1981-07-02 Brendan Byrne Arena, East Rutherford, NJ

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

Info & Setlist | Venue

Tour debuts of "Jersey Girl" and "I Don't Want To Go Home", the first ever performances in the U.S. of "Johnny Bye-Bye", "Follow That Dream", and "Rockin' All Over The World". This show marks the last time that "Born To Run" opens the set. Roy plays "Once Upon A Time In The West" as a prelude to "Badlands". "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" includes a snippet of "Sweet Soul Music". "Detroit Medley" includes "I Hear A Train", "Shake", and "Sweet Soul Music". The day before the show, workers are still finishing the arena. This show was the first of any event at Meadowlands; Bruce opened the arena this night. A lengthy 2 1/2 hour soundcheck was performed during the afternoon. This show made the local TV news mainly due to the crass case of ticket scalping surrounding Bruce's entire Meadowlands stand.

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Darkness on the Edge of Town”
“Hello, New Jersey (crowd cheers)…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Independence Day”
“Thanks…I haven’t seen nothing like this (chuckles)(crowd cheers) here’s, yeah, we’re gonna play a long time tonight so you guys ought to sit down (crowd cheers) this is, uh, this is “Independence Day” and (crowd cheers) and I need…I need a little, I need a little bit of quiet for this song, thank you…(music starts)…I remember when I was a kid that, uh…the only thing I could remember when I was a teenager was I always…I always felt ashamed of myself when I was young, for some reason…and I could never figure out why…and…as I got older and I moved away from my folks…I used to try and think back about what was….what was wrong with the way I was feeling back then and why it seemed I was always, I could never connect with my old man and…and…I guess part of the reason was because when I was…when I was 16 or 17, he wasn’t, he wasn’t much older than I am right now…and…I wouldn’t give him the room to have…to have the same…hopes and dreams that I had when I was growing up, I thought because he was my father or because he was older that…that he…there was a point where you give up those things…and…all I remember was him sitting in the kitchen all the time, coming home after work, just sitting there and he sat there for 18 years and I never once asked him what he was thinking about…and…later on I…about two years ago…I was down in California and he came out and visited, visited down with me…and we talked about a lot of things that we should’ve talked about when…when I needed to hear ‘em and he needed to hear ‘em…and it took us, took us 30 years just to be able to tell each other that we loved each other (crowd cheers) so if you’ve got parents at home, you ought to go home and ask ‘em what they’re thinking about, you know, they might surprise you… ”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Johnny Bye Bye”
“Back in…back in 1977, I guess it was, we went…we were playing down in Memphis, Tennessee…and it was late at night…and we drove past Graceland (crowd cheers) and…the rest…I’m gonna save (chuckles)…but I went down to Philadelphia and I saw (crowd cheers) I saw Elvis, it was one, I believe it was the last tour that he ever did…and, I went and I remember I felt, I felt disappointed because he didn’t play the old songs like…like I remembered ‘em… and he sang…two songs he sang best all night was…was a song called “American Trilogy” and a song called “How Great Thou Art” …and it wasn’t long after that that he died…and I used to think back and try and understand what happened to him, why…why he ended up like he did…and how easy it is to…to get…to get everything and to lose…lose that thing inside you that keeps you, that keeps you alive, you know…anyway, this is for Elvis ‘cause he, he deserved better than he got (crowd cheers)…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “This Land Is Your Land”
“This…this is a song…by Woody Guthrie and…I need a little, I need a little quiet for this song, thank you…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, after “Thunder Road”
“(?) listen, we’re gonna take just a short break, then we’re gonna be back and we’re gonna do another whole set for you (crowd cheers) so I’ll see you in a little while, ok? (crowd cheers)…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Wreck on the Highway”
“This is, this is called “Wreck on the Highway” (crowd cheers) I need a little quiet for this song…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Rosalita”
“And then…
(…) We have with us tonight…on our stage…a galaxy of celebrities …beginning at the far left of the stage, on that thing that we like to call “a piano,” let’s hear it for Professor Roy Bittan (crowd cheers) play it, Roy (Roy plays) this man to my left…the poet of the soul, master of rock and roll, a man who brought you such great hits as “I Don’t Wanna Go Home,” “Sweeter than Honey,” “This Time It’s for Real,” “Some Things Just Don’t Change,” “Daddy’s Come Home,” on the guitar, Mr. Miami Steve Van Zandt (crowd cheers) and now to my immediate left, (?) can I say he’s a man who’s a great humanitarian, a great veterinarian, can I say a close personal friend of mine? no! I can’t say he’s any of those things but just let me say Mr. Garry W. Tallent on the bass guitar (crowd cheers) and now we’ve got a little special occasion here, the man behind me is playing his first night in the E Street Band as a married man (crowd cheers) he’s married now, girls…gotta read ‘em and weep!…let’s hear it for Mighty Max Weinberg (crowd cheers) oh yeah (?) and now to the far right, a man from the same town that brought you that great “Flemington Furs”-commercial you see on TV in the wintertime, Mr. Dan Federici from Flemington (crowd cheers) and now (crowd cheers) last but not least…what can I say?…the man (?) we like to call him…he’s known to his friends as the greatest living human being…but you guys can just call him the king of the world…master of the universe….emperor of all things…faster than a speeding bullet…more powerful than a roaring locomotive…able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…is it a bird? (crowd: “No”) is it a plane? (crowd: “No”) I’ve got to say it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s… Spotlight on the Big Man!…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Jersey Girl”
“Uh, we just came back from a big trip, we were all around Europe, in England and all those places…and…it’s really something over there, it’s, it’s different than New Jersey (chuckles)(crowd cheers) and…the people were great and I’d like, what I’d like to…I just wanna say you guys, you guys made, uh, made tonight for us, thank you (crowd cheers) you were great, nobody better so (chuckles) (crowd cheers) anyway, this is something special that we learned for you, this is a Tom Waits song and it’s on his “Heartattack and Vine” album..and uh, this is for all the Jersey girls (?)…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “I Don’t Wanna Go Home”
“Come on, Steve…we’re gonna do a song that Steve wrote now… he’s gonna sing it with me…”

02.07.81 East Rutherford, NJ, middle of “Detroit Medley”
“Wait a minute…wait a minute…wait a minute…wait a minute…wait a minute…wait a minute…Big Man, I feel…the moves coming up (crowd cheers) I may be…I’m about to come down with a bad case of the moves (crowd cheers)…Big Man…I got a gas crisis…I got a gas, I mean I’m running out of gas…I mean I got a gas crisis…I’ve been doing this all night…you can’t do this all night (crowd cheers) I gotta go home, put on the TV, get ‘em little Pop Tarts in the toaster, sit back and (?) put on Johnny Carson…got a gas crisis…we don’t need the gas?…did somebody steal the car?…we need the car…we need the car because…because…because…I see a train…”

Compiled by Johanna Pirttijärvi

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SPRINGSTEEN INAUGURATES NEW JERSEY ARENA

Bruce Springsteen's Thursday night show at the Byrne Arena in New Jersey's Meadowlands sports complex marked the new facility's debut as a site for rock performances. It is one of the first large arenas in the nation to have been designed with rock shows as well as sports events in mind, and it seems to work well for music.

The seats are comfortable, the acoustics did not seem to pose any notable problems, and the arena is easy to get to from Manhattan. It will undoubtedly prosper as an attractive alternative to the chancy acoustics and high production costs involved in putting on rock shows at Madison Square Garden.

Mr. Springsteen's performance, the first of six he is giving at the arena, hit a careening pace at the very beginning with ''Born to Run'' and sustained it through two long sets. Last winter at Madison Square Garden, Mr. Springsteen had not organized his material as effectively. His ballads, which tend to play on tonic-to-subdominate chord changes and to sound very much alike, were bunched together, especially in his opening set.

Mr. Springsteen seems to want every ballad he writes to provide an emotionally draining rock-and-roll catharsis, and the best of them do. But as every accomplished dramatist knows, catharsis depends on contrast. Mr. Springsteen also writes melodically appealing upbeat material that tends to be much lighter in tone. To this listener, his faster numbers are his real strength, and they provide the contrast that allows his ballads to communicate effectively.

The playing of Mr. Springsteen's E Street Band was as tight and focused as the writer has ever heard it, and several songs that had once been somewhat ponderous set pieces sounded leaner, and much the better for it. Overly elaborate arrangements have marred Mr. Springsteen's albums, turning some potentially powerful songs into bloated rock operettas, but on his most recent record, ''The River,'' he seemed to be making a determined effort to cut away the excess, and this process is continuing in his stage show.

Occasionally, the show still drags. On Thursday, ''The Promised Land'' dissipated much of its momentum in a concluding sing-along chorus that sounded uncomfortably like an oompah band, and the personal soliloquy Mr. Springsteen uses to introduce ''Independence Day'' has begun to seem a little perfunctory and might profitably be discarded.

In general, Mr. Springsteen is less than convincing when he seems to be buying the image admiring critics and fans have created for him, the image of the rock messiah whose songs are eternal verities carved in stone. No rock artist can afford to take himself that seriously and, in any case, Mr. Springsteen's writing is too uneven and too musically limited to bear up under the sort of scrutiny that is routinely lavished on holy writ.

He was born to run from one end of a stage to the other, playing inspiring, supercharged rock-and-roll; when he is doing that, he easily lives up to his notices.

^{By Robert Palmer via The New York Times.}

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SPRINGSTEEN INAUGURATES NEW JERSEY ARENA