Waitin' on a Sunny Day - Bruce Springsteen in Sunderland (2024)
"Hard times, baby well they come to us all
Sure as the tickin' of the clock on the wall
Sure as the turnin' of the night into day"
I lost my wife in the early Summer of 2023.
In the warm, bright sunshine of May our world fell apart.
She'd been
ill for a very long time but so many things went wrong, so quickly...
It was a series of waking nightmares; ambulance journeys, long late-night walks down hospital corridors, hushed conversations in side-rooms and then... nothing.
She was gone.
Just... gone.
Every day had always begun and ended with her. She was the person our lives revolved around.
Gone.
In the hollow, tired-eyed and washed-out days that followed, my son and I would sit up
talking night after night. Neither of us were sleeping properly - we were plagued by dreams about hospitals and funerals. We couldn't seem to get our heads around what
had happened - not so much a phase of denial as a sense of complete
disbelief.
How could this happen?
How can she not be here?
Our world was suddenly changed and it was all horribly wrong.
We
didn't want to watch anything on TV that reminded us of our loss - and I'd never realised just how many
films and TV shows revolve around the death of a spouse or a parent. So,
we'd sit in the living room and my son would boot up his games console while I sat and replied to emails and messages from relatives and friends.
For
some reason we also started listening to Bruce Springsteen. I think it
started with 'The E Street Shuffle'. A few years ago I'd bought a box set of Springsteen's first 7 albums (everything from
'Greetings from Asbury Park' to 'Born in the USA') for about a tenner. And I was amazed
by his first two albums - they weren't what I was expecting.
The first
time I heard 'The E Street Shuffle' I suddenly realised why David Bowie
had been so interested in Springsteen's early work. 'Young Americans' is
always touted as Bowie's 'plastic soul' album but the title track has
the same wordy and breathless storytelling vibe as 'The E Street
Shuffle' or 'Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)'. I tried to convince my son (a big Bowie fan) of
this by playing him 'The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle'
album. It's such a brilliant record and it's no wonder Bowie tried to steal the piano player. My son also had a good chuckle at the way Springsteen pronounced 'lover's lane'.
And it developed from there; we worked our way through the Springsteen back catalogue.
Maybe
we needed to hear that music at that particular time. A lot of it is
big, loud and positive - but perhaps more importantly it had no
connection to my wife. It didn't feel wrong to listen to that music without her.
My wife loved music - she sang with a choir - but
she loved musicals, big belting show tunes and Cliff Richard. My son
and I had been through her extensive music collection to select favourite hymns and songs for her funeral, and we'd had a very emotional time listening to
so many tracks that reminded us of moments spent with her. But she didn't
have any Springsteen in her library, so we felt safe listening to - and
enjoying - his music.
Growing
up, I was never a fan of Bruce Springsteen. My older brother had always sneered at his music as being 'too American, too loud and too macho'. As a kid, I'd looked up to my brother - he'd been right about Doctor Who and David Bowie
being brilliant - so maybe he was right about Springsteen, too?
I had found a dodgy tape of 'Tunnel of Love' in late 1987 (a relative was working in
the Middle East and used to bring bags full of pirate tapes home) and I'd adored that album, especially the title track. But I couldn't tell big brother. I'd also
loved 'Hungry Heart' and 'Dancing in the Dark' whenever they were played
on Radio One or Top of the Pops - but I couldn't admit to any of it. I
couldn't 'out' myself as a fan.
It was daft.
At about the same time I also splashed out on the 'Born to Run' album and
couldn't believe what I'd been missing. Part of me wished I'd found this
music when I was younger - I might have been a very different teenager if
I'd been listening to 'Tenth Avenue Freeze Out' or 'Jungleland' alongside 'Orange Crush', 'Debaser' and 'How Soon Is Now?'
As the long, empty Summer of 2023 petered out and the school term started again we were still listening to the sounds of E Street. With my son out during the day I
found it hard to stay in the house alone. I'd ride the local buses
between Sunderland, South Shields and Newcastle - always with Springsteen on
my battered mp3 player.
"Hell's brewin', dark sun's on the rise
This storm'll blow through by and by"
There's a defiance to a lot of Springsteen's lyrics, a sense of being able
to battle through tough times rather than sinking. I clung on to that. Never mind taking things one day at a time, I was mainly living from hour to hour - sometimes from song to song..
Are scattered to the wind
And hard times come and hard times go
And hard times come and hard times go..."
And
then, completely out of the blue there were posts on Facebook about
Springsteen and The E Street Band playing at Sunderland's Stadium of
Light in May 2024. It would be just about a year after we'd lost my wife.
I'd been past the Stadium countless times on my day-wasting bus journeys - and we'd also passed the place every single day on the way to visit my wife during her final stay in hospital. It felt like an enormous and timely coincidence. I realised we
had to be there.
When we bought the tickets I told my son we
were gambling on his GCSE timetable and the weather. We got lucky with
his exams but lost big time on the weather.
It was bloody
awful - a day of torrential rain and swirling wind. I half expected the show to be cancelled.
Springsteen himself described the conditions as "hellacious".
The crowd was all wrapped up in waterproof coats or polythene ponchos - and the sky stayed grey and ominous. The rain drummed constantly on the stadium's stands.
"don't worry, we're gonna find a way".
And it
was great to hear tens of thousands of Sunderland accents all yelling
'Brooooooooooooooce!'
It was a 3 hour long show - and I was
wondering how 74 year old Bruce Springsteen managed to sing, dance and play guitar
without the weather playing havoc with his joints. My knees were aching after the first hour! Stage hands tried to sweep the excess water from the stage and the crowd cheered as Bruce tap-danced in the puddles. He seemed just as determined to have a good time as we were.
Hearing songs like 'Wrecking Ball', 'The Rising' and 'Lonesome Day' was genuinely moving. I'd had these tunes in my head as I'd taken long, meandering bus journeys around the North East, on the days when I couldn't bear to be in the house alone. And now here they were, alive in the air around me - with thousands and thousands of local voices belting out the lyrics.
"Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay..."
I don't think I've ever heard so many saxophone solos or seen a band enjoy themselves so much on stage. It could all just be a polished routine after decades of touring but it was wonderful to watch and be a part of.
As the show went on I also realised how many of the songs seemed to dwell on themes of mortality, loss and grief. Springsteen introduced 'Last Man Standing' by talking about his very first band and the loss of his former bandmates - and during 'Backstreets' he said 'grief is the price we pay for loving well'. I needed to hear those words.
And of course it was incredible to hear everybody singing the first verse and chorus
of 'Hungry Heart' so loudly that Brooooooce didn't have to. There
were a few moments like that - including a ridiculous 9 minute version
of 'Badlands' that the crowd wouldn't allow the band to finish, we just kept singing. I'm sure the same things probably happen at every
show, but they were wonderful moments - despite the 'hellacious' wind and rain the crowd didn't want the show to end.
Looking forward to a
special day and being determined to enjoy it regardless of terrible
weather feels like some sort of metaphor for the last couple of years or maybe just adulthood in general.
We watched the rain bouncing off the keyboards as Roy Bittan played his rolling, extended solo during 'Racing In The Street'. And the huge screens showed water splattered on the camera lenses as Bruce and Steven Van Zandt wrapped up 'Glory Days' with their 'it's time to go home' banter.
I've always been cynical about big, expensive outdoor rock shows. Oasis and U2 really put me
off that sort of thing when I was in my 20s - paying loads of money to
get pushed and shoved around a field for hours with loads of fans who
were too cool (or too out of it) to sing along. I'd always been horrified at the price of the tickets - so much money for something that's over and done with in a few hours. Isn't a book or a record better value for money? You get to keep those! But it was hard to stay cynical when the drenched Stadium of Light crowd threw themselves into every single 'woah', 'woah-wo-oah' and 'wah-hah-hah-ho-ho' of 'Born to Run'.
During 'Tenth Avenue Freeze Out' pictures of late E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici were shown on the giant screens - and that feeling of loss, the kind of loss you don't think you'll ever recover from, struck me hard. But the band still plays. The music goes on. And everybody keeps singing.
At the very end of the show, after riotous, celebratory versions of 'Dancing in the Dark' and 'Twist and Shout', Bruce returned to the stage alone. He thanked us for coming to see the band in 'these conditions' and then he sang 'I'll See You In My Dreams'. Just him, his guitar and harmonica:
"I'll see you in my dreams
When all our Summers have come to an end
I'll see you in my dreams
We'll meet and live and laugh again
I'll see you in my dreams
Up around the riverbend
For death is not the end
And I'll see you in my dreams..."
My son pretty much had to hold me up at the end. The
mix of those lyrics and my knackered old knees almost had me over.
Ears still ringing, we poured out of the Stadium and into the night, searching for a bus home. The rain had finally stopped. At least for a little while.
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