market the new record. Springsteen was adamant about its elements being plain and avoiding anything that might be perceived as hype, which had dogged him in the Born to Run era. Even the television spots that aired in a half-dozen markets during Saturday Night Live were brief (ten seconds) and to the point. "Stripped down," you might say. And Springsteen famously approved everything.

You'll also that, as part of the planned Darkness promotion, "A billboard will be up on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles." That's the very billboard, of course, that Springsteen and an E Street cohort would tag with spray paint come July. Bruce told Dave Marsh shortly thereafter, "I wanted to get to my face, and paint on a mustache, but it was too damn high."

Our thanks to Dick Wingate for the page of history above — Dick authored those words, including "Look for immediate radio and consumer acceptance to cause a sales explosion!" The album went platinum by the end of the month, and it was certified triple-platinum by the end of the century. Its explosive acceptance continues 43 years later. Keep on can't-stopping, Darkness.
- June 2, 2021 - Christopher Phillips and Jonathan Pont reporting

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