Crying in the dark with Springsteen
Damn you, Bruce Springsteen.
We’re sitting here in the darkness, sharing a few laughs and memories, and you go and start cryin’ on me.
My eyes are already drizzling as you share how your mom loved to dance since the 1940s, reminding me of when I saw you “Twist and Shout” together on stage after the clock ticked past the midnight hour into your 63rd birthday in Jersey in 2012. It’s even harder to remain poised when you share playing Glenn Miller recordings for her to listen to now that she’s 95, a decade into her battle with Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t help that Miller is my own father’s favorite.
Then you express the wish to dance with her “one more time.” And your palms rise to dam the flow of your own tears.
I start to do the same thing — then remember my own mitts are covered in a poison ivy rash the size of a Jersey swamp. At least it’s comforting to well up in the darkness. Your ability to just keep performing without pause is yet another “magic trick” your show reveals in the Broadway light.
Your presence here is the first thing to draw me back to Manhattan since we all learned the sinister definition of “COVID.” Thanks for a reminder that we, “the beloved audience, gets to ride shotgun.”
I climbed aboard five decades ago. Back on Oct. 2, 2007, longtime Stamford Advocate/Greenwich Time colleague Tom Mellana and I were walking down a lonely Hartford side street when we bumped into Chris Keating, a former Greenwich co-worker who has covered the state capital for decades for the Hartford Courant.
“This is my first time seeing Springsteen,” Chris said. “How about you guys?”
“Um, this is my forty-first show,” I replied. “About the same for me,” Tom added.
Ever the seasoned journalist, Chris quickly fired back the natural follow-up question: “Wait, are you guys the band?”
I have hit the road to Philly, Boston and Cleveland, but this isn’t like the Pizza Wars when it comes to Jersey vs. Connecticut. My Springsteen scorecard reads “Jersey 31-Connecticut 5.” New York gets a little fuzzier (13), depending on whether you’re willing to count Queens and/or Long Island.
I have these numbers because I have reliably tucked my tickets into a frame and taken notes.
The Connecticut shows, though few, have been memorable. Back in Hartford with Tom that night, a woman offered $100 to swap seats to make her husband more comfortable on an aisle. I probably should have asked Tom before I told her we’d gladly oblige at no cost. But I did insist on keeping that original ticket.
Then it turned out the ushers had scrambled the seating and we were forced to move — twice.
Another night in Hartford, Nov. 15, 1992, my seats were in the last row. Feeling no rush, a friend and I took our time at Taco Bell. After we climbed to our perch, we noticed there was no one to our right or left. I wish the guy in front of me had never shared the reason.
“A few minutes ago, crew members took people from your section to put in the front row,” he revealed, pointing to perhaps the most excited concert-goers I’ve ever seen.
Then, Bruce, there was the time Connecticut served as a sequel to New Jersey. During your May 19, 2005 solo performance at the Meadowlands, the sound system blew out in the section behind us. You mistook audience members’ yelps for boos (turns out they do sound different than “Bruuuuce”) and bluntly invited them to leave.
Two months later in Bridgeport, you accurately recognized there might be overlap in attendees and apologized for your earlier behavior in your home state.
Sin in Jersey, show penance in Connecticut. That seems about right.
Tickets, alas, are as ephemeral as memories. Like everything else, COVID changed that tradition too. Not only were we mandated to show proof of vaccination and ID at the St. James Theatre Tuesday, but there was no paper ticket. Only QV codes would suffice from phones that had to be extinguished during the performance.
I won’t be framing my phone.
But I won’t really need a reminder to bookmark this night. First time back on a train since March 2020. First time seeing Tom since his Zoom farewell from our papers in January. A New York moment when the waitress delivers our dinner check with the words, “this never happened before. Your amount is the same as theirs but I closed your check for them by mistake. Can you just use theirs?”
The other check had us downing two shots. Yup, Bruce, that’s exactly what you got busted for in November.
We bumped into another former colleague, Meghan Muldowney, on the way to our seats.
“Of course you’re here,” she said.
And yes, it was our first reunion with you since the last Broadway show Tom and I caught Nov. 16, 2017.
You’ve picked up new magic tricks. You forgot your guitar (did you really?) upon entering the stage. As acolytes fiercely engage online in the revived Great Verb Debate on whether Mary’s dress “waves” or “sways” in “Thunder Road,” you slyly murmured the latter (you are wrong, Bruce Springsteen. It waves like the flag. And people sway, not fabric).
For all the script tweaks, you didn’t talk about this era of social isolation as much as I anticipated. For the writer in me, it was a less disciplined piece of art.
So it took a bit for it to sink in that this is the right show for this time. The reflections on the people you’ve lost resonate even more as an affirmation of life.
You seemed even giddier to see those of us riding shotgun shoulder to shoulder than we were to see you. It didn’t feel so much like a performance as much as friends — survivors — hanging out and honoring the departed.
Exiting the solemn hues of the theater into the kaleidoscope shimmers of Times Square was an Oz-worthy postscript.
On this night, you never said the phrase you reliably bellow in arenas and stadiums. But we heard those unspoken words as well.
“Is anybody alive out there?
We’re still here, Boss, ready for the next part of the ride.