Reason to Believe: Bruce Springsteen and his fans

This is an old essay that I thought I’d share, given that we’ll be seeing Bruce Springsteen on Broadway later this week. There are no links in it — as I said, the essay is older (probably from 2005 or so).

REASON TO BELIEVE: Bruce Springsteen and his fans

“I always believed, well, the fans are there for something. It’s more than a personality cult. They’re there because there’s certain music that — the music they love. There’s ideas that perhaps you have in common.” — Bruce Springsteen on Nightline

The show is loud at this point, pushed to a fever pitch that will carry it through nearly three hours, through the full-bodied sound of the current album, through some chestnuts from earlier days, some reconfigured, made new, re-created. It’s as if he is saying, “There is nothing static in rock and roll,” as if he’s saying “change, transformation is the natural state of the world.”

It is Dec. 13, 2002, and we’re in Albany, N.Y. Bruce Springsteen is winding down the second leg of his American tour, playing one of the last concerts before taking a long break for Christmas. My wife, Annie, and I and a friend had trekked north from our home in New Jersey to see Bruce and the E Street Band — my fifth Springsteen concert, Annie’s fourth.