We bow down as Bruce almighty rains supreme

THE BUSINESS

RTÉ1, Saturdays, 10am LUNCHTIME LIVE

Newstalk, weekdays, noon NEWS AT ONE

RTÉ1, weekdays, 1pm

It was a great shout by RTÉ1’s The Business to have the rock and roll journalist Pat Carty doing a piece on Bruce Springsteen. It was important they didn’t just get some fellow from Ibec to declare he’s been fanatical about Bruce since he discovered him six weeks ago, and is now compiling his Top 10 Springsteen contributions to the economy of Ireland Inc.

In fact, everyone in Ireland now feels entitled to have an opinion on Bruce, so it’s increasingly rare to hear someone like Carty who has some moral authority in this area. In his finely-wrought tribute, Carty started with memories of a Bruce gig long ago when it rained unmercifully before kick-off, causing Bruce to start with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Who’ll Stop the Rain.

Miraculously, the rain stopped. Which was both a testament to Bruce as a godhead, and a reminder that a goodly proportion of the multitudes who attend his gigs these days may well think that Creedence Clearwater Revival is the name of a soft drinks manufacturer.

So The Business was certainly stretching itself here, though it framed the item as “leadership lessons from Bruce Springsteen”. Moving swiftly forward, Carty finished on an emotional high, remembering old friends of his own and crying tears of gratitude in Munich as Bruce did Bobby

Jean.

We’ve all been there.

So many of us were there last week it was perhaps inevitable that stories of Springsteen seeped into other radio shows.

There was a spillover on to Newstalk’s Lunchtime Live ,in which Andrea Gilligan listened to some of the people who had been trapped in queues outside Croke Park, when The Boss had already started his set. Thankfully, the gigs last for so long, it’s not such a grievous loss – but it still sounded extremely annoying for anyone who found themselves a victim of this “shambolic organisation” as one caller put it.

Then again, it may all be part of a pilot project to restrict attendance at Bruce concerts to those who really deserve it. On Lunchtime Live in 20 years, when Bruce is still doing an Irish tour, perhaps they’ll be complaining they were stopped at the gate and asked to name two tracks off the first side of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Hence the long queue.

It would indeed be morally right to impose these simple conditions of entry on various fair-weather fans and “socialites” and others who have no souls – but as The Business might tell you, business is business.

Bruce even wended his way into an item about Age Friendly Ireland on Today with Claire

Byrne. The great racing man Ted Walsh and Anna May McHugh, of ploughing fame, have been enlisted to bring their brio to the task of “combatting ageism”. So it naturally followed that somebody had to mention that the septuagenarian Bruce Springsteen is still playing three hours a night – and that’s without the three hours of encores.

Pat Kenny, who’s even older than Bruce, was combatting ageism by interviewing Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny, who is raising awareness of some of the ailments that afflict the older musician – things like repetitive strain injuries, or even our old friend, hearing loss.

Pat made the observation that one of Rosanne’s records has been re-released on vinyl, though it wasn’t on vinyl in the first place – which led them into talk about vinyl being “viscerally attractive”. It was just the sort of thing you could hear at a meeting of Age Friendly Ireland, especially when Pat mentioned a time long gone when Rosanne was a “party girl”.

Glory days. They’ll pass you by, glory days.

Meanwhile it seems there are people as young as Bruce was in the glory days, and some of them have shows on 2FM – or rather, they had. RTÉ’s arts and media correspondent Evelyn O’Rourke was on the News at One explaining to presenter Gavin Jennings that on May 31, 2FM will be losing the services of content creators Doireann Garrihy and The 2 Johnnies. And Jennifer Zamparelli has been “on leave” from her morning show for a couple of weeks.

Jennings evinced the kind of curiosity he might have while listening to a National Geographic reporter describing the movements of some mysterious tribe – The Young People.

No one is The Boss of them.