1981-04-29 Sportpaleis Ahoy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Scheduled: 19:30 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

First ever Springsteen performance of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle", which opens the show to stunning effect. Perhaps more of an adaptation than a cover, with an ethereal arrangement, lyrical variations throughout and even extra verses, presumably penned by Springsteen:

Well now the land's on fire
It's written in blood in the sky
Better load shotguns out of the trunk
The city's burning tonight
Better wake up, look out your window
I see the tide is turning
'Cause out across the cornfield tonight
I see crosses burning
^{(courtesy springsteenlyrics.com)}

Visit our Media tab to hear audio of "Run Through The Jungle". Roy plays the piano intro before "The River". During "Racing In The Street", Bruce unusually reprises the chorus at the end of the outro. European debut of "I'm A Rocker" and the first ever performances in the Netherlands of "Factory", "Fire", and "Racing In The Street". KRO Radio conduct a ten-minute phone interview with Steven Van Zandt for De Noen Show.

29.04.81 Rotterdam, The Netherlands, intro to ´´Independence Day´´
´´Yeah, how you doing tonight? (crowd cheers) anybody here who was here last night? (crowd cheers)….(someone yells a request) we´ll do that later for you, ok?….in the second set….this is, uh, this, it´s gonna be a long show so you guys ought to sit down (?)(chuckles) ….this is called ´Independence Day´….I need a little quiet for this, thank you…..(the music starts)….I grew up in this house where….where people never really talked to each other…. and I remember when I was a kid I always wondered what my old man was so mad about all the time….´cause ever since, ever since I could remember, all he did was get up in the morning and go out back and try and get, he´d buy these 200-dollar cars that he´d have to get started every morning and he´d go to work and he´d come home and at night he´d just sit in the kitchen with the lights out, smoking a cigarette, drinking some beer, waiting for, waiting for I, I don´t know what, I guess waiting for it all to go away or something….but it seemed whenever we used to talk, like when I was, like, 16 or 17, when I was just starting to become a man, we´d have nothing good to say to each other and…..and it wasn´t until about three years ago, I was at my aunt´s house and she gave me this picture of my father and my mother in 1946 and I could hardly recognise him because he was standing there in this suit and he looked, he looked like John Garfield, he was looking at the camera like he was gonna eat the photographer and, you know, and he looked so young and he looked so, he looked so strong and, and that wasn´t the same, that wasn´t the same….man that I grew up with….and I guess if, if you don´t find out things, if you don´t find something that keeps you alive eventually it all gets eaten out of you, your insides just get teared up and you got nothing left ….and it was funny ´cause when I was a kid I couldn´t find it no place but, but I found it, I found it on the radio….and later I used to wish that I´d been able to go downstairs where he was sitting in the kitchen and say, and say like ´Hey, Dad, like, listen to this, you know, listen to this song by the Drifters or listen to this song´ because, because I found it in that music, I found….I found, it just seemed like a reason…..a reason and a promise, a promise of life….and it was the one, that was the one thing that he missed, he never had, he never had that promise of life, he lost it, when he was young, he came back from the war, he got married and went to work in a factory and it killed him his whole life and to him all that music used to just sound like noise, it never sounded like nothing, you know, and…..I just wish he could´ve heard in it what I heard in it a little bit….´´

29.04.81 Rotterdam, The Netherlands, intro to ´´This Land Is Your Land´´
´´Back in, uh, in 19, I guess it was 77, we played in Memphis, Tennesee….and it was late at night and me and Steve, we got in this cab and the taxi driver was gonna take us down to Elvis´ house, Graceland….and I was standing outside and the gates were locked and we were looking through and there was like, there was like one light on and I said ´Steve, I gotta go see if he´s home´ and I, and the taxi driver said ´No, don´t, they got big dogs there, they´re gonna eat you up, don´t jump over the wall´ (chuckles) I jumped over the wall and I ran up the driveway and I got, I got right to the door and this guard came out of the woods and said ´What do you want?´ I said ´Is Elvis home?´ (chuckles) and he said ´No, no, he´s in Lake Tahoe´ and so I told him that I got a band and we just played in town and he said ´Ok, you gotta go, you gotta leave´ so we (chuckles) he brought me down to end of the gate and we got out and it was later….it wasn´t too long after that that….that he died and….and the songs, when I seen him the last time, I seen him in Philadelphia and he looked old and he looked tired and the songs, the songs he sang the best, like he didn´t, I remember going hoping that he was gonna do all the old rockers but the songs he sang the best was this song called ´American Trilogy,´ which was a song about his country, and there was another song called ´How Great Thou Art,´ which was about, about the God that he believed in and….this song, this song is written by Woody Guthrie and it´s a song about living free and….it´s a song about not having to, not having to die, not having to be 55 or 50 and not being able to find a job or having to die poor in some factory and about not having to die in some big million-dollar mansion with a whole lot of, whole lot of nothing running through your veins because he deserved a lot better than that….´´

29.04.81 Rotterdam, The Netherlands, intro to ´´Wreck on the Highway´´
´´I´d like to, I´d like to ask you a favor: if there´s anybody, I couldn´t tell, I´ve heard a couple of noises during the night, if there´s anybody that has any firecrackers, please don´t set them off in the hall here, alright?….you´re gonna hurt yourself or you´re gonna hurt somebody who´s sitting around you so if you have firecrackers, please keep ´em in your pockets and save ´em for, uh, whatever you save ´em for (chuckles)….Fourth of July….thank you…..this is, uh, this is from ´The River,´ this is called ´Wreck on the Highway,´ I need….I need a little quiet for this, thank you very much….´´

29.04.81 Rotterdam, The Netherlands, middle of ´´Rosalita´´
´´We got with us….to the far left of the stage….on the piano, Professor Roy Bittan….play it, Roy (Roy plays)….on the guitar, Miami Steve Van Zandt….on the bass, Garry W.Tallent…. on the drums, the Mighty Max Weinberg….on the organ, Phantom Dan Federici…..and last but not least….I´m talking about the king of the world…..I´m talking about the master of everything ….I´m talking about the emperor of all you can know….I ain´t talking about a bird….I ain´t talking about a plane….I don´t care who you bring down here, baby, ain´t none of them suckers can stand to the power and the glory of the Big Man Clarence Clemons on the saxophone….and bigger than life and twice as (?) - me….´´

Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi

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Rotterdam Ahoy

The two songs that Bruce chose to open the two Rotterdam 'River' shows, April 28 and 29 1981, were both special songs and carefully selected. The first show opened with ‘Follow that Dream’, Springsteen’s rearrangement of a song written by Fred Wise and Ben Weisman and made famous by Elvis Presley. The second show opened with a rearranged and haunted version of CCR’s ‘Run Through The Jungle’, a debut. In an in-depth interview that took place right after the show backstage at the Ahoy, Bruce told Dutch journalist Constant Meijers:

“The first night we played a set that we had already done a couple of times before. Those songs fit well together. The second night we did a new set. Although maybe not everything fitted well together, there were moments in there that went above the first night. That's why I did it. And I wanted to do something different because I realised that the second night there were many people that came the first night. I think I liked the second night better than the first. I had a better feeling about it. I don’t know exactly why. We did too many things differently.
The opener of the first night, ‘Follow That Dream’, provides the framework of what follows. We have only recently been playing that song; I think we played it like three or four times. The set is structured in such a way that the ideas correspond with the structure of the albums. The second night I went for something different. We started with ‘Run Through The Jungle’, which is essentially the opposite of ‘Follow That Dream’.

(…) At the end of an opener like 'Follow That Dream’ I experience something strange; I get the feeling I am immediately in people’s heads. That's the reason I start the show with that song. It is actually too slow to start a show with. But it’s precisely because of that, that you put people in doubt for a moment. I think of that as if you take a deep breath before you make a big jump. The same effect has ‘Run Through The Jungle’ because this song has the same atmosphere and intimacy as ‘Follow That Dream’. At the start of a show people don't expect intimacy, they expect on going like ‘vrroeeemm’… They want to get excited, get up as one, jump to their feet. But if you start the show very slowly, you get people immediately closer, to you. That works very well. We've never done that in the States, that's why I like these shows better.”

Springsteen reworked CCR’s version of ‘Run Through The Jungle’ into a haunted new version, to which he added verses that reference gruesome acts of the Ku Klux Klan:
"Me and Robert Williams / Out on Route Line 3 / Last night they dragged him out of his house / And shot him in the street
Now the land’s on fire / It’s written in blood in the sky / Men load shotguns out of the truck / The city’s burning tonight
Mary wake up, look outside your window / I see the tide is turning / ‘Cause out across the cornfield tonight / I see crosses burning"

Bruce also addresses the Ku Klux Klan in the interview with Meijers:
“In ‘Follow that Dream’ it says, ‘Every man has the right to live. The right to a chance, to give what he has to give.’ That is the opportunity every living create deserves. But what on the other hand do we see? Disappointed personalities, devastated people who never quite find themselves complete. They lock themselves up in their houses, full of resentment, or they join the national-socialists or the Ku Klux Klan because they're looking for an identity, a belief. There you will find the John Hinckleys. People who look for it outside of themselves instead of within. They are not aware of that, because that possibility was never presented to them in a way they could understand it.”

Bruce had addressed the topic of alienation in society also during the first show, during his introduction to ‘This Land is Your Land':
“This is a song that was written by Woody Guthrie. Back in the States - I guess it´s the same now everywhere - where unemployment is so bad that it seems that when times get tough, there is always that resurgence of people with common interests, that seem to turn against each other. In the States you always see more about the Ku Klux Klan, the national socialists. This song was written as a dream I guess, that the land that you live in and the land that I live in was put there for us and that it doesn´t belong to any one group of people, one race or one color or religion. It’s hard to sing it when it’s so far away from being true. When it seems so far out of people´s reach. But it’s a dream.”

Bruce even added a topical verse to Guthrie’s song, in which he referenced the riots in Brixton, UK, just two weeks earlier:
"From California to the streets of New York / From Harlem County to Liberty City / From the streets of Brixton the people are wondering / If this land was made for you and me"
It is here in these introductions on the European tour and in these interviews that Springsteen’s growing social awareness becomes clearly evident. In the interview with Meijers, but also in a second interview with Jan Donkers, that took place even later that same evening at Ahoy, Bruce talks about seeing The Grapes of Wrath and the dance scene at the end of the movie, which 15 years later was the inspiration of ‘Across the Border’ from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

^{By Jos Westenberg via Be True.}

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