The Night in 1984 That Changed My Life Forever
I became one of “those who had seen him”
I have written on multiple occasions that one of the pivotal moments in my life came at nine years old when, in August of 1975, the Born to Run album was released. On that occasion I had a St. Paul-like, Road-to-Damascus experience during which the scales fell from my eyes. At the time, I didn’t think it could get better than that.
But if you’ve read St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, you know that it did get better for him. In verse four of chapter 12, he says he was “caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” I haven’t seen heaven yet, but I got my own glimpse of musical paradise on November 26, 1984 (37 years ago today) when I saw Bruce Springsteen live for the very first time.
It was a Monday night at Reunion Arena, a Dallas “landmark” only four years old at the time and known mainly as the home of a really bad NBA team. It had rained earlier in the day, but the skies had cleared for Bruce (even though the show was indoors), because of course they had. My buddy Mike, who had seen Bruce both during The River tour in 1980 and the night before (there were two shows in Dallas in ’84), tried to prepare me, but how do you describe a sunrise to a blind man?
The first thing that surprised me was that there was no opening act; I thought everyone had an opening act. Bruce and the E Street Band took the stage with no introduction and launched immediately into “Born in the USA.” The album of the same name had been released in June and was just starting to explode in a way that would take Bruce from 18,000-seat venues like Reunion Arena to the 90,000-seat Cotton Bowl when I saw him again less than a year later.
He played fourteen songs, with a heavy dose of tunes from Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska, and Born in the USA. At the end of “Thunder Road,” the band walked offstage without a word. It was a short set, four songs less than ELO had played when I saw them in ’78, but that wasn’t what bothered me.
I turned to Mike and said: “He didn’t play ‘Born to Run’.”
He looked at me like I had grown a second head, then burst out laughing.
“You’re a moron,” he replied. “That was the first set. This is the intermission.”
Yes, my friends, at that point I had no clue about the marathon length of a Springsteen show. I was about to learn.
The second set dug deeper into the back catalogue, with gems like “Growin’ Up” and “Because the Night.” When they again left the stage after “Racing in the Street,” I was no longer worried that he had not played The Greatest Song Ever; Mike assured me “Born to Run” would be the first encore.
He was wrong. The first song was — oh my sweet baby Jesus — “Jungleland.” Hearing that three-minute sax solo on record is one thing; seeing the Big Man play it mere feet away from you is something else entirely. When the song ended, Bruce asked that we stop on our way out and donate to the North Texas Food Bank, which had tables set up in the lobby. (As a side note, I’ve seen him four times between 1984 and 2016, and all four times he had the North Texas Food Bank folks there).
And then, after nine years of waiting, it happened. Max’s drum intro, crashing guitars, and that glorious opening line: “In the day we sweat it out on the streets, of a runaway American dream.” Dead. I had died and gone to heaven. As the crowd’s final “tramps like us” faded away, I thought it was a fine end to the best show ever.
But Bruce wasn’t done. After “Born to Run,” they ran through “Detroit Medley,” “Twist and Shout,” and “Do You Love Me?” like a frat party band during pledge week. The show was well past the three-hour mark; surely, I thought, that was the way to go out with a bang. Nope, he had one final gift for us.
After catching his breath, Bruce stepped up to the microphone and said that since he wouldn’t see us in December, he had to do one last song. Clarence threw on a red Santa hat, and they finished off the show with this:
This was the setlist from that magical night 37 years ago today. Setlist.fm reminded me of the order; I could never forget the songs. Tramps like us…
- Born in the U.S.A.
- Out in the Street
- Prove It All Night
- Darkness on the Edge of Town
- Factory
- Johnny 99
- Reason to Believe
- Mansion on the Hill
- I’m Goin’ Down
- Glory Days
- The Promised Land
- My Hometown
- Badlands
- Thunder Road (end of set one)
- Cover Me
- Dancing in the Dark
- Hungry Heart
- Cadillac Ranch
- No Surrender
- Because the Night
- Growin’ Up
- Bobby Jean
- Racing in the Street (end of set two)
- Jungleland
- Born to Run
- Detroit Medley
- Twist and Shout
- Do You Love Me?
- Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
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