Fascinating juxtaposition

I find it absolutely fascinating that the first voice I hear on this trailer is that of Bruce Springsteen and the first face I see on the trailer is that of Elvis Presley's granddaughter.

Saturday night in Virginia Beach

The Wall by Bruce Springsteen

Cigarettes and a bottle of beer
This poem I wrote for you
This black stone and these hard tears
Are all I've got left now of you
I remember you in your Marine uniform laughing
Laughing that you're shipping out probably
I read Robert McNamara says he's sorry

You and your boots and black t-shirt
Ah Billy you looked so bad
Ya, you and your rock and roll band
Was the best thing this shit town ever had
Now the man who put you here
He feeds his family in rich dining halls
And apology and forgiveness have no place here at all
At the wall

I'm sorry I missed you last year
I couldn't find no one to drive me
If your eyes could cut through that black stone
Tell me would they recognize me?
For the living, time must be served
Life goes on
Cigarettes and a bottle of beer
Skin on black stone

High School pictures, paper flowers
Ribbon, red as the blood
Ya, as the blood you spilled
In the Central Highlands mud
Now the limousines rush down Pennsylvania Boulevard
As the rain falls
And apology and forgiveness have no place here at all

The Boss re-invents disco

The Brothers Gibb weren't born in Australia, of course, but their father emigrated to Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia (just a little northeast of Brisbane) in 1958 and it was there the Bee Gees had their first hit, Spicks and Specks.

So, of course, when Bruce Springsteen played his first-ever concert in Brisbane, he opened the show with this.

Three days earlier, this is how he opened an outdoor concert at a winery in Hunter Valley, Australia, about a three hour drive from Sydney.

A rare treat

The Boss offers special gift to vets and everyone else

In a Veterans Day concert last night in St. Paul, Minn., Bruce Springsteen, for the first time ever in concert, played Devils & Dust with the E-Street Band. Now this video comes across as though it was made from a miniature camera hidden in a wrist wratch (in other words, the sound and video quality isn't all that great), but you can still sense the greatness and the emotion in the delivery of the song. A very special moment.

An excellent profile of the Boss

David Remnick

Nearly half a century ago, when Elvis Presley was filming Harum Scarum and Help! was on the charts, a moody, father-haunted, yet uncannily charismatic Shore rat named Bruce Springsteen was building a small reputation around central Jersey as a guitar player in a band called the Castiles. The band was named for the lead singer’s favorite brand of soap. Its members were from Freehold, an industrial town half an hour inland from the boardwalk carnies and the sea. The Castiles performed at sweet sixteens and Elks-club dances, at drive-in movie theatres and ShopRite ribbon cuttings, at a mobile-home park in Farmingdale, at the Matawan-Keyport Rollerdrome. Once, they played for the patients at a psychiatric hospital, in Marlboro. A gentleman dressed in a suit came to the stage and, in an introductory speech that ran some twenty minutes, declared the Castiles "greater than the Beatles." At which point a doctor intervened and escorted him back to his room.

So begins a superb Springsteen profile appearing in the current New Yorker written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Remnick. It’s probably the next best thing to reading a full-scale Springsteen biography. You can find the entire piece here.

Shake it up baby

Even at the age of 62, The Boss still knows how to work a crowd into a frenzy.

Bruce plays tribute to Levon Helm last night in Newark concert

The Boss pays tribute to the Big Man in N.J.

Bruce Springsteen is obviously a home-state hero in New Jersey so when he played the Izod Center in the Meadowlands this week you had to know the crowds would be especially enthusiastic. Bruce has been saving Tenth Avenue Freeze-out for the final song of the evening so far on every stop of the Wrecking Ball tour. But on Wednesday night, he actually sang it from a mini-stage located out in the audience and when he came to the line "when the Big Man joined the band," he not only stopped for a moment of reflection for his dear departed friend, but, for the first time on the tour, pictures of Clarence were shown on the auditorium’s big screen. The audience’s reaction is electric, as you can see here.

The Boss pays his respect to Trayvon Martin

Think it was just a coincidence that Bruce Springsteen chose to premier this song on his Wrecking Ball tour in Tampa, Fla.? I think not.

"Death to My Hometown"

A look at one of the songs from Wrecking Ball as performed live on the new Bruce Springsteen tour.

Additions to the E-Street Band

Eddie Manion

Bruce Springsteen has decided that no one single musician can fill the void left by the death of his longtime friend/associate/saxophonist Clarence "Big Man" Clemons. So he’s hired two: Eddie Manion, a veteran member of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes as well as a frequent Springsteen collaborator (he was part of the Miami Horns and a member of Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions Band), and Jake Clemons, Clarence’s nephew. For those wondering about Manion’s bona fides, here he is performing the solo from Jungleland.

Other additions to the E-Street Band for the upcoming Wrecking Ball tour are trombonist Clark Gayton and trumpeter Curt Ramm, both of whom also toured with Springsteen as members of the Miami Horns. Also being added to the band is trumpeter Barry Danielian and backup singers Cindy Mizelle and Curtis King.

Bruce plans tour, CD for 2012

Bruce Springsteen has answered "yes" to the question of whether there’s a future for his E-Street Band following the death earlier this year of saxophonist and close friend Clarence "Big Man" Clemmons." According to his Website, Springsteen will release a CD of new material next year and kick off a tour in May with a series of concerts in Europe.

"Info on the US dates and the World tour dates will be coming up shortly," Springsteen says on his Webpage. "In addition, we want you to know the music is almost done (but still untitled), we have almost settled on the release date (but not quite yet) and that we’re all incredibly excited about everything that we’re planning for 2012."

Eulogy for a Big Man

Bruce Springsteen delivered a stirring, memorable eulogy at the recent memorial of Clarence “Big Man” Clemmons. Here is part of what he said:

“Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet. You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together, you might be able to do. You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you. Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety, and in some funny way we became each other’s protectors; I think perhaps I protected ‘C’ from a world where it still wasn’t so easy to be big and black. Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it. Clarence’s celebrity and size did not make him immune. I think perhaps ‘C’ protected me from a world where it wasn’t always so easy to be an insecure, weird and skinny white boy either. But, standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet. We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself. And we were coming to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Together, we told an older, richer story about the possibilities of friendship that transcended those I’d written in my songs and in my music. Clarence carried it in his heart. It was a story where the Scooter and the Big Man not only busted the city in half, but we kicked ass and remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship would not be such an anomaly. And that... that’s what I’m gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and double down on that story on a nightly basis, because that is something, that is the thing that we did together … the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fucking big to die. And that’s just the facts. You can put it on his grave stone, you can tattoo it over your heart. Accept it … it’s the New World.

“Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die.

“So, I’ll miss my friend, his sax, the force of nature his sound was, his glory, his foolishness, his accomplishments, his face, his hands, his humor, his skin, his noise, his confusion, his power, his peace. But his love and his story, the story that he gave me, that he whispered in my ear, that he allowed me to tell... and that he gave to you … is gonna carry on. I’m no mystic, but the undertow, the mystery and power of Clarence and my friendship leads me to believe we must have stood together in other, older times, along other rivers, in other cities, in other fields, doing our modest version of god’s work … work that’s still unfinished. So I won’t say goodbye to my brother, I’ll simply say, see you in the next life, further on up the road, where we will once again pick up that work, and get it done.”

If you’re interested in reading the entire eulogy, you can find it here.

Miami Steve eulogizes the Big Man, says E-Street will go on

Miami Steve Van Zandt

In an eloquent send off to the late Clarence “The Big Man” Clemmons, the saxophonist of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, guitarist Miami Steve Van Zandt said the band will continue to tour and perform because “that’s really all we know how to do.” Clemmons died during the past weekend of complications from a stroke he suffered the week before.

Here’s what Miami Steve had to say:

“Rock ‘n’ roll has lost an irreplaceable performer. The E Street Band has lost its second member. And, personally, I have lost a lifelong friend and brother. Rock ‘n’ roll historians will discuss in great detail and lengthy discourse the profound racial implications and effect of a white rock band in the early ‘70s having a black man with such a strong featured presence as well as the unmistakeable and dangerously unfashionable … more than just a nod, but marriage to tradition, by the inclusion of, to many, the embarrassingly and hopelessly anachronistic saxophone. It was a time of reaching for the future. Glam had started. And yet Bruce Springsteen decided to keep a firm grasp of the past, as he looked ahead. Commercial suicide for anyone less talented than he.

Band members have a special bond. A great band is more than just some people working together. It’s like a highly specialized army unit, or a winning sports team. A unique combination of elements that becomes stronger together than apart. We become a part of each other and experience marvelous, miraculous moments in life that only we truly share. We will continue to make music and perform. Let’s face it, that’s all we really know how to do. But it will be very different without him. Just as it’s been different without Danny (Federici), our first lost comrade.

The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It’s a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest. But like all of them, Clarence leaves us his work, which will continue to inspire us and motivate us, and future generations, forever. Rock ‘n’ roll is our religion, and we will continue to lose disciples as we go, but we pick up the fallen flag and keep moving forward, bringing forth the good news that our heroes have helped create, their bodies lost, but their spirits and their good work everlasting.

And for the E Street Band, the heart of us, Clarence and Danny, will always be there, stage right. So thank you, Clarence. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. But I’ll see you again, soon enough. Thank you for blowing life-changing energy and hope into this miserable world with your big, beautiful lungs. And thank you for sharing a piece of that big heart nightly with the world. It needs it. You and that magnificent saxophone, celebrating, confessing, seeking redemption and providing salvation all at once. Speaking wordlessly, but so eloquently, with that pure sound you made. The sound of life itself.”

Now, of course, Bruce Springsteen is never coming to me for advice, but if he did I would tell him not to try to replace The Big Man. He was irreplaceable. But I could see him adding a three-piece horn section: sax, trumpet, trombone. And although it was always one of the highlights of any Springsteen concert, he’s got to retire Jungleland. It might be played as well by another saxophonist, but it just wouldn’t be the same song without Clarence. That song is just as much his as it is Bruce’s.

Bruce Springsteen with the Dropkick Murphys

Ths took place Friday at Boston's House of Blues. I guess this is one way for a 60-year-old Springsteen to stay young.

Holiday greetings from The Boss

Bruce Springsteen recently performed an intimate concert in front of about 60 fans at the Carousel House in Asbury Park, N.J. The show only lasted 30 minutes and was comprised of four songs from Bruce's The Promise, the recently released outtakes from his Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, plus something for the holidays. He was joined by such E-Street stalwarts as Steve Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg, Garry W. Tallent and Roy Bittan as well as Jackson Browne's erstwhile playing companion David Lindley, a hot horn section and Charles Giordano, who has replaced the late, great Danny Federici on organ.  The setlist is:
“Racing in the Street (’78)”
“Gotta Get That Feeling”
“Ain’t Good Enough for You”
“The Promise”
“Blue Christmas”

Enjoy and consider it an early Christmas present to other Bruce fans.

Darkness on the edge of a Saturday morning

It was one of those days. I spent most of Friday in some form of physical discomfort -- a constant tightening in the chest and the feeling that I had strained every muscle in my torso. When I struggled back to the hacienda between 5:30 and 6 p.m., I wrote for a little while until, absolutely exhausted, I fell into bed around 6:30 p.m. I slept until 10 p.m. or so, and when I awoke, I came back downstairs, wrote a little more and, around 11:30, decided to check the mail. I spotted it as soon as I opened the front door: the package containing my copy of The Promise: Darkness on the Edge of Town box set.

Now I had already downloaded the double CD The Promise the day it was released and although I dearly love the Darkness on the Edge of Town album, Bruce Springsteen's masterpiece for me will always be Born to Run. In fact, I'm willing to argue that it is the best rock album of all time. So I skipped the remastered Darkness CD and focused my attention on the three DVDs included in the set.I figured since it was getting close to midnight, I should just watch one of the three and, of course, I picked out the longest one, a three-hour Springsteen concert recorded in 1978 in Houston.

I picked this one because as many times as I have seen the Boss in concert since 1972, there is no question he and the E-Street Band reached their performing peak in 1978, the tour that etched in granite Springsteen's rightful place as the greatest live concert act ever and the E-Street Band as the best live rock band of all time. And the Houston show didn't disappoint. The only thing missing was any of the stories Springsteen use to tell while introducing songs during that tour. But that's OK, because the set list is magnificent. The most pleasant surprise for me was something I had not seen before -- an musical interchange between saxophonist Clarence Clemons and organist Danny Federici during Fever. It almost made my leap from my couch and give my television screen a one-person standing ovation.

So now it's after 3 a.m. and during the next couple of days I will make sure I find the time to visit the other two DVDs (I've heard some wonderful reports from friends who saw at the Toronto Film Festival the documentary on the making of Darkness that's included on the first DVD). But I'm not going to do it right now.

However, I will take a few more moments to whisper to all the Bruce fans out there, or anyone interested in the legacy of rock 'n' roll in the context of what otherwise was the dismal disco decade, you owe it to yourself to make the investment in this box set. From what I've heard and watched and read already, I promise you it's a treasure.

Outlaw Pete: Can you hear me?

The Boss to give more "Darkness" for Christmas

The Rolling Stones just pulled this off with their classic Exile on Main Street album. The songs on the original double-album were remastered, several outtakes were added to the original list of songs and it was re-released a couple of months ago. It is still No. 28 on Amazon's Best Seller list after 106 days in the Top 100.

Now Bruce Springsteen is going to do something similar with his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. He is re-recording some of the vocals on the album, adding some outtakes and plans to release it in time for the Christmas sales season.

No word yet on what the outtakes are although two popular Springsteen compositions from those sessions - Fire, which became a hit for the Pointer Sisters, and Because the Night, a big-seller for Patti Smith - would seem like prime contenders. Guitarist Steve Van Zandt told Rolling Stones that as many as 10 outtakes could be included.

Darkness is the album that contained such Springsteen classics as Badlands, The Promised Land and Prove It All Night. The album is not an easy one to listen to. It's about working class characters with little to call their own and in danger of losing even that. It is, however, one of my favorites and contains in Racing in the Streets, one of the songs I always loved hearing Bruce perform live (an almost 10-minute version is available on the new London Calling DVD.)