Springsteen Brings Historic Show to Hershey Tonight

New Era

Published: Aug. 19, 2008

By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

In 2005 we got the Rolling Stones. Two years later, a reunited Police.Short of U2, or some miracle Beatles reunion, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's show tonight should be among the most unforgettable nights the crumbling old football arena has ever seen.

Tonight's 7:30 show begins the homestretch of a worldwide tour in support of Springsteen's 2007 album "Magic," which debuted last October at number one on Billboard's Top 200 and has sold just over a million copies.Springsteen shows are something to behold if you haven't had the pleasure.

They start out as house-rocking parties, become feverish — punctuated by moments of high drama and relentless energy — celebrating both the redemptive power of rock and roll and the shared history between band and audience.They end, for many, feeling like nothing short of a religious experience.

The current tour began, as almost all Springsteen tours have in the last decade, last September in dress rehearsals at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, N.J. That's the beach town where Bruce began his professional career in the late 1960s and met most of the musicians who would come to join the ranks of the E Street Band.

Since October, Springsteen and the band — who've never played Hersheypark — have made two trips each across Western Europe and North America, over 200 shows in front of a total of 2 million people.And so far, it has proven to be one of the most memorable E Street road journeys of all, though not without its difficult moments.

E Street Band organist Danny Federici, a Springsteen cohort since he was invited to join an acid-jam rock band called Steel Mill in 1968, made what would be his final performance on March 20 in Indianapolis.Having battled melanoma for three years, Federici died April 17.

Other luminaries in Bruce's orbit have also been extinguished over the course of the last year: the fortune teller Madam Marie, a fixture on Asbury Park's boardwalk for over 50 years and canonized in Springsteen's 1973 song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy);" Bill Chinnock, who played in groups with virtually every E Streeter; Terry McGovern, Springsteen's personal assistant, bodyguard, and all around aide de camp, who passed during the recording of "Magic."

Perhaps in defiance of those losses, the Boss has been turning in what even his oldest fans are calling some of his most exciting shows ever. And he has his audience to thank.

It was on the European legs that a strange new element began to enter the shows; that of fans helping to determine what Bruce and the band would play. Changing the setlist for any given night on the fly has been a fact of life with Springsteen since the early 1970s. But at some point fans started bringing posters with hand-written requests on them, turning each concert into a make-your-own-setlist event; setlist blogging, if you will.

"People have brought signs to shows before and Bruce has on occasion said 'put those signs down,'" says Chris Phillips, editor of "Backstreets" since 1980, the definitive print and now online source of Springsteen and Jersey Shore music.

"But in Europe it kind of evolved organically," he said. "When they moved to stadiums he became more receptive to it."It's become almost a stump-the-band challenge, as people request obscure oldies, B-sides and album cuts the band hasn't played in years.

"Now it's become a regular part of the show; he'll go out to the audience and collect the signs, then go through them and spring them on the band. It's really mind blowing," says Phillips.

So far, the band hasn't been tripped up. Having played together most of their lives — and almost non-stop since reuniting in 1999 — that would be hard to do.

The big favorites like "Born to Run," "The Rising," "Thunder Road," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," and "Badlands" are there, but are each night surrounded by…well, anybody's guess. Dramatic epics like "Jungleland" and "Incident on 57th Street," as well as oldies like "Twist and Shout," "Little Latin Lupe Lou," or "Quarter to Three."

"So the setlist is useless," guitarist Nils Lofgren told Billboard magazine earlier this summer. "The band, musically, is in the best shape we've ever been, I think," added Lofgren. "It's fun to be part of something…where a band leader can do that much improv and get away with it and have a band that'll deliver and make it work."

Bruce Springsteen: American Man

Sunday News
Published: Aug. 17, 2008
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent


He began his career as a skinny outcast who fought with his father, dropped out of community college and was facing a hopeless life. But since finding a sense of community and a sense of purpose in rock 'n' roll, Bruce Springsteen has come to represent the ideals of the modern American man.

Twenty years ago, Bruce Springsteen recorded one of his most important, most undervalued songs. "Walk Like A Man," from his album "Tunnel of Love," seldom makes an appearance in concert, but it's stuck in the rotation of Springsteen's life.In the song, the singer is standing at the altar about to be married. His father grips his hand, cries on his shoulder and turns away.

All the singer can remember is walking behind his father on the beach as a child, trying to match his manly stride, "tracing your footprints in the sand, trying to walk like a man."

While Springsteen, who will perform Tuesday in Hershey, still argues with himself about the role his father played in his life — as recently as 2006 he called his dad an absentee father, even though he was physically available, if emotionally distant — the song signaled that he had made some kind of peace with his father and realized he still had lessons to learn from him.

Today, Springsteen seems to have a more mature understanding of life and his place in it. Praise has been heaped upon him like no other artist since Bob Dylan, and he has evolved into more than just an iconic rock star, peerless bandleader and celebrator of cherished American dreams.

In short, he is a fit model of American manhood.Springsteen hasn't been gunning for the title of "model man." He would probably scoff at the idea. But in his life and music, he meditates on a set of admirable values and principles: loyalty, fidelity, integrity, love of community, patriotism rooted in solidarity, the glad responsibility of citizenship, reward in one's work, respect for others and satisfaction in love.

By Springsteen's unspoken standards, a man worthy of calling himself as much is a loving husband and devoted father, a faithful friend, a spiritual seeker and an engaged, compassionate citizen. He is able to celebrate the victories of life, but knows the cost if those victories are hollow or cheaply won.

To that end, Springsteen has conducted his personal life in close harmony with his musical ideals. He has kept business and personal struggles out of the limelight. Go ahead, Google him. You'll be hard pressed to find anything more than a lawsuit against a crooked manager in 1976 and a disagreement over a horse two years ago.

There have been no public temper tantrums, attacks on paparazzi, mad stalkers, drug arrests, illegitimate children or DUIs. He is either very lucky or very grounded. The argument for the latter seems most convincing.

Growing up, Bruce Springsteen knew the frustration of poverty. The Freehold, N.J., house where he spent most of his youth had a gaping hole in one wall that was never properly repaired. He told friends a plane crashed there during the war. His father drove a school bus.

Years later, he would sing with childlike wonder about looking up at a mansion on the hill, and in another song swore that once he grew up and became wealthy he would never drive a used car. Bruce now lives in that mansion on the hill, a few of them in fact, and while he can afford any car he wants, he prefers classics from the 1950s and 60s.

Springsteen settled his family only a few miles from Freehold. He still makes occasional forays into town,
visiting the old neighborhood, having a beer with the guy who lives in his boyhood home. He's even played benefits for the Catholic school that nearly kicked him out.

In rock 'n' roll, Springsteen found hope in the bleakness of his surroundings. The voices he heard on the radio came from mostly working-class kids, black and white. They spoke to him, gave him comfort and a taste of an exciting, alluring world. More to the point, they introduced a set of ideals on which to build a life.

An outcast at school, Springsteen found friendship and understanding among other musicians who shared his passion for rock music, and they became his de facto family. When he finally got signed to Columbia Records in 1972, he called in all the best Jersey Shore musicians he had worked with over the years — all ace players, but first and foremost, friends he could depend on and trust, personally and musically.

Many of the members of his E Street Band have been playing with him for decades. In 1991, Springsteen married singer Patti Scialfa, who joined the band in 1984. In April, organist Danny Federici, who hooked up with Springsteen in 1968, died of melanoma. Every night since, he's been given a touching tribute on tour.

It's no wonder that themes of friendship, loyalty and fidelity have found their way into the core of Springsteen's catalog. His social themes took a little longer to develop.Only in the last decade has Springsteen developed a strong political voice. Throughout the first epoch of his career, he aligned himself with no movements, sang no protest songs and burned no draft cards. (He failed his draft physical.)

In 1979, he performed at the No Nukes concerts against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and power plants, but was the only artist not to contribute a statement to the concert program. He turned a 1981 concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum into a benefit for the fledgling Vietnam Veterans of America, saving the group from an early demise. There he performed Credence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain," recognizing the song as an unofficial anthem of Vietnam vets.

He added his gruff refrain to the all-star "We Are the World" single in 1984 to aid famine victims in Africa, but didn't play Live Aid the following summer. He signed onto Amnesty International's Human Rights Now tour in 1988, and played Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" to a hopeful audience in East Berlin a year before the wall came down.

He imbued a man dying of AIDS with empathy and empowerment on his Oscar-award winning "Streets of Philadelphia"; pointed to the still-deep racial divide in America on "American Skin (41 Shots)," about the pointless shooting death of Amadou Diallo at the hands of New York City police; and channeled Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck on "The Ghost of Tom Joad."

But in choosing his stages, songs and statements, Springsteen steadfastly remained uncommitted to any political platform, party or candidate, despite having plenty of opportunities to declare himself.

When Ronald Reagan name-dropped Springsteen during a 1984 campaign stop in New Jersey, a state ravaged by the policies of Reaganomics, Springsteen said nothing. Twelve years later, Bob Dole tried the same trick. This time, Bruce wrote a letter to his local paper simply saying he didn't support Dole.

By the 2004 presidential elections, however, something had changed. Maybe it was due to the fact that he had three children, or that the activists of the 1960s weren't around much anymore, but Springsteen felt compelled to spearhead a barnstorming tour of swing states, dubbed the Vote For Change Tour, to benefit a liberal political action committee.

At the conclusion of that tour, he went so far as to endorse and go on the stump for Democratic nominee John Kerry, performing and speaking at several rallies late in the campaign. In endorsing the senator, Springsteen for the first time put the ideals of his songs into a political context. He had clearly been heading in that direction for some time.

"For the last 25 years, I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens," he wrote to the New York Times.

Onstage in Washington, D.C., in October 2004, he was even more direct. "You deceive the country into war, you should lose your job! It ain't rocket science!"

Some of Springsteen's fans were less than happy. Bruce had always gotten a lot done working not with well-funded, high-profile politicos, but with food banks, union relief funds, homeless shelters and veterans groups. The risk, Springsteen said, was worth it because remaining silent would have called into question the sincerity of the ideals expressed in his music.

In his book "The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Redemption, From Asbury Park to Magic," writer Jeffrey Symynkywicz, a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, summarizes the ideals of more than 30 years of Springsteen's music into what he termed the Ten Commandments of Springsteen.

Reflecting a balance of hope and bitter reality, the list of observations includes "There is always something more," "Our stories symbolize something deeper" and, perhaps the most important one, "Life without connections is empty and dangerous."

On his newest disc, "Magic," Springsteen, now 58, contemplates his mortality and wonders if, as a nation, we've strayed. Twenty years after "Walk Like a Man," Springsteen continues to chew on his belief that a man worthy of admiration is a work in progress. He should know.

Reinventive Counting Crows Outshine Maroon 5

New Era
Published: August 6, 2008
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

The pairing makes total sense from a marketing standpoint: Mom and Dad can catch the Counting Crows, while Maroon 5 can deliver safe, slick rock 'n' roll for the teenagers to enjoy.But the similarities in substance between the two groups are few, if any. And Tuesday night at Hersheypark Stadium, the match-up wasn't even a fair one.

Following a brief set from up-and-coming singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles — sounding refreshingly like a sunnier Norah Jones who doesn't seem afraid of her own shadow —Maroon 5 stormed through over an hour of slick, soul-kissed pop hits. Singer Adam Levine proved he is more of a sex symbol than a bandleader.While his clear voice and confident stage demeanor make him a god to teens and young adults, not to mention provide fodder for his side job as a guaranteed tabloid teaser, he is little more than a boy band singer with an actual band behind him.

Not a bad band, mind you. Maroon 5 can lock in a tight soul groove and stay there. It's just that hit after hit — "This Love," "Harder to Breathe," "Sunday Morning," "All I Need" — anyone with open ears over 30 wonders where they have heard these tunes before. Prince? Terrance Trent D'Arby? Morris Day? Maybe Jamiraqui? With two albums in less than seven years, it's not likely a pop act can pull off a show that is anything more than adequately slick, no matter how many 13-to-21-year-old girls sing along.

With a set of pipes like his and a monster hit-maker like Clive Davis behind him, there is no doubt Levine will have every chance to prove these assertions wrong.But there is a difference between simply a good band and a well-rehearsed one. And within minutes of Counting Crows' taking the stage shortly before 10 p.m. to the buttery tones of Bill Withers' "Lean on Me," the difference was clear.

"We're going to do something a little different tonight," is how a now noticeably svelte singer Adam Duritz introduced the band's performance. As he explained, it was the band's way of making sure they always play from the heart, instead of a setlist.

"It's a hard thing being a Counting Crows fan," he joked. "I read the boards, so I know. I know you want us to sing the songs the way you want me to so you can sing along with them," he said, alluding to his frequent habit of not ever sticking to the same phrasing of each song as it was recorded.On a good night, it can make a familiar song ring with new kinetic energy. On a bad night, it sounds like he's doing a bad Van Morrison impression.

"But if we played the same show every night, you'd be getting ripped off," he explained.It was an approach more appropriate for a small club or theater, but brandishing more acoustic guitars than electric, the band made it work, with most of the audience on its feet the entire show.What could have become a stadium-sized snooze became immediately memorable, and dare it be said, intimate.

Starting with their breakout hit "Rain King," recast in a slower country-rock delivery with lyrics from "Someone to Watch Over Me" the band played almost entirely re-imagined versions of its classics.Of the groups older material only the soaring piano/accordion ballad "Long December" and the touching "If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel is Dead)" were played close to their original forms.

"Angels of the Silences," which opened the band's second album in 1996 with crushing guitars and belted vocals, was played gentle and slower than its original, followed by the rare country tune "Four White Stallions," complete with pedal steel."Mr. Jones," the band's first hit single from 1994, was virtually unrecognizable to fans until well into the first verse.

Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" may have proven a hit for Counting Crows in 2002 but fans criticized its stiff, cheesy pop feel. Here the band atoned for that sin with a version entirely new — keeping the heavy beats of their hit version and referencing Mitchell's folksy original with harmonica and mandolin.

Only one song, "Washington Square," was played from the group's new disc "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings."A band that can reinvent its catalog on a whim and still connect with its core audience is a talent to be applauded. Why it needs to share the stage with a derivative Top 40 band to do that is unclear.

Live Please Crowd, No Matter How Small

New Era
Published: Aug. 4, 2008
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

The closest thing to a hometown show and Live couldn't fill a small hockey arena Friday night. Bringing along Blues Traveler and Collective Soul — two other bands whose hit-making days are a decade gone — didn't help.

Maybe it's too early for 1990s nostalgia.After all, folks who came of age, went to college and found plenty of well-paying jobs in the booming mid-90s now face the demands of family and career in an economy that is turning Generation X into Generation Foreclosure.

So it may be understandable that the Giant Center was barely over half full for a triptych of Clinton-era hitmakers — even if one of them was local favorite Live, whose members hail from York and got their start at Lancaster's Chameleon Club.It didn't help that not one of the bands had new material to support. Collective Soul put out an album available only at Target over a year ago, and Blues Traveler hasn't had anything new out in four years, only a collection of acoustic versions of their hits.

Similarly, Live's "Radiant Sea" is an odds and ends collection.But all three marquee bands, by now seasoned enough to be able to pull off a good gig in a bad situation, played for the crowd that was there, not the one they could have drawn a decade ago.When Live took the stage shortly after 9 p.m. it was a sure thing that even though a disappointing number of seats were left empty, the ones that mattered were the ones filled.

Blasting through hits and an impressive number of favorites one came to the understanding that this group's catalog was richer than their latest sales figures reveal. "I Alone," "Simple Creed" and "All Over You" connected with ragged fury, even if at first singer Ed Kowalczyk's vocals sounded shrill and distorted. (Granted, his piercing voice is probably not an easy one to mix.)"Selling the Drama" rang true with its anthemic chorus, and their version of Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line" had a cleverly inverted re-arrangement.

But Live is a band that has had to find out how to grow up and approach middle age with grace and still somehow stand by its youthful rage. It has not been an easy transition, one marked with missteps into vague Eastern spiritualism.Live still gets airplay on hard rock and adult contemporary stations (that pays the mortgages for sure), but wide acclaim and credibility for a band that goes from sales of 8 million ("Throwing Copper") to less than 100,000 ("Songs From Black Mountain") is hard to come by. But as the cliché goes, they are still big in Europe.

The more mature Live was represented by Kowalczyk's wedding song "Turn My Head," the U2-soundalike "Stood Up for Love" and the perennially popular dirge "Lightning Crashes."As for the other acts, Blues Traveler frontman John Popper led his band through jammy versions of their hits, and showed that even though his caterwauling harmonica sound may have become dated and annoying, he can still play with plenty of power and originality.

Collective Soul, who came to the stage late due to bus trouble, crammed their set into an abbreviated rundown of hits and the ones that could have been. "December" featured three guitars and a heavier arrangement than the hit single. "The World I Know" lost the strings and its preciousness to became an arena-rock power ballad.

Three has-been bands grinding out their decade-old hits not enough for you? How about a throwback cover singer in between? Enter adorable Hana Pestle, who held the crowd rapt with versions of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" and Radiohead's "Creep" during set changes.

But what really stole the show, and the entire night to be fair, was when the six kids of the Live band members came up onstage for "Heaven," the song wherein Kowalczyk reveals that all the pent up rage of his youth and spiritual searching of early adulthood is finally vanquished in the eyes of his daughters.The kids, between the ages of about 5 and 11, danced, played air guitar and in general looked quite at home rocking out with their dads.

And as if to declare exactly where the band's future is, and indeed his own, Kowalczyk sang the song while holding his 6-year-old daughter. Corny? Sure. Sentimental and a little bit tacky? You bet. But to a parent that can see God in the eyes of their child (and may he curse those who cannot), such considerations of cool-ness are none to even ponder.

Whether they rock for angry young metalheads or soccer moms, Live at least seems certain of that which will inspire them. No amount of hand wringing over declining record sales and low attendance figures can change that. And the kind of passion Live still feels can ignite a fire at any time.Don't count this band out yet.