1984-12-13 Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, TN

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

Info & Setlist | Venue

"Out In The Street" is missing from the tape, but the opening bars can clearly be heard following "Johnny Bye-Bye" (which includes the "Mystery Train" outro) before the tape cuts to "Glory Days". It is stated in the book Blinded by the Light that the set included a version of "Memphis, Tennessee" but it is not in evidence on the known tapes. It's likely that the Chuck Berry song was included in "Detroit Medley" (which did include "Travelin' Band"), as it was the following night in the same venue. "Twist And Shout" or "Do You Love Me" followed by "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" most likely closed the set.

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Darlington County”
“Ready for a little trip? (crowd cheers)…on down to Darlington County…
(…) They got him for drunk driving…resisting arrest…failure to give a good account of himself…and impersonating a human being…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Atlantic City”
“We are gambling in New Jersey (chuckles)(?)…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Johnny 99”
“We’re gonna be playing a long time tonight, you guys can sit down for a while if you want (?)…this is a song about dropping out the bottom with nowhere to run…or to hide…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Reason to Believe”
“This is a song about, uh…people who want to believe in something so bad that…that they believe in anything that’ll come along…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Nebraska”
“Here’s a song about, uh, isolation…seems like with all the technology that’s supposed to bring people closer together, people feel farther apart all the time and, uh…I guess they feel distanced from their family, from their friends, from the government, from their jobs…those are the things that keep you going…and when they go, then you get (?)…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Johnny Bye Bye”
“Thank you…this is, uh…I guess there’s all kinds of isolation whether you’re at the top or on the bottom…I remember that I was …I was living on this farm when a friend of mine called me and told me that Elvis had died…and it was hard to understand how somebody who took away so many people’s loneliness could’ve ended up feeling so lonely…I remember when I first heard Elvis, it was like hearing, you know, a voice, a voice out of the wilderness telling you that you’re not alone out there…but a dream, a dream that comes true is a dangerous thing…but he deserved better than he got, this is called “Bye Bye Johnny”…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Glory Days”
The intro is missing from the source tape.

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “The Promised Land”
“Alright, you gotta keep looking for that Promised Land…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “My Hometown”
“Thank you…this is, uh…a song I wrote…I guess three or four years ago…I was living away from…from home, I was living out on the West coast for a few months…and, uh…I got to thinking about the place I’d grown up, what I felt about it…and for a long time I remember…I always kind of had this love-hate relationship with the place I was brought up, raised and born – mostly, you know, I say it was mostly hate, I guess, it seemed like a real narrow-minded town, you know, the kind of place where it wasn’t, wasn’t that easy to just walk down the street…and, uh…so I started going to New York all the time…I used to go up to East Village (chuckles) you could do whatever you wanted up there (chuckles) nobody bothered you (chuckles)…but, uh, as I got older, I started going back to the town I was born in and see my old friends, see what had become of the place…and I guess one of the reasons why I felt so estranged from the place was I was afraid, afraid of belonging to something when I was a little younger…’cause if you say you belong somewhere, that means you got some responsibility to that place… if you stand up and say “Well, well, I’m an American” or “I’m a Tennesseean” (crowd cheers) that means you got, you got some responsibility to America and this state and this city…and tonight when you go out into the lobby, you’re gonna see some folks from the Memphis Foodbank and what a foodbank does is every year in America twenty percent of the food that gets produced just gets wasted and thrown away and a foodbank tries to get hold of that food, get it to the agencies that need it to get it to the people that need it and that’s, uh…that’s like old folks who just ain’t getting enough social security to see them through the month…like undernourished kids, people who have been hit hard by unemployment and hard times, there’s a lot of people out there that could use a helping hand and, uh…I guess I always thought like the American spirit was supposed to be a generous spirit (crowd cheers) so tonight, tonight they’ll be out there and they can use a little support, whether it’s giving them a buck or something or whether you got some time and you can volunteer in a warehouse where they need some people to work in or you have some equipment, they need trucks…they’re out there trying to make Memphis just a fairer and more decent place to live (crowd cheers) and in the end…in the end it’s up to you because this is your hometown…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, beginning of “Thunder Road”
“[After the sing-along] You need practice (chuckles)…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, towards the end of “Dancing in the Dark”
“Sometimes I feel…I get feeling so lonely…and I feel so downhearted…that’s when I need a little help…and I just wanna reach out…to somebody…somewhere…and say…”Hey, Baby”…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, after “Hungry Heart”
“If you’re hungry inside, shout it out (crowd cheers)…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Cadillac Ranch”
“Now, this is a tragic tale…about a man and his Cadillac (crowd cheers)…I’m a roadrunner, Baby!…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Pink Cadillac”
“Alright now…take it easy there…well, now, this is a song about the conflict…between worldly things and spiritual health…between desires of the flesh (crowd cheers) and spiritual ecstasy…now, where did this conflict begin?…well, it began in the beginning in a place called the Garden of Eden…now, the Garden of Eden was originally believed to have been located in Mesopotamia…but the latest theological studies have found out that its actual location was ten miles south of Jersey City, off the New Jersey Turnpike (crowd cheers) now that’s why they call it the Garden State (crowd cheers) but now understand, in the Garden of Eden, there were none of the accoutrements of modern living…you didn’t have no little bed you could crawl up in and put your head on a little pillow at night, you couldn’t go home and put those Pop-Tarts in the toaster and watch Johnny Carson…you couldn’t out on to the highway and buy a cheeseburger if you wanted one!…no Sir!…in the Garden of Eden there was no sin…there was no sex (crowd boos) man lived in a state of innocence…well, now, when it comes to no sex, I prefer the state of guilt that I constantly live in (crowd cheers) but before the beginning of the tour I decided to make a spiritual journey to the location of the Garden of Eden to find out the answer to these mysteries…so I hitchhiked out there and I found out that that spot is now occupied by Happy Dan’s Celebrity Used Car Lot…I walked in, the man said to me “Son, you need a yellow convertible, a four-door DeVille with a Continental spare, wide chrome wheels, air-conditioning, automatic heat, a full fold-out bed in your backseat, eight-track tape deck, TV and a phone so you can speak to your loved one when you’re driving all alone” (crowd cheers) I said “I’ll take two”…but then I said “But Dan, that’s really not the reason I came, you see, I’ve come to find out the answer to…to temptation …why my body pulls me one way and my soul pulls me the other …is there any end to this conflict?”…and he said “Well, Son, that’s easy because right here on these ten beautifully commercially-zoned acres was the sweetest little paradise that man had ever seen…in the Garden of Eden there was a Tree of Life, there was a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there was a man, Adam, there was a woman, Eve, and she looked so fine…and when Adam kissed her, it was the first time that a man had ever kissed a woman…and she had legs that were long and pale and when Adam touched her, it was the first time that a man had ever touched a woman…and then they lay down in the green fields…and when Adam…well, let’s just say it was the first time (crowd cheers) but there was something else in the Garden of Eden on that day, old Satan came slithering up on his belly and somehow he turned their love into a betrayal and sent them running down into the darkness below…but that’s alright because right here tonight on this back lot for ninety-nine ninety-five and no money down and don’t worry if you’ve got bad credit, it’s good here…I have their getaway car…and if you’ve got the nerve to ride…I’ve got the keys to the first…pink…Cadillac (crowd cheers)…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Racing in the Street”
“Yeah, I remember when we first met it was…it was the end of the summer down on this little strip off the river…and we started going out and you know how it is when you’re first going out with somebody, you’re laughing all the time, everything you do is fun… but then later on it seemed like the things, the things that made her happy once just didn’t make her happy any more…and I was spending most of my time trying to figure out some way, some way to make her happy again…she started to not wanna go out and she didn’t talk too much…then she got to where she’d hide my keys so that I couldn’t go out at night…and it got hard to make her understand that when I took the car out and when I won, that it was the only time…the only time I got to feeling good about myself …and to have just one thing, one thing that you do in your whole life that makes you feel proud of yourself…I don’t think that’s too much for anybody to ask – is it?…
(…) Well, that was the night…that was the night that we left…we still don’t know where we’re going yet but I guess that’ll come in time…but sometimes it seems like, like time’s just running so short on you…like it’s gonna run out on you…and there’s not much you can do but keep going and keep searching…and keep going…keep going…keep on going…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, intro to “Born to Run”
“(?) I wanna thank everybody for coming down to the show tonight here in Memphis (crowd cheers) I’d like to also thank you for your …for your support of the Memphis Foodbank…a lot of the power of rock’n’roll came from friendship and a sense of community…that …we just…we ain’t alone out there (chuckles) so…in the end… nobody wins unless everybody wins…”

13.12.84 Memphis, TN, middle of “Detroit Medley”
“Ladies and gentlemen…in the traveling band we got…Professor Roy Bittan on the piano (crowd cheers) Miss Patti Scialfa on the vocals (crowd cheers) on the bass guitar, Mr. Garry W. Tallent (crowd cheers) on the drums, the Mighty Max Weinberg (crowd cheers) on the organ, Dan “Phantom” Federici (crowd cheers) on the guitar, Mr. Nils Lofgren (crowd cheers) and last but not least…the greatest human being who ever lived…the Big Man, Clarence Clemons on the saxophone (crowd cheers)…hold on now, let me check my schedule …over to California…Phoenix, Arizona…Denver, Colorado… Birmingham, Alabama…Dallas, Texas…Baton Rouge, Louisiana… (the rest of the source tape missing)… ”

Compiled by Johanna Pirttijärvi

Brucebase Wiki

Site Navigation