Eerily, the phone rang at 6:00 a.m. on September 11. The older you get, early a.m. calls too often portend of things and news ominous. Seeing it was from a brother in Lexington, Kentucky did nothing to assuage my anxiety. Going back 50 years, Bronson and I had met in college in Lexington, Kentucky. Over the years, we forged a friendship that had been born of being there for and with each other over births, deaths, broken hearts, job hirings and firings, drug rehab, high cotton and low roads. I recall riding to his Dad’s funeral from New Orleans to St. Louis on a 250 Yamaha Enduro dirt bike, while years later his traveling 2,000 miles to search me out on a shelter floor when my life had succumbed to a broken will and bad choices.
Nervously answering, I hear an excited “Got ‘em.” The exuberance of his proclamation, interrupting some cherished rack time, I reply with an expletive draped inquiry couched in the WTF vernacular of the day. Bronson quickly informs me, “Bruce, we scored two of the Ticketmaster lottery tickets for Bruce on Broadway.” All enmity cast aside, knowing the demand for those tickets which scalpers would later command up to 10 K for, incredulous, I blurt out, “You’re sh----ing me.” Bronson confirms our good fortune and we begin planning for our assault upon the Great White Way to see a man who has been a beacon, champion and channel marker in my life for over 50 years, as related on these pages scant weeks ago.
Having seen Bruce Springsteen in every venue imaginable, from clubs to 80,000 person stadiums, usually with his E Street Band, this was different. He was doing a one man show, 15 songs, all on acoustic guitar, piano and harmonica. On two of those songs, wife Patti Scialfa would sing harmony, but that was it, a follow up to his recent life’s memoir, Born To Run.
Exhilarated, yet nervous, going to fearful, ever since meeting him at a Jersey Shore Club in ’67, from tears to screaming joy, from dance to dirge, the man had never failed to connect on so many levels with me and his audience. I have always believed that great art always has of necessity one connecting thread, which is the ability to invoke empathy and I feared that this man and his story which I had leaned on or danced to on so many of the times of my life, would be lost in the bright lights and showy glitz of Broadway. That was not to be, but I will come to that momentarily.
The seats Bronson had scored were for October 11, Wednesday evening. Getting connecting flights put me in Medford at 5:00 a.m., connecting at Salt Lake City, then to JFK, landing at 8:30 p.m.. Monday morning, I awoke to hear Tom Bowdette tell me that I was “burnin’ daylight” and needed to get a move on. Forty minutes later, I was on Delta prop jet, arriving at Salt Lake City, with 2 1/2 hours to kill, now having gone to 4 hours due to bad weather in the Big Apple.
Cruising the Salt Lake airport, I heard the hearty laugh and words tinged with the West Texas drawl of the Pecos, looking up to see the kindly face of J.C. Wilson, the 74 years young, shoe shining legend of the Salt Lake City International Airport. Deciding I dug the man’s carriage and demeanor, while looking at these old snake skin boots that needed some lovin’, I climbed into his chair and asked for a shine. We traded stories, J.C. telling me how he’d spent 8 years in the Marines, stationed in Pleiku and other parts of Viet Nam beginning in ’65. He’d recently had an operation to remove the upper lobe of his left lung, the cancer attributed to his exposure to Agent Orange, which he was denied treatment for by the VA, during the decades our government denied its effects. He went on to tell me about his kids and grandkids and how he enjoys doing community service work with the Elks and Masons. I told him I had bone cancer and, like him, would beat it. He gave me a hug as I went to catch my plane. Only to find out it had been put back another 3 hours due to the residue of Hurricane Maria.
Kicking back, the guy across from me remarked on my rattlesnake boots, which Mr. Wilson had just brought back to life. Dressed in civilian brush fatigues, carrying only a khaki ruck sack, I learned that he was on his way to Guiana on the northern mainland of South America. An effervescent guy, probably 50 or so, he claimed to be a partner in a gold mining company. I asked him about “the locals” and was told, like anywhere else his company had been in the past 30 years, the government was corrupt and greasing them was a cost of doing business. He claimed to have a security force and body guards that would meet him when he landed in Georgetown to transport him to the mining site in the jungle. He said the natives were thieves, but he employed the best of them and paid them well, going on to say the only ones he really had to worry about were “the Russians,” but they were content to manage their bauxite mines. I asked him about the heavy metals, sulfuric acid and toxic substances that pollute the ground water of the mining areas and was told that the clean-up should be attended to by the graft the government had extracted from his company. Somehow, the spectre of J.C. Wilson’s Agent Orange cancer loomed over the conversation, scored by the opening strains of “Born in the USA” by the man I was traveling to see.
The 5 hour flight was uneventful, landing at JFK in the balmy 74 degree mist. Walking to the long taxi line, I was confronted by a dark man sporting dread knots who asked where I was going. I replied “the Row Hotel, Times Square, 700 8th Ave.” He said “c’mon Mon, I get you there in a flash.” Looking at the 40 or so persons in line for legit taxis and not having Uber down yet it was an easy decision. As we bobbed and weaved in and out of traffic, escaping paint transfers by inches, it reinforced my belief that both California and NYC drivers are both wild and crazy-the only difference being that the hacks in the Apple are talented, having to actually turn when driving, while Cali drivers live on the brakes of their stop and go freeway existence.
Row Hotel boasts in its internet pitch to having “pioneered a new era of individuality among Times Square hotels by meeting NYC’s signature urban grit with grandeur.” Well, at least they’re batting .500 on that. The rooms are cracker box small and the beds more like cots, but hell, I’m in Times Square which beat the stuffing outta Lombard St. in Frisco. Exhausted, but intoxicated by pulse of this city that never sleeps, the midnite crowds assembled, I go stalking the streets in their never ending buzz and energy. My Joe Buck-like Stetson and snake skin boots manage to bring on the huckster’s calls, ranging from “Can you help a brother out?” to “Hey cowboy, you wanna take a real ride?”
You look at the glittering store signs-Harry Winston’s, Bulgari, Dolce-Gabana, Gucci- catering to a clientele that is soft asleep in Carnegie Hill, Soho, Tribeca or Cobble Hill, having escaped their excesses of 2008 and beyond, knowing their power broker protectors remain comfortably ensconced in Washington D.C., while the teeming masses ebb and flow, never sleeping, as the promise of America’s Dream continues to elude.
I walk a bit further into the Theatre District and Broadway, pausing at every corner to see the blinking marquee bulbs that I marveled at as a boy when my mother would reach into her “shoebox money” and bring me here to see Man of LaMancha, West Side Story and Oklahoma as a boy. I walked on, taking in the regal signage for The Lion King, School of Rock, Cats, Hamilton, Wicked Chicago, Miss Saigon, Hello Dolly, Cyndi Lauper’s Kinky Boots and Beautiful-The Carole King Musical. Again, I pondered how the glitter and pomp of Broadway would serve as a vehicle for the telling of Bruce Springsteen’s life or would it be reduced to the sanitized Wurlitzer of Jersey Boys.
The following morning, Bronson arrived and we set out on a pre-arranged tour of the city. Hopping the J Train to Fulton St. in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. We then walked several blocks to the massive waterfalls and reflecting pools of the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero. We looked at the 2,983 names engraved in bronze along the reflecting pools and said a prayer for those that perished, including 46 from my home county in North Jersey and my cousin who was vaporized at the Pentagon that morning 16 years ago. Looking at the spot where the towers fell while New York City’s finest entered the dust belching, steel screaming hell, I stood there, transfixed, as the words of the man I would see that evening returned from that time:
“Now there’s tears on the pillow
Darlin’ where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss
My soul is lost
Tell me how do I begin again?
My city’s in ruins
My city’s in ruins.
We pray for the faith, Lord
We pray for the lost, Lord
We pray for this world, Lord
We pray for the strength, Lord
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on rise up! Come on, rise up!”
Having paid our respects, it felt right to head on over to Central Park West and pay homage to peace activist and musician John Lennon. Arriving at the 2.5 acre portion of the Park known as Strawberry Fields, amid the tall elm trees, shrubs and flowers, we met people from around the globe paying tribute to John, all encircling the iconic black and white Imagine mosaic, evoking his vision of hope for a world without strife, conflict or war.
Once again, I thought of this true patriot from Jersey, who on many occasions had gone a step further, taking the words from the page, to hold up the mirror on America, asking Her to live up to Her Dream. Looking back to a recent concert in North Carolina he had cancelled to protest a newly enacted law allowing business owners the Jim Crow right to refuse service to anyone based upon their sexual orientation. I wonder how many professional ball players would take a quarter of a million pay cut by refusing to play a game or two to take a stand for their moral point of view.
There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain’t a boy, no, I’m a man,
And I believe in a promised land
I believe in a promised land…
On our walk back through Central Park, we encountered a fellow playing a saxophone. For a street musician, his chops were amazingly good. We spoke for a moment, me mentioning a good friend, Joe McGlohon, who had been sax player and band manager for 13 years for Reba McIntyre. He said it was a shame how her band had all been killed in that airplane crash. I told him that Joey had been the only one to survive, having been assigned to the second plane. I took my phone out and as chance would have it, got Joey on the phone in London where he now lives and the two of them had a fine talk about their respective craft. More and more, the trip was lending itself to that truth of all things being connected and the dividends derived from reaching out.
And so, Bronson and I repaired to our hotel with its “signature urban grit” and windowed view of the adjacent pigeon deposited, tarred roof and brick wall to get ready for the show. At this point, I should inform that I had sent a packet to the Theatre, addressed to the artist. I enclosed the recent Triplicate article from 9/30, thanking him for all the times I’d leaned on him over the years, including an LA times article which noted my quoting him in many of the pro bono cases I’d undertaken back in the OC on behalf of its homeless.
At 7:15, we made the 4 block trek to the Walter Kerr Theatre. Originally named The Ritz, the theatre was small by Broadway standards, seating only 900 people, with a floor and a mezzanine, all seats within 100 feet of the stage and artist. The intimacy and personal scheme immediately was upon us, seeing a stage with no backdrop or curtain, only a stand for one of the two Takamine guitars he would play and a piano ten feet away stage left. Including a harmonica, his voice, part song, part spoken word, was the sum total of the shorn insulation, naked bare wire of the performance we were about to see. The stark and sparse overhead lighting was haunting to ethereal, as if to accentuate the dark incubator confinement many of his songs were born of.
At 8:00 sharp, to the traditional cries of Bruuuce, he walked out of the wings. Wearing only a black T shirt, black work jeans and boots, he thanked the audience for being there and then went into a chronological story telling of his life, at times humorous, at times brooding, at times contemplative, but all throughout possessed with the romantic innocence and vulnerability which was always hiding in the plain view of his stadium shows. A voice that has defined rock and roll’s strut and swagger, joy of rebellion and hope for a better day, that I’ve heard a hundred times, but on this evening was being whispered in your ear.
He opened with “Growing Up,” a testament to the fear and angst many of us lived in during our teenage years.
“Well I stood stone like at midnight, suspended in my masquerade
And I combed my hair ‘til it was just right and commanded the night brigade
I was open to pain and washed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch
I strode through a fallout zone and come out with my soul untouched.
I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd, when they said “Sit down,” I stood up
Ooh…growin’ up.
“My Hometown” , going from being 8 years old, sitting in his Dad’s lap as his father tossled his hair while driving through town morphing into “My Father’s House,” a place dark and cold, where I would once again cringe with the memory of my old man’s late night uneven step coming up the stairs, praying it wouldn’t land at my door. Followed by “The Wish,” and his devotion to his mother who’d bought him that Japanese guitar for Christmas upon which no sad songs would be played for her, painted the house so like the one I grew up in.
In those opening songs, it was apparent that this was not a concert or a musical and that Bruce Springsteen had not come to the land of the “book” and the “act”, but rather had used the theatrical convention to take the audience into his world and as he put it, “communicate something of value.”
“Born in the USA,” an unabashed song of protest, distinct from the jingo-istic tenor applied by so many, followed his taking of a trip to L.A.. While there, staying at a run-down Hollywood Hotel, meeting Ron Kovic, a Viet Nam vet who had lost his legs to a war he decried in “Born on the Fourth of July,” the impetus of the song was born. It was hard not to think of the true, Tennyson-like ‘their’s not to reason why’ patriots like Kovic and Salt Lake shoe shine legend J.C. Wilson, while listening to Bruce strum his 12 string Takamine, lamenting a brother who was “gone at Khe Sanh.”
Joined by his wife Patti Scialfa, the two carved out beautiful harmonies in “Tougher Than the Rest,” a testament to the wagering of all you got for the love of a women against loneliness.
As with most of his shows, Bruce finished with Born To Run. His paean to innocence and the courage to walk with him out on the wire, case that Promised Land out beyond the tracks and find out if love is real-there I was again, 50 years ago, with him holding out against the house until three music hungry kids were let inside. That night, he reaffirmed a commitment made those many years ago to speak his truth, stand up unflinchingly against the wrath of the crowd and allow you to take from it what you might need. Once again, he’d delivered.
On the way out of the theatre, as Bronson and I descended the stairs, a stocky guy with a Jersey accent, inquired if I was Jon Alexander. I said I was. He asked me to come with him. I asked why. He replied that Bruce wanted to meet me. Bronson and I walked out a small stairway into a cordoned off area in front of a chauffeured Escalade. A moment later, Bruce and Patti came out. We shook hands and reminisced for a moment, thanking each other for the better times in our lives which had converged. Patti, gracious as always, gave me a hug and then they were off, back to their world and me to mine.