Celebrating Life With Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band

My dad, Bruce Baltin, took me to my first Bruce Springsteen show at the L.A. Sports Arena in October, 1984, on the Born In The U.S.A. tour. Over the next nearly 40 years I’d estimate we saw almost 30 Springsteen shows together.

My dad, who passed away March 9 at the age of 79, was great about taking me to concerts, from the Rolling Stones at the Coliseum and the Us Festival to Jackson Browne in Santa Barbara. But there was always something special about Springsteen shows.

So seeing Springsteen for the first time on this tour, this past Saturday night alone at Madison Square Garden, just three weeks after my dad’s passing, took on a very different meaning for me. It was an experience of catharsis, of sorrow, of joy, of mourning, and mostly of celebrating life.

There is, of course, no better show to celebrate life in the history of rock and roll in my opinion. Every Springsteen and the E Street Band concert is a tribute to the power of rock and roll, to a sense of community, to embracing and living in the moment. And in recent years, following the losses of E Streeters Danny Federici and Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, that has been even more true.

For many of us long time devotees every member of the E Street nation has felt like family as they have been with us most of our lives. So those losses were mourned, in their own ways, by fans. But it’s only made the joy of the shows stronger.

Springsteen spoke about that Saturday night introducing a beautiful rendition of “Last Man Standing.” He spoke about the 2018 death of his Castiles band mate George Theiss and how that left him the last living member of his first band. “It just makes you realize how important it is to live every moment” Springsteen said. But the most powerful message from his introduction was this: “The dead’s great and final gift to the living is an expanded vision.”

So maybe it was with that expanded vision we all took in the transcendent performance, or maybe watching a show with the expanded vision that came from having just lost my dad I saw the show in a different light,

But I will say this, my sixtieth Springsteen show was arguably the best I have ever seen (and actor Jeff Garlin, seated the row in front of me, concurred, on this his, fifteenth or twentieth show). Maybe it’s that in a post COVID lockdown world we weren’t sure if or when we would see Springsteen and the E Street Band again. Or maybe it’s with all the losses we’re all aware of our mortality and that this incredible run won’t last forever.

What makes a Springsteen show so special is that for all nearly 21,000 people who stood on their feet delivering thunderous ovations for three hours, they have their own back story as to why it is so meaningful. Everybody brings their own memories, their own nostalgia, family and friends, into the arena with them.

And over the course of three flawless hours Springsteen and the greatest band of musicians in rock history, I said and I stand by it (and I have seen everyone), deliver moments that tap into whatever you are feeling.

For me, who was mourning on this night, the highlight was an absolutely epic “Backstreets,” one alive with emotion, with pain, with beauty. For others, it was the tour debut of “Jungleland,” “Special for NYC,” he said. Or maybe it was the celebratory feelings of “Kitty’s Back” and “The E Street Shuffle.” The cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped” was a standout, as was “Candy’s Room” and “Johnny 99,” and the recent “Ghosts,” “Letter To You” and the Commodores’ “Nightshift.”

As I said, whatever feeling you wanted to tap into on this night, Springsteen was going to get you there. And of course the night ended in celebration, as it always does, with the jubilance of “Born To Run,” fun versions of “Glory Days” and “Dancing In The Dark,” “Rosalita” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.”

Bur there was one more moment of both introspection and beauty to come. Springsteen closed out the night, as he has on the entire tour, with a solo acoustic performance of the song “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” off the album Letter To You.

In the devastatingly gorgeous song, Springsteen sings, “I’ll see you in my dreams/We’ll meet and live and love again/I’ll see you in my dreams/

Yeah, up around the river bend/For death is not the end.”

It was a perfect ending to a beautiful elegy. Simple, lovely, moving and, most importantly, hopeful. And that’s what we go to Springsteen shows for. For hope, for joy, to embrace life and to believe when we walk onto the streets after three glorious hours that there is still the chance everything will be okay.