1978-07-07 Roxy Theatre (The), West Hollywood, CA

Scheduled: 21:00 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

Broadcast on KMET-FM radio. Remarkable setlist includes the premieres of "Point Blank", "Rave On" and "Heartbreak Hotel". Another live debut "Independence Day" is performed solo on piano for only time on the tour. "Point Blank" features different lyrics to later versions and is played slightly differently. Also includes the first known tour performances of both "Twist And Shout" and "Raise Your Hand". "Night" is dropped for the first confirmed time on the tour. This show is widely seen as one of the great Springsteen shows of all time.

This show was also one of the main source concerts for the official Live/1975-85 box set, which includes no less than eight recordings from this show - "Spirit In The Night", "Paradise By The "C"", "Adam Raised A Cain", "Growin' Up" (with a few cuts in the middle-part "lawyer" story), "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City", a heavily edited "Backstreets" with the "Sad Eyes" sequence removed and part of the third verse switched with a different performance, "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" and "Raise Your Hand", as well as the spoken introduction to "Fire". Another performance recorded that night, "For You", was later released as a B-side/bonus track on 7"/12" vinyl worldwide, and on CD on the Japan only Live Collection EP. In addition, a short live excerpt from this show (Bruce’s speech given after "Badlands" about a photo recently taken of him) was officially - and exclusively - released on a promotion-only 7" flexidisc issued to subscribers of Austrian pop magazine Rennbahn Express in June 1981. "Spirit In The Night" and "Backstreets" are available on the PBS Exclusive EP limitedly released in 2005.

Official concert recording available for purchase in multiple formats, including CD and high definition audio, from Springsteen's official live download site at live.brucespringsteen.net.

Running Time: 3:06:17

^{Note: Also part of the 'Darkness on The Edge Of Town Tour 1978 8-Show CD Box Set', available on February 1, 2021 via Nugs.}

Originally broadcast on KMET FM Radio.

The broadcast and some recordings of "Point Blank" and "Thunder Road" have been edited where the original broadcast suffered from interference. Prior to the release of the Official Live Download, this show only circulated as recordings from the radio broadcast unlike the other radio broadcasts from this tour for which pre-FM sources circulate. Recordings circulate on many unofficial LPs and on CDs 'Roxy Night' ^{(Crystal Cat)} and 'Hands Towards The Sky' ^(Lobster) and 'Roll Your Tapes' ^(Growin'), CDRs 'No Private Party. ^(Ev2) and most recently 'Out There In Radioland' ^(JEMS), a transfer from a first generation 7-1/2 IPS (inches per second) reel. Released to retail in the UK in February 2015 ^(RoxVox), and in May 2015 ^{(Leftfield Media)}.

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Rave On´
´´Hello…hey, gimme some lights up here….how you doing?….alright, first, I´d like to say a few things first, first I´d like to say, I want to thank youse for coming down, I´d like to thank L.A. for treating us the way they have, it´s been fantastic the last few days in town….and uh….I know there was a lot of people that waited a long time on line outside….and there was a lot of ´em that didn't get in for one reason or another and I wanna apologise to ´em and say that I´m very sorry, if I could I would've liked to invite the whole town but….so I´d just like to, the folks that didn't get in or had a hard time out on the street, I´d like to say I´m sorry, it was my fault and, uh, I wasn't trying to turn this into no private party ´cause I don´t play no parties anymore….except my own….so gimme a little slapback on this microphone, one, we´re gonna do some rock´n´roll for you….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Spirit In The Night´
"Hey! Hey! Alright…seen my picture in the papers yesterday, I was on the front page…that was a funny picture, I looked like I was catching flies, y'know…I had my mouth wide-open, like, i don't know, heyyyy, I always take those kind of shots..anyway! (drum shot, piano tinkles)…now wait a minute!..see when I do this, let me do it again…when I do that, this is what's supposed to happen…"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Darkness on the Edge of Town´
"Hey, all you guys. Sit down, you're making me nervous…find your seat or something…I'm gonna fix this…you gotta sit down because we're gonna be, we're gonna be up here so…be easier on your feet…this is a song, this is er, this is called Darkness on the Edge of Town"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Candy's Room´
(shouts from the crowd) Thanks…you guys keep asking for that…huh?..alright alright alright, we'll play that one…we haven't played this one too much, now that one we don't ever play [in response to calls for 'Kitty's Back']…alright play, er, Candy's Room, Candy's Room"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´For You´
(shouts from the crowd) "We'll get to that one (laughs), alright, ladies and gentleman, princess cards she sends me…"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Point Blank´
"This next song is a new song…no, it's newer than that…this is er, this is a song I wrote I guess it er, didn't make it, didn't make it on Darkness…I wrote it right after I finished that album…and er, this is a song about, it's called Point Blank, it's a song about being trapped, two friends of mine working two jobs a day, her husband is working two jobs a day and er, they're trying to take her house away and, it's a song about being trapped and not being able to get out…two, three…"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´The Promised Land´
"Thank you….gimme a break with that!..then get out the collection baskets (laughs)…one…I got, I got nothing coming out of this thing up here Bobby…ah one two…one two…nah need more than that…one two…that's that's getting there…alright…we drove through Utah, me and Steve and a couple of friends of ours…and er, this is a song called The Promised Land" [after the song] "take a chance".

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Racing in the Street´
´´This is a song….It's funny 'cause like I go out…I go out with my girlfriends,ya' know, I take 'em out in my car. And we drive around and anytime the car breaks down, they say 'Well hey, ya' know,' (chuckles)…wait I'm buzzing…they say 'You're the guy, you write the songs about the cars all the time, you fix the car!' And me like, when I go under the hood, it's like..like…Alice lost in wonderland (crowd cheers)…Hey uh, where's this go? Where's, ya' know, it's like…I don't know anything about that stuff, but I think I understand the spiritual and religious significance of the 396, so… (crowd cheers). So I write these songs, anyway and it's like, this is for everybody driving around, listening to this in their car… This is Racing In The Street…´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Thunder Road´
´´I was riding….I was riding through the Arizona desert….we, uh, we bought this 900-dollar old ´65….Galaxy and we were driving around for a few days down towards Reno and we found this one spot and this Indian, he´d, uh, he´d built a house, I guess, it´s pretty, it´s pretty, like, well-known, he built the house just from the stuff that he´d scavenged from the desert and built this big sculpture out of it, it´s by the side of the highway and, uh, we took off down this dirt road towards the house and I remember it was at….it´s right at the beginning he had this sign and it said, uh…..it said in this blood-red paint, said ´This is the land of peace, love, justice and no mercy´….and the sign said, uh, it pointed down this dirt road that said ´Thunder Road´….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, following ´Thunder Road´
Bruce: "Thank you…we're gonna, we're gonna take…we're gonna take a fifteen minute break and we'll be right back…be back in fifteen minutes.

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Paradise by the C´
"You guys got the hot seats, got the front seats now?….alright….all I wanna know is are you out there ? (cheers) all them bootleggers out there in radio-land, roll your tapes!…."

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Fire´
´´Alright, this is for all the girls here, this is called ´Fire´….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Adam Raised A Cain´
"lemme changed my guitar…alright…this is one for the boys….here's 'Adam Raised a Cain'…

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Mona - She´s the One´
´´This is for the girls too….riding home there's this place called Crematory Hill…it's supposed to be a old Indian burial ground…and at night if you drive out there past the graves, you can hear the howling (?)…Miami…I'm telling you I saw somebody walking out there the other night…and I think…I said I think…it was my baby…(sings)…last night I saw my baby walking, way down, by the old graveyard…she was walking through the mist…she's looking for a kiss…and I called out her name…I said heyyy Mona…"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Growin´ Up´
´´This is for….a fellow sent me a note backstage…..said he´s here with his son who´s six years old…..are you here anyplace?….the cat that sent the note?….is that you?….it was a fine note….and this was his son´s first rock show or something, rock concert?….I forgot his name (chuckles) it was Jason or something and, uh, this is for him and this is for everybody else that´s still growing up….there I was…..gotta get my buttons straight….there, I got it….there I was one night….just a normal guy….and then….there I was….the next night….goddamn, I was still just a normal guy (?)….
(….) I think….I ain't sure…..but I think….my mother and father and my sister, they´re here again tonight….hey, are you guys out there?….they´re over there?….for six years they've been following me around California, trying to get me to come back home….hey Ma, give it up, huh….give me a break!….they still chuckles) (someone in the crowd: ´Where are they ?´) I don´t know, they´re over there somewhere but (someone in the crowd: ´Get them to take a bow´) you know, they´re still trying to get me to go back to college….every time I come into the house, you know, ´It´s not too late, you can still go back to college´, they tell me….I say ´Alright, alright, Ma´….but it´s funny ´cause…..when I was….growing up…. there were two things that were unpopular in my house…..one was me….and the other one was my guitar (chuckles) and my father, he used to sit in the kitchen, and we had this grate, like, the heat´s supposed to come through, except it wasn´t hooked up to any, any, like, heating ducts, it was just open, straight down to the kitchen and there was a gas-stove right underneath it….and when I used to start playing, he used to turn on the gas-jets and try to smoke me out of my room…..I´d end up out on, out on the roof or something….. and he used to always refer to this guitar, you know, never ´Fender guitar´, ´Gibson guitar´, it was always the ´Goddamn guitar´….every…he stuck his head in my door, that´s all I´d hear ´Turn down that goddamn guitar´….he used to try to get me to be a lawyer and it was funny ´cause I was in a motorcycle accident when I was 17 and, like, this cat just, you know, ran head on into me and then got out and yelled at me for ruining his Cadillac ….and we had, like, a suit, a legal suit and my father took me down to this lawyer in town, his name was Billy Boyle and he later became mayor, which, and anyway, I went down there and he looked at me and he said ´Oh man, I gotta defend this?´, I looked about, just about exactly the same way I look right now and, uh (chuckles) and like I remember we were going to court, right, the day of the suit, like, I got, I´m like in a wreck, I just got hit, my leg´s messed up, and I remember my lawyer telling me ´If I was the judge, I´d find you guilty´, you know….I don´t know for what, for being, just for being there, I guess, you know (chuckles)(?) but anyway….my father´d always say ´You know, you should be a lawyer, you know, you get, get a little something for yourself´, you know, and my mother ….you know, she used to say ´No, no, no, no, he should be, he should be an author, he should write books, you know, you should, that´s a good life, you can get a little something for yourself´, but like what they didn't understand was, was that I wanted everything….(a woman yells: ´You got it´) and….so, you guys, one of you guys wanted a lawyer and the other one wanted an author, well, tonight youse are both just gonna have to settle for rock´n´roll….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, middle of ´Backstreets´
´´I remember you….baby, I remember you….standing on the corner….of Richmond Avenue….and I remember I´d….I remember back then I´d…..I´d drive all night….I swore I´d drive all night…..just to buy you some shoes….and to taste, and to taste your tender charms….to have you hold me in your arms….to have you hold me in your arms….and for just one look…..for just one look….from your sad eyes….you had such pretty sad eyes, you had such pretty….sad eyes…I remember they….cried all night, they cried all night, we let ´em cry till they´re all cried out, they cry all night…baby, they´d cry all night….and I held you….and only me and you knew….that, baby, only me and you knew….the way they could lie….the way they could lie….they could tell such pretty lies….they could tell such pretty lies….and now you´re back….and now you´re back…..well, little girl, I´m back too ….and I've been out and I've seen some things….yeah, I've been out, I´ve been seeing some things….I've been out and I've seen some things….and baby, I've learned a thing or two about me and you….and all I wanna know is why….all I wanna know´s why….all I wanna know´s why….why…baby, I wanna know why….baby, just….I want you….I want you….to look into my face…..just look…..into my face….just look….into my face….look into my face….look into my face….look into my face….and tell me why….I wanna know why….you lie….you lie….you lie…and we´ll go….hiding on the backstreets….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Heartbreak Hotel´
(tuning his guitar) "I can do this…I can do this, it's alright…this happens to me every once in a while…it's the pressure of performance that makes this difficult…I gotta get this baby in tune, alright…the roadies will tune my guitar, we got something for you in the meanwhile, gimme some echo, gimme some slapback on this thing…one…one…well…"

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Rosalita´
"Rosie, you gonna step outside, inside where ever you may be, Rosie, come out tonight!"
(during the song) "On the piano, Professor Roy Bittan….on the guitar, Miami Steve Van Zandt….on the bass guitar, Mr. Garry W.Tallent….on the drums, the Mighty One, Mighty Max….on the organ, now you see him, now you don´t, Phantom Dan Federici….and last but not least…. do I have to say his name ?….do I have to speak his name ?….do I have to say his name ? ….in this corner….king of the world….master of the universe….weighing in at 260 pounds ….the Big Man, Clarence Clemons…."

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Independence Day´
´´This song I wrote, uh….there was a group of songs I wrote, I wrote ´Darkness on the Edge of Town´ and a song called ´The Promise´ which is not (?) recorded, I wrote this song a long time ago and uh….(?) my father, he was always, I tease him a whole lot but he was always telling me that, that ´You should do, uh, you should be better than me whatever you do´ and…..and, uh, this is for him….this is called ´Independence Day´….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Raise Your Hand´
"I got one last thing to say…one last thing…Miami Steve if you please…"
(during the song) "I see some people that ain't up back there !….you think this is a free ride ? (crowd: ´No´) do you think this is a free ride ? (crowd: ´No´) you wanna play, you've got to pay (chuckles) now I wanna see you get up (chuckles) and out there I want you to walk over to your radio, turn the mother up as loud as she´ll go, open up the windows, wake up your neighbors ´cause if there´s something you need….if there´s something you want…..you´ve gotta raise your hand….´´

07.07.78 Los Angeles, CA, intro to ´Twist and Shout´
´´(the band returns to the stage 15 minutes after ´Raise Your Hand´ ended) One, two, we ain't got no monitors, we ain't got nothing but…..(laughs)….´´

Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi & Brucebase
Thanks to Joe McCaffrey for the addition on "Racing in the Street"

^{© 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.}

Bruce Springsteen Raises Cain

I wanna go out tonight I wanna find out what I got –Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands”

Los Angeles, Tuesday, July 4th

One of Bruce Springsteen's most popular early songs is called "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)." That he is spending this Independence Day on the shores of the wrong ocean is an irony that escapes no one, including himself. L.A. is not terra incognita, but Springsteen does not yet reign here as he does back east, and perhaps the time is auspicious to change that. Although he has been up all night mixing tapes recorded at his last concert (Saturday night, in Berkeley), he is at the pool soaking up the sun by eleven a.m.

If God had invented a hotel for rock bands, it probably would look like the Sunset Marquis, where Springsteen and the E Street Band are staying. Nestled on a steep side street just below Sunset Strip, the Marquis is a combination summer camp and commune. Its rooms are laid out around the swimming pool and guests on the first floor use the pool terrace as a sort of patio. In the daytime, the poolside is jammed, and at night, it's easy to tell who's home by the lights inside, behind curtained glass doors. Springsteen, the band, their crew and entourage occupy thirty rooms, including all those around the pool.

At noon, producer/manager Jon Landau, Bruce and I disappear into Springsteen's room to play the Berkeley concert mixes. There are two mixes of an eight-minute rendition of "Prove It All Night" that shatters the LP version, and one mix of an unnamed, shorter instrumental, often called "Paradise by the Sea," which opens the second half of his concerts. Even on a small cassette player, it's clear that something considerable is going on.

For years people have been begging Springsteen to make a live album, and "Prove It All Night" shows why. The song is considered the lightest item on Darkness on the Edge of Town, his new album, but onstage it becomes what pianist Roy Bittan, for one, thinks is the most exciting song of the show, featuring a lengthy guitar and keyboard improvisation that sounds like an unholy alliance between the Yardbirds and Bob Dylan. When the introduction gives way to the melody of the song, "Prove It" is transformed from something potentially light and dismissible into an emotional crucible. Hearing it, you may wonder if "Prove It All Night" is a hit single, but you know it's a great song.

"Paradise by the Sea" is its alter ego. Only Springsteen, touring behind a new album, would have come up with this to open the second half of the show: a five-minute instrumental featuring Clarence Clemons' sax and Danny Federici's organ, which simultaneously evokes Duane Eddy and Booker T. and the MGs.

Clemons walks into the room with an unbelievably joyous look on his face, and when the tape ends, he takes Bruce by the arm and shouts, "Everybody into the pool!" The next sound is a series of splashes, and in a few moments they reappear, bathing suits dripping, and listen again, then repeat the performance. Soon, the tiny hotel bedroom is crowded with half a dozen people dripping wet and exuberant.

At 6:30 p.m., Bruce is at KMET-FM to do an on-the-air interview with disc jockey Mary Turner. There are a couple of bottles of champagne, which may be a mistake; Bruce gets loose pretty easily. And in fact, he is a little sloshed as the interview begins, but Turner plays it perfectly, fishing for stories. She gets at least one winner.

"When my folks moved out to California," Bruce begins in response to a question about whether he really knows "a pretty little place in Southern California/Down San Diego way" as he claims in "Rosalita," "my mom decided — see my father and I would fight all the time — and she decided that we should go to Tijuana [he laughs his hoarse laugh, reserved for the truly absurd]. So we got in the car and drove down there, arguing all the way. First I drove and he yelled at me, and then he drove and I yelled at him.

"Anyway, we finally go there, and of course, my old man is the softest-hearted guy in the world. Within fifteen minutes, some guy has sold him some watch that must've run for all of an hour and a half before it stopped. And then some guy comes up and says, 'Hey would you guys like to have your picture taken on a zebra?'

"Well, we looked at each other — who could believe this, right? Zebras are in Africa. And so we said, 'Well if you've got a zebra, we definitely want to have our picture taken.' So we give him ten bucks and he takes us around this corner, and he's got … he's got a damn donkey with stripes painted on its side. And he pulls out these two hats — one says Pancho, one says Cisco — I swear — and he sits us on the donkey and takes our picture. My mother's still got that picture. But that is all I knew about Southern California at the time I wrote 'Rosalita.'"

This is the easiest I have ever heard Bruce speak of his father. "Adam Raised a Cain," from the new album, may have exorcised a lot of ghosts. In some of the stories Bruce has told onstage about their relationship, however, his father seems like a demon, which of course, he is not.

In fact, Douglas Springsteen has lived a very rough working-class life. For a great deal of Bruce's childhood, his family (he has two sisters, both younger) shared a house with his grandparents while his father worked at an assortment of jobs — in a factory, as a gardener, as a prison guard — never making as much as $10,000 a year. Later he moved the family from New Jersey to northern California, where he is now a bus driver. Bruce says that the tales of their conflicts are true ("I don't make 'em up"), but that they're meant to be "universal." He is not exactly enthusiastic about discussing the relationship, although in a couple of the songs that didn't make it onto Darkness, particularly "The Promise" and "Independence Day," he has chronicled his preoccupation with fathers as thoroughly as did John Steinbeck in East of Eden, the film that inspired "Adam."

Bruce is so loose by now that when an ad for Magic Mountain's roller coaster — the largest in the world — comes on, he discusses great roller coasters he has known, and his desire to see this one. "You wanna date?" he asks Turner, in front of who knows how many listeners. She makes the perfect reply: "Only if we sit in the front seat."

After the interview, we head to the car and a beach house in Santa Monica, where there's a promise of food and fireworks. We race straight out Santa Monica Boulevard to the freeway. It's like something out of a Steve McQueen movie (Bullitt). I haven't spent as reckless a moment as this one in years. But Bruce, who isn't driving, is determined to see those fireworks. "C'mon," he says, over and over again. "I don't wanna miss 'em." He's like a little boy, and the car whips along, straight into a traffic jam at the end of the Santa Monica Freeway, where we can see hints of the fireworks — blue, red, gold, green — cascading out over the ocean.

It's a chill night and the party is outside, Band and crew members shiver on the patio, chewing on cold sandwiches (Swiss cheese, ham, turkey, roast beef) and sucking down beer and soda. Bruce quickly decides this won't do. He heads for the gate leading to the beach. "C'mon," he says to one and all. "Let's walk up to the pier. I want a hot dog."

And so we strike out down the beach. The pier is a mile south, far enough so that it's lights are only a glow on the horizon. And covering the beach the entire distance are people shooting off their own fireworks, Roman candles and skyrockets. We haven't gone a hundred yards before the scene has become a combat zone. I suggest a strategic retreat to the highway. Bruce gives me a look. "C'mon, what's the worst that can happen? A rocket upside the head?" He giggles with joy and keeps trudging on through the sand.

The rockets are exploding directly over our heads now, and once in a while, closer than that. A rocket upside the head is not unimaginable. Bruce strikes out closer to the water, where the sand is more firmly packed and the walking is easier. Down here there are other sorts of activity: lovers in sleeping bags and drinkers sitting in sand pits, nursing themselves against the chill with liquor. The rockets, fewer now, drift out into the water to die with a hiss or a fizzle, and Bruce Springsteen moves through it all, just another cloud in a hurricane, a natural force or maybe just another kid.

Two hot dogs with relish and an hour of pinball later, we walk back along the highway to the car and zip back to the hotel. Tour manager Jim McHale, David Landau (Warren Zevon's lead guitarist and Jon's brother) and booking agent Barry Bell are talking in Jon's room when Bruce bursts through the poolside curtains. His face is glowing. "We're goin' to make the hit," he shouts, and ducks back out. McHale's jaw drops and he races from the room. "I think they're going to paint the billboard," says David.

The raid isn't completely a surprise. Sunday night, driving up the Strip on the way to see The Buddy Holly Story, Bruce had first noticed the billboard looming above a seven-story building just west of the Continental Hyatt House. Billboards are a Hollywood institution — they're put up for every significant album and concert appearance — and this one uses the Darkness cover photo, poorly cropped, to promote both the new record and the group's Forum appearance tomorrow night. As we passed this enormous monument, which rears up forty feet above the building, Bruce had groaned and slumped in his seat. "That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life," he said.

The billboard is only a few blocks up the street. According to all accounts, Springsteen, Clemons, bass guitarist Garry Tallent and several crew members approached with some stealth the office building on which the billboard is perched. Much to their surprise, the building was wide open, and the elevator quickly took them to the roof. There, McHale, perhaps figuring that cleverness is better than a bust, quickly organized them. There were twenty cans of black spray paint, quickly distributed, and Bruce, Garry and Clarence quickly took positions on the paperhangers' ledge. Bell was positioned across the street to watch for cops. At a signal from McHale, the painting began: PROVE IT ALL NIGHT spread across the billboard from edge to edge, the middle words nearly lost in the dark photo of Bruce. Then Bruce stood on Clemons' shoulders and painted another legend above NIGHT: E STREET, it said. As they were clambering down, a signal came — the cops. Some headed back for the elevator, but Bruce, Clarence and McHale left Cagney-style, down the outside fire escape. It was a false alarm anyway.

In the hotel lobby at a quarter to three, Bruce is exhilarated. "You shoulda been there," he says, running over the event like a successful general fresh from battle. Was he worried about getting caught? "Naw," he says. "I figured if they caught us, that was great, and if we got away with it, that was even better." He looks down at himself, hands black with paint, boots ruinously dusty from the beach, and laughs. "There it is," he says. "Physical evidence … The only thing is, I wanted to get to my face and paint on a mustache. Bu tit was just too damn high." He terms the paint job, "an artistic improvement."

Wednesday, July 5th

Last night, as we were getting into the car after the KMET interview, Bruce began to talk about the reviews Darkness on the Edge of Town has been getting. It is a subject on which he qualifies as something of an expert: more has been written about him — and about what has been written on him — than any other rock performer of recent years, with the possible exception of Mick Jagger. The miracle is, I guess, that the scars barely show — instead Springsteen looks at the press with avid interest.

"It's a weird thing about those reviews," Bruce says. "You can find any conceivable opinion in them: one guy says the record's exactly like Born to Run and it's great, the next one says it's not like Born to Run and it's great, the next one says, it's not like Born to Run and it's awful." This amuses him. The nearly unanimous opinion that the album is grim and depressing doesn't.

It's the title, I suggest. "I know, I know," he says impatiently. "But I put in the first few seconds of 'Badlands,' the first song on the album, those lines about 'I believe in the love and the hope and the faith.' It's there on all four corners of the album" By which he means the first and last songs on each side: "Badlands" and "Racing in the Street," "The Promised Land" and the title song. He is clearly distressed: he meant Darkness to be "relentless," not grim.

Later, I ask him why the album lacks the humor that buoys his shows. "In the show, it's a compilation of all the recorded stuff," he says in the halting way he uses when he's taking something seriously. "If you go back to The Wild and Innocent, 'Rosalita' is there, and all that stuff. But when I was making this particular album, I just had a specific thing in mind. And one of the important things was that it had to be just a relentless … just a barrage of the particular thing.

"I got an album's worth of pop songs, like 'Rendezvous' and early English-style stuff. I got an album's worth right now, and I'm gonna get it out somehow. I wanna do an album that's got ten or eleven things like that on it. But I didn't feel it was the right time to do that, and I didn't want to sacrifice any of the intensity of the album by throwing in 'Rendezvous,' even though I knew it was popular from the show."

The other criticism that is easily made of Darkness concerns the repetition of certain images: cars, street life, abandonment by or of women, family and friends. Those who like this call it style; those who don't say Springsteen is drilling a dry hole. But perhaps Springsteen's greatest and most repeated image is the lie.

"It's hard to explain without getting too heavy. What it is, it's the characters' commitment. In the face of all the betrayals, in the face of all the imperfections that surround you in whatever kind of life you lead, it's the characters' refusal to let go of their own humanity, to let go of their own belief in the other side. It's a certain loss of innocence — more so than in the other albums."

I drove out to the Forum this afternoon with Obie. Obie is twenty-five, and she has been Bruce Springsteen's biggest fan for more than a decade. When he was still just a local star, she waited overnight for tickets to his shows to make certain she'd have perfect seats. She is now secretary to Miami Steve Van Zandt, Springsteen's guitarist and manager/producer of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. This means what while Springsteen is on tour, Obie is the de facto manager of the Asbury Jukes. But she's also something more. She makes some of the jackets and suits Bruce wears onstage. She is also a historian; there are a thousand Asbury Park legends behind her twinkling eyes. More than anything, she is a fan who counts the days between Springsteen shows. Her loyalty is rewarded. Whenever she comes to a show, in any town, the front-row center is reserved for her.

It is partly this that makes Bruce Springsteen so attractive: he is surrounded by real-life characters that form the kind of utopian community most of us lost when we graduated high school; one of the reasons Springsteen is such a singular performer is that he has never lost touch with this decidedly noncosmopolitan gang.

Part of the legend is the E Street Band. "Ya know, you can tell by looking at 'em," Bruce explains to me, "that this isn't a bunch of guys with a whole lot in common. But somehow the music cuts right through all that."

There's a lot to cut. Bassist Garry Tallent is a consummate rockabilly addict who looks the part. He's been known to use Brylcreem. Organist Danny Federici has an angel face that could pass for the kind of tough guy Harvey Keitel plays in Fingers. Pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg are seasoned pros, veterans of recording studios and Broadway pit bands. Miami Steve Van Zandt is a perpetual motion machine, a comic version of Keith Richards' Barbary pirate act, with a slice of small-town-boy-made-good on the side. And Clarence Clemons, last of all, dwells in a land all his own, not quite like the universe the rest of us inhabit, though it is seemingly available to all comers. Clemons transforms any room he enters, as a six-foot plus black man with the bulk of a former football player often can do, but even in his own digs at the Marquis, there's something special happening — his hospitality is perfect, and it is in Clarence's room that the all-night part is most likely to run.

Bruce stands distinctly outside this group. "It's weird," he says, "'cause it's not really a touring band or just a recording band. And it's definitely me, I'm a solo act, y'know." But there is also a sense in which Bruce Springsteen does not mesh in any society, and it has a great deal to do with what makes him so obsessive about his music.

Before he landed a record contract, all of the Asbury Park musicians held day jobs — Garry Tallent worked in a music store, Clemons was a social worker, Van Zandt was in the construction union. The exception, always, was Bruce, who never held any other job, apparently because he could not conceive of doing anything else. At age eight, when he first heard Presley, lightning struck, and when he picked up the guitar at thirteen, another bolt hit him. "When I got the guitar," he told me Wednesday night, "I wasn't getting out of myself. I was already out of myself. I knew myself, and I did not dig me. I was getting into myself."

By fourteen, he was in his first band; by sixteen, he was so good that when he practiced in his manager's garage, neighborhood kids would stand on milk crates at the windows with their noses pressed to the glass, just to hear. The only other things besides music that ever meant much to him, Springsteen says, were surfing and cars. But nothing — even girls — ever got in the way of his obsession with his music; there is a certain awe in the way that people who have known him for many years speak of his single-minded devotion to playing. It's as if he always knew his destiny, and while this hasn't made him cold — he is one of the friendliest people I know — it has given him considerable distance from everyday relationships. One does not ever think of Bruce Springsteen married and settled down, raising a family, having kids; that would be too much monkey business.

What keeps the band so tight is the two-to-three hour sound check before each gig. Today's began at 3:30 p.m. — it's a 7:30 show on the ticket — and didn't end until nearly seven. In part, these are informal band rehearsals, with Bruce working up new material: as we enter the hall at five, he is singing Buddy Holly's "Rave On," a number he has never done live. But there's more to it than that.

On this tour, Springsteen's sound mixer is Bruce Jackson, a tall blond, Australian who worked for Elvis Presley for several years. He is amazed at Springsteen's perfectionism. "At every date," he says, "he goes out and sits in every section of the hall to listen to the sound. And if it isn't right, even in the last row, I hear about it, and we make changes. I mean every date, too — he doesn't let it slip in Davenport, Iowa, or something." Presley, on the other hand, was concerned only with the sound he would hear in the onstage monitors.

("Anybody who works for me," Springsteen says, without a trace of a joke, "the first thing you better know is I'm gonna drive you crazy. Because I don't compromise in certain areas. So if you're gonna be in, you better be ready for that.")

Which perhaps explains the consistently high quality of Springsteen's life performances. I must have seen forty over the years, and no two are alike. Even if the songs are the same, which they hardly ever are, Bruce brings something different to every one. Tonight's is conversational — the loosest I've ever seen, and at the same time, frighteningly intense. He begins immediately after "Badlands," the opening number, by talking about the walk on the beach last night ("It's like a combat zone out there") and makes some self-deprecating remarks about his press attention, which has mushroomed this week: Robert Hilburn had given him a rave advance notice in the Sunday Los Angeles Times, and Ed Kociela had more than matched it with a pair of pieces — interview and Berkeley concert review — in Monday's Herald-Examiner. In a way, Springsteen was taking Los Angeles by storm, as he had taken New York in August 1975 with the release of Born to Run and ten shows at the Bottom Line. There are some who must find such excessive praise threatening or suspicious — though only a fool would think that such enthusiasm could be manufactured — but Bruce diffuses it easily: "See all that fancy stuff in the papers about me? Big deal, huh? I gotta tell you, I only levitate to the upper deck on Wednesdays and Fridays …Wednesdays and Fridays, and I don't do no windows."

Perhaps the most nervy and nerve-racking antic Springsteen has retained in making the transition to hockey arenas is his trademark leap into the audience during the third song, "Spirit in the Night." He looks frail — at an extremely agile five-foot-nine, he is not — and one is always worried that his consummate trust in his fans is going to let him down. But night after night he gets away with it. Somehow. Tonight, the security doesn't get the picture and tries to drag the fans off Bruce as he ascends an aisle deep in the loges. "You guys work here or something?" Springsteen demands. "Get outta here. These guys are my friends." The crowd roars.

His parents have come down from their home near San Francisco for the show, and the evening is sprinkled with allusions to them and his sixteen-year-old sister, Pam. The stories he tells are always among his best moments, but what gets me tonight are the asides and dedications: he tells about the billboard ("We made a few improvements,"), about asking Mary Turner for a date, and when he does "For You," he dedicates the song to Greg Kihn, who recorded the song for Berserkley Records a year ago. And because Gary Busey is here, he tells about seeing The Buddy Holly Story. It's the perfect review.

"It's funny because I could never really picture Buddy Holly moving. To me, he was always just that guy with the bow tie on the album cover. I liked the picture because it made him a lot more real for me."

But the encores are the evening's highlights. First, "The Promise," a quiet ballad that was one of the first things Springsteen wrote for the new album, and which was finally dropped from it. In an earlier version, "The Promise" was taken by many listeners to be a metaphor the lawsuit with former manager Mike Appel that delayed production of the new LP for more than a year. But tonight, with a new verse added in the studio, it's obviously about something more universal: "Now my daddy taught me how to walk quiet/And how to make peace with the past/And I learned real good to tighten up inside/And I don't say nothin' unless I'm asked."

And then, to top it all, he does his two most famous songs, back to back: "Born to Run" and "Because the Night," the latter in a version that shrivels the Patti Smith hit. When the night finally ends, it is with "Quarter to Three," houselights up full and the crowd singing along as spontaneously as I've ever heard 14,5000 people do anything.

Backstage I run into Jackson Browne. "Good show, huh?" I say. He looks at me querulously, like I was just released from the nut house. "Uh unh," Jackson says. "Great show."

At midnight, local FM stations broadcast an announcement that Springsteen will play the Roxy, the 500-seat club and record-company hangout on Sunset Strip, on Friday night, one show only. Lines begin forming almost immediately.

Thursday, July 6th

Walking through the lobby of the Marquis last night, just after two a.m., I ran into Bruce, who asked if I wanted to walk over to Ben Frank's for something to eat. On the way I mentioned that there must be a lot of people in line at the Roxy just up the street. Bruce gave me a look. "I don't like people waiting up all night for me," he said.

Bruce ate another prodigious meal: four eggs, toast, a grilled-cheese sandwich, large glasses of orange juice and milk. And the talk ranged widely: surfing (Bruce had lived with some of the Jersey breed for a while in the late Sixties, and he's a little frustrated with trying to give a glimmer of its complexity to a landlocked ho-dad like me), the new album and its live recording ("I don't think I'll ever go back to the overdub method," he said mentioning that almost all of the LP was done completely live in the studio, and that "Streets of Fire" and "Something in the Night" were first takes). But mostly we talked or rather, Bruce talked and I listened.

Springsteen can be spellbinding, partly because he is so completely ingenuous, partly because of the intensity and sincerity with which he has thought out his role as a rock star. He delivers these ideas with an air of conviction, but not a proselytizing one; some of his ideas are radical enough for Patti Smith or the punks, yet lack their sanctimonious rhetoric.

I asked him why the band plays so long - their shows are rarely less than three hours - and he said: "It's hard to explain. 'Cause every time I read stuff that I say, like in the papers, I always think I come off sounding like some kind of crazed fanatic. When I read it, it sounds like that, but it's the way I am about it. It's like you have to go the whole way because … that's what keeps everything real. It all ties in with the records and the values, the morality of the records. There's a certain morality of the show and it's very strict." Such comments can seem not only fanatical, but also self-serving. The great advantage of the sanctimony and rhetoric that infests the punks is that such flaws humanize them. Lacking such egregious characteristics, Bruce Springsteen seems too good to be true when reduced to cold type. Nice guys finish last, we are told, and here's one at the top. So what's the catch? I just don't know.

At the end of every show, before the first encore, Bruce stands tall at the microphone and makes a little speech. "I want to thank all of you for supporting the band for the past three years," he concludes and then plays "Born to Run." I wondered why.

"That's what it's about," he said. "Everything counts. Every person, every individual in the crowd counts — to me. I see it both way. There is a crowd reaction. But then I also think very, very personally, one to one with the kids. 'Cause you put out the effort and then if it doesn't come through it's a … it's a breakdown. What I always feel is that I don't like to let people that have supported me down. I don't like to let myself down. Whatever the situation, as impossible as it is, I like to try to …I don't wanna try to get by."

And so it was no surprise that, waking up this morning, I found that all hell had broken loose. Only 250 seats for the Roxy show were available for public sale, which meant that a great many of those who had waited up weren't going to get in. And Bruce was not just upset about this; he was angry. It was a betrayal, however well intentioned, and the fact that another 120 tickets would go to fans through radio-station giveaways did not mollify him. People had been fruitlessly inconvenienced by him. It did not matter that at most similar small club gigs, the proportion of public to industry is reversed. This was his show, and it should have been done properly.

Friday, July 7th

Whatever bad blood had erupted from the overnight Roxy fiasco is gone. In its place, one begins to get a sense of Springsteen's impact on L.A. Polaroids snap at the billboard modifications up the Strip, and the band seems prepared for a big night. At six p.m. there's a media first: Springsteen is interviewed on KABC, the first time he has ever been on TV in any way, shape or form. It's a good interview — "It's probably the only thing that I live for. When I was a kid, I didn't know nothin' about nothin' until rock & roll got into my house. To me it was the only thing that was ever true, it was the only thing that never let me down. And no matter who was out there, ten people or 10,000 people, there's a lot to live up to …What happens is, there's a lotta trappings, there'' a lotta things that are there to tempt you, sort of. It's just meaningless. And I just try to …I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on, that keeps me honest."

But even more striking are the filmed performances of "Prove It All Night" and "Rosalita" that accompany the interview. Even on this small screen, Springsteen is a visual natural, mugging like a seven-year-old and leaping like the rocker of someone's dreams; I know why so many film directors, seeing him for the first time, have virtually drooled in anticipation.

After the Forum, the Roxy seems cramped. The broadcast is set for nine, but it's a quarter past by the time the band takes the stage. The place is packed — even the balcony box above Roy Bittan's piano looks like it is holding twice the customers it was intended for. And while there are celebrities here — Cher and Kiss' Gene Simmons, Jackson Browne, Irving Azoff and Glenn Frey, Karla Bonoff, Busey, Tom Waits — it is mostly a crowd of kids and young adults.

The crowd rustles as Bruce steps to the mike, but he holds up his hand. "I want to apologize to everybody," he says, "for what happened with the tickets to this show. It was my fault, and I'm really sorry. I wasn't trying to make this no private party — I don't play no parties anymore. Except my own." I think that Mrs. Springsteen, sitting in the back, must be very proud to have such a son. And he steps to the mike and sings: "Wel-a-well-a little things you say and do …" It's "Rave On" and the joint explodes. Garry Tallent, who loves this music as much as anyone I have ever met, is singing the choruses, his face shining. "I've always wanted to sing Buddy Holly onstage," he tells me later in his quiet way.

But "Rave On" is only the ignition. Having decided to play a special show, Springsteen goes out of his way. He dances on the tabletops, and the crowd leaps to grab him. He adds "Candy's Room," one of the Darkness songs he never performs, and halfway through the first set, he introduces a "new song that I wrote right after I finished Darkness. It's called 'Point Blank,' and it's about being trapped." And he tells a story of a friend of his who has to work two jobs, as does her husband, to make ends meet, and "they're" still trying to take the couple's house away. And when he sings, it's very real, living up to that title: "Point blank, right between the eyes/They got you, point blank/Right between them pretty lies that they tell … . No one survives untouched/No one survives untouched/No one survives."

Near the end of the first set, he tells this story: "Last summer, I went driving out in the desert near Reno — we just flew to Phoenix and rented a car and drove around. And in the desert we cant upon a house that this old Indian had built of stuff scavenged from the desert. And on his house there was a sign: THIS IS THE LAND OF PEACE, LOVE, JUSTICE AND NO MERCY. And at the bottom of the sign, there was an arrow pointing down this old dirt road. And it said: THUNDER ROAD." This gets the biggest hand of the evening.

The second half is, if anything, harder to believe. It begins, after the usual twenty-minute intermission, with Bruce stepping to the mike and saying: "All right all of you bootleggers out there in radioland. Roll them tapes!" And he comes on with a performance that deserves to be preserved: when a guitar has to be sent backstage for repairs, he calls a brief conference, and the band suddenly steps forward and sings, of all things, "Heartbreak Hotel," with Bruce as the very incarnation of his hero. There's an encore performance of "Independence Day," another of those songs that didn't make Darkness, this one the most moving ballad version of "Adam Raised a Cain" story I have ever heard. During "Quarter to Three," three hours into the set, Bruce climbs to the balcony and sings a chorus there before he leaps ten feet down to the piano, by some miracle uninjured. The houselights go up, and the kids are on their feet, chanting — no one is going home. And even with the announcement comes that the band has left the building, no one moves. "Br-u-ce, Br-u-ce" the chant goes on and on, and suddenly the curtain is raised, and there they are (Max Weinberg fresh from the shower). They roll into "Twist and Shout" and finally, nearly four hours after it all began, the show is over.

Los Angeles Times rock critic Robert Hilburn is at a loss for words. "How do I come back and review this show," he says despairingly, "after I just said that the Forum was one of the best events ever in Los Angeles? Who's gonna believe me?" Maybe, I can only suggest, that is everybody else's problem.

Phoenix, Saturday, July 8th

My favorite comment on last night's show came from Max Weinberg on this morning's flight. "You know, I was thinking in the middle of the show that when I was twelve years old, this is exactly what I wanted to be doing."

Later, I ask Springsteen why he had apologized. "It just seemed like the only thing to do," he says. "I couldn't imagine not. There was a little naivete in thinking that the kids are gonna come and when somebody tells them that there's no more tickets, they're gonna go home. They're not. All I know is, it should've been done better."

Still, I suggest, he could have gotten away without an apology. "I couldn't have gotten away with it," he says, throwing me a look. "That's all I try to do — live so I can sleep at night. That's my main concern."

It's going to be a task tonight. It was 109 degrees when we got off the plane and into this oven, and a film crew has shown up to shoot tonight's performance for a TV commercial. They'll be at the sound check, and they'll also have cameras — and additional lights — at the show.

Springsteen seems more open and eager to promote Darkness than any of his other albums. Despite the massive amounts of ink he has attracted, he has never been a particularly accessible interview, and he has never, ever appeared on TV. I wonder why the change.

"I always had a certain kinda thing about all those things - like the TV ad or this ad or that ad. But I realized shortly after this album came out that things had changed a lot since Born to Run. I just stopped taking it as seriously, and I realized that I worked a year - a year of my life - on somethin' and I wasn't aggressively tryin' to get it out there to people. I was super aggressive in my approach toward the record and toward makin' it happen - you know, nonrelenting. And then when it came out, I went, 'Oh, I don't wanna push it.'

"It's just facing up to certain realities. It was ridiculous to cut off your nose to spite your face. What it was, was I was so blown away by what happened last time, I initially thought of doing no ads. Just put it out, literally just put it out."

It is the first time I have ever heard Springsteen refer to a negative effect of the past three years of litigation and layoff. It's strange he's not more bitter, I suggest. "At the time that that went down," he explains," I wasn't mentally prepared. I knew nothin' about it. It was all distressing to me. There were some good times, but what it was, was …the loss of control. See, all the characters [on the LPs] and everything is about the attempt to gain control of your life. And here, all this stuff, whether it had a good effect or a bad effect, I realized the one thing it did have was it had a bad effect on my control of myself. Which is why I initially started playing, and why I play. That's what upset me most about it. It was like somebody bein' in a car with the gas pedal to the floor."

(I have only heard him explain his relationship with former manager Mike Appel better on one occasion: "In a way, Mike was as naive as me," he said then. "'You be the Colonel, and I'll be Elvis.' Except he wasn't the Colonel, and I wasn't Elvis.")

There are of course other reasons for the TV commercial: while Springsteen is enormously popular in certain areas, in others he is all but unknown. This is particularly true of the South. And it is especially difficult for people who live in the Northeast and Southwest, where Springsteen already is a star, to grasp his commercial difficulties elsewhere. Anyone who sells out both the Los Angeles Forum and Madison Square Garden (three nights at the latter) ought to be a national star, but for a variety of reasons, Springsteen is still not there yet. Most of this has to do with his lack of acceptance on AM radio - on that side of the dial, he is a virtually invisible quantity: "Born to Run" made it to Number Seventeen, and "Prove It All Night" will be fortunate to be that high, principally because both emphasize electric guitars, which makes them hard rock, not exactly what AM program directors are currently looking for.

In Phoenix, however, all of this can be forgotten. Phoenix was the first town outside of the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia-Boston region where Springsteen became popular. In the words of Danny Federici, "This is the first place I ever felt like a star." It's hard to believe, driving past these deserted desert streets at 7:30 on a Saturday evening, that the 10,000-seat Veterans Memorial Coliseum is sold out. But when the show is over, I know what Robert Hilburn felt.

It's not that it's just another fantastic show. This is another goddamn event, and it goes farther than the Roxy, with all of that's show's intimacy, innocence and vulnerability, but with an added factor of pandemonium. It's the sweetest-tempered crowd I've ever seen, and at the same time, the most maniacal. Bruce dedicates the show to the town in memory of the time "when this was about the only place I could get a job," and the crowd gives it back. During "Prove It All Night," three extremely young girls in the front row hold up a hand-lettered sign written on a bedsheet. Quoting the song, it says, JUST ONE KISS WILL GET THESE THINGS FOR YOU. And he gets them, during "Rosalita," one after another, as they race up to kiss him, lightly, on the cheek. A fourth darts up, and just…reaches out and touches his hand. And finally, three more race up and bowl him over. ("This little girl, couldn't have been more than fifteen, and she had braces on her teeth," Springsteen exclaims later. "And she had her tongue so far down my throat I nearly choked.")

I've never seen anything like this in such a big hall. Before the encores — which include "Raise Your Hand" and the inevitable "Quarter to Three" — are over, not seven, but seventeen girls have climbed up to hiss him, and there are couples dancing, actually jitterbugging, on the front of the stage. The cameramen are torn between filming Bruce, who is pouring it all out, and simply shooting the crowd, which is pushing him farther and farther.

It's a perfect climax to a week of rock & roll unparalleled in my experience. All I know is, it lives up to the grand story Bruce told in the midst of "Growin' Up." The story has become a virtual set-piece by now, but that night he added a special twist. You should get to hear it too. Maybe it fills in some of the cracks, maybe it explains just why Bruce Springsteen pushes people to the edge of frenzy.

It began with a description of his family, house and home, and his perennial battles with his father. "Finally," he says, "my father said to me, 'Bruce, it's time to get serious with your life. This guitar thing is okay as a hobby, but you need something to fall back on. You should be a lawyer' — which I coulda used later on in my career. He says, 'Lawyers, they run the world.' But I didn't think they did — and I still don't.

"My mother, she's more sensitive. She thinks I should be an author and write books. But I wanted to play guitar. So my mother, she's very Italian, she says, 'This is a big thing, you should go see the priest.' So I went to the rectory and knocked on the door. 'Hi, Father Ray, I'm Mr. Springsteen's son. I got this problem. My father thinks I should be a lawyer, and my mother, she wants me to be an author. But I got this guitar.'

"Father Ray says, 'This is too big a deal for me. You gotta talk to God,' who I didn't know too well at the time. 'Tell him about the lawyer and the author,' he says, 'but don't say nothin' about that guitar.'

"Well, I didn't know how to find God, so I went to Clarence's house. He says, 'No Sweat. He's just outside of town.' So we drive outside of town, way out on this little dark road.

"I said, 'Clarence, are you sure you know where we're goin'?' He said, 'Sure, I just took a guy out there the other day.' So we come to this little house out in the woods. There's music blasting out and a little hole in the door. I say, 'Clarence sent me,' and they let me in. And there's God behind the drums. On the bass drum, it says: G-O-D. So I said, 'God, I got this problem. My father wants me to be a lawyer and my mother wants me to be an author. But they just don't understand — I got this guitar.'

"God says, 'What they don't understand is that there was supposed to be an Eleventh Commandment. Actually, it's Moses' fault. He was so scared after ten, he said this is enough, and went back down the mountain. You shoulda see it — great show, the burning bush, thunder, lightning. You see, what those guys didn't understand was that there was an Eleventh Commandment. And all it said was: LET IT ROCK!'"

^{By Dave Marsh via Rolling Stone, August 24, 1978.}

The Business Of The Unexpected: Roxy ’78

Imagine yourself at the Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 5, 1978. Bruce Springsteen is playing his first headlining arena show in the area, a culmination of his growing popularity. During the intermission between sets, a rumor swirls that a special show is happening on Friday night at the Roxy in West Hollywood and tickets are going on sale tomorrow morning. With a capacity under 500, seeing Bruce and the E Street Band at the tiny club will be the toughest ticket in town. What do you do? Leaving early means missing the rest of the Forum show when the rumor may not be true. But if you stay, do you miss the chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime intimate performance? A true Sophie’s Choice.

Perhaps a few did leave before the encores; others rushed straight from the Forum to the Roxy to join the growing queue because the rumor turned out to be true. A small item in Thursday’s LA Times confirmed tickets were going on sale for Bruce’s “first club appearance in nearly three years.” The faith of those who braved the overnight line was likely rewarded as eyewitness reports suggest as many as 1,000 people were waiting when the Roxy box office opened at noon.

“It was like the Beatles when we announced the Roxy,” says Paul Rappaport, Columbia’s west coast promo guy at the time and organizer of the show on behalf of the label. After it quickly sold out, “hundreds of kids showed up in the KMET lobby and at the CBS Records lobby in Century City looking for tickets,” he adds.

Why KMET? Because the silver lining in the Roxy announcement for those who couldn’t attend was that it would be broadcast live on the radio, the first of five such transmissions on the Darkness tour that helped cement Springsteen’s peerless reputation as a live performer.

Each one - The Roxy, The Agora, Passaic, Atlanta and Winterland - has its merit. They are compelling shows one and all. But the circumstances surrounding the event and the remarkable, risk-taking performance make the Roxy stand apart.

Rappaport recalls a phone conversation with Jon Landau where they discussed how difficult it was to create breakthrough buzz in LA even given a sold-out Forum show. “It is such a big town and there’s a lot going on, so it is hard to get attention,” he told Landau. The manager in turn suggested the idea of a live broadcast on KMET.

The FM rock radio powerhouse had grown more popular than the biggest Top 40 station in the city. “It’s like that scene in Back to the Future where the guy takes two electrical cords, shoves them together and sparks fly,” Rappaport says. “That’s what happens when you marry the greatest thing in rock ‘n’ roll to the greatest amplifier in Los Angeles…. I told Landau it would be amazing.”

The catch was there were only a few of days to pull it off, including buying out the band already booked to play the Roxy that night, getting Ma Bell to lay special high-fidelity phone lines at the venue to send audio to the radio station, as well as procuring a remote-recording truck to handle the mix and — as we’re fortunate enough to hear today — preserve the concert on multi-track tapes.

Springsteen starts the set by acknowledging the ticket challenges, which he owns with humility, a tenor that then gives away to something akin to a coiled snake. “We’re gonna do some rock ‘n’ roll for ya. A WELL, A WELL, A WELL THE LITTLE THINGS THAT YOU SAY AND DO, MAKE ME ALWAYS WANT TO BE WITH YOU HOO HOO.” Inspired by the recently released biopic, Springsteen opens the set with a thrilling surprise, the band’s stupefyingly tight take of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.” With it, the breakneck pace for the Roxy is established, never to be vanquished.

How fast? If your digital playback device had a pitch control, you’d probably check the setting during “Candy’s Room,” jet-fueled by Max Weinberg. Every song in the first set teems with confidence and conviction, none more so than the sequence of “Candy’s Room” into a flawless “For You,” followed by the next of the night’s shockers, “Point Blank.” It’s a bold debut for the future River track, stunningly performed with early lyric and arrangement variants.

The caliber of performances in the first set carries on in the second, which opens in high spirits with more unreleased tunes, the instrumental band spotlight “Paradise By The ‘C’” and “Fire.” While the setlist serves as a showcase for Darkness tracks and the Roxy versions are uniformly brilliant, when people suggest the ‘78 radio broadcasts drove thousands of new converts, it is because they captured both the music and the magic.

As the set moves to “Growin’ Up” and its delightful “goddamn guitar” story, enchantment turns irresistible. “Growin’ Up” flows into a scintillating “Saint In The City” and the E Street Band crushes it. The new mix by Jon Altschiller makes Springsteen and Van Zandt’s guitars sabre sharp.

If somehow that weren’t enough to convince, we get “Backstreets,” in a version many cite as one of the very best. The mid-song “Sad Eyes” passage (edited on Live 1975-85) is intact here, restoring this masterpiece to its full grandeur. From the charm of “Growin’ Up” through the emotional catharsis of “Backstreets,” religious conversion is complete.

“In the middle of the show, I stepped out because I needed fresh air,” Rappaport recalls. “It was one of the greatest scenes I have ever witnessed in rock: A couple hundred kids with their ears pressed to the wall outside the Roxy; all of the Sunset Strip listening to this broadcast, car after car, windows down, people singing along. It blew my mind.”

There would be more mind blowing to come. Bruce opens the encore with yet another new song, premiering “Independence Day” on solo piano, a monumental moment. Neither “Point Blank” nor “Independence Day” would be played again until September, which makes it all the more astounding that Springsteen chose to debut them in the broadcast. In fact, over the course of the night he performs five unreleased originals, two of them for the very first time, plus another four unreleased cover songs, two them also live premieres.

All this knowing full well -as he proclaims at the top of the second set - that bootleggers and thousands of fans listening at home would indeed be rolling their tapes. When the stakes couldn’t be higher, Springsteen went all in.

“One of the things I had to do,” Rappaport explains, “was tell the sales branch that I guarantee there will be a bootleg. But we had to do it….It’s one of the greatest live recordings of all time.”

When asked about the audacity of debuting brand-new songs, Rappaport replies, “Bruce understood the platform he had. I think he wanted to play those songs because he was always trying to do something different. He didn’t want to repeat himself. I have never seen a guy work harder than him, ever. ”

Rappaport then recounts a tale told to him by Columbia’s then head of sales, who had seen Springsteen backstage at a big show debating doing another encore when it seemed like he had already given the people all they could want and then some. When asked why we was even considering one more song, Springsteen replied, “I’m in the business of the unexpected.”

With the Roxy, the unexpected was broadcast all over town, and via tapes and bootlegs, ultimately to fans the world over.

The encore rolls on after the sublime “Independence Day” and Bruce and the band push the show as hard as she will go. “Born to Run,” “Because the Night” (which was already a hit for Patti Smith), Eddie Floyd’s “Raise Your Hand” and finally, after 12 minutes of cheering, “Twist and Shout.”

From the band to the audience in the club, from the kids outside the venue to the listeners all over Southern California listening on KMET, anyone who experienced the Roxy performance would concur with Rappaport’s final assessment: “I witnessed rock ‘n’ roll history.”

^{By Erik Flannigan via Nugs.net.}

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