PROVE IT ALL NIGHT
On-stage, for at least five decades, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN has known few peers. And looking up at him since 1974 has been photographer JANET MACOSKA, tracing his transformation from grease monkey to megastar. “He’s the preacher,” she tells DANNY ECCLESTON, “a
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLEVELAND, Ohio: a match made in smoke-belching heaven. “It’s a factor y town,” notes photographer Janet Macoska, Ohio born and bred. “It has that mentality. The people are uninhibited. Rock’n’roll just fit in.” Weaned on radio pioneers from R&B evangelist Alan Freed onwards, it was the town that ate and drank rock. “Radio would play bands that weren’t playing any place else in America,” says Macoska. “That’s where I heard of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. David Bowie’s first US concert was in Cleveland. And Bruce Springsteen, when he finally got out of New Jersey, was totally adopted by Cleveland. He was one of us.”
Macoska has tracked the evolution of that affair since February 1974, when she was dispatched to shoot a Wishbone Ash gig at Cleveland’s Allen Theatre but used most of her film on the opening act.
“I went because I liked this new-fangled duelling guitar thing happening with Wishbone Ash,” she says. “But Bruce comes on, he’s captivating from the very beginning. He’s got energy and charisma and I have no idea of who he really is.”
Her next Springsteen assignment brought her back to the Allen Theatre in April ’76, but the difference in the now-headlining act, with Born To Run and thousands of road miles behind him, could not have been more marked.
“Even in the pictures you can see how he’s fitting into his own persona and his own body and his own voice,” says Macoska. “You remember how people would call him the next Dylan because of the way he wrote his songs? He was never the next Dylan. He had way too much personality and force. He’s the preacher. There’s always that revival energy.”
Macoska’s Springsteen pictures, spanning five decades and many previously unpublished, are compiled in a new book, Live In The Heartland, a paean to the relentless energy but also the dynamics and poetry of Springsteen live. In fact,
LOCAL HERO Bruce Springsteen, Allen Theatre, Cleveland, April 7, 1976
Janet Macoska was delighted to stumble across this shot – never printed up – among her contact sheets. “It’s just not a shot I’d have sent to the paper, who are going to print one shot if you’re lucky. As soon as I saw it I thought, Oh this is so cool. It’s that moment where he steps away from the mike and the lights pretty much cut off on him. It’s a moment of respite as he gets ready for the next song.”
REASON TO BELIEVE Cleveland Municipal Stadium, August 7, 1985
Macoska: “I’ve turned the camera on his famous butt, and I’m also shooting what he sees. The crowd is huge, and that’s not even the biggest crowd he’s ever played to. He’s so used to pushing enough energy to fill the hearts and minds of everybody who’s in front of him – but now it’s gargantuan. It becomes filling up stadiums, which he does and it’s Super Bruce.”