1997-01-31 Tōkyō Kokusai Fōramu, Forum Hall A, Tokyo, Japan

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

Info & Setlist | Venue

First ever performances in Japan of "Murder Incorporated", "Highway Patrolman", "Youngstown", and "Galveston Bay".

Bruce Springsteen

Intro to "Atlantic City"
´´Thank you….(speaks Japanese)(chuckles)(speaks Japanese)….good to see you….´´

Intro to "Adam Raised A Cain"
´´Thank you….(speaks Japanese)….here´s, uh, ´Adam Raised A Cain´….´´

Intro to "Highway 29"
´´Thank you….oh, this is a song about a fellow who gets in over his head, I guess, doesn´t realise it till too late….about the price of, of that sudden insight, which, uh, usually only comes after
you´ve fucked up very badly, unfortunaly, you know (chuckles) this is called ´Highway 29´….´´

Intro to "Murder Incorporated"
´´Oh, in the States you got, uh….a group of people whose lives and dreams are considered expendable….we got murder incorporated….´´

Intro to "Red Headed Woman"
´´Thank you, Sir, domo….this is a song I originally wrote for my wife, it was a tribute (chuckles) was a, uh, an ode, was….(chuckles) and, uh, I guess it´s a song I originally wrote for my wife, it´s also about, uh, uh, sexual act very popular in the United States and I assume all around the world (chuckles) uh, in the States it´s known as ´cunnilingus,´ I, I couldn´t find out what Japanese translation of that was (laughs)(someone cheers) thank you, cunnilingus fans out there, thank you very much (chuckles) but uh….what can I say? what else can I say about it? not much, oh, uh, I´ll try, uh….uh, uh, alright (chuckles)(speaks Japanese)(chuckles) (speaks Japanese)(chuckles)….´´

Intro to "Two Hearts"
´´Woh! Where are you, baby? (chuckles) alright….here´s for my red headed woman….´´

Intro to "Born In The U.S.A"
´´Oh, I always remember there was a….a park on the one end of town, the east end of town that I grew up in, there was this small, little park right where the road took you out of town and it was always, uh, filled with little white crosses and I thought it was very beautiful when I was young, it was always a place where when you….when you drove past, you knew that you were home again….and, uh….I got a little older and I saw there was something written on all the crosses and I remember asking my mother what they said, what that was, and she said ´Well, that´s the names of…all the men who died in all the wars that were fought from our town….and that´s one of the ways we remember them´….´´

Intro to "Dry Lightning"
´´Yeah, thank you, this is a, uh….a song about men and women, I didn´t write about men and women for a long time….wrote about men in cars, men in cars thinking about women (chuckles) uh, men watching women in cars (chuckles) but not quite men and women so (chuckles) this is, uh, about one of those relationships where, everybody´s had ´em, where you always made it, there was a lot of good things going on, might have worked out if you weren´t so busy sort of fucking it up all the time , you know (chuckles) but, uh….let me see, this is, uh, uh (speaks Japanese)…this is called ´Dry Lightning´….´´

Intro to "Youngstown"
´´(?)…I was in the States, I played, uh, Youngstown, Ohio, was the, uh….city that was the center of the steel industry in America for the whole first half of the century…and, uh, around the late-´70s and early-´80s, it, uh, most of the mills closed down….and, uh….this is a song about the people that, uh, built the buildings in my country and the bridges that…..and, uh, we´re considered expendable….this is called ´Youngstown´….´´

Intro to "Spare Parts"
´´Thanks, when I was, uh….(?)(chuckles)….thank you, I was, I remember the first time I picked up the guitar, I felt like….it was, uh, such a powerful thing that I always used to say ´Well, if you wrote the right song or….you know, there´d be peace in the Middle East, if you just got that, got it right, you know´ (chuckles)….but you get a little older, you realise it´s not that easy (chuckles) and uh….but I think one of the dangers of….growing up is you can forget what you can do so this is a song about a woman that saves just the part of the world that she can touch….that´s pretty good in the end….´´

Intro to "Sinaloa Cowboys"
´´(chuckles) This is, uh, Kevin, Kevin-san (chuckles) he´s a guitar man, oh….financial advisor, guru….sexual counsellor (chuckles) he is the (chuckles) Dr.Ruth of roadmen (chuckles) ah, I used to, uh….before I had….a lot of little kids, I used to take some trips with, uh, some of my friends, we used to go all through the southwestern part of the United States and uh, we´d go through Arizona and, uh, Nevada and Utah….it was, uh, staying in all these little motels, you know, we´d stay off the interstates and just go on the little state and county roads….and uh….I was in a motel in western Arizona and, uh….this classic sort of little desert town, there´s a grocery store and a gas-station and a motel and a bar - all these necessities for human life to flourish there (chuckles) and uh….and, uh….we were sitting outside, it was late at night, around 11.30, and these two Mexican men came in from the west and took the room next to us and one was a young kid and….one was a fellow about my age….and he came over and started looking at our motorcycles and started talking that he´d had a younger brother that died in a southern California motorcycle accident and, uh, there was something in his voice that always stayed with me in the back of my head….I think I was about to have my own children and there´s that fear of….all the things, those things in the world you can´t protect them from, just the randomness of….of, of the world and, uh, there was something in his voice, I don´t know, some sound was like when you suffer that sort of loss, it´s hard to get the world to feel right again, I don´t know how people do it….but, uh, his voice stayed with me and I was writing a song on Central California drug trade, Mexican gangs come up into the Central Valley and they hire migrant workers to work in the drug labs, they´re the ones that usually get blown up or busted and….it´s a song about two brothers who come up out of Mexico and, uh….there´s something about his voice, I always heard his voice in the back of my head as I was writing it so I dedicate this to him every night….wherever he may be….this is called, uh, ´Sinaloa Cowboys´….´´

Intro to "The Line"
´´This is a, uh, song set in San Diego, down in San Diego, you get a lot of young guys that come out of the army and they end up going to work for the California border patrol, it´s a confusing job….I think, uh….there was a Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, who said that, you know, California was Mexico till 1848 so the border sits there more like a scar….and….there was, the immigration issue was really, so abused in the last American election, there´s, uh, there´s always been people coming across the border and doing jobs that nobody else wants to do for a pay that nobody else will take at the behest of American businesses and their kids´ll get a little education or if they got sick, they´d get some medical care but anyway, this is a song about a young border patrolman trying to figure out….where that line is, where that line really is down there, and inside of him, I guess….this is called ´The Line´….´´

Intro to "Balboa Park"
´´Thank you, this is a, uh, song about kids, these kids that come across the border and, from Tijuana to, to San Diego, when they´re about, uh, oh, some of them are as young as 12, 13, 14, 15 years old and they end up on this strip called Twelfth Street in San Diego….uh, it´s a funny thing, you know, once you have your own kids, you sort of get….extra sensitive to anything about kids, I guess, and uh….and people always ask you what the difference is, you know, how they changed your life, I think the kids, they got this window onto the grace that´s in the world and uh….´cause they´re open, and I think that as you get older, it gets harder to….to feel that grace, which is why, I think, people listen to music and, uh, uh, engage in unusual sexual practises and things like that (chuckles) but uh….but the kids, they got this window onto that grace and it comes through them and it blows into your life and I think your job is to sort of shepherd it as a parent, you know, and protect it, this is a story about kids that got no way to do that….that´s what happens, uh, when that grace goes unprotected and uh….´´

Intro to "Across The Border"
´´Thank you, when I was, uh, I grew up in a house where there wasn´t a lot of talk about books or, uh…or culture or, uh, everybody was sort of busy keeping their heads above water as best as they could, and the first thing that I remember that gave me a sense of another world was the music that I heard in the morning on the radio, my mother would have the radio on in the kitchen in the morning and I´d hear all those great Top40-records and I always heard something in all those singers´ voices, like a secret message saying ´There´s a party going on and you´re missing it, little boy,´ you know (chuckles) and, uh, uh….that, really those were, those records really gave a sense of the outside world and that there was another life that you could live beyond the life that you saw in front of you in your small town, beyond growing up and going to school and working in the factory and coming home at night, that there was a world that was worth risking yourself for….and uh….you know, and it was filled with fun and sex and danger and beauty and all the things that make life worth living, you know (chuckles) but uh….later on a friend of mine showed me John Ford´s ´Grapes Of Wrath´ and I found something in that film that I, the same sort of thing that I´d found in all those old records and uh….I guess in the Steinbeck novel and the film there was an old-fashioned sense of heroism, somebody risking their, what they had for an idea that was outside of them and bigger than they were….by implication saying that we´re connected in some fashion….and, uh….there´s a scene at the end of the picture where Tom Joad´s killed a security guard that´s killed a friend of his and he´s gotta leave his family and they´ve traveled thousands of miles and they have nothing and they´ve lost their home and, and their family members and they´re staying in this workcamp….and he slips into his mother´s cabin at night and he wakes her up and says ´Mama, I gotta go´ and they step out underneath these trees and uh….she says ´Well, I knew this would come but how am I gonna know if you´re alright, if you´re alive, will I ever see you again?´….he says ´I don´t know,´ says ´All I know is I gotta go out and kick around and see what´s wrong and see if there´s something I can do about it….and you´ll see me ´cause at night I´ll be in that darkness that surrounds you when you´re sleeping and you´ll hear me in men´s voices when they´re yelling ´cause they´re angry ….and in the way that kids sound, laughing when they know that there´s food on the table and that they´re safe and, uh….you´ll, you´ll see me´….so he moves off into the night, the next morning the Joads are heading north looking for work and mother says, father says ´What are we gonna do without Tommy?´ and the mother says ´Well, we´re gonna keep going´….so this is a song about how people keep going, how after the world deals its harshest blows, as it will to all of us at some time or another, people fall back on love and faith and hope and, uh, ultimately on each other, that´s all there is, so, uh, I guess, this, uh (speaks Japanese)….´´

Intro to "Galveston Bay"
^{[the introduction is in Japanese]}

Intro to "If I Should Fall Behind"
´´Thank you, a little bit of light here….to, if you can turn this on, my friend….this is, uh, I´d like to, uh….(speaks Japanese)….´´

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

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