1985-04-03 Melbourne Showgrounds, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Scheduled: 19:00 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

First of two shows in Melbourne. Set includes the final "Johnny Bye-Bye" to date and the final performance of "I'm A Rocker" until 2002.

Intro to "Atlantic City"
´´I grew up, uh….I was in my teens….around this old, kind of run-down resort town….. and….I guess back in the 50´s and the 40's they used to do a lot of business down there….. up and down the whole coast, they got hit by pretty hard times….and, uh, about 70 miles south….they legalized gambling….and, uh, now they got big, golden mansions…. and gold casinos ´bout a block in from the slums….and they have mafia fighting for control….and this is ´Atlantic City´….”

Intro to "The River"
´´(?) this next song, I can remember my dad….used to always come right home from work….he had a brown bag….a six-pack in it, he´d sit down at the kitchen table…and he wouldn´t move for the rest of the night….matter of fact he didn´t move for the rest of the 18 years I lived in the house (chuckles)….he´d come home from a job….and my mother´d give him his dinner….he´d sit down there and….he´d just sit there all night, I don´t know what he was thinking….but uh….he wouldn´t like to have any of the lights on at night, he´d get mad if you turned the light on (?)….and then in the livingroom the only light on was the television….I remember my mother´d sit there…..she´d have on one of those blue bathrobes and blue slippers with the big flowers on the toes….and those pink curlers, the kind that the women used to always wear….I´d come in late at night, she´d be there in front of the television sleeping away…but my dad used to be real slick, he used to….he´d lock up the frontdoor so that we used to have to come in through the kitchen and he could tell what time me and my sister was coming in….and if you were gonna come in too late, sometimes you were better off waiting till the next morning….so I used to have this sleeping bag I used to stash out on the edge of these woods about three or four blocks from my house….if it got too late at night, I´d go down there, I´d pull it out and sometimes if it was warm, I´d sleep outside there, I´d sleep in some friend of mine´s car….or on somebody´s porch….and uh, later when I got older and I went back….it seemed like sometimes those places (?) out by the woods, seemed like more of a place that was my own than my own house was when I was growing up….and this is a song ´cause everybody, uh, everybody needs some place they can go when they can´t go home….”

Intro to "Johnny Bye Bye"
´´It was around 1976, me and the band were on the Born To Run tour and uh….many, many, many years ago….we were down in Memphis, Tennesee….and we´d just played at this little auditorium and we´d never been in Memphis before….and uh, me and my guitar player Steve were sitting around in a hotel room….we decided we wanted to go out and find some place to eat…so I called up a taxi cab, it was about, I guess, 3 or 4 o´clock in the morning, the taxi cab came to the hotel….and we asked if he knew some place where we could get a sandwich….he said ´Yeah, there´s a place right out by Elvis Presley´s house´…we said ´You know where Elvis lives ?´, he says ´Yeah, yeah, it´s just, you know, two miles´, so we said ´Well, take us there right now´…so the guy drove us out to Elvis´….and I remember I got out of the taxi cab (?) and I stood in front of those, those two gates that he had with the guitar players on the front….and you could see through, you could see up the driveway into the house and I could see that on the second floor of the house, there was one light on….so I figured that must be Elvis up reading….I said ´Steve, Steve, I gotta go see if he´s home´, so the taxi cab driver says ´No, man, don´t jump over that wall, they got dogs over there gonna tear you up and that´ll be the end of your career´ (chuckles)….so I jumped up over the wall and I got down on the other side and I started running up the driveway….and I´m kind of running up thinking ´What am I gonna say if Elvis comes to the door ?´….so I get to the frontdoor and I´m just about to knock….these guards come out of the woods and they say, you know, ´Can we help you ?´ (chuckles)….´Is Elvis home ?´ (chuckles)…. and they say ´No, no, he´s not home now, he´s, he´s in Lake Tahoe´, you know…. ´Well, you see, I play guitar too, I got a band, I´ve made some records´, I told ´em I was on the cover of Time and Newsweek and they said ´Sure you were, yeah, great, great´, you know (chuckles)…I don´t think they believed me….it was alright, they were pretty nice about it, they took me by the arm and put me back out into the street (chuckles)….oh, I don´t know what I would´ve said if I….if he´d come to the door….if somebody comes to my door at 3.30, I usually like to beat ´em with a stick or something (chuckles)…but uh (chuckles)…but uh….I remember a friend of mine called me up just about a year later and told me that Elvis had died….it was hard to understand how somebody…who seemed so alive and had come along and taken away so many people´s loneliness should´ve ended up so lonely…and it wasn´t, wasn´t right, he should´ve lived…this is uh….this is a song called ´Bye Bye Johnny, Johnny Bye Bye´…”

Intro to "My Hometown"
´´This is a song, I guess, about trying to find (?) with the place that you grew up…most people, I think they have a kind of a love-hate-relationship with the place they were born…either it´s not big enough or it´s too big or there´s not enough going on in there or there´s too much going on…..I grew up in this (?) small town about an hour and a half out of New York….but uh….even though we were always close to the city, for some reason going to New York, for most people in our town, was unimaginable, you know, ´Are you gonna go to New York ? Wow !´ (chuckles) ´What´re you gonna do there ? It´s dangerous up there !´….I remember I got to be about 16, I started taking the bus up to the city every weekend that I could….I remember thinking that if I ever got out….was able to leave that I believed I´d never, I´d never miss it, never look back…. and when I started to be able to get out on the road with the band, for a long time I never did miss it….then some years passed and I started to come home, I´d get in my car and I´d drive back through town at night….past all, like, the houses that I grew up in, down the old streets…started to go back and try to see what my friends were doing, what their lives were like now….and uh….I guess I realised when I was a kid, one of the things I was worried about was I was afraid of belonging to anything….´cause if you belong to something and you admit that you belong to something, it means that you got some responsobility to that place, whether it´s your city or your country or even the world that you live in….and uh….before the tour I went down to Washington ….and I visited the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and that´s such a, they´re, they´re, they´re only about a 100 yards from each other but it´s such a long walk and there´s so much distance….between those two places….that´s a sad trip ….and uh, I guess we all bear the shame….and the responsobility….and the glory of the places that we live….so here´s wishing the best to you and to your hometown….”

Intro to "Pink Cadillac"
´´This is a song about temptation….about the conflict between worldly things and spiritual health….between desires of the flesh….sexual desire….and spiritual ecstasy ….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 originnally believed to have been located in Mesopotamia….but the latest theological studies have found out, and you´re gonna read about this in the newspapers any day, that its actual location was ten miles south of Tamborine Highway….that´s why they call it the Garden State !….but now understand, in the Garden of Eden there was none of the accoutrements of modern living….you didn´t have a little bed that you could go home and crawl up into at night ….no, you couldn´t go home and turn on your TV…you couldn´t go out on to the highway and buy a cheeseburger if you wanted one….they didn´t have those, uh, those, uh, (?) sandwiches….no, Sir, no !….in the Garden of Eden there was no sin….there was no sex….man lived in a state of innocence….now, when it comes to no sex, I prefer the state of guilt that I live in….we got into town a little early yesterday and so I decided I´d drive on out to that location and see if I could find the answer to some of these mysteries….why flesh pulls me in one way and my soul pulls me another….so we drove on out there….and we 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, fold-out bed in your backseat, eight-track tapedeck , TV and a phone so you can speak to your baby when you’re driving all alone’…I said ‘I’ll take two’…then I said ´But Dan, that´s not the reason why I came….I wanna know the answer to this temptation…I wanna know why your body pulls me in one way and your soul pulls you another all the time´….he said ´Well, son, that´s easy because on these ten beautifully commercially-zoned acres was the sweetest little paradise that man had ever seen, now, in the Garden of Eden there were many wonderous things : 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….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 soft to the touch….and when Adam touched her, it was the first time that a man had ever touched a woman…and then they walked out into the green fields….and then they lay down….and when Adam….let´s just say it was the first time….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 sweet love into a betrayal and sent them running down into the darkness below….but that´s alright ´cause right here tonight on this backlot for 99.95 and no money down and don´t worry if you´ve got bad credit, it´s good here….I´ve got their getaway car and if you´ve got the nerve to ride….I´ve got the keys….to the first….pink….Cadillac….”

Intro to "Racing in the Street"
´´It was right around this time of year, it was towards the end of summer….and the weather was like, in the days it´d still be, it´d still get pretty warm but at night it really cooled off…and I can remember (?) , I´d put on a couple of t-shirts and a sweatshirt and my leather jacket and I had this Camaro that I´d bought for 500 dollars…it was a 1969…and uh, it was a convertible, the top went down but it wouldn´t go back up, its only problem (chuckles) and I used to get out in that thing in the middle of the night…. just drive back through our town….to the backroads, down on the beach…and uh, used to be this strip down off the river where on weekends a whole bunch of us used to get together, I guess it was kind of like a junkyard where people from town would come down and dump off the things they didn´t want no more, leave ´em out there to rust out in the rain…but there was this little clearing where on Fridays and Saturdays we´d sit around and just talk and stuff and that was the first place that I met her….and uh, we first started going out and when we did, I guess it was like it always is when you first start going out, you know, everything is great all the time, you know, it´s fun, you´re laughing at each other´s stupid jokes and stuff, you know, and uh….(?) real good for quite a while….then the time or something, I don´t know what it is that pulls people apart, makes ´em change but she got to where she didn´t wanna talk so much any more, didn´t wanna go out at night….and uh, she got to where she started hiding my keys so I couldn´t take the car out and uh…I couldn´t understand it, I was trying to figure out…I knew that we were real good friends….and uh….and I knew that once she understood that….when I took the car out….and when I won….that it was the only time I got to feeling like something was happening to me….and it didn´t matter if other people thought it was stupid or whatever they thought about it….I used to feel like something….and to have just one thing in your whole life….that makes you feel proud of yourself….I don´t think that´s too much for anybody to ask, not even (?)….”

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

Steve	This is the best concert I have ever been to, by a mile and I have just seen Bruce for the fourth time tonight at Hanging Rock.
John	I agree with Steve it was the best concert when the band hit the first note on born in the USA it sent a shiver thru me, went to both gigs at Melbourne Show Grounds and saw 2 nights at Boston's North Bank Centre in 2007 with my wife it, was Danny Federici's last last shows. Took my 4 kids a wife to last gig at Hanging Rock, the guy is amazing but 1985 was special for me cheers.
AussieJohn	This was my first ever Bruce show and very special as it was at the old Melbourne show grounds. We camped over nigh in one of the big sheds before they let us sprint to the stage area around 2pm. The best memories.

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