1996-03-13 Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden

Scheduled: 19:30 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

First ever performances in Sweden of "The Ghost Of Tom Joad", "Straight Time", "Highway 29", "Nebraska", "Dead Man Walkin'", "It's The Little Things That Count", "Sell It And They Will Come", "Brothers Under The Bridge", "Dry Lightning", "Reason To Believe", "Youngstown", "Sinaloa Cowboys", "The Line", "Balboa Park", "Across The Border", "Streets Of Philadelphia", and "Galveston Bay".

Bruce Springsteen

Intro to "Adam Raised a Cain"
´´Tack….god kväll….det är trevligt att vara tillbak i Stockholm…..that was it, that was all my Swedish right there (chuckles) it wasn´t bad though (chuckles)….yeah, it´s nice to be back, uh, this is where I usually give my little disclaimer, it´s probably not necessary tonight but, uh, the music tonight´s real quiet so if anybody around you´s making too much noise, it´s a community event, feel free to band together and politely say ´Shut the fuck up´, alright (chuckles)….with a smile on your face of course (chuckles)….´´

Intro to "Straight Time"
´´Thank you….thanks a lot….this is, uh…..this next song is a song about, uh….trying to be new, you know, trying to….oh, change the way you´ve lived, lived a good deal of your life, it´s about a fellow who gets out of prison and….he´s trying to find a way to fit himself back into his family and, and back into the world at large and, uh….to do that you gotta leave, leave a lot of what felt like you behind you….your old habits….you know, this is, I guess, about how some, sometimes what´s the worst in you is the thing that you think makes you feel most alive….this is ´Straight Time´….´´

Intro to "Highway 29"
´´Thank you….thanks a lot, this is a song about, uh, self-knowledge….which is kind of a funny thing because….the less self-knowledge you have, the more you think you have, you see….that´s its twisted blessing, you know (chuckles) so, uh….this is a song about little self-knowledge coming too late…..also one of the few pop songs with a shoesalesman as the protagonist….kind of proud of it (people clap) that´s the shoesalesmen in the crowd out there, I guess (chuckles) here we go….´´

Intro to "It´s the Little Things That Count"
´´Alright, I got a question for you….uh, got a song coming up here, gonna do a song about sex or a song about TV-commercials, what do you think ? (yells) alright, let´s, let´s take a little vote here, uh, a song about sex, let´s hear it (huge cheer) a song about TV-commercials, let´s hear it (less cheer) that´s good, you see, in the United States we think Swedish, Sweden is the home of wild and uninhibited sex so you´re (chuckles) you´ve proven that one (chuckles) sex ! (huge cheer) TV-commercials ! (less cheer) now gimme the other guitar…. it´s good to know there´s some things you can count on this world, goddamn, alright (chuckles)…alright, so….so I´m in my mother´s Cadillac, alright, and I´m, I´m in a town that I can´t mention….on a freeway that can´t be named….uh, and I´m going to a buddy of mine´s, mine´s house for dinner, he, uh, I´m gonna be late ´cause I´m stuck in traffic so I have to pull off the freeway and practise some new-found maturity by calling him on the phone and telling him I´m gonna be late, I pull off, uh, but I´m in an industrial area, there doesn´t seem to be any, there´s no, nothing, there´s no houses or, or apartments, it seems just an endless street of factories but then on one little corner I see a little bar….I park the Cadillac, I go in the bar….I say ´Where´s the payphone ?´, they point me to the back but I go in my pocket and I only got 20 bucks so I go to the bartender and I say ´Gee, I gotta use the phone, do you have change for a 20 ?´ and he says, uh, ´Well, we don´t give any change around here´…so I said, well, you know, ´Do you mean like that you don´t or nobody in the bar gives change or do you mean like the whole neighbourhood has gotten together somehow and said ´Fuck ´em, no more change if they stop ?´…uh….so, uh…..watching this there´s a, there´s a waitress watching this go down and she doesn´t say anything, she just comes up to me and goes like this and in-between her fingers she holds up a quarter….I take the quarter, I say ´Thank you´, I go to the payphone, put the money in but it seems that I´m just a little bit out of the area code and it´s a 50-cent call so (chuckles) so, uh…..I, I turn to her and I say ´Gee, you know, it´s, it´s a 50-cent phonecall´ and she just says ´Well, that´s too bad´, you know (chuckles) but, uh….but, uh, but she says ´Gee, but I´ll give you another quarter if you give me a ride home´ (first no crowd response, then the crowd slowly gets it and Bruce chuckles) that´s the story (people clap) wait a minute, you haven´t heard this song yet, it might be a piece of shit, you don´t know (chuckles) alright….´´

Intro to "Sell It and They Will Come"
´´Alright (cheers)(chuckles) alright, if you keep that up and I´ll be forced to play the one about the TV-commercials, you see (chuckles) alright….there´s a little sex in this one too….I don´t know if they have these commercials over here, I think that they do and for that I have to deeply apologise….it´s a national embarrassment but hey, that´s how we got where we are, alright (chuckles) alright, so, uh….alright….I´m not even gonna explain this one, it´s gonna all be pretty self-explanatory (chuckles)….it´s very fitting that it goes from sex to television…. ´don´t you think ? (chuckles)….´´

Intro to "Brothers Under the Bridges"
´´Yeah….yes indeed….that´s my latest masterpiece, goddammit (chuckles) there it is, hey…. you´re being entertained now (chuckles)….this is a song, it´s, uh….set in San Gabriel Mountains outside of Los Angeles and there was a group of homeless Vietnam Vets that set, set a camp up out there….in trying to get out of the city….and, uh…..one of them has a, it´s a story about one of them that has a grown daughter that he hasn´t seen and she comes looking for her father out there in the mountains and what he, uh….and this is what he says to her, this is called ´Brothers Under the Bridges´….´´

Intro to "Dry Lightning"
´´Thank you….thanks, here´s another….here´s another song about, uh….men and women, man och kvinna….love, sex….kärlek (chuckles) yeah, mycket svårt (chuckles) men viktigt (chuckles)….you know what I´m talking about there (chuckles)….this is a song about, uh, everybody´s been in those relationships where you´re really trying….you think you´re trying anyway….but you´re not quite getting there….this is called ´Dry Lightning´….´´

Intro to "Youngstown"
´´Thank you….about a month and a half ago we were in, uh….I came through Youngstown, Ohio, which is, uh, was one of the big centers of the steel industry in the States for the first part of the century….and uh….it was a great night, it was, uh…..I guess the mills closed down around late 70´s, early 80´s, the town lost about two-thirds of its population, thousands and thousands of jobs….and uh….you know, when you go there now everybody had a brother and everybody had a father, everybody had a grandfather….that all those shutdown affected so this is a song about, uh….people that, you know, built the buildings that we lived in and the bridges that we crossed and, and really what we….what we know of as America, gave their sons and daughters to our wars and we´re considered expendable….´´

Intro to "Sinaloa Cowboys"
´´That´s Kevin Buell….my, uh….guitar guy, financial advisor….sexual counsellor, guru, uh, mystery keyboardist, yeah….we´re up here on the Lonely Guy Tour (chuckles) we should´ve called it that (chuckles) uh….here´s a song that, uh….the next four songs are actually set on the….uh….on the California-Mexico border, out in Central California too, uh…..I was staying in this little motel in this little Arizona town…..just spending the night and it was one of those little four-corner desert towns where there´s a gas-station, uh, a grocery store, a motel and, of course a bar and, and, I was sitting outside….with some friends of mine and these two Mexican men came in from the west and, uh, one was a young kid and one was a little older fellow….he started looking over our motorcycles and we started talking and he, uh, he said he´d had a younger brother who´d died in a motorcycle accident….in Southern California a couple months earlier….and he sat and he talked about his….brother for an hour….and uh, there was something in his voice that always stayed with me….I think that particularly once you have your kids, you know, that first line of family always feels like it´s to protect, you know, you´re always thinking….to protect and to take care of them and the ones that come after you….and when that breaks down…..that, uh, I don´t know, the loss that you feel, that you must feel….so, uh, this is a song about, uh, two brothers that get caught up in the Central California drug trade, the Mexican drug gangs come up and hire migrant workers to work in the drug labs, they´re the ones that usually get blown up or busted by the DEA….so, uh…. when I wrote this, I had, I, I heard my mysterious friend´s voice in my head so I dedicate this every night to him, this is called ´Sinaloa Cowboys´….´´

Intro to "The Line"
´´Thanks, this is, uh, this is a song that set at the, uh….San Diego border station where you get a lot of….young guys coming out of the army and they go to work for the border patrol ….and uh….(?)….a Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes said, you know, that California was Mexico till about 1840, 48 and so the border is more like a scar than a border, so these guys go to work down there and I think it´s a real….it´s a hard job knowing where the, where the line always is….´´

Intro to "Balboa Park"
´´Thanks….thanks, this next song is a song about kids…kids are funny, you know, before you have your own…..and your friends come over, if they just had ´em and they come over and sit down and they go on and on and on….and you gotta like, you know, you gotta feign amazement, you know, they go ´Yeah, he took his first piss and it went right in the bowl´…. and you go ´Well, oh, quick, get Guinness Records on (chuckles) get ´em on the phone´ (chuckles) so, you know, but what´s worse is sort of if they bring ´em along, you know, like I
lived alone for 30 years….I don’t like people touching my stuff (chuckles) you know, and, uh….so they bring ´em along and they start, like, you know, running wild through your house or something and you don´t wanna say anything because you know how it is yelling at somebody else´s kid, you know, you don´t like to do that so it always ends up being ´Oh, is that expensive ?….is that your guitar ?´ (chuckles) but then, you know, then you have your own and you get to seek out your own revenge, you know (chuckles) but, uh….aah, it´s funny, people always say ´Hey, what´s the difference in your life between, you know, when you had ´em and you didn’t have ´em ?´….and, uh, I guess the main difference that I figured out….is sort of that kids are like, they´re like these open, they have this open window onto the grace that´s in the world and….and they sort of, they just have this access to it and they bring it into your life, you know, every day, by just being there, I guess, and I think that as you grow older that that, that grace, that window you have onto that grace, it closes up, you know, either as the world sort of beats you up or, it seems to shut down and shut down and for some people, I guess, closes entirely….which, I think, iwhy people seek out, uh, you know, films and, and, and novels and go to see art and, and unusual sexual practices, that also (?)(chuckles) to get that grace back into your life (chuckles) so, it´s like, yeah, hey, it´sm uh, so, but the kids, they bring it with ´em when they come, one fashion or another…so this is a song about lost kids, kids 10,11, 12, 13 years old down along the border, they come over the river from Tijuana and they´re running dope or they end up selling themselves in this place called Balboa Park….sort of what happens when, uh, that grace is violated….´´

Intro to "Across the Border"
´´Thanks, uh, when I was about 20, 26 years old, a friend of mine showed me John Ford´s Grapes of Wrath and uh….it was a film that really resonated….throughout the whole rest of my life, you know, and I think it was because it asked a real, real fundamental question that we sort of ask and answer every day by our….you know, by our actions, by what we do, the way we live, it was a question that, the basic question I thought was, you know, are we all individual souls….you know, are we all sort….do we all hold our own salvation, or whatever you wanna call it, separately from everybody else or are we….or are all those souls linked together and that we rise and fall collectively in some fashion….and what does that mean…..I think that….at the end of the film there´s a scene where Tom Joad´s killed a security guard and he´s….the police are coming for him and he knows he´s gonna, he´s gonna have to leave his family, he´s gonna have to tell his mother that after she´s lost her home, they´ve come thousands of miles and they, they have nothing and he knows he´s gonna have to tell her that, after all that she´s lost, that she´s gonna have to lose her son now….but before this, before this scene there´s a dance scene that´s really, it´s very lovely, very lovely….and for me, it was always Ford holding out the possibility of beauty in sort of a brutal world because where there´s beauty, there´s always hope and where there´s hope, that leads to some idea of, whatever, divine love or brotherhood or whatever you wanna call it….so after this dance scene….Tom slips into his mother´s tent and touches her very gently and wakes her up and says ´Mama, I gotta go´….and they step out underneath these trees….and she says ´Well, Tommy, you know, I knew, I knew this day would come, uh….but how am I gonna know how you are, how am I gonna know if you´re alive, you know, if my son is well….will I ever see you again ?´….and he says, uh, says ´Well, Ma, all I know is I gotta go out and I gotta kick around and I gotta see what´s wrong and I gotta see if there´s anything that I can do to make it right….and you´ll see me because at night, you know, I´ll be in that darkness that´s all around you when you´re sleeping, you´ll see me…..and I´ll be in the way that men´s voices sound when they´re angry and when they´re yelling, you´ll see me….and I´ll be in the way that kids sound when they´re coming in and there´s food on the table and they have a home, someplace where they know that they´re safe and they´re protected´, he says ´You´ll see me´ ….then he disappears off into the darkness….and the next scene is the Joads looking for work, heading north and, uh, the father says ´Well, Tommy´s gone, what are we gonna do ?´ ….and the mother just says ´What we´re gonna do….we´re just gonna keep on going….we´re gonna keep on going´….uh, so this is a song, I guess, about the mystery of human nature…. and about that question…..how people keep on going….and what they find…..´´

Intro to "This Hard Land"
´´(tunes his guitar) There it is, alright, here´s a song about faith, hope, brotherhood, sisterhood….the pursuit of happiness (chuckles) uh, tequila, friendship, every Western I ever saw….´´

Intro to "Galveston Bay"
´´Thank you….oh, thanks, let me just take a second and, and say thank you, you´ve just been a fabulous audience, thank you very much, uh….it´s, uh….this is music that, that means a lot to me and, and, uh….uh, being able to come out here and do this like this is a, is a great gift that you give me and I appreciate it very much, thank you….this is a….this is a song that´s based on a, uh, based on an incident that happened in the, uh, Gulf Coast of Texas in the mid-80´s, uh…..what you had was at the end of….the Vietnam War, there was a….uh, a whole, large amount, number of refugees that came over and settled in the Gulf Coast….and uh….they went into the fishing industry and there ended up being a lot of tension between the Vietnamese fishermen and the Texas fishermen….and…..I guess….part of it´s a song about….. I don´t know, let the music do the talking (chuckles)….´´

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

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Heart of Darkness

Bruce Springsteen is about to put on a very intense performance for a very demanding audience: himself. At 6 on the night of his solo acoustic show in Stockholm, he walks out onto the stage for sound-check at the Cirkus, an 1,800-seat hall on the European leg of his "Ghost of Tom Joad" tour. The stage is bare. The only props are a mean little army of black Takamine guitars, lined up 13 strong behind a curtain, each tuned differently, yet each with an identical polish on its identical hollow body. Springsteen's guitar roadie and keyboardist, Kevin Buell, places four or five in a neat, protective semicircle around the microphone. Springsteen picks one up. He strums it a few times. Then he softly finger-picks the opening notes of "The Ghost of Tom Joad." About halfway through the song, he stops. "There's a different sound in here," he muses. "It's kinda cool." He listens intently to the fading notes, to the empty room, to the silence.

He plays a couple more songs, trying out the different guitars, sorting out the different reverberations they make. A photographer creeps along the far reaches of the loge. He's been instructed not to get too close to the stage; the clicks of the camera will distract Springsteen's obsessive quest for perfection. He plays "Sinaloa Cowboys," another harsh, strained breath of a song. Midway through the first verse, the guitar emits a honk of feedback. Springsteen tries it again, and the feedback honks again. He tries playing the second verse, and it honks at the same place in the chord progression. "It's a funky note," Springsteen mumbles. "See if I can isolate it." He moves the capo on the guitar's neck, changing the key. Then he changes the key again, and a third time. "It's just that one E flat, for some reason," he says. The false note is banished. This isn't just a sound-check; it's an exorcism.

These days, Springsteen is in severe heavyweight mode. With "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and its accompanying tour, which returns to the United States this summer, he knows he has a lot to prove. "Tom Joad" is his way of asserting that, at 46, he still has something important to say. He seems worried that people won't listen, because in each show he instructs them to. "This is a community event," he tells the crowd in Stockholm. "If anybody's making too much noise, feel free to band together and tell them to shut the f—- up." It's a new twist on rock psychology: tell your audience to be quiet and not get too excited. The Swedish crowd was supportively attentive, but in the United States, "Tom Joad" is proving both a commercial and a critical risk. It's the only album in his catalog not to be certified gold or platinum, and the first U.S. shows received less-than-jubilant reviews last winter. (But another of Springsteen's brutal acoustic songs, the title track from the film "Dead Man Walking," was up this week for an Oscar.) If Springsteen was once the savior of rock and roll, right now he's its Puritan minister, taking America to task for its sins.

Underneath all the messages, Springsteen is sending an odd, barely audible little SOS of his own. In recent years something has been missing from his music, and he wants it back very badly: relevance. Not just social relevance, but relevance to his audience, relevance to himself. For all the hoopla surrounding his reunion with the E Street Band on his 1995 "Greatest Hits" collection, the new material just didn't have the oomph of the glory days. His 1992 albums "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" were commercial and critical letdowns. You have to go back to 1987's "Tunnel of Love," the heartbreaking chronicle of his failed first marriage, for vintage Springsteen; some might argue you have to go back to "Born in the U.S.A.," the 1984 runaway career train that sold 15 million copies and made him a household name. "I had very high goals for my band when we started," he says, backstage after the Stockholm show. He wears a work shirt and jeans; his hair is pulled back into the tiniest of ponytails. He's every bit as intense and methodical in his speech as he was onstage. "We didn't go out just to make music, we went out to make essential music. It was fun and entertaining and hopefully enjoyable, but at the core there was something serious and essential that tied into the experience of living in America. I think the criticism of some records I made in the late '80s or '90s centered around that idea."

Today Springsteen's personal life has never been more fulfilled. He's happily remarried, to singer and bandmate Patti Scialfa, and they're raising three kids: Evan, 5; Jessie, 4; and Sam, 2. But he's decided that happy home stories aren't what his audience craves. "Before I did 'Tom Joad' I had another record that was based more on relationships and things," he says. "I finished maybe three quarters of it, and I invested a good bit of myself in it. But one night I said, "Gee, I'm not sure this is what I want to hear from me right now.' So I sat back and said, "Well, what would I want to hear?'" The answer was: essential music. "I had a couple of things guiding me. One was "Streets of Philadelphia,' which had gotten a tremendous response. It was a small song that I wrote in a few days, but I was addressing outside issues. ["Tom Joad'] is in that tradition. It's music that fulfills the promises that I made when I began. That's what I'm interested in doing right now. That's who I think I should be."

Yet that evening after the show, when Springsteen and his tour party head out to dinner, a very different guy emerges. This isn't Springsteen, the retrofitted model; it's plain old vintage Bruce, the storyteller, the cutup, the local kid. Prompted by his longtime agent Barry Bell, he switches into tour-story mode. "We're playing Lincoln Center," Bruce recalls, "and it's a big night. Max [Weinberg, E Street drummer] was sick. And he blew his lunch in the middle of "Born to Run.' But he didn't stop playing. Extra merit for Max. Then in "E Street Shuffle' I hear what sounds like a trumpet. And I'm going, "Damn. What the hell is Clarence [Clemons] doing with that saxophone?' And I look, and next to Clarence is a trumpet player. So I said, "Clarence, what's he doing over there?' Clarence goes, "He said you said it was OK!' I said, "Well, it's not OK. Get him off!' Then we come out for an encore, and all of a sudden I notice the stage is rising. I think, "Jesus, this can't be happening.' And then I realize, no, the stage isn't rising, the audience is sinking. There's an orchestra pit that they put about 100 seats on, and a kid spilled beer into it, short-wired the thing. The monitors are crashing in after them. It was unbelievable. Our Lincoln Center debut."

Springsteen never leaves that Jersey guy far behind. He grew up—it's a famous story —in Freehold, a small town near the shore, on a street with a church, a convent and a Sinclair gas station. "Me and my parents lived in my grandparents' house," he says. "Then there was my cousin's house, my aunt's house, my great-grandmother's house, my aunt's house on my mother's side with my other grandmother in it. We were all on one street, with the church in the middle." By his teens, Springsteen was an outsider, watching things happen, remembering them. "The drummer I had then, Bart Haynes, and this fellow Walter, they both died in Vietnam when we were in our teens," he says. "I can still see them in their uniforms. Those are very powerful images. The factories. It still finds its way into my work."

People think Springsteen is an upper-crusty L.A. guy now, but he and his family still spend most of the year in New Jersey. He has a "big, beautiful farm" that he bought a couple of years ago, plus his house in tony Rumson. He takes the kids back to Freehold sometimes: "There's hot-rod rallies, and a firehouse. The kids go up and sit on the fire truck." And every summer, they visit the boardwalk. Jersey is "a place I've never left," he says. "I've tried many times, and never done it. A part of me did leave, but a part of me always stayed. I still enjoy the way it smells and feels in the summertime."

Springsteen is still reconciling the guy he was with the guy he is. But there are signs that he's getting better at it. Lately he's been performing a new song called "The Wish" that he wrote for his mom. It's more jaunty and upbeat than anything on "Tom Joad," yet it's sweet, even a little sentimental, and it says a lot about the difficulty of growing older and growing up. "So tonight I'm takin' requests here in the kitchen/This one's for you, I'm gonna come out and say it," he sings. "But if you're looking for a sad song, well I ain't gonna play it." It's not very deep. But some things don't have to be.

^{by Karen Schoemer via Newsweek on April 1, 1996}

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