Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Hungry Heart (Live 1980)

I’ve mentioned before that I find it much easier to write a daily song post if I have a theme to focus my selections. Therefore, I am going to focus the next few months on a new theme: artists I have seen perform. I have seen hundreds of live shows in my life, from large national acts to local bands playing tiny clubs, so I have a lengthy list from which to choose. Not all the live shows I have seen are connected to an interesting story (at least interesting to me), but I’ll try to make selections that allow me to say something other than “I saw this band. They were great.” I can’t think of a better way to start this new series, especially after just wrapping up my music of 1975 posts with Born to Run, than with my favorite rock and roll band of all time, and possibly my favorite live show of all time. 

When I was in college, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band toured for his Tunnel of Love album. The shows combined songs from his new album with songs from his earlier albums, plus two amazing encores. I could end the story there – I saw Springsteen when he was young, and the band was young, and the music was incredible, and I have never forgotten that concert. If you read my last post, you can imagine how blessed I felt to see Springsteen at this particular time in my life. However, there is more to the story, and I think it is an interesting memory, especially for those of us who remember what it was like to get tickets to a show back before the internet. 

The story begins one rainy winter morning when my roommate and I went out to try to get tickets to see The Boss. Neither of us had ever seen him, so this was a pretty big deal. Back in the 1980s, if you wanted to buy tickets to an arena concert, you had to go to whatever local store was selling the tickets (usually a major record store chain). If the show was going to sell out quickly, you had to first go get a number by waiting in line for hours, and then wait for your number to be called, and then hope that there were still tickets available by the time all of the numbers before your number had been called in record stores across the country who were also selling tickets. In this particular case, we were lucky and we got some tickets in the upper level. Success! And that could be the end of the story – a happy ending. We went to the show, it was amazing, we saw Springsteen! But, wait…there’s more. 

After the show had sold out so quickly, a second show was added for the next night. We already had our tickets, so we didn’t feel any need to go through the ticket purchasing exercise a second time. Fate, as it turned out, had different plans for us – and in this case, fate was on our side!  

Unrelated to the Springsteen concert, there was a school election occurring later that week – possibly for dorm president, but I don’t remember. One evening, while going about our normal nightly activities, a knock came to our dorm room door. Some guy from another floor who we had never heard of (I don’t remember his name all these years later) was canvasing the dorm for votes in the election. I can’t say for sure, but we were probably listening to Springsteen’s multi-cassette release of live material. He was a Springsteen fan, and in true political fashion, he quickly offered us two of his Springsteen tickets for the second show for $25 bucks a piece (yes – that is how much shows used to cost before TicketMaster and Live Nation destroyed the live concert industry). The catch was that we had to vote for him. I can’t speak for my roommate, but I voted for him. He lost. But I still think of him to this day when I listen to the old live Springsteen collection and think about those two Springsteen shows. 

Today’s song is taken from that Live 1975-85 box set. It was the second song of the first encore when I saw him in 1987.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

• Artists I Have Seen Live