Scheduled: 18:00 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??
First show of four in Los Angeles as the Born In The U.S.A. Tour reaches its climax. Live debut of "War", which Bruce sings with the lyrics taped to his arm, and only performance of Born In The U.S.A. outtake "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart" until 1993, and until 1999 with the E Street Band. "Twist And Shout" includes "La Bamba" as well as "Do You Love Me". Final tour appearance for "Because The Night".
- On Stage
- Setlist
- Performances
- Cancelled
- Gallery
- Media
- Recording
- Storyteller
- Eyewitness
- News/Memorabilia
incl. Rehearsals.
© All credits to the original photographer. We do not monetize a photo in any way, but if you want your photo to be removed, let us know, and we will remove it.
Official concert recording available for purchase in multiple formats, including CD and high definition audio, from Springsteen's official live download site at nugs.net/bruce (previously live.brucespringsteen.net).
- Running Time: 3:19:55
Audience tape. Three recording sources circulate, available on CDR 'Last Stand Volume 1' and directly from the Master Tapes (Anonymous/mjk5510). A second source is available from a tape transfer (Audielish70). A third source recently entered circulation from "Tape Man Joe" master tapes (G/Buckshot). Professionally shot videos of "Stand On It" and "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart" circulate on DVD.
Intro to "Seeds"
”We were on, uh….the first part of our American tour…..we were down in Houston , Texas…..and there was a lotta folks down…..from up north, from northeast…..outta Pittsburgh….Youngstown….outta Detroit…..Gary….who’d moved down south….. looking for work in the oil fields, in the oil rigs….and when they got down there, the price of oil dropped…..they’d be laying them off, they’d be down there with their wives and kids….. you’d see them sleeping out on the side of the highway at night in their cars….or in tents…. with no place to go, nothing to do….but move on….this is called ‘Seeds’….”
Intro to "The River"
”How ya doing out there tonight ? (cheers)….it’s good to see you….again….hope we didn’t….keep you waiting too long, we wanted to….wait till most of youse could beat the traffic that’s on the way out here….ah……oh….this is uh….when I was growing up, my dad used to play this trick on me….he used to lock up the frontdoor…..so I used to have to come through the side….and he’d sit in the kitchen waiting on me….smoking a cigarette… and uh…..I’d stand out there in the driveway…..and I used to have a real long hair, like way down to my shoulders….and he used to hate it, you know, we used to fight about it all the time….and uh….I’d stand there and I’d get my collar up and I’d tuck it back as tight as I could….trying to make it look as short as it would….and I’d get up my nerve and I’d get up on the porch…..and he’d always let me get through the kitchen….and he’d always let me get through the livingroom….my mom’d be sleeping on the couch in front of the T.V…..and then just as I got my foot on that bottom step, thinking like ‘I made it, I’m gonna get to my room’…..from the kitchen I’d hear ‘Bruuuce’ (crowd bruuces)…. didn’t sound that nice, though, at the time (chuckles) ….and uh…..he used to call me back and I’d….come in the kitchen and I’d sit down with him and we’d be sitting in the dark and I remember the thing that used to bother me was that I could never see him….. and he wouldn’t say nothing for the next ten or fifteen minutes…..and then he’d ask me , like the same old question…..what I thought I was doing with myself…..and uh….I guess the worst part about it was that I was never able to explain it to him…..I couldn’t explain to him why I looked the way I did…..it was like that old song that said about trying to tell a stranger….about rock and roll….but uh…..that’s kind of a two-way street because I didn’t know what he was doing with himself either….I didn’t understand….at the time, I guess, I was about 17 or 18 and he was probably only…..only about a year or two older than I am right now…..and I couldn’t understand the pressure of trying to raise a family….looking for work…..and feeling like….feeling like you were failing at it……we came down from…. (?) Valley in Pittsburgh at the beginning of this tour where they’re….shutting all the steel mills down…..like they’re doing here in East Los Angeles, just like they did…..and uh…… what do you do when the jobs go away but the people remain ?…..when communities begin to disappear…..and families fall apart…..and you end up living…..in the shadow of a dream…..and that’s what this song is about…..”
Intro to "War"
(my source tape is missing the beginning of the intro)
”…..and I guess if you turn on your T.V now, you still see it…..and uh…..I guess without living through it sometimes…..when your decision comes around, you may be wondering what to do…..so I guess…I’d like to….dedicate this next song to all young guys out there or young girls….and remind you that blind faith in anything…..your leaders…..in 1985, will get you killed…..it don’t matter…..whether it’s in Central America…..or if you’re a young Iranian or you’re in Iraq or a young Russian in Afganistan…..’cause what I’m talking about here is…..WAR!”
Intro to "I’m Goin’Down"
”This is a song about uh…..the , uh…….vicisitutes of love …..is anybody in love out there tonight ? (cheers)…..this is like, you know, when you first meet somebody…..you know, everything’s great and you come out dressed up nice all the time……everything they say is brilliant….and like you’re flattering each other all the time…..you know, that’s part of a….courtship , I guess…..you know, the girls…..the girls come over like they´re putting that perfume on all the other places besides behind their ears…….you know, guys, like they’re shaving like extra (?)…..I don’t know …..but…..if you’re gonna go out, it’s like ‘Oh honey, uh……what movie do you wanna see ?…..you know it’s like ‘Oh sweetie, I don’t care , whatever you wanna go see….. ‘Honey do you wanna go out tonight ?’…… ‘Oh baby, I don’t care , as long as I’m with you ‘ (cheers)….yeah……oh yeah…..how sweet it is !…..then you come back about a year later - and I’m speaking from personal experience …..you come back about a year later and it’s uh…..’Are we gonna go out tonight or do I have to look at your face all night long ?´ (cheers)…..’Did you take a shower today ? ‘ ‘You didn’t take a shower today!’…..(chuckles)….you know…..I don’t know….why does all that happen ….it kinda ends up…..”
Intro to "Glory Days"
”I’m coming to get you now…..I’m gonna tickle your little totsies….here I go ….. (singalong)….Pavarotti, look out…..boys, take it down…..oh Jeesus, I gotta take a little rest …..I just had my birthday, I’m 36 now…..I was 34 when this tour started…..oh, where has youth gone ?….yeah….man…..36…..I’m glad to get my birthday over, though, you know it’s like…..all day people coming to you and calling you like the Birthday Boy…. ‘Hey, how’s the Birthday Boy?’…..Jeesus….but I had a nice party (chuckles)…..oh but I always get an inspiration when I look at the Big Man….Big Man, he’s 44 (cheers)…..and like he’s still handsome, he’s maintained his youthful beauty somehow…..he got a deal with the devil or somehow, I don’t know how it is, I don’t know…..and at night like I lay there in bed sometimes and….my back….yeah …..oh yeah…..yeah…..I always sleep with my guitar…..my wife, first she didn’t like it but she’s got used to it now…..uh, yeah….. you gotta take the whole package…. anyway, 36…..I feel handsome tonight…..I’m at my sexual peak tonight. (cheers)….. so….in the end….hey Big Man…..in the end it ain’t nothing but glory days…..”
Intro to "The Promised Land"
”Yeah….(?) for the young folks…..gonna do one for the old timers out there (chuckles)…. so if you’re my age or older……no matter how old you get, you gotta keep searching for the Promised Land….”
Intro to "My Hometown"
”Thanks, thanks a lot…..yeah…..this is the beginning of our last stand here…..you know…. we’ve been ….we’ve been what seems like almost everywhere this year, I guess….. all across the country….New York, Australia, Japan….we went to…..and it’s a funny thing every place we went…..this happens everywhere, every place we went…..when you mention the name of that place, people cheer….I’ll give it a shot….Los Angeles (cheers)…..you see…that works every time….works every time….I got to thinking about it and I guess people cheer when they hear the name of their town because they’re proud of where they come from…..and uh…..if that’s the case, I guess it makes sense that they’d wanna do something…..to make it a better place to live…..and tonight in the audience, we got some representatives …..from the Community Food Resources of Los Angeles…. that’s a foodbank…..and they serve Long Beach…..(?)…..Riverside….San Diego…..we got representatives from the Steelworkers Oldtimers Foodbank…..who some of you guys might remember from the last time we were here…..what a foodbank is is a simple thing, every year twenty percent…..of the food that gets produced ends up getting wasted and thrown away….meanwhile in every city and every town…..and every state, there’s people going to bed without enough to eat or without the right kinds of food…..there’s old folks whose social security checks don’t get ‘em through the month…..they gotta decide between buying themselves medicine or food…..there’s folks that been hit hard by unemployment …..there’s single mothers trying to raise families on their own….there’s young kids out there and uh…..it’s a pretty simple thing what these folks need….they need a little help and what a foodbank does is it gets the food that would normally be wasted….and it gets it out to the agencies that serve those people…..uh….so I guess what I’m trying to say is….that these are the folks that are out there every day putting some of the ideas that I’m singing about….up here tonight, to work…..making it real in people’s lives everyday and keep it (?)….a little closer….to that Promised Land…..and without them….without them…..what I’m doing up here tonight doesn´t amount to much more than words…..so….I guess what I’d like you to do is when you go out to the lobby…..get the phonenumber of the foodbank that’s nearest you…..there’ll be nobody collecting out there but if you get that number , give ‘em a call, find out what they’re about….and make Los Angeles and the surrounding area a better place….for all of its citizens to live…. I’d like to…..I´d like to also thank youse….thank youse ‘cause I’ve been talking to the steelworkers out here and they said the response…..when we were here last was really great….they’ve been doing great things, they got a theatre group now made up of….of unemployed steelworkers that are about to…..about to put on their first play…..so if you can, give ‘em a call, find out ‘cause they’re doing a lot of interesting and important things….the Steelworkers Oldtimers Foodbank, give them a ring, find about what’s going on right here in your hometown….Ok ? (cheers)”
Intro to "I’m on Fire"
”I can remember growing up…..and my folks working so hard all the time…..I remember my dad always….my bedroom was out over the backyard and every morning he´d lay on….on his back on the cold ground…..trying to get the car started to go to work…..I remember my mom….always going down to the finance man…..borrowing money for Christmas…..getting it paid off just in time….to borrow money for Easter….getting it paid off just in time to buy us….school clothes….for some reason she…..she never (?) bothered….I remember it bothered my dad….and he’d sit at the table at night….like something was dying inside…..I got to feeling like…there was something dying inside of me….and I didn’t know how to keep it alive….laying in bed feeling like I was just gonna…..like I was just gonna….you know if something didn’t happen….that I’d just….that I’d just…..that I´d just……”
Intro to "This Land Is Your Land"
”I wanna thank you guys for coming down to the show (chuckles)(cheers)…..I wanna say….we had uh…..everytime we’ve been in Los Angeles over the past year , a couple of months, it’s been ….we’ve had a great time here, I met my wife here, yeah (cheers)
(chuckles)…..and uh so anyway I’d like to do this song for you…..this is uh….about the greatest song that I think has ever been written……written about America…..and what’s so great about it is that it gets right to the heart….of the promise….of what our country was supposed to be about….and as we sit here tonight, that’s a promise that’s eroding….. for many of our fellow citizens….I don’t think if you talk to the….. steelworkers in (?) Valley…or here in East Los Angeles or Gary, Indiana…..there’s a lotta people out there that feel like their country….is sailing away from them and leaving them on the dock….. and I don’t know if they believe this song is true anymore and I´m not sure that it is….. but I know that it oughta be….so….let me do this for you reminding you that with countries , just like with people …..it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away…. and uh…..let me wish you the longest life with the best of absolutely everything…..”
Intro to "Stand on It"
”Gotta work tomorrow ?….Tomorrow’s Saturday , right ?….so you think you can take us, huh ?….so you think you’re tough here in California , huh ?……so you think you can put the whammy on those little New Jersey boys, huh ?…..Oh yeah ?…..Oh yeah ? ….”
Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi. |
Jenny Troy | Not sure which of the 4 nights I attended, but it was a mess! Parking was nonexistent and prices were crazy! Bruce was little more than a speck in my eye this time and I was heartbroken. I had seen him 4 times at the Sports Arena and was always so close, this was my least favorite show. |
Peggy Hannan | Man I was really hating his new found popularity and the size of this place but they pulled it off! Best band in the land! |
© All credits to the original photographer. We do not monetize a photo in any way, but if you want your photo to be removed, let us know, and we will remove it.
TELL YOUR MAMA |
Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, 1985 represents the apex of Bruce Springsteen’s mass popularity. No concerts performed before or since represent the same level of mainstream cultural impact inherent in the final four performances that wrapped the mammoth Born in the U.S.A. tour.
According to the LA Times, on September 27, opening night of the sold-out stand, Bruce and the band played to 83,000 people. That means over the course of four sold-out shows, more than 330,000 people clicked the turnstiles at the site of two Olympic Games, to see not world-class athletes but the world’s greatest live performer. Staggering.
Springsteen long factored for the person in the very last row at his concerts, but now that fan was 100-150 yards from the stage. Scaling up production elements at stadiums to deliver a comparable level of band-to-fan connection was crucial, and that affected everything from the sound of Max’s drums and the quality and size of the stage-side video screens to the clothing the band wore on stage, which was brightly colored to help boost the visibility and discernibility of individual members from far away.
Los Angeles 1985 starts as it must with a dazzling “Born in the U.S.A.” Jon Altschiller’s zoomed-in mix (with a notably livelier audience levels) dials in a difficult-to-achieve balance of synthesizer and guitar. The deepest notes of the former provide a sternum-compressing whoosh that anyone who saw a BIUSA stadium show will remember; the latter more forward and clearer than we often hear on 1985 recordings. As Bruce sings, “long gone daddy in the U.S.A.,” we get some real chugga chugga licks, followed later by an extended solo that’s up there with the great ones that append the song on the 1988 Tunnel of Love tour. As for Max Weinberg, he absolutely crushes one of the best live versions of “Born in the U.S.A.” ever released.
At this point of the 1984-85 tour, the E Street Band was a machine in the best sense of that word, operating under both Bruce’s and the individual players’ master control. The transition from “U.S.A.” to “Badlands” is lush with Danny Federici organ swirls, and we can hear every band member in sharp detail right down to Clarence Clemons’ percussion.
LA 1985 is rife with distinct moments worth highlighting: Bruce singing out, “debts that no honest man could pay” with particular passion on “Atlantic City,” and matching that energy again for the last line of “Downbound Train”; the happiness in his voice ahead of “Glory Days” as he talks about turning 36 four days prior; Patti Scialfa’s soaring high notes that raise “Trapped” to full crescendo; Clarence’s under-appreciated solo on the same song releasing the pent-up tension that makes the arrangement so mesmerizing; the heightened peaks of the extended “Cover Me” that finally relent to the breakneck release of “Dancing in the Dark” (the exclusion of which from Live/1975-85 still puzzles); Roy’s best Jerry Lee Lewis impression splashing all over a rip-roaring and rarely played “Stand On It.”
But the E Street MVP this night is Nils Lofgren. LA 1985 is an opportunity for reappreciation of how much of the load he carried on the tour and the many spots when he shined. His intro to “Seeds” oozes dirtier than you might recall, and the hypnotic prelude to “I’m on Fire” alters the tone of the song significantly.
As Nils plays, Springsteen’s spoken introduction to “I’m on Fire” (omitted on Live/1975-85) subtly shifts the song’s narrative, too. He speaks of the struggles endured by his father and mother, and of his fear that, if he didn’t get out, whatever sense of hope and happiness was figuratively dying inside his dad would be his fate as well. Lying awake in bed, thinking dark thoughts like one of the characters he wrote about on Nebraska, the narrator confesses he understands how one could snap. It makes the “Hey little girl is your daddy home” that follows more of a disturbing dream.
What’s commendable given the circumstances and stakes surrounding LA 1985 is that Bruce is still taking risks and using his status to make a statement. The night marks the daring debut of Edwin Starr’s righteous anthem “War,” written by Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield. With lyrics taped to his forearm, Springsteen tears into the anti-war cry, in a version appealingly raw compared to the finished track that would later become the first single released from Live/1975-85. For a man whose messages and political views had been co-opted and misinterpreted of late, “War” allows zero ambiguity, no more so than when Bruce implores, “Tell your mama!” Nils adds another compelling guitar intro here, as Bruce sounds his solemn warning that “blind faith in anything…will get you killed.”
The bulk of LA 1985 is made up of what might be called a refined stadium setlist, optimized for maximum impact in venues of this scale. Over the last 34 years, so-called stadium friendly material suggested something that couldn’t compare to the greatest theater and arena performances that preceded it. Yet listening today, one marvels at how skillfully the band is playing in front of 83,000, not merely showing themselves up to the task of reaching that distant back row but retaining the tightness, power, and nuance that made them the best live act in the world. In other words, don’t sleep on ‘85.
Stadium staples aside, let’s not overlook the second of the night’s world premieres. “Alright, let’s try it” serves as the rallying cry to the live debut of “Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart,” the charming Born in the U.S.A. outtake and “I’m Goin’ Down” b-side that is a kindred spirit to another equally enchanting leftover, “Be True.” Both share a certain mid-tempo melodic romanticism that marks a lot of the songs Bruce often left on the cutting room floor. It’s a winning version that curiously omits The Big Man’s recorded sax solo in favor of piano solo by The Professor. Listen for Bruce hooting encouragement and howling with glee as Roy takes the spotlight. He clearly likes Janey.
The show wraps fittingly with a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Travelin’ Band,” resplendent with Clarence’s baritone sax, Roy’s piano fills, and nearly a dozen tour-stop namechecks. It’s the perfect selection for the end of the line, recalling the mystery train that left the station at a St. Paul arena 15 months earlier and wound up conquering the world by the time it came to a halt in LA, playing to an audience more than five times the size.
By Erik Flannigan via Nugs.net. |
Disclaimer | © 1996 - 2024 | Brucebase