What’s it like to wait for an event for nearly 40 years?
In a time when some countdown the days to the release of the next iphone, which is generally every couple of years anyway, it’s a generation, but this week, for me and a legion of others, that waiting ends. Bruce Springsteen is here at last.
A lot has happened in the last 40 years, a couple of different Prime Ministers, wars, the recession we had to have, marriages, kids, and a young man from Freehold New Jersey took over the world, and in 1975 I heard a song on my old beat up tranny that has stuck with me ever since, a lot have drifted through my life but Born To Run is THE song.
Back in 75 I would tell anybody who would listen that one day the bloke who was jokingly known by my family and plenty of others as Stringbean and ultimately The Boss, would rule the planet. Oh, how they laughed and laughed again!
There were cries of derision at announcer’s school one night when one of 3 records we got to play was Born To Run. “What the hell, who is THIS?” Blah. When I told the infidels who it was and that one fine day they would kneel at the Bruce alter blank looks came back at me from all around the studio. Philistines !!!!!!
This week will be special for the long time die hards who have stuck around through the best of times; The Wild The Innocent, Born To Run, Darkness, The River, The Rising, Wrecking Ball, and for me personally the leaner times, Human Touch, Lucky Town, Tunnel of Love. I wasn’t big on Nebraska either.
It seems the world fell in love with New Jersey’s favourite son in 1984 with the release of the juggernaut that was Born In The USA, the title and sentiment of which is still misunderstood in some quarters to this day. Read the lyrics people ! That means you Mr Reagan.
Who’s this new bloke Spring…something or other, that couldn’t possibly be his real name, surely? Again we die hards sprung to the defense of the church of Bruce. Now they were listening !
We’ve always been here for you man!
And now, this week our hero is finally here. I travelled by Greyhound bus (what a cliché) to Sydney in 85 and Melbourne last year to see him in concert and this week it’s all three shows in Perth. I told The Carlton Supporter if he was doing 10 shows I’d be at every one. There was no argument.
To the tramps who were born to run, savor the shows and take these memories with you, we have waited a long, long time and they may never come again. It will be worth the decades long wait.
