Scheduled: ??:?? Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??
Info & Setlist | Venue
Final night of the tour, and a contender for one of the best ever with Bruce in inspired form. Last ever "Action In The Streets" (apart from a 2011 club performance) and last "Don't Look Back" for a long time (until 1999). Final E Street Band version of "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher" until 2009. "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" includes the Miami Horns playing a snippet of "Auld Lang Syne" in the band introductions and a snippet of "Theme From Shaft" in the midsection. "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher" includes a brief snippet of "I Don't Want To Go Home". A fan recalls "I saw the last three shows and they were definitely as good as it gets. We had no idea that Bruce was close to settling his legal problems, but it was clear that these were special. I remember March 24 as being the hottest show but that may just be that it was the first one that featured "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City" and "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher", both showstoppers." Although many setlists are not fully known, eight songs may have appeared at every show of the Lawsuit Tour – at least, there are no shows at which we can say with certainty that they were not played. Those songs are: "Spirit In The Night", "Thunder Road", "She's The One", "Born To Run", "Backstreets", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out", "Jungleland", and "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)".
incl. Rehearsals.
- 1978-05-31 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1978-05-30 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1978-05-29 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1977-03-25 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1977-03-24 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1977-03-23 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1977-03-22 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1975-12-03 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1975-12-02 Music Hall, Boston, MA
- 1974-10-29 Music Hall, Boston, MA
© All credits to the original photographer. We do not monetize a photo in any way, but if you want your photo to be removed, let us know, and we will remove it.
Audience tape released on CDs 'Forced To Confess' (Great Dane), 'Higher And Higher' (Doberman), 'Stranded In The Park' (RCR), 'From The Dark Heart Of A Dream' (Godfather) and 'Are You Ready For The Final Moment' (JEMS). The latter is the best quality, transferred from Steve Hopkins' master tapes. This transfer can also be found on CD 'Are You Ready For The Final Moments?' (Godfather).

25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Night´
´´Are you ready for the final moments? (cheers)….are you ready for the last time? (cheers) ….are you ready to step out….out in the street ?….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Incident on 57th Street´
´´(?) this is for the Cleveland boys who will never die….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Thunder Road´
´´This is for the King and the Little King (chuckles)….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´She's The One´
"I'm gonna take you back….back to the beginning of the universe….when the sun collided with a '63 Impala….and the Earth rolled out of a truck….
(….) Smokestack and lightning…say…out…out…take it…out…in the street…out….everybody…(a little more echo)…everybody thought that in the Garden of Eden the first woman's name was Eve…but they had it wrong, didn't they Big Man?…when God looked down from heaven he saw her standing there down on the corner…and he said heyyy Mona…he said mmm Mona…
(….) Well midnight (?)…yeah me and Mona we run through the jungle….me and Mona we run through the jungle….me and Mona we run through the jungle….Mona, I want to be your nightwalker…well I wanna be your lovetalker…well I wanna be your outsider…yeah I wanna be your nightrider…Mona I wanna be your gunslinger…well I wanna be your gunslinger….Mona I wanna be your gunslinger….yeah I wanna be your gunslinger…well I wanna be a driver….yeah I wanna be a driver…. well I wanna be a driver….well I wanna be a driver….(?)…well come out come out on the front…won't you listen to my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp…. won't you listen to my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp….Mona listen to my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp…..won't you feel my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp….won't you feel my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp….won't you feel my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp….(whispers)….won't you feel my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp….won't you feel my heart beat bomp-itty-bomp….
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Tenth Avenue Freeze Out´
´´(?)…are you prepared? (cheers) I don´t think you´re ready yet, are you ready yet? (cheers) are you ready yet? (cheers) well, soon we'll see….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Action in the Street´
´´I wanna know….is do we understand each other? (cheers) do we understand each other? (cheers) and are you alive? (cheers) are you alive? (cheers) are you alive? (cheers) are you alive? (cheers) are you alive? (cheers) are you alive? (cheers)….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´It´s Hard to Be a Saint in the City´
´´This is for the Cleveland boys because I promised, I promised, I promised, I promised….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Backstreets´
´´Let the rain fall down….and wash your tears away….open your eyes….(?)….because it´s branded in your heart….and it´ll always be a part of you now….so, baby don't…little girl, don´t cry…. little girl, don´t cry, it´s all over now….tonight….tonight….fall into my arms…..and we will go away….(?)….
(….) Me and you, baby….me and you, girl….well, I remember running back…..I remember this guy abandoned this car….in this field ´bout a mile and a half outside of town….and at night me and her and Billy used to hitchhike out there….I remember the kids, they stripped down the outside of it till there was almost nothing left….but the interior, the insides were still alright….and we´d ride….way down by the railroad tracks….we´d go riding in the backseat….baby, take me riding in the backseat…..in the backseat….in the backseat….in the backseat of that old Cadillac….Billy´s got cleats on his boots, oh, her heels are stacked…. yeah, in the backseat….oh, take me down….hey, Terry, take me down…..and the world and this madness ´round and ´round and ´round and down and down and down and ´round and ´round and ´round we go and down and down and down….I remember these kids that night, they set fire to this abandoned farmhouse that was about….a half a mile up the tracks and they had these machines down there and they had these engines down there….we´d see the flames shooting out across the sky till they caught the field, we set up on the hood and watched it rushing towards us, watching the flames rushing towards, watching ´em rushing towards us across the field till we ran back on the tracks and started heading back into town ….and then….and then….then she kissed me….then she kissed me…..then she kissed me….. then she kissed me….oh, oh….and then she promised….and then she promised….and then she promised….and then she lied….and then she lied….and then she lied….and then she lied…. she lied….she lied….she lied….pretty li-li-li-lies….pretty li-li-li-lies….and I was just wishing ….I remember praying….that God would send some angels and blow this whole damn town right into the sea….I remember wishing that God would send some angels and blow this whole fucking town right into the sea….just wishing that God would send some angels and blow this whole damn town right into the sea….just blow this whole, just blow it into the sea ….just blow it all away….just blow it all away….just blow it all away….BLOW IT ALL AWAY….BLOW IT ALL AWAY….MAKE IT GO AWAY….BLOW IT ALL AWAY…. JUST BLOW IT ALL AWAY….JUST BLOW IT ALL AWAY….JUST BLOW IT ALL AWAY….JUST BLOW IT ALL AWAY….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Rosalita´
´´Well, it was like this…..there was this girl, you know….
(…) Miracle cure….nurse, nurse….to the far left of the stage, in the piano…..on the piano…. sometimes underneath the piano, Professor Roy Bittan….(?) play it, Roy….over on the guitar, coming to you from Asbur Park, Miami Steve Van Zandt (Steve plays) not too much….on the bass guitar, Mr.Garry W.Tallent….on the drums, the Mighty Max…..on the organ, Phantom Dan Federici…..play it, D….all the way in the back….we keep them way back there so they can´t scare you….coming to you all the way from Philadelphia…..via Newark Airport, the magnificent Miami Horns (Miami Horns play a bit of ´Auld Lang Syne´)….(?) it´s alright…. and last but not least….do I have to say his name ?….do I have to speak the words ?….are you ready for the king of the world ? (cheers) for the master of the universe ? (cheers) for your next president ? (cheers) for Mr.Hollywood himself ? (cheers) you all know him, you all love him….the biggest man in the world, the Big Man, Clarence Clemons….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Quarter to Three´
´´(?)….alright, hands over your hearts….are you ready, band ?….are the people ready ? (cheers) The Boss ready ? yeah !….
(….)(Clarence: ´(?) hallelujah, hallelujah (?)….hallelujah (?)´) I feel like a new man, I feel like a new man, I feel like a new man….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Little Latin Lupe Lu´
´´(?) gimme me the beat, Max…..let there be rock….and let there be some goddamn echo on this microphone….alright….hey, Roy, are you ready ? (Roy: ´I´m ready´) gimme the note, gimme the note, oh yeah, here we go….´´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´You Can´t Sit Down´
´´Are you warmed up now ? (cheers) think you got it going little bit now ? (cheers) then are you ready to be serious ? (cheers) are you ready to be serious ? (cheers)….´
25.03.77 Boston, MA, intro to ´Higher and Higher´
´´We can´t go home now, it´s too early….(?) go home, watch TV, watch Tom Snyder (chuckles)….alright, gimme the beat (?) gimme the beat for me (music starts)….oh yeah (?) ….I wanna thank, uh, come on, Professor….I wanna thank, uh, all the people in Boston that come down to the show these past four nights….let you know….through the hard times, through the good times we appreciate….your support….all the people that came down and saw us when we´re playing at Oliver´s, in Charlie´s Place, in Joe´s Place, I wanna thank you all very much, (?) we sincerely appreciate it….I´d like to dedicate this song to guys that are friends of mine and have worked their ass off for me every night for a very little pay, to the crew, the light people and everybody to say we love you very much…..´´
Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi
‘It was life-changing’: For four scorching nights in 1977, Bruce Springsteen owned Boston |
Mike Grenier wasn’t buying all the hype about this gawky kid named Bruce Springsteen. Grenier, a big music fan, was well aware that the skinny wailer from New Jersey had been on the cover of Time and Newsweek at the same time in 1975. He knew that a writer from Boston’s weekly Real Paper had grandly declared the then-little-known Springsteen the “rock and roll future” a year before that.
Eh, Grenier thought.
But when some friends from Wellesley called him around midnight on March 24, 1977, to say they’d just gotten home from an incredible Springsteen show at the Music Hall in Boston, Grenier relented. The following night, he stood outside the Tremont Street theater (now the Wang), trying to buy a ticket from a scalper.
Fifteen minutes before showtime, he was about to give up when a young man approached with an extra. The guy only wanted face value: eight bucks.
“I walked into the show as a complete skeptic,” Grenier recalls, “and I walked out converted.”
That show, he says, “took me into a different orbit, a stratosphere of music exploration. The fact that I’ve seen Bruce 227 times” — he’s not exaggerating; he’s been counting — “tells you it was life-changing.”
It isn’t just Grenier who feels that show — Springsteen’s last of a four-night run at the 3,500-seat Music Hall —was a high point in a career that has reached some of rock music’s most elevated peaks. As Springsteen, now 73, and his E Street Band prepare to play the TD Garden on Monday, we tracked down several diehard fans who were in the building for those vaunted Music Hall shows.
“I was all the way in the back, but it didn’t matter. It was like I was onstage,” says Paul Kaytes, a retired biologist from New Jersey who was attending Brandeis University at the time. “He projected all the way to the back wall. It was really a one-to-one connection.”
Kaytes, who also worked in the theater world as a stage manager, says the Thursday show (the third of the four that week) “was the closest I’ve ever come to a theatrical experience in a rock show. It really was opera, it was ‘West Side Story,’ all those things wrapped into one, with Buddy Holly thrown in.”
Ellen Rothman, who estimates she has seen 180 Springsteen shows, still gets emotional thinking about the 18-minute version of “Backstreets” she heard on the final night of the March ‘77 residency. That song featured the so-called “Sad Eyes” interlude — an embellishment that longtime fans have parsed through a deep database of unofficial live recordings.
“‘Chills’ doesn’t even begin to describe it,” says Rothman, who was also present at Springsteen’s mythmaking 1974 appearance at the Harvard Square Theatre (and the one before that in the same neighborhood, at Joe’s Place). “The whole Music Hall was dead silent. People were just mesmerized.”
In his 1989 book “Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music,” the Seattle-based music journalist Charles R. Cross declared the final night of the 1977 Music Hall run a “candidate for greatest show ever.” For years, fans have shared recordings of the live tape, known as “Forced to Confess,” from that night.
Cross is also the founder of Backstreets magazine, which covered all things Springsteen from 1980 until its last publisher announced its closing earlier this year. Cross thinks one of the reasons the Music Hall shows have loomed so large for fans can be traced to the lawsuit Springsteen was embroiled in at the time with Mike Appel, his former manager, which kept him from releasing new music. (The man who replaced Appel, Jon Landau, was the writer of the Real Paper review; he remains Springsteen’s manager today.) After releasing three albums in three years, culminating in his 1975 breakthrough, “Born to Run,” Springsteen was stuck; he would have to wait another year before he could release 1978′s “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”
“It was one of the most difficult lawsuits in rock history,” says Cross. “During that time, Bruce had no money. I think what he was doing at that point was reclaiming who he was onstage.
“It was the transition between the romance of the songs on the early albums, evolving into the working-class anthems. On the ‘Lawsuit Tour,’ you got both. There was a magic when he was onstage during that tour. It felt like every single night could be the last.”
Jeffrey Hersh co-promoted all of Springsteen’s shows at the Music Hall between 1975 and ‘78 with his friend Ira Gold, doing business together as Windowpane Productions. They first worked with Springsteen on the Cambridge shows in 1974, when they were collaborating with Bonnie Raitt’s manager, Dick Waterman.
“Bruce remained loyal to us,” Hersh says from his home in Southern California, where he moved around 1980. For years, he was a vice president for Gold Mountain Entertainment, the management company for Nirvana and the Beastie Boys.
Springsteen knew he was in good hands. After the Harvard Square Theatre show, Hersh found a spiral notebook in the dressing room. It contained the singer’s handwritten lyrics to new songs he had yet to record, some of which would end up on “Born to Run.”
Hersh called the talent agency and said, “I’ve got something Bruce may want.”
Rich Stefanik drove up from New Jersey for the third night. He found tickets for sale in a classified ad in the Aquarian, a weekly newspaper in his home state. He still remembers the name of the Boston seller.
“He had four tickets for $100, a big mark-up at the time,” Stefanik says. “I sent cash in the mail.”
A songwriter himself, Stefanik had already seen Springsteen at another legendary show, at the Bottom Line in New York City. As he recalls, none of his buddies who made the trip to Boston had seen Springsteen before.
“You wanted to turn other people on,” he says.
He brought his camera and took some pictures, including one of the band in front of a makeshift backdrop covered in graffiti with the names of characters from Springsteen’s lyrics and members of the Miami Horns, the horn section that was touring for the first time with the E Street Band.
On “Mona,” the Bo Diddley song that inspired Springsteen’s homage, “She’s the One,” the singer promised to take the crowd “back to the beginning of the universe, when the sun collided with a ‘63 Impala.” That led into an uptempo version of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”; later, the band played the epics “Jungleland” and “Rosalita.”
“I don’t think there was ever a tour where you got more of a blitzkrieg out of Bruce,” says Cross, the music writer.
“Are you alive?,” Springsteen demanded of the audience, six times in a row, during the final Music Hall show that March. Each time he asked, the response grew louder.
During the encore, as the band leaned into Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” he took a moment to thank his Boston fans for their role in boosting his career.
“Through the hard times and through the good times, we appreciate your support,” he said.
After the show, Mike Grenier walked outside and claimed the first pay phone he could find. He called his friends in Wellesley and said, “Sorry to wake you up, but this was spectacular!”
“I thanked them profusely,” he says.
Over the years Grenier, a longtime sports reporter for the Salem News, met plenty of fellow Springsteen devotees who were in awe when he told them he’d been there at the last Music Hall date in 1977.
“When they found out you went, they’d go, ‘Whoa, that was a special show,’” he says. “‘You certainly caught Bruce at the right time.’ ”
By James Sullivan via The Boston Globe. |
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