Story 1981-09-08 Rosemont, IL
storyteller.gif

08.09.81 Rosemont, IL, intro to ´Independence Day´
´´How´s the summer for you here ? (cheers)….we, uh….we have spent the summer touring here in the States but….before that we were over in Europe for a few months….that was the first time I ever been over there and it´s….it´s a lot different, it´s a lot different there than it is here….it´s uh….but when you go over there, you get a distance (?) I guess from being away from home, you look back…..and I was reading this book, it was called, uh, The History of the United States, it was by a guy by the name of Allen Nevins and Henry Steele Commager and when I was in school, I didn´t pay much attention to history or anything else that they were teaching me….but….as I got into this book, I realised how much I´d missed and how important it was to know, to know a lot of those things, as I look back and I remember that that my old man, he worked in a factory and his….and his father, he worked in a factory…. and there´s nothing that stops, stops that cycle from, from keeping going on and repeating and repeating itself….it´s important to know, it´s important to know about the forces that play, that are gonna play on your lives as you get older….and….in that book, there´s a lot of things to be proud of and there´s a lot of things to be ashamed of so…..´´

08.09.81 Rosemont, IL, intro to ´Who´ll Stop the Rain ?´(following ´Independence Day´)
´´I guess what I was trying, I was trying to say before is the difference….when I look back and I looked at my old man and his old man was the difference between us was that we didn´t, none of us knew enough and you gotta know a lot about where you´re coming from before you can understand where you´re gonna go to and….you´re gonna be able to stop the rain…..´´

08.09.81 Rosemont, IL, intro to ´This Land Is Your Land´
´´Here´s a song, it was written a….long time ago by a guy named Woody Guthrie…..who was, uh, I guess for me, was about the best songwriter we ever had and…..I guess this song is about responsobility, a part of it is about taking responsobility for, for the things that you do and the things that, that happen around you…..´´

08.09.81 Rosemont, IL, intro to ´Johnny Bye Bye´
´´Thanks….(?)….I remember when I was 9 years old, I was sitting on the floor of my livingroom and my mother had on the ´Ed Sullivan Show´ and uh…..on came Elvis Presley ….that´s something….that I never forgot and…..I wrote this song after, uh, after a friend of mine called me up and told me that, that Elvis had died and I thought about it, I still think about it a lot, how somebody that, that once seemed so, seemed so alive and seemed to have so much, so much inside to give, could in the end…..end up, uh…..end up the way he ended up, this is, uh…..this is for Elvis ´cause he, he deserved a lot better than he got…..´´

08.09.81 Rosemont, IL, middle of ´Rosalita´
´´Alright….are you loose ? (cheers) well, you better be because I´m about to go into the most exciting part of the show….I´m talking about the band introductions (cheers) I told you, I told you, alright, we´re gonna start over there on the far left, the guy that plays that big thing we like to call a piano….let me hear a nice warm round of applause for the most educated member of the band, the only member of the band with a full high school diploma, I´m talking about, let´s hear it for education and Professor Roy Bittan….next we got a guy….who brought you many hits, such as ‘I Don’t Wanna Go Home’, ‘Sweeter than Honey’, ‘This Time It’s for Real’, ‘Some Things Just Don’t Change’, ‘Daddy’s Come Home’, ‘Trapped Again’, poet of the soul, master of rock and roll, the great Miami Steve Van Zandt on the guitar….next, on the bass guitar, all the way from Neptune, New Jersey (?), I´m talking about the one, the only, the handsome, the debonair ladies´ man Mr.Garry W.Tallent on the bass guitar….next we got a gentleman, he´s known around the neighbourhood as the king of the big beat, the man with the moving feet, let´s hear it, from South Orange, New Jersey, the Mighty Max Weinberg on the drums….next, over on the far right, we got a gentleman, the only red-headed member of the band, all the way from Flemington, New Jersey, now you see him, now you don´t, I’m talking about the one, the only Phantom Dan Federici on the organ ….and now…..I don´t blame you for being excited….because right now I´m gonna introduce to you, this is the most difficult part of the show because I can never think of words able to describe this guy…..and so….I´d like to, to do here in Chicago….(?) when people can´t describe something, sometimes they wrote poems about it, like the guy that saw a tree and it was so pretty he couldn´t describe it so he wrote a poem or the guy that seen a rose and he wrote a poem about it, well, right now, I´d like to do my poem for Clarence…..‘C’ is for ‘Cool’ which on a foolish man would dispute….‘L’ is for lean and mean and (?)….‘A’ is for the ace of the saxophone….‘R’ is ‘cause he´s a regular guy even though he´s world reknown ….‘E’ is for his everlasting love which I hold so dear….‘N’ is for nasty, you mess with him and your face he will smear….‘C’ is for that C-note he owed me since last year….and ‘E’ is for everything else, you put that all together, what’s that spell ?….what’s that spell ?…. what’s that spell ?…Spotlight on the Big Man !….

Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License