| Mike Saunders |
We spent our last full day in Barcelona preparing for, experiencing and getting back from Bruce’s second gig at the Olympic Stadium, which was another endurance test in terms of what the Spanish weather had in store for us. We woke up on the morning after my birthday to bright sunshine. We’d had a downpour while out for an alfresco meal on Saturday evening but initial forecasts of thundery rain throughout Sunday had now been downgraded to drizzle or occasional light rain during the show, or no rain at all. So after a few hours spent relaxing, Dan, Deirdre and I took a chance and set off dressed for dry weather. Big mistake.
It was easy to get to the stadium from our place. Short Metro and funicular journeys followed by a 10-minute walk and we were there. This time we found the combined pit/GA queue snaking down the approach road instead of around the stadium. The aforementioned inefficient system of no marshals, toilets, barriers or any useful information was still in place. As we joined the line, we heard Bruce and band playing Lucky Town at the end of the soundcheck, which we later found out also included My Love Will Not Let You Down and I’m Goin’ Down. It was sunny when we left, but there were now increasingly dark clouds looming directly overhead. They’ll soon pass over, I said unconvincingly. Minutes later there was a biblical downpour, accompanied by the occasional rumble of thunder. According to Audrey Hepburn, the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, but now it was chucking it down on the mountain. Those who were less meteorologically optimistic had brought plastic ponchos, but the rest of us (with literally nowhere to hide except the doorway of a nearby museum and a couple of bus shelters) had to stand there and get soaked to the skin. A process that didn’t take very long given the torrential nature of the precipitation. It put a literal dampener on what originally promised to be an exciting anticipatory afternoon. To be frank, we were suddenly thoroughly f-ing miserable and pissed off. At one point, we seriously considered leaving to watch Spanish TV at the apartment, which would have been preferable to being the first Bruce fans in history to drown standing up.
The rain continued in various strengths for over two hours, lessening off, then coming back with a vengeance, while we crawled around the stadium complex as we had on Friday, making our slow, soggy way to the main entrance, wondering about the cost of trenchfoot medication in Spain. It was zipped up inside my neck pouch, but my ticket, an A4 inkjet printout, was soaked. The barcode had miraculously survived but the electronic reader didn’t recognize it when I finally got within sight of the gate. (This was apparently a problem on Friday too, unrelated to the weather). The woman tried three times, then waved me through. If I’d been refused entry at that point due to a waterlogged ticket, somebody might have got hurt. Dan’s Metro ticket, which was thicker, had disintegrated completely. Luckily I’d wrapped my phone and camera in a sandwich bag. Trudging dejectedly into the stadium, we settled in the exact spot we had on Friday, to the far right of the pit, where Ekaterina joined us. Sitting on the ground wasn’t an option, so we just had to stand there, dripping. If the merch outlets had sold towels, they’d have made a fortune. While fans flooded in with their umbrellas and plastic ponchos of various hues, the screens displayed details of the stadium evacuation procedure should it be required, suggesting that a storm may be imminent, but thankfully the rain stopped before showtime, the sun appeared briefly and a rainbow formed above us. The cool air gradually dried us out as we shivered in our inappropriate and insufficient clothing, but our shoes remained soaked. I was sure some kind of fungus was growing in mine, or maybe a brand new variant of pond life. Having dry fingers finally allowed us to operate our cameras and phones again. Some of my photos can be found below.
Luckily, we didn’t have long to wait until the gig after the extended slog into the venue. Bruce hit the stage around 8.55 to another massive roar from the huge crowd, whose enthusiasm hadn’t been dampened even if their clothes had. As hoped, despite static setlist syndrome, the second concert had several notable differences from the first, opening with My Love Will Not Let You Down and including Trapped, Johnny 99 and a rare Ramrod. Again, the band solos and horn arrangements in Kitty’s Back and The E Street Shuffle were highlights for me, as was the solo acoustic Last Man Standing into Backstreets. The clips of Clarence and Danny on screen during Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out were a poignant reminder of the show’s underlying theme of mortality. Running close to three hours with 29 songs and eight encores, it turned out to be the longest concert of the tour so far, some kind of compensation for our earlier ordeal. The sound, lights and three big high-definition screens were excellent. No celebrities made it onstage this time, but Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson (dry as a bone of course) were seen having large amounts of fun at the mixing desk before being escorted by security past us through the pit to the backstage area. We also saw Jon Landau walking around the pit again and Thom Zimny and his crew rushing past. It was good to run into Laurie, Paul and Malcolm (with Brenda) again, and to see Mira Belle, Suso Peter Blöchliger, Jose Ramon Cervera, Caroline and Ralph, and Philip Jump and Cinzia for the first time. Sorry we missed you, Anna, Brenda and Carina.
Bruce finally walked off around 11.50. In the past, we might have stuck around to clap for another encore, but enough was enough. We were happy to leave as fast as possible and begin the long trudge back down to the Plaza d’Espanya. This time it only took us 45 minutes, instead of around an hour, to wind our way down the endless series of steps and escalators to ground level. If there is a next time, we intend to shave another five minutes off our record. And we’ll bring canoes, just in case. The Metro closes at midnight on Sundays, but because Monday was a public holiday, it was running until 2am. A much better prospect than trying to squeeze onto a night bus, find a taxi, or in the worst case scenario, walk three miles. After waiting for a human bottleneck to clear, we made it back to our apartment by 1.45 for a hot shower (we gave it full marks for its easily understood controls) and beer, pizza, ice cream and coffee. After chatting about the day’s events, we crashed out at 3.45am.
The three of us were up again at 9am on Monday, for breakfast on my favorite balcony. If Bruce had played in the café across the tree-lined street below us and the Sagrada Familia had been dragged three blocks north, I might have stayed on that balcony for six days straight, watching the world go by. I wanted to fold it up and bring it home with me, but it would have exceeded cabin baggage requirements. Deirdre still had a few hours before flying to Dublin, but a taxi arrived at 10.45 to whisk me and Dan to the airport and back to reality, our six-day Barcelona trip now sadly complete. But as I always say, you have to come home so you can go away again. Real life is just a temporary phase between the good times. Before we left, we used a heater to bring our shoes to an acceptable level of dryness for travel, but they still smelt musty and damp. I won’t even mention the condition of the socks we’d worn inside them at the gig. |
