1985-08-05 RFK Stadium, Washington, DC

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

Info & Setlist | Venue

Second and last (until Kilkenny, Ireland in July 2013) performance of outtake "Man At The Top" with the same lyrics as July 12, 1984, with the exception of the line "movie stars and astronauts" that replaces the "one thing in common they all got" (second verse, line three from Tracks version). First ever performance in the U.S. of "Seeds". "Twist And Shout" includes "La Bamba" as well as "Do You Love Me". First time "Sherry Darling" closes the show - this will be repeated for the majority of the final U.S. leg.

Intro to "Seeds"
”Now….on our last tour of States, we were….traveling thru Texas….past thru Houston….was a lotta folks down there that’d come down from up north…..looking for a job in the refineries or in the oil fields….when they got down there, the price of oil dropped….they were laying off their refineries….people were coming (?)…tents pitched out on the side of the highways, sleeping in ‘em….sleeping in their cars….and people telling ‘em ‘Just move along’….this is a song called ‘Seeds’…..”

Intro to "Atlantic City"
”Here’s a song about blood money….”

Intro to "Man at the Top"
”Well, this is, uh….here comes a car hop…ain't ever gonna stop…in a ???…Yeah, just thinking about what I'm gonna do (chuckles)…this is a song that, I guess, uh….fits both in Atlantic City or Washington…..this is called ‘Man at the Top’…..little bit acoustic ???…”

Intro to "Glory Days"
”Man….I gotta rest a minute….I’m getting old now, man, oh yeah…..I’m getting old…. Tom Seaver , he’s older than me, though….he got his 300th victory yesterday (cheers)….yeah….Tom
Seaver, he´s uh…he’s not quite as old as the Big Man (cheers)…..but the Big Man , he maintains his youthful beauty all the time (cheers)…. you know….yeah…oh….me, I’m 35…Roy, he’s 36….he’s finished….I’m 35, I got, I can still live a little bit….you know….I gotta slow down now ‘cause like….I’m married and everything , I can’t stay out late no more (cheers)….can’t be kissing all the girls all the time anymore……no (chuckles)…..anyway….this is for anybody, if you got your kids with you out there tonight….or if you’re married….or if you’re oh-oh ……if you’re old as me (chuckles)…..this song’s for you tonight…..ready, boys ? …..ready, people ? (cheers)….”

Intro to "The Promised Land"
”Yeah….it’s nice to….nice to be back home (cheers)….we’ve come back all over the world since we’ve seen you last…..this is for Kate, Johnny, your little girl…..”

Intro to "My Hometown"
”This is uh…..thank you…..this is uh….when I was about…..I guess 15….I was 15 years old and there was these two brothers in town….one was a singer and one was a guitar player….and I guess they had the first…..really adventurous band……in my home-town…..and one was named Ray and one was named Walter…..I remember Walter was….the first guy I ever seen tuck his pants inside his boots (chuckles)….. that was revolutionary at the time (chuckles)(cheers)….you know….he was a real good, real good singer….and uh….he got drafted….and…..went to Vietnam, I guess it was in ‘66…. and he….I remember when his mother got….got the word that he was missing in action……and Walter was the kinda guy, he didn’t have…..he didn’t have the kinda talents that got you….that kept you from getting killed in 1965 and 66, he just had a good voice….he wasn’t in college and….but uh….I guess this next song is….a song I wrote…..and after….a quite a while after I wrote it, I guess, I realised that what it was about was responsobility….and a lot of you young guys out there and girls too….that the next time there’s a…..little war whether it’s in Central America….. wherever it might be, you’re gonna be the ones that…..that they’re gonna wanna go….and you need a lot more information that you get on…..on six o’clock news….to know what to do (cheers)….I guess whether….whether we like it or not, it’s our money that gets spent either for making bombs or gets spent for feeding people….. you know, gets spent for waging little covert wars….or for educating people…..and we all get sucked into it one way or another……there’s no way around it……and uh…..I guess a couple of years ago I read a….history book……History of the United States…..I remember…. when I was in school, I always hated history……but I read this book and I learned….I felt like I learned a lot about where we were coming from ….. where we are today and where we’re going….. and where we’re going is pretty scary…..uh…..so I guess all you really gotta do is….take a walk from that Lincoln Memorial on to the Vietnam Veterans’Memorial (cheers)….you know….you read…..read the names of the dead…..and you get an idea what the stakes…..you’re playing for in 1985….when you were born in the U.S.A (cheers)….so this is your hometown but you gotta make, uh….you gotta put your stake in for it, you gotta make a claim for it (cheers)…..gotta find out what’s going on around you (cheers)…..”

Intro to "I’m on Fire"
”I always remember….coming in at night…..and my dad’d sit at the kitchen table….and I always think how life was so hard for him…..he’d sit there every night thinking about everything that….we was never gonna have…..(?)….and how he’d get mad at us (?)…… he’d get you thinking like that too……I’d lay up in bed staring at the ceiling….feeling like if something didn´t happen……if something didn’t happen that someday I was gonna….someday I was just….you know like I’d just …..felt like I was gonna just…..”

Intro to "Can’t Help Falling in Love"
”(?)…..I know some of you guys waited for a real long time, I want you to know we appreciate it (cheers)…..and….I’d just like to take a second …..and say that tonight in the audience we have…..representatives from ….three different foodbanks….and uh…. I know that you ….heard a lot about the hunger that there is…..in Africa lately…..and while the hunger that we have here in States…..is certainly not….as drastic as that….. it is very bad, there are people…..out there going hungry….and these foodbanks are helping them out (cheers)…..what they do….what they do is they get….in the United States each year 20 percent of the food that gets produced gets wasted…..they get that wasted food…..and they make sure it gets to the people….in the agencies that need it to help senior citizens whose…..social security checks don’t get ‘em the whole way (cheers)….people that are hit hard by unemployment…..here in Washington you have the Capitol Area Foodbank…..in Maryland, there’s the Maryland Foodbank…..in Virginia…. there’s the uh….Virginia Community Foodbank (cheers)….and uh….this is the public service announcement so (chuckles)(cheers)…..they could use your help…. if you got some volunteer time….or you got some money (chuckles)…..they can use your support and they’re here making your town…….a better and more decent place for everybody to live in (cheers)….and….uh…..I’d like to do this song, this is my favorite Elvis song (cheers) and ….in 1975….I was in Memphis….we played at a little auditorium….it was about 3.30 in the morning and me and my guitar player Steve decided we wanted to get something to eat….and a taxi cab driver came by….and he told us that he knew where Elvis lived….and he took us out to Graceland….and I remember standing in front of those gates…..I remember standing in front of the gates, looking at the guitar players…..and I saw a little light on in the second story window…. and I figured that Elvis must be up reading…..and I said ‘Steve, I gotta try’….and I jumped over the wall and I jumped out on the other side….I started running up the driveway (cheers)….and….later on I thought that this was a stupid thing to do….’cause I hate it when people do it at my house (chuckles)…but anyway, I was filled with the enthusiasm of youth……and uh….jumped over the wall and I ran up to the frontdoor…. and as I was about to knock it, a guard came out of the woods and he asked me what I wanted…..and I said ‘Is Elvis home ?’…..and he said no, Elvis was in Lake Tahoe….I told him that I had a band and…..that I played the guitar…..and I told him, I told him I had my picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek (chuckles)(cheers)…..and he said ‘Oh yeah, sure, sure’ (chuckles)….I don’t think he believed me…he took me by the arm and he put me back out on the street….but uh….I never uh….I guess in a way it was better that it worked out like that ‘cause it wasn’t Elvis….I was really going to see that night….I guess it was some dream that I had, you know (cheers)….anyway, when I heard that he’d died…..a friend called me and told me that he died, about a year or two after that and it was hard to understand…..how somebody whose music came in….and gave so many people a feeling….of the promise of life….and a feeling for reason to live….could have died so tragically and so alone…..but uh…..I guess it’s easy…it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away…..so I’d like to do this for you, wishing you all….. the longest life with the best of everything (cheers)….hold on to it….”

Intro to "Sherry Darling"
”One more for you…..let’s do, uh…..here’s a good summer song….(to the band:) let’s do ‘Sherry Darling’……(?) if I remember the words (chuckles)…..(?)….”

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

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The Electricity of Springsteen

At 7:42 last night an ebullient Bruce Springsteen sprinted on to the huge stage at RFK Stadium, positioned himself in front of a huge American flag and counted off the opening measures of “Born in the U.S.A.,” the centerpiece song and title of the album that catapulted him to rock messiahdom over the last year.

Springsteen delivered his edgy saga of a returning Vietnam veteran, complete with its catalogue of shattered promises, in a rough-hewn performance redeemed at each verse’s end by the catch phrase that has come to be his credo:

“Born in the U.S.A… . I’m a cool rockin’ daddy … born in the U.S.A.”

Exactly the sentiments of the 54,000 fans who greeted the song and the singer with a cascade of “Bruuuuuuuuces,” a sea of raised fists (which would punctuate just about every song for the rest of the night), and a full-throated massed choir that defined the instant community that is at the heart of every Bruce Springsteen concert.

As he has done time and again in the decade between Newsweek covers, Springsteen immediately renewed the emotional contract that exists between him and the only audience that matters, the one he is playing to that particular night. For more than three hours, that impassioned performance connected his own faith in rock ‘n’ roll with that of his fans, a spirit that salvaged even his bleakest material.

Trafficking in ecstatic rock ‘n’ roll, Springsteen drained spirits only to reinfuse them through that instant communion central to his performance. “Glory Days,” a wry remembrance of better times than these, provoked its own glorious daze of calls and responses, and sometimes the Boss let his fans sing introductory verses.

And when he closed the show with his now-ancient anthem of possibility, “Born to Run,” Springsteen seemed as spent as his audience. Which didn’t stop him from a lengthy encore of rock ‘n’ roll oldies or a revival of an old favorite, “Rosalita.”

As Springsteen moved through 15 songs in the first half, and an equal number in the second, upping the emotional ante on one tune, the good-time spirit on the next, the night became a celebration of hope anchored in harsh realities, a position poles apart from the self-centered escapist esthetic of most modern pop.

Looking almost awkwardly athletic — as muscular in fact as the music itself — Springsteen personified the importance of being earnest. He may be reluctant and uncomfortable in his new role as America’s rocks populi, but his emotional commitment to and deep identification with America’s working class seems both genuine and deeply felt.

That made songs like “Johnny 99” and “Atlantic City,” both about workers laid off and driven to crimes by debts “no honest man can pay,” not only believable but instructive. Yet if Springsteen’s “Badlands” are even harsher eight years down the road, that song’s key line reflects the singer’s resilience: “I believe in the faith that can save me.”

By the time Springsteen got to Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped,” another anthem of defiance, enough night had fallen for the two giant video screens on either side of the stage to kick into action, which immediately made him larger than life. That’s apparently what his fans wanted, because the show picked up an extra fraction of energy from that point and never flagged again.

In song after song, New Jersey’s favorite son pitted expectations against reality, mapped out the distance between dream and daylight, examined the shattering impact when those dreams are not just deferred but ended.

Still, whether it was the angry frustration of a new song like “Seeds,” a hard rocker verging on metal, or the litany of loss informing tunes like “The River,” “Johnny 99” or “My Hometown,” Springsteen always came back with a song of hope like “Dancing in the Dark,” “Out in the Streets” or “Born to Run,” each offering the distinct promise of release.

Sometimes the songs’ energies were release enough, like the raw rockabilly fervor of “Working on a Highway,” the jaunty raunch of “Darlington County,” or inspirational reminders like “Hungry Heart,” “The Promised Land” and “Thunder Road.”

Springsteen has become rock’s version of the Great Communicator, even if his patriotic positioning is tinged in irony and rooted in an entirely different consciousness than the president’s.

Like Reagan, Springsteen relies on anecdotes (his introduction to the wrenching “My Hometown” and a delightful cover of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You,” no doubt inspired by his recent marriage). He also relishes vignettes that celebrate the everyday heroisms of ordinary citizens. Springsteen invests home, family and work with their traditional importance and lives out those implications, most obviously and most publicly in his own work.

And again like Reagan, Springsteen seems nostalgic for a more innocent time, though he suspects it will never return. In “My Hometown” he notes the decimation and decay that have changed his old working-class neighborhood to the point that he can recognize neither it nor himself.

Yet even when those key concerns are addressed in desultory observations, Springsteen seems to be saying the hope must never die.

In “Dancing in the Dark,” where Springsteen picked a partner out of the audience (just like the video) he points out that “you can’t start a fire without a spark” and that seems to be the most enduring message in his music.

A Springsteen concert is a study in orchestrated climaxes centered around guitar player Nils Lofgren and saxophonist Clarence Clemons and punctuated by Max Weinberg’s Odin-like percussion. No one is better at juxtaposing the defiant optimism and boisterous energies of rock ‘n’ roll with the gritty realism of the social observer — Woody Guthrie via Phil Spector. Springsteen’s grim news bulletins often travel on raucous rails, but they seem to be delivering not only a new audience, but an expanded awareness about blue collar issues, much as Live Aid did for hunger.

Springsteen still celebrates the good-time romanticism that once centered on cars and girls (in that order), but his tendency is to chilly observations about the hard times that have driven the darkness from the edge of town to its very heart.

His work, like his myths, has always been shaped by his live performance. Sweating, straining, he gives everything to his audience, and they respond in equal measure. The 12,000 people on RFK’s infield spent the entire night standing and dancing on their chairs; had anyone pulled those chairs away there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have come down to earth till show’s end.

Despite Tina Turner’s protestation, rock does need another hero and Springsteen seems to fit the bill. He may not ride a white horse — more likely he’ll be driving a pink Cadillac and sitting on a cushion of conviction — but for now he is living up to his own expectations, no one else’s.

On stage, dressed in funky jeans and a vest that revealed a shape America would be proud to be in, Springsteen humanized his own myth, coming across as a regular Everyguy. He is the common man, singing about the common man, to the comman man. The only adjustment he has made at this point is accommodation to size, certainly not to spirit or integrity. That subtlety may be lost on the new fans, but it’s reassuring to his older, loyal constituency.

The Bruce Springsteen who rocked RFK stadium last night was the same sincere, directed performer who has maintained both a hungry heart and a faith in the power of rock ‘n’ roll. As he sang at one point, “We made a promise, we swore we’d always remember, no retreat, no surrender.” For Bruce Springsteen, that is not just a promise; it is a premise for a better future.

^{By Richard Harrington via The Washington Post.}

Links:

The Electricity of Springsteen ^{(WashingtonPost)}

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The Electricity of Springsteen