No one in music has a more appropriate nickname than Springsteen. Fans call him The Boss because that’s what the guys in his E Street Band started calling him way back when, but while Sinatra was really only the Chairman of the Board of the Rat Pack, Bruce really is the Boss of all he surveys in music, and not just in his own genre.

In terms of honesty, integrity and the level of intimacy that he somehow manages to maintain in vast arenas packed with people, no one can beat him. No one comes close. And the range and depth of his music is approached by only a few other artists, Neil Young being one.

And he’s out there onstage — fully aflame or at least hotly smouldering — every night, never flagging, never letting his grip on the audience loosen. I’ve seen him five times and was utterly flabbergasted on every occasion. Every concert was flawless in its staging, pacing and dynamics, song selection and positioning, audience interaction and … what do you call it — the feelgood factor? You really do come away feeling like a better person. No wonder some people think he’s God. Or a faith healer. Or a damn good priest. Or the funny, caring, endlessly entertaining older brother you wish you had.

Since Springsteen doesn’t tour the Far East, I haven’t seen him in a while, but I’ve checked out some DVDs of the more recent live shows and notice that the stages are a lot more elaborate than they used to be, and things seem quite a bit more choreographed than they once were. This is not necessarily a good thing, considering his early no-nonsense, bare-to-the-bone presentations. Back in the early days of “Empire Bru-u-u-uce”, it was all songs and nothing but, and that’s the way it was when “the future of rock and roll” first illuminated Toronto.

It was 1975 and Springsteen’s breakthrough year was cruising to a triumphant close. Despite knowing that they had a major attraction on their hands, the local promoters had booked him into Minkler Auditorium, a 1,000-seat theatre at Seneca College. Ticket demand was sure enough avid, so they rented the 2,000-seat Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, then figured they’d better go for the 3,000-seat Field House at Seneca. (In a few more years Springsteen would be selling out three consecutive nights at the enormous CNE Stadium.)

The Field House has something to do with athletics, I presume, so it’s not exactly posh. It’s a lot like a gym, in fact, so the concert felt like a high-school sockhop. But the place also has a nice wide stage, and at the time we had no problem getting close to it.

Almost the whole concert ended up on a bootleg called “Bring Out the Hype”, which is apparently what someone in the crowd inexplicably shouted before the show. It includes all but two of the songs and even Bruce’s introduction to his little Yuletide treat, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”:

“You guys all been real good this year? Oh, that’s good, you sure? No messing around, no screwing around, everybody’s been alright? That’s good ‘cause Santa Claus — everybody out there been good? Oh, that’s good, that’s, that’s dynamite, because, you better watch out … That Santa — still getting by on the cheap shit.”

Bruce had started the show with “Thunder Road”, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, “Spirit in the Night” and “Lost in the Flood”, and then took us to even loftier heights with “She’s the One”. Next came the anthem on which his career was first built, the story of urban youth, the legend of the city lights, “Born to Run” …

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines …

Next up were “Pretty Flamingo”, “Saint in the City”, “Backstreets” and “Kitty’s Back”, followed by the magnificent journey into “Jungleland” and some past glory with “Rosalita” and “4th Of July Asbury Park (Sandy)”. That’s when Bruce put on his Christmas cap for “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. He wound up with the so-called Detroit Medley (”Jenny Take a Ride”, “Devil with the Blue Dress”, etc), “For You” and the rollicking “Quarter to Three”.

Springsteen shows are always epic-length, usually three hours without an intermission, another factor that ensures they fit the give-it-all-up-for-this-moment rock’n'roll mould, and they always feature a jaunty band introduction, along the lines of: “To the far left of the stage, on the piano, Professor Roy Bittan. On the guitar, poet of the soul, master of rock and roll, Miami Steve Van Zandt. On the bass guitar, with the thunder from down under, Mr Garry W Tallent. On the drums, the Mighty Max Weinberg. On the organ, Phantom Dan Federici. And last but not least — how can I say it?, let me think — king of the world, master of all things, emperor of the universe, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall women, I mean tall buildings, in a single bound — Is it a bird? Is it a plane? What the hell is it? Clarence Big Man Clemons on the saxophone!”

What we didn’t know at the time was that Springsteen was laughing and singing his heart out even though he was up to his armpits in legal hassles, his new manager and deliverer to stardom, the ex-music critic Jon Landau, trying to pry him as inexpensively as possible from the grip of his former overseer. In the meantime he couldn’t record a follow-up to “Born to Run”, so he just kept touring and touring. From 1974 through ‘77, it was all one big Born to Run tour. Tramps like us.

Still, the shows changed almost nightly. The mega-fans who track his setlists and song fluctuations from town to town, who are as familiar with the minutiae of Springsteen lore as Trekkies are with their Kirk-and-Spock dialogues, can explain the significance of every moment on the highway and how the saga evolves. Thank God someone’s getting all of this on the record.

I’m grateful to the British Brucespotters of BruceBase for not only writing down what songs he played in every show he’s ever done but, by way of assessing the bootleg records that emerged from almost all of them, writing down Springsteen’s wonderful song introductions as well. This storytelling, now an integral part of the concerts, is a huge part of the appeal. Even if the tales he shares between songs vary little from town to town, they vary enough that fans in each place feel as though they’re being given something special, something they can take home and put in a scrapbook and cherish.

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“I grew up in this in this little town — it was about 10,000 people, I guess,” he told a crowd bigger than that at Maple Leaf Gardens on January 20, 1981. “And I remember that when I was in school, I never did very good in stuff. If you don’t, it’s like if you don’t do good in school, people, they think you’re stupid. It was, uh, it seemed that the things I was learning and the way they were teaching me was something where they never, they never tried to teach you how to go out and find your place. They were teaching you stuff that was meant to help keep you in your place.

“And it wasn’t until I turned on the radio — my mother used to have the radio on in the kitchen every morning — that I started to hear the songs and the stuff that was on the radio, in the early ’60s. And that was a lucky time. That was a real, that was a lucky time. And I started listening to the Drifters and Elvis. That I got a sense, it was the first thing, I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t find out, it seemed, what I needed to know in school or from my folks or out on the street with my friends. It seemed like the only place that I got a sense that there was more to life than what I was living, was when I’d be up in my bed at night and have the radio tucked underneath the pillow and listen to what was coming across the airwaves.

“And I remember when I finally started to hear, I used to wish I could run downstairs and tell my old man about it. Because I never remember him being happy or looking like he was ever young a day in his life. But it always just sounded like noise to him.”

And with that jabbing reminder of how tough it used to be trying to communicate with your parents, Springsteen began singing “Independence Day”.

Well Papa go to bed now it’s getting late
Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now
I’ll be leaving in the morning from St Mary’s Gate.
We wouldn’t change this thing even if we could somehow
Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us.
There’s a darkness in this town that’s got us too.
But they can’t touch me now
And you can’t touch me now
They ain’t gonna do to me
What I watched them do to you.

So say goodbye it’s Independence Day
It’s Independence Day
All down the line.

That was the beginning of 1981, and the setlist went like this: “Prove It All Night”, “Two Hearts”, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, “Darkness on the Edge of Town”, “Independence Day”, “Factory”, John Fogerty’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain”, “The Promised Land”, Out in the Street”, “Racing in the Street” (another of my favourites that he stopped playing for a long time), “The River”, “Badlands”, “Thunder Road”, “Cadillac Ranch”, “Sherry Darlin’”, “Hungry Heart”, “Fire”, “Candy’s Room”, “Because the Night”, “4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)”, “For You” (”for all you guys way up in the oxygen seats — that’s high!”)

He introduced “Stolen Car” like this: “This is when we were making the last record …” A loud firecracker went off in the audience. “If you got any of those firecrackers, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t set ‘em off … you can hurt somebody …

“This was a song that, uh, a close friend of mine got married while we were making the last record and we went out to his wedding and, uh, we were sitting there in the temple and the rabbi got up and he gave a speech about how, as long as you’re alone, all your dreams and all the things that you hope for and all your fantasies, they just remain fantasies, and it ain’t till you get in touch with somebody … that it’s the first step to making the things that you dream real. And it’s like, sometimes, I remember when I would sit in my room and I’d write a song, and a song, it’s not finished and it doesn’t mean nothing till somebody hears it. And so, if you miss out on that connection, you end up like a ghost.”

Next came “Wreck on the Highway”, “Point Blank”, “The Ties that Bind”, “Ramrod”, “Backstreets”, “Rosalita”, “I’m a Rocker”, “Jungleland” and, yes indeed, “Born to Run”, with the 12-minute tear-it-up Detroit Medley for an encore.

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In between those shows I saw Bruce and the E Street machine on November 16, 1978, also at the Gardens. Apparently it was the only show he opened with “Reddy Teddy” before thinking better of it. That was followed by “Badland”, “Streets of Fire”, the oldie that Manfred Mann plaintively recorded, “Spirit in the Night”, “Darkness on the Edge of Town”, “Independence Day”, “The Promised Land” and “Prove It All Night”.

Then he said, “Where’re you guys from, New Jersey? You can’t jump up in front of ‘em all night long! Sit down, sit down, take a little break, alright? At least one song. This is for the people behind these guys who’s jumping up all night long — ‘Racing in the Street’ — sit down for this.”

After that: “We were out in Southwest, about a year ago, and we were driving down the highway, and just off the highway we came upon this big sign that stood out in front of this house that this Indian had built from stuff that he’d scavanged off the desert, and it said, ‘This is the land of peace, love, justice and no mercy’, and it pointed down this dirt road that said ‘Thunder Road’.”

Next was “Jungleland” and “The Ties That Bind”, followed by “Fire”, “Candy’s Room”, “Because the Night”, “Point Blank”, and medley combining “Mona” with “She’s the One” and Van Morrison’s “Gloria”, and then “Backstreets”.

And then Bruce fired another love dart into the anonymous crowd, by way of introducing “Rosalita”: “I once had a girl, and I stole her away from her mommy and daddy and we went to California. Then somebody stole her away from me. The rumour has it that she travelled north, so, wherever you are, Rosie, come out tonight.”

“Born to Run” was followed by the usual show closer, the Detroit Medley, which came this time with a warning: “Wait a minute — got an emergency here. I just been informed by the hall management that if anybody has a weak heart or a weak stomach, during the next section of the show, would they please step into the lobby as it might be dangerous to your health.”

As far as I know, no one required medical treatment, and the proceedings ended up at “Quarter to Three”.

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Springsteen’s show at the CNE Stadium on July 23, 1984, was the first in a three-night run. He was mightier than ever by this time thanks, quite ironically, to the Reagan-era American patriotism that embraced the single “Born in the USA”. The song itself is an anti-war protest, of course, but that could be ignored if you only heard the chorus, so Bruce scored himself a lot of conservative fans.

And the anthem opened the show, the massive screen at the back of the stage a riot of stars and stripes, which, speaking for myself at any rate, I think the Canadians were quite ready to cheer for too. I have a recording from another concert with an introduction to another song in which the Boss remembers getting his draft notice and figuring he was bound for Vietnam. For three days before he was due at the draft board he went out on a bender and, as a result, was rejected for service. (”It’s nothing to applaud about,” he told some fans who were grateful that he was spared.)

Then one day his father (who’d once taken advantage of Bruce being laid up in hospital following a motorcycle accident to cut off his long hair), asked him what he thought he was doing with his life and Bruce told him about the draft notice. “What happened?” his old man asked.
“They didn’t take me.”
His dad said, “That’s good.”

In 1968 Canada had a prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, who’d started out as a liberal’s liberal but was getting meaner all the time, and there was talk about helping the Americans in Vietnam. It didn’t happen, of course, but I was just the right age. “A lot of my friends went,” Springsteen said, “and when they came back they just weren’t the same anymore.”

The rest of the ‘84 setlist: “Out in the Street”, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out”, “Atlantic City”, “Johnny 99″, “Highway Patrolman” (”This is a song about family — it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is sometimes when it comes to your family”), “Prove It All Night”, “Glory Days”, “The Promised Land” …

“Used Cars” warranted some more childhood reminiscing: “I used to sit out on my front porch when I was a kid, when the weather was like this, and I kind of lived on this main street, it was called South Street, in this little town called Freehold, New Jersey. [Cheers from the crowd.] It wasn’t that nice [chuckles] …

“Used to be this guy lived next door … who used to have one of those radios that’d get stations from all over the world, and he’d set it out and we’d sit there on the steps and watch the cars go by, and I’d count the convertibles. Figured that anybody in a convertible had to be doing alright. It used to come time when my dad’d go down and we’d get another car. It was the only time me and my sister used to get together on anything. She was a year younger than me and we used to fight all the time, but we’d be begging him, ‘Daddy, please, you know, get a convertible’, and he’d say, ‘We’ll go down, okay, I’ll think about it’. Then we’d always come home in, like, a Rambler or a Studebaker [chuckles] with a hardtop.

“But we used to get him back because me and my sister found the exact spot in the back seat where no matter what we did, he couldn’t reach us while he was driving. He would say, ‘You’re gonna get the belt when you go home’.”

… A lovely segue into “My Hometown”, followed by “Badlands”, “Thunder Road”, “Cadillac Ranch”, “Hungry Heart”, the massive hit single “Dancing in the Dark”, “Sherry Darling”, “No Surrender”, “Because the Night”, “Pink Cadillac”, “Fire”, “Bobby Jean”, “Backstreets”, “Rosalita”, “Jungleland”, “Born to Run” and then the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” and, finally, the Detroit Medley.

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I’m holding out hope that the August 26, 1985, show, also at the CNE Stadium (opening a two-nighter) wasn’t the last time I get to see Springsteen. Maybe he’ll come to Asia; maybe I’ll have to go see him.

This was the same tour as the year previous, so the setlist was little changed, but Bruce doesn’t do the same shows all over the place. This time there was “The River” and “I’m Going Down”, both great, great tunes, and “Working on the Highway” and “Trapped” and “Cover Me” and “Downbound Train”. He introduced “My Hometown” with a genuinely heartfelt appeal for people to support Toronto’s Daily Bread food bank.

“I decided that the reason people cheer [when he mentions the city where he’s playing] must be because they must have some pride in where they’re from, so, uh, I guess if you got some pride in where you’re from, that means you’d wanna do something to help make it a better place.”

And “Pink Cadillac” was preceded by a long, amazing story about temptation in the Garden of Eden, “originally believed to have been located in Mesopotamia … but the latest theological studies have discovered — and you’re gonna be reading this in the Christian Science Monitor any day now — that its actual location was … 10 miles south of Jersey City, off the New Jersey Turnpike, and that’s why they call it the Garden State back home.

“There were none of the accoutrements of modern living. You didn’t have no TV, you couldn’t go home at night, put the little Pop-Tarts in the toaster, get the ham and cheese out of the refrigerator, make a sandwich, jump in bed with your baby and like watch David Letterman or something. You couldn’t do that, no sir! In the Garden of Eden there was no sin. There was no sex. Man lived in a state of innocence. When it comes to no sex, I prefer the state of guilt that I constantly live in, but oh, man, in the Garden of Eden there were many wonderous things.”

And that’s when “old Satan came slithering up on his belly” and sent Adam and Eve “running down into the darkness below”.

“But that’s alright because right here tonight on this backlot, I’ve got their getaway car, and for 99.95 and no money down — don’t worry if you’ve got bad credit, it’s good here, we’ll finance, we’ll take a chance on you — if you’ve got the nerve to ride, I’ve got the keys — to the first — pink — Cadillac!”

There were two massive surprises that night, one being the finale, “Twist and Shout”, and the other being the next-to-last song, “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You”.

“I tried to meet Elvis once,” Springsteen said, revisiting a favourite anecdote. “We were playing down in Memphis, and it was late at night and a taxi cab brought me out to Graceland, and I stood in front of the gates that had those guitars on the front, and I seen a light in the second-storey window, and I jumped over the wall and started running up the driveway [chuckles] which I always tell people I think was probably a pretty stupid thing to do at the time, ‘cause I hate it when people do it at my house in the middle of the night [more chuckles].

“But, uh, anyway, there I was. I ran up the driveway, I got to the front door. A guard came out of the woods, asked me what I wanted and I said, ‘Is Elvis home?’ And he said, ‘No, he’s in Lake Tahoe.’ So I said, ‘Oh yeah, but you see, like, I got a band too. I’m a guitar player. Elvis was my inspiration,’ and I told him I had my picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek [chuckles]. But, uh, I don’t think he believed me. He took me by the arm and put me back out on the street.

“It wasn’t too long after that, a friend of mine called and told me that Elvis had died, and I remember it was hard to understand how somebody whose music came in and took away so many people’s loneliness and gave so many people a reason to live, it was like he came along and whispered a dream in everybody’s ear and then we dreamed it. So he deserved better than he got.

“Anyway, you gotta be careful, ‘cause it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away. So I’d like to do this for you tonight, wishing you all the longest life with the best of absolutely everything.”

I was 10 days past the eighth anniversary of Elvis’ death. I figure one icon had been measuring his mortality against another’s. Springsteen’s 36th birthday was a month away; Presley died at 42. I’m sure glad Bruce is still around.

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* See #3: Lou Reed
* See #4: Rolling Stones
* See #5: Reggae Sunsplash
* See #6: Neil Young
* See #7: David Bowie
* See #8: The Tubes
* See #9: Pink Floyd
* See #10: Bob Marley
* See #11: Bob Dylan
* See #12: Heatwave
* See #13: Watkins Glen
* See #14: The Who
* See #15: Crosby, Stills Nash & Young
* COMING SOON: The Compleat Dorseyland Concert Directory