1975-02-06 Widener Field House, Widener College, Chester, PA

Scheduled: 20:00 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

One show, held in the 1,500-seat Widener Field House, with Springsteen & The E Street Band the sole act on the bill. This first of two consecutive nights at Widener was not quite a sellout. Due to the notoriously bad sound in the school's Field House, Mike Appel had engaged a local contractor to install echo-suppressing material along the walls and roof of the Gymnasium. A few hours before the show Appel learned that this material was highly flammable and a mad scramble ensued to re-position the material to be out of possible reach of the crowd. This caused the start of the opening night's show to be delayed for over 90 minutes. The material functioned reasonably well and the over-two-hour show was a roaring success. The school's newspaper reported that Suki Lahav had to be treated for exhaustion after this show, although she recuperated in time for the following night's performance. The 16-song setlist listed is sourced from the video and newspaper reviews and may be the complete set, although it is possible that one or two songs are missing and it's likely that the order is not correct. As noted in the Montgomery Gazette, "Incident On 57th Street" opened the show, and a two-song encore of "Back In The U.S.A." and "For You" (played by Springsteen alone at the piano) brought the proceedings to a close. "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" includes a snippet of "Theme From Shaft" in the midsection.

Video from this show has been in circulation since the late 1970s (portions of the film footage are said to have been circulating among the Widener community as early as 1976) and the detail surrounding its origin has long been a source of speculation. For many years, the circulating quality of the footage was uniformly poor. However, portions of the video were shown in Springsteen TV documentaries in the '90s and the quality was significantly better than anything seen before. Since then, upgraded versions have made their way into DVD trading circles, but the quality still doesn't quite match up to what has been seen in documentaries. This has lent credence to a long-held rumour that this footage (far from emanating from a shadowy fan) may have been shot by Widener students involved in a film-making course and that there may have been some pre-arranged conditional approval to film the concert from the Springsteen camp. In truth, the two shooters, M and J, weren't students at all, but a couple of Springsteen fans, the father of one of which had purchased a Sony Portapak video recorder for use in his business. On a lark, the friends borrowed the camera and open-reel recorder and thought they would try their luck filming a show by their favorite musician, without permission. They only had enough tape and batteries to record a little over an hour, but shoot they did without incurring any unwanted attention from security or management. That clicking you hear in spots on the video is the pair shooting still photos, too, as they took turns holding up the relatively heavy video camera. The pair only ever shot one other artist before ending their careers as concert videographers. For years after the show the pair would thread up the video to show at parties and they eventually made a copy for the late WMMR DJ Ed Sciaky, from which it is presumed the circulating copies emanated. There has long been uncertainty about exactly which of the two Widener shows was filmed from the crowd. For some time it has been believed that the video was sourced from the second show (February 7), however recent comparison of the video and the newly discovered audio detailed in the February 7 listing has established that they are not sourced from the same concert. Further discussions with the filmer and the audio taper has confirmed without doubt that the video was shot at the first show (February 6). The video is comprised of nine songs plus a very brief snippet from the introduction to "I Want You".

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