How To Survive a 16-hour Springsteen Concert.

The roadie lament.

Sore feet.

Arenas are big places.

You get there first thing in the morning and start to walk. Back and forth. Pushing anvil cases. Hauling cable. Working for rock and roll.

I get this gig working a Bruce Springsteen concert. I’m talking years ago, college days, and I haven’t a clue who Bruce Springsteen is. He’s another guy with a 48’ truck full of amps and guitars and drums and light and stuff.?

I just go to the back of the truck with every other grunt and and start hauling gear.

Off the truck, down the ramp, up the ramp, along the hallway, up the ramp, into the arena, along the side, to the back.?

Go back to the truck and do it again.

There’s a backbeat to it. I enjoy it. We all do.

You work like a demon with 20,000 souls hanging over your head. This entire thing has to ready for when they open the doors.?

I still don’t know who Springsteen is, but he’s got some nice guitars. You can judge a guy that way. Guitars are a reflection of player’s soul.

We keep hauling and unpacking, and unraveling and untangling.

There’s an art to untangling cables. I learned it years ago and the master electrician spots my skill right away. He points to mass of cables that got knotted into a heap of snakes.

I go to work on it. You kind of toss them around, get them loose, give them a nice cable massage and bingo, they lay down all orderly. Then you lay them down in nice runs and tape them into place.

Backstage at a rock and roll show is dark place. You don’t want anybody tripping over cables.

I’ve got some other useful skills I picked up along the way. I know how to run spotlights. There’s extra cash in it, and its a good place to watch a show. Whoever this Springsteen guy is he sold the place out so something is happening here. He’s sold a lot of records to. I’ve seen the album covers in record stores, but I haven’t listened to any of them.?

It’s not my current groove. I’m still untangling a different nests of cables in ears—Coltrane and Bird, and on a different tip, Bartok. You go down a whole lot of different lanes in music school.

Born in The USA? I don’t know. I like the idea of the song, the words.?

I climb up to my spotlight perch early. It’s nice up there. Solitude. I’m always looking for it. I can be there, in the crowd, and not there in the crowd at the same time.

I think a lot of roadies are like that. We’re rock and roll cowboys. We like to drift across the plains. We like to get on our horse and ride into the work light sunset. Hang out at the empty arena after the show. Let the echoes fade. Feel the ghosts.

There’s a lot of ghosts in these concert barns.

Springsteen is serious. I’ve never quite seen a show like the one I saw that night.?

I’ve worked a lot of shows at this point. I’m not a fan of anybody. You see enough and they blend into one another, like a sonic Jackson Pollack. Bursts of color, splatters of notes, all a certain flavor of chaos, riffs, echoes on echoes.?

It’s an ear stew.?

The same shapes to navigate spiced with brilliance.?

Some of the shows are good. Some of them are, well, some of them are less than good. I always appreciate the performance though.?

The best ones leave it all on the deck. Good or bad that’s all I’m looking for. The blood. When they walk off the stage exhausted, empty tank.?

You see that and admire it no matter the music.

But what I’m witnessing that night on my spotlight goes beyond anything I’ve seen before.?

Springsteen plays the hits. A good show. A long show. Then he gets out an acoustic guitar and plays one on one wi the crowd.?

Intimate.?

Sexy as hell.?

Then the band comes back out and plays another four tunes.?

Then comes out again and plays another four spot.?

Then Bruce grabs the acoustic again and plays a couple of Woody Guthrie tunes.?

Then the band comes out and takes the roof off the place.?

I’ve been up at my spot for almost three hours. I’m used to ten song sets, and that includes and an encore. Springsteen is closing in on 32 songs.?

My feet are closing in on total surrender. My back left an hour ago. I’m thinking of peeing in a cup.?

Springsteen spares that one. He wraps up the set and leaves the crowd buzzing. They have to turn on the house lights to get everybody to leave.

I’m happy to climb back down to earth. Well, roadie earth. A hard concrete slab.?

We go to work packing it all up, rolling it all out. The out is always faster than the in. Maybe four hours tops and the door of the trucks slam shut.

The band rolls out of town. Trucks and buses heading south.

I head the other way. The empty interstate a 3 a.m. cruise. Memories burned into my brain.

A young star forging connections. Building his world. Inviting people in. Come for the ride. They come and dance and never leave. For years, for decades, every show is a commitment. There's that word. Commitment and passion.

I find a diner by the highway. Early morning breakfast.Think about what I've seen. The power of live music. The echoes that never die. A soul bared, vulnerable, moving across the stage in my spotlight, a demon in some ways, an angel in others.

And the pure love from the band to the crowd, from the crowd to the band, the tribe, the bond.

I drive back to Boston in the dawn. You feel like a vampire sometimes in this life.

Shut the curtains and crawl into your wooly coffin. Sink into a sea of rock and roll dreams.

Every week I publish stories from lives lived in creativity. I'm happy to share the stories of others, so if you have any, please message me, and please subscribe so we can learn what we can learn together. Thanks.