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Ultimate Classic Rock

How Bruce Springsteen Settled a Lawsuit With His Original Manager

Famous for his energy but also his off-stage reserve, Bruce Springsteen stood on a courtroom table in 1976 and argued that no amount of money could compensate for a missed opportunity to influence a generation.

It’s an argument that began — at least in the courts — on July 27, 1976, and went on for 10 months. Springsteen filed the lawsuit against Laurel Canyon, Ltd., owned by his manager and publisher Mike Appel, who co-produced Born to Run along with his future manager Jon Landau . Among the allegations were fraud, undue influence and breach of trust. The legal maneuvering, all parties would later learn, had far more to do with relationships than money.

It may have been hard for some to predict Springsteen’s rise with Born to Run, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard chart . Though the Jersey boy’s first two albums Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle were critically lauded, sales were low. He knew if he didn’t manage to move his third, Columbia Records would've given him the boot. The sales came through this time, making Springsteen into a superstar.

But with all his success, his bank balance was surprisingly low. Desperate to make music and not particularly interested in the money or corporate rites of passage, Springsteen signed contracts with Appel just a few years earlier that quickly became a problem. He was retaining less than a tenth of his income, according to Christopher Sanford’s 1999 book Springsteen Point Blank .

“The irony is that I myself had much to do with the pitching and existence of this tent here in the corner of my personal little carnival," Springsteen wrote in his 2016 autobiography Born to Run . "Mike shouldn’t have been so overreaching, but my young fears and refusal to accept responsibility for my own actions also brought much of this into being.”

A naive young Springsteen had signed away rights to his publishing and a large chunk of money to his management. “More than rich, more than successful, more than happy , I wanted to be great,” Springsteen said in a 2010 documentary called The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story that chronicled the days leading up to his next album, Darkness on the Edge of Town . He was great, by many standards – but suddenly being “rich,” or at least the greatness that wealth represented, seemed like a reasonable goal, as well.

Appel countersued two days after Springsteen filed. He had also filed a motion to prevent Springsteen from entering the studio to record a new album with Landau, now his preferred producer and confidante. Landau's latter-day involvement as producer and advisor to Springsteen had threatened Appel's place in the pecking order, and he was defending his territory with all he had.

Springsteen couldn’t record new music, despite being on a creative apex during which he had already released three albums in as many years and sat atop the musical world, buoyed by the simultaneous cover stories on Newsweek and Time . Instead, he took the band on the road, perfecting the craft of live performance, getting some much-needed cash in his and his band's pockets, and playing what would become legendary shows.

In his book, Springsteen described Appel as wanting to protect his investment following the success of Born to Run. Both of them acutely aware of how significantly Born to Run  changed their circumstances, Appel carried a new set of agreements with him all through Europe as the band toured, trying to get Springsteen to sign them. But, describing himself as no longer “clueless,” Springsteen wanted to get a better understanding of the original agreements he’d blindly signed with Appel. He wanted a lawyer — and not the one Appel provided — to look them over.

After learning the terms largely favored Appel, Springsteen wrote, he met his manager in a New York City bar and told him it was a no-go. The two laughed, had a few drinks and finally, Springsteen was ready to make the deal despite the terms. In a scene reminiscent of a romance novel rather than corporate deal, Springsteen wrote, “maybe it was just to get the whole fucking business thing, where I was extremely uncomfortable with my ignorance, off my back. I told myself I didn’t really give a fuck about the money anyway. … High on many shots of whiskey, I pressed pen to paper. I felt a hand grab mine. A voice said, ‘No, not like this.’ It was Mike’s.

“I loved Mike — I still do — and despite the recent contract revelations, I wanted us to continue to work together,” he wrote.

Listen to Springsteen's 'The Promise'

Each side claimed to want and fair and amicable agreement, but each side was also holding their ground. Even Springsteen’s mother, Adele, tried to help the two work out their issues, sending Appel a book called Business Problems of the Record Industry Workshop, according to Sanford.

“By now, I knew the full extent of our early contracts, but what were they compared to us?" Springsteen remembered. "The music, the audience, what we’d been through, and our feelings for each other. ...  I started, 'Mike, I know the contracts are bad but that’s alright. We can fix it, they’re just paper. We can tear ‘em up and start something new. We have X amount of dollars for five years of work. Let’s split it and move on. Just tell me how much is mine and how much is yours. I was looking for a fair and rational answer. Instead, Mike replied, 'Well … that depends,' describing a split that would be more advantageous for Springsteen only if he signed with Appel for another five years.

“At that moment, Mike’s words went beyond negotiation and became a not-too-thinly veiled threat," Springsteen added. "Amongst friends, that’s not nice. We would fight, hard.”

Springsteen took to theatrics during the deposition and trial, informed by his legal team that the only way Appel would budge is if he knew there was no way their working relationship could be repaired. He eventually had to be pulled aside by the judge, who explained how his behavior could be used against him during a trial.

Meanwhile, Springsteen wrote more than 80 songs, ostensibly for what would become the 10-track Darkness on the Edge of Town. Many of them were released decades later on The Promise , including the title song, which is among the strongest in his catalog. But he hadn't put it on Darkness, mostly for fear it was too transparently autobiographical.

Parallels were drawn between the song’s race car-driving narrator and Springsteen’s feelings about his career during the lawsuit, particularly in the final verse when he sings: “ I won big once and I hit the coast / Oh but somehow I paid the big cost / Inside I felt like I was carrying the broken spirits of all the other ones who lost / When the promise is broken you go on living but it steals something from down in your soul / Like when the truth is spoken and it don’t make no difference, something in your heart turns cold ,” and especially in its final line, “ We were gonna take it all and throw it all away .” 

Where Born to Run was filled with hope and dreams of getting out, "The Promise" reflected the danger of having those dreams come true.

Ultimately, Springsteen wrote, “A settlement was reached, separation papers were drawn up and one quiet night in a dimmed midtown office building, Mike and I finalized our divorce. ... I would have some dealings with Mike in the future, some good, some cheesy, but once the war was over and time — a good deal of it – passed, the fondness and connection remained. … We had come to cross purposes — this is the world — but I can never hate Mike; I can only love him.”

Appel ultimately gave up most of his publishing rights in exchange for $800,000 as part of a May 28, 1977, settlement. His production cut was reduced from 6 to 2 percent. And to the surprise of some, when he started a new agency a decade later, Springsteen loaned him $175,000 to do it, according to Sanford.

“These were two people who were essentially married, who had broken down walls for each other and together,” David Benjamin, part of Springsteen’s legal team at the time, told Peter Ames Carlin for his 2012 book Bruce. “And it was a great partnership when it worked, … Look, I’ve been divorced; I’ve been there. So just as important as Mike was, he was the starter marriage. Jon took Bruce to places Mike probably couldn’t. And when one of the partners falls in love with someone else, the hurt in the old marriage becomes magnified.”

The two eventually mended fences, as alluded to by Springsteen. He began playing full-album shows in 2009, and flew Appel in for a stop in Buffalo where the E Street band performed Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. . "So, tonight I’d like to dedicate this to the man who got me through the door," Springsteen said before beginning the album segment that night. "Mike, this is for you."

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‘It was life-changing’: For four scorching nights in 1977, Bruce Springsteen owned Boston

Bruce Springsteen at the Music Hall on March 25, 1977, the final show of a memorable four-night run at the theater.

Mike Grenier wasn’t buying all the hype about this gawky kid named Bruce Springsteen. Grenier, a big music fan, was well aware that the skinny wailer from New Jersey had been on the cover of Time and Newsweek at the same time in 1975. He knew that a writer from Boston’s weekly Real Paper had grandly declared the then-little-known Springsteen the “rock and roll future” a year before that.

Eh, Grenier thought.

But when some friends from Wellesley called him around midnight on March 24, 1977, to say they’d just gotten home from an incredible Springsteen show at the Music Hall in Boston, Grenier relented. The following night, he stood outside the Tremont Street theater (now the Wang), trying to buy a ticket from a scalper.

Fifteen minutes before showtime, he was about to give up when a young man approached with an extra. The guy only wanted face value: eight bucks.

“I walked into the show as a complete skeptic,” Grenier recalls, “and I walked out converted.”

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That show, he says, “took me into a different orbit, a stratosphere of music exploration. The fact that I’ve seen Bruce 227 times” — he’s not exaggerating; he’s been counting — “tells you it was life-changing.”

It isn’t just Grenier who feels that show — Springsteen’s last of a four-night run at the 3,500-seat Music Hall —was a high point in a career that has reached some of rock music’s most elevated peaks. As Springsteen, now 73, and his E Street Band prepare to play the TD Garden on Monday, we tracked down several diehard fans who were in the building for those vaunted Music Hall shows.

“I was all the way in the back, but it didn’t matter. It was like I was onstage,” says Paul Kaytes, a retired biologist from New Jersey who was attending Brandeis University at the time. “He projected all the way to the back wall. It was really a one-to-one connection.”

Kaytes, who also worked in the theater world as a stage manager, says the Thursday show (the third of the four that week) “was the closest I’ve ever come to a theatrical experience in a rock show. It really was opera, it was ‘West Side Story,’ all those things wrapped into one, with Buddy Holly thrown in.”

A ticket stub from the third night of Bruce Springsteen's four March 1977 Music Hall shows.

Ellen Rothman, who estimates she has seen 180 Springsteen shows, still gets emotional thinking about the 18-minute version of “Backstreets” she heard on the final night of the March ‘77 residency. That song featured the so-called “Sad Eyes” interlude — an embellishment that longtime fans have parsed through a deep database of unofficial live recordings.

“‘Chills’ doesn’t even begin to describe it,” says Rothman, who was also present at Springsteen’s mythmaking 1974 appearance at the Harvard Square Theatre (and the one before that in the same neighborhood, at Joe’s Place). “The whole Music Hall was dead silent. People were just mesmerized.”

In his 1989 book “Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music,” the Seattle-based music journalist Charles R. Cross declared the final night of the 1977 Music Hall run a “candidate for greatest show ever.” For years, fans have shared recordings of the live tape, known as “Forced to Confess,” from that night.

Cross is also the founder of Backstreets magazine, which covered all things Springsteen from 1980 until its last publisher announced its closing earlier this year. Cross thinks one of the reasons the Music Hall shows have loomed so large for fans can be traced to the lawsuit Springsteen was embroiled in at the time with Mike Appel, his former manager, which kept him from releasing new music. (The man who replaced Appel, Jon Landau, was the writer of the Real Paper review; he remains Springsteen’s manager today.) After releasing three albums in three years, culminating in his 1975 breakthrough, “Born to Run,” Springsteen was stuck; he would have to wait another year before he could release 1978′s “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”

“It was one of the most difficult lawsuits in rock history,” says Cross. “During that time, Bruce had no money. I think what he was doing at that point was reclaiming who he was onstage.

“It was the transition between the romance of the songs on the early albums, evolving into the working-class anthems. On the ‘Lawsuit Tour,’ you got both. There was a magic when he was onstage during that tour. It felt like every single night could be the last.”

Rich Stefanik took this photo from the audience at the March 24, 1977, show, the third of Bruce Springsteen's four nights at the Music Hall that week.

Jeffrey Hersh co-promoted all of Springsteen’s shows at the Music Hall between 1975 and ‘78 with his friend Ira Gold, doing business together as Windowpane Productions. They first worked with Springsteen on the Cambridge shows in 1974, when they were collaborating with Bonnie Raitt’s manager, Dick Waterman.

“Bruce remained loyal to us,” Hersh says from his home in Southern California, where he moved around 1980. For years, he was a vice president for Gold Mountain Entertainment, the management company for Nirvana and the Beastie Boys.

Springsteen knew he was in good hands. After the Harvard Square Theatre show, Hersh found a spiral notebook in the dressing room. It contained the singer’s handwritten lyrics to new songs he had yet to record, some of which would end up on “Born to Run.”

Hersh called the talent agency and said, “I’ve got something Bruce may want.”

Rich Stefanik drove up from New Jersey for the third night. He found tickets for sale in a classified ad in the Aquarian, a weekly newspaper in his home state. He still remembers the name of the Boston seller.

“He had four tickets for $100, a big mark-up at the time,” Stefanik says. “I sent cash in the mail.”

A songwriter himself, Stefanik had already seen Springsteen at another legendary show, at the Bottom Line in New York City. As he recalls, none of his buddies who made the trip to Boston had seen Springsteen before.

“You wanted to turn other people on,” he says.

He brought his camera and took some pictures, including one of the band in front of a makeshift backdrop covered in graffiti with the names of characters from Springsteen’s lyrics and members of the Miami Horns, the horn section that was touring for the first time with the E Street Band.

On “Mona,” the Bo Diddley song that inspired Springsteen’s homage, “She’s the One,” the singer promised to take the crowd “back to the beginning of the universe, when the sun collided with a ‘63 Impala.” That led into an uptempo version of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”; later, the band played the epics “Jungleland” and “Rosalita.”

“I don’t think there was ever a tour where you got more of a blitzkrieg out of Bruce,” says Cross, the music writer.

“Are you alive?,” Springsteen demanded of the audience, six times in a row, during the final Music Hall show that March. Each time he asked, the response grew louder.

During the encore, as the band leaned into Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” he took a moment to thank his Boston fans for their role in boosting his career.

“Through the hard times and through the good times, we appreciate your support,” he said.

After the show, Mike Grenier walked outside and claimed the first pay phone he could find. He called his friends in Wellesley and said, “Sorry to wake you up, but this was spectacular!”

“I thanked them profusely,” he says.

Over the years Grenier, a longtime sports reporter for the Salem News, met plenty of fellow Springsteen devotees who were in awe when he told them he’d been there at the last Music Hall date in 1977.

“When they found out you went, they’d go, ‘Whoa, that was a special show,’” he says. “‘You certainly caught Bruce at the right time.’ ”

Story updated to correct Jon Landau’s quote describing Bruce Springsteen after seeing him perform in 1974.

James Sullivan can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames .

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Bruce Springsteen: 'People thought we were gone. Finished'

It took a bit of help for Bruce Springsteen to become a star. He'd already released two admired but underachieving albums when, in September 1975, Columbia Records finally threw its weight behind the scruffily handsome 26-year-old and his third album, Born to Run. Wrapped in its distinctive sleeve image of the guitar-toting Springsteen leaning on the back of saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Born to Run became an instant sensation: the US record industry's first designated platinum album, signifying sales of 1m copies. Springsteen appeared simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek. In the sales parlance of the day, this boy was a hot property. But Born to Run's success raised a problem: who owned the property?

On 27 July 1976, Springsteen filed a lawsuit against his manager and publisher Mike Appel, who had co-produced Born to Run, with Springsteen's future manager, Jon Landau. Two days later, Appel countersued, seeking to prevent Springsteen working on his next album with Landau. The dispute had been brewing ever since Springsteen, recklessly naive about business matters, had been made aware that the contracts he had signed with Appel in 1972 meant he would never see the full benefits of his work. When New York supreme court judge Arnold Fein granted Appel his injunction, Springsteen in effect found himself banned from entering the studio with his preferred collaborator. The legal battle that ensued placed his recording career on hold for 12 months, at the very point he should have been capitalising on Born to Run, and the impact on Springsteen's life would be profound. Although he emerged from the court case victorious, inasmuch as he regained control of his professional destiny, Springsteen's innocence was gone. He entered the recording studio in June 1977 wary of success and the consequences.

When his next album did emerge, exactly a year later, it revealed a very different Bruce Springsteen to the one who had so enraptured America with Born to Run's grandiloquent urban romance fantasies. Although flecked with uplifting motifs, the music's predominant character was downtrodden. Born to Run's sonic template had been a rock variant on Phil Spector's star-spangled Wall of Sound, whereas this new record's narrative felt dour and its instruments harsh. Idealised city glamour had been replaced by small-town social realism ("I'm riding down Kingsley/ Figuring I'll get a drink/ Turn the radio up loud/ So I don't have to think"). The album's title, meanwhile, suggested the writer's lovestruck characters had nowhere left to run, and now found themselves mired in an existential void: the Darkness on the Edge of Town.

The extent to which Springsteen himself was acquainted with this place would define his work from here on, as he has embarked on a journey that has seen him accrue riches beyond most people's imagination, and his reputation for integrity survive all manner of turbulence.

"The whole force of Darkness … was a survival thing," he says. "After Born to Run, I had a reaction to my good fortune. With success, it felt like a lot of people who'd come before me lost some essential part of themselves. My greatest fear was that success was going to change or diminish that part of myself."

Springsteen is in Toronto, where The Promise, a documentary about the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, is receiving its world premiere at the city's film festival. Prior to the gala screening, Springsteen and his wife, E Street Band vocalist Patti Scialfa, walk the red carpet. If his easy manner is an affectation, then he's a better actor than plenty of the professionals in town. The notion of "authenticity" will always attend Springsteen, owing to his espousal of the basic human values of community and civility in tandem with material wealth, a paradox that coalesced around Darkness on the Edge of Town. Consequently, The Promise offers a valuable insight to Springsteen's motivation at a key moment in his life. In the mid-70s, before the industrialisation of the music business's promotional machinery prolonged the lifespan of albums, a three-year gap between records was unthinkable even to a behemoth like Led Zeppelin, far less a one-hit wonder. But for Springsteen, still flinching from the accusations of hype that surrounded Born to Run, the personal stakes were high: during his exile from the recording studio he had kept his E Street Band at work, either on the road or in the rehearsal space at his house in Holmdel, New Jersey, and once the resolution of the lawsuit freed him to enter the studio he was in no mood to rush.

"People thought we were gone. Finished," Springsteen says. "They just thought Born to Run had been a record company creation. We had to reprove our viability on a nightly basis, by playing, and it took many years. You had to be very committed. One thing we did well after Born to Run was, I said: 'Woah.' I got on Time and Newsweek because I decided to be. But I was very frightened at the train and how fast it was going when we got on. In a funny way, the lawsuit was not such a bad thing. Everything stopped and we had to build it up again in a different place."

One result of his enforced absence from the studio was that by the time Springsteen did begin recording his next album, he had amassed a huge reservoir of material. For Born to Run, Springsteen had eight songs and recorded them. His maniacal perfectionism resulted in the process taking longer than most bands might have considered tolerable, but otherwise it was a relatively conventional exercise. Now, however, finally ensconced at the Record Plant in New York, the band began the process of working through the songs they had rehearsed during the previous year, to which Springsteen would then add yet more as he formed his vision for the new album. Estimates vary as to exactly how many songs were taped, but E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg puts the figure at 40 or 50.

"We were recording typically from three in the afternoon to three in the morning, five days a week," Weinberg tells me. "There was this stream of material – and lots of takes. There were moments of frustration for everybody, individually and collectively, but you wanted to do so well, for Bruce. There was a crucible aspect to it: under the pressure we grew, both as young men and a band."

One of the documentary's most revealing pieces of archive footage has Weinberg repeatedly hitting a snare drum and Springsteen mechanically intoning "Stick! Stick!" Indicating the relative inexperience of all concerned when it came to the technicalities of recording, weeks were spent attempting to eliminate the sound of the stick hitting the drum.

"It was a learning process for all of us," Weinberg says. "Both frustrating and funny at the same time. We were trying to make a great record. Every time we played we were trying to make something that was meaningful and would last. We were trying so many different things. Bruce would rehearse us for several days on a song and then throw the song out. He had a plan – sometimes it wasn't as obvious to the rest of us."

As work proceeded throughout the second half of 1977 and into 1978, Springsteen's conception for the new album hardened. He had become influenced by the film versions of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, and John Ford westerns such as The Searchers, whose themes of essentially decent men assailed by external forces resonated on a personal and increasingly political level with this shy product of working-class New Jersey. He began posing himself Big Questions: "How do you make a way through the day and still sleep at night?" "How do you carry your sins?" Since Born to Run, Springsteen had also met Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro, the vanguards of a new American cinema. In the wake of Taxi Driver, Springsteen felt his next statement demanded the whiff of real sweat and blood, as opposed to the impressionistic street dazzle his records had hitherto dealt.

"The record was of its time," he says. "We had the late-70s recession, punk music had just come out, times were tough for a lot of the people I knew. And so I veered away from great bar band music or great singles music and veered towards music that I felt would speak of people's life experiences."

Thus Springsteen jettisoned many compositions – love ballads, soul stompers and beery singalongs – simply because they didn't fit his ascetic vision. The material's quality can be gauged by the songs recorded for Darkness but donated to other artists: with the addition of some of her own lyrics, Because the Night gave Patti Smith her only hit single; Fire became a US No 2 for R&B trio the Pointer Sisters. Then there are the songs that have never made it beyond live bootlegs or fevered discussion by Springsteen obsessives. Twenty-one of those Darkness outtakes will soon be released as a two-CD set, also titled The Promise, after a song widely regarded as one of Springsteen's greatest, taped at the Darkness sessions and slated for inclusion until it was dropped at the last minute. Evoking the starry-eyed protagonists of Born to Run's Thunder Road watching their dreams turn toxic, Springsteen now concedes The Promise would have fitted the record's mood perfectly, but that he felt uncomfortable with the self-referential tone. "It's about fighting and not winning … the disappointments of the time," he says in the film.

"It is an incredible song," Weinberg says. "The material he leaves off – there are whole other albums."

Springsteen's fastidiousness extended even to the last details of his photograph on the sleeve, chosen only after a series of glossier set-ups were rejected. Bleary-eyed and pallid, he leans on flock wallpaper next to a shuttered window reflecting what one imagines is a bare lightbulb. Here, we are clearly invited to suppose, is the physical manifestation of the album title. In fact, the location was the living room of then unknown New Jersey photographer Frank Stefanko, to whom Springsteen had been introduced by Patti Smith.

"He was a guy who'd worked in a meat-packing plant in south Jersey," Springsteen says. "He got the 13-year-old kid from next door to hold a light. He borrowed a camera. I don't know if he even had a camera! But when I saw the picture I said, 'That's the guy in the songs.' I wanted the part of me that's still that guy to be on the cover. Frank stripped away all your celebrity and left you with your essence. That's what that record was about."

While the hardcore fan community will devour the newly released songs, the original Darkness album remains the bedrock of both the Bruce Springsteen legend and the ethical code by which he, now 61, continues to abide. The scope of his career confirms him as a man of many parts, but in order to resolve life's eternal dilemmas requires a journey to the heart of Darkness on the Edge of Town.

"I was never a visionary like Dylan, I wasn't a revolutionary, but I had the idea of a long arc: where you could take the job that I did and create this long emotional arc that found its own kind of richness," Springsteen says. "Thirty five years staying connected to that idea. That's why I think the band continues to improve. You can't be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you're gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation."

A Promise kept: How the making of Darkness was caught on film

Thom Zimny is astute enough to know the main reason The Promise, his documentary on the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, is such a startling piece of work has little to do with him, despite his Grammy and Emmy awards. Instead, it has much to do with a piece of Super 8 film, shot by a man named Barry Rebo, that sat on a shelf, unwatched for 30 years. It comprises footage from 1977 of Bruce Springsteen and the members of the E Street Band in New York's Record Plant, arguing over the direction of a particular mix until Springsteen yells "Shut the fuck up!" We see Springsteen leafing through an exercise book full of lyrics and ideas for more songs, then hear the protests of his bandmates and producer/manager Jon Landau, wearied by Springsteen's relentless pursuit of excellence. "What are your looking in this book for?" demands Landau. "The only thing that can come out of this book is more work! Close the book and there's no more work!" Later, the band members are seen holding a sweepstake on how long the next take will be. "I got 4.45!" hoots guitarist Steve Van Zandt.

We are also witness to earlier footage of the band rehearsing at Springsteen's house while he was exiled from the studio due to his legal battle with manager Mike Appel. Apparently in a trance, the Boss strums at his guitar and hums a melody while Van Zandt taps out a groove on congas. Springsteen is bare-chested and sporting an afro; the latter is without his trademark bandana. As insightful as any of the musical revelations, such tonsular candour exemplifies Rebo's achievement. The lack of premeditation is remarkable: not once do any of the protagonists look at the camera.

"We were like, 'Nobody's ever gonna see this crap,'" Springsteen says. "Nobody was self-conscious. It was like he wasn't there. He was a pal, the only guy in the neighbourhood that we knew with a camera."

Zimny restored the footage to the best standards allowed by modern technology and then shot contemporary interviews with Springsteen, his band members – including Danny Federici, the E Street Band organist who died in 2008 – and key associates. The format repeats the success of Wings for Wheels, Zimny's equivalent making-of documentary which accompanied the 30th anniversary reissue of Born to Run, but The Promise goes deeper, probing both the subtext of Darkness on the Edge of Town and the protagonists' personal chemistry. In particular, the bonds between Springsteen and Van Zandt, his musical consigliere, are illustrated time and again, most amusingly in a scene where the pair hammer out a prototype version of Sherry Darling – a song destined for Springsteen's next album, The River – featuring Springsteen on piano and Van Zandt drumming on a cushion. For Zimny's film to have actually intensified the mythic qualities of one of rock's most celebrated buddy acts is testimony to its cutting edge.

The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story is released on 15 November on Columbia as a three-CD/three-DVD set, containing Darkness on the Edge of Town remastered, plus the two-CD set The Promise and the new documentary and two live DVDs. The Promise is available separately as a two-CD set.

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How Phoenix radio made Bruce Springsteen the Boss: He 'just kind of shot through the roof'

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Bruce Springsteen was still working toward a mainstream breakthrough that could live up to the promise of his critical acclaim when he found the Celebrity Theatre packed with fans who knew his first two albums for the hits they were in Phoenix, thanks to the DJs at KDKB-FM, a free-form progressive rock station that was making this a breakout market for the scruffy New Dylan from Freehold, New Jersey.

As Linda Thompson Smith, a KDKB DJ at the time , recalls, “We were all over that first album. And not that many stations were. But we were playing ‘Blinded By the Light,’ ‘Growin’ Up,' ‘For You,’ ‘Spirit in the Night’ and ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.’ Everybody at the station loved him so much.”

It was March 24, 1974, and Springsteen was touring at the helm of a ragtag assortment of brilliant musicians who would soon be dubbed the E Street Band in support of “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle,” a landmark second album that, like his first release, “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.,” didn't make the Billboard album charts.

Both albums charted later, after the success of “Born to Run.”

Springsteen on the Celebrity Theatre: 'We don’t sell out a place this size ever'

There’s a backstage interview on Soundcloud from that sold-out show at the Celebrity, which has a capacity of 2,650, in which Springsteen is talking to reporters from the Phoenix New Times and Arizona State University’s student paper, the State Press.

“I don’t know why in the hell we got so popular in this one particular spot,” he says. “We don’t sell out a place this size ever. We sell a dinky 27,000 albums.”

According to setlist.fm , his set that night included "Wild Billy's Circus Story," "New York City Serenade," "Spirit in the Night," "The E Street Shuffle," "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," Rufus Thomas’ "Walking the Dog,” “Kitty's Back,” “It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” “For You,” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” and the R&B classic “Twist and Shout.”

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Springsteen's 1st Phoenix concert: 'A very physical performance'

What Thompson Smith remembers most about that show is “just the energy and the response,” she says.

“It was a very physical performance. And the band was so much fun to watch. They were energized and it really translated to the audience. It was one of those experiences where you walk away going, ‘Wow, that was one the best shows I have ever seen.’ And you could see them getting better really quickly. They just kind of shot through the roof in a lot of ways.”

By that point, it was obvious to Thompson Smith that she was witnessing an icon in the making.

“We knew on that one,” she says. “We called it.”

Springsteen's 2nd Celebrity Theatre concert tickets cost $4.75

Springsteen returned to the Celebrity on Saturday, July 27, 1974, with Danny O’Keefe in the opening slot, for two performances, at 7:30 and 11 p.m.

Tickets cost $4.75.

In a review of “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle” that ran in The Arizona Republic as a preview, Gus Walker wrote, “This man Springsteen is rapidly becoming the darling of Phoenix’s progressive rock radio station. Cuts from his new album can be heard so constantly that the station is sounding akin to top-40. Springsteen will be at the Celebrity Theater Saturday, his second appearance in six months, and he has been hailed by some as the new Bob Dylan.”

Danny Zelisko, a Valley concert promoter for the past five decades who started bringing Springsteen through town in the ‘80s, credits KDKB and program director Bill Compton with the size and feverish enthusiasm of the audiences Springsteen commanded here before his mainstream breakthrough.

"Bill and KDKB singlehandedly broke Bruce Springsteen here," Zelisko says.

"They were playing the first record. Then, the second record. I mean, take whoever the top spin-getter has been in the last month here on any kind of radio format and multiply that by 10. That’s how often Bruce got played here. And they played every song on both records, which is unheard of. That’s why he rose to such prominence here in such a short time.”

Thompson Smith says the DJs at KDKB were drawn to that first album by the strength of the material.

“But the audience responded very quickly, and the sales were there in the record stores,” she says. “So everybody was happy. CBS was happy and they got us what we needed to promote him. They were grateful. Because those first two albums, there wasn’t national response on them everywhere. But I would say that Bruce was in pretty high rotation from Day 1 because there was such a response to it and we all loved it.”

Danny Zelisko says 2nd Springsteen Celebrity show was 'bedlam'

Zelisko says that second show at the Celebrity was “bedlam.”

In a good way.

“He just destroyed the place,” Zelisko says. “The stage was turning. I thought he would jump right off the stage. Because back in the day, Bruce could jump pretty damn high. But it was just bedlam.

"He had such a high-energy audience that he was performing at a Mach 10 level. When all you see are smiling faces, people sweating and dancing, crushing into each other, jumping up and down, I mean, you had no choice but to jump right in and really live a little.”

Joe Catanzaro was in high school at the time.

“It was one of the best shows I have ever seen,” he says. “I couldn’t believe how good he was. He only had the two albums out. But he did ‘Jungleland’ as one of the encores. I think he came out with five encores if my memory serves me well. But it was just amazing how much energy he had. It was nonstop. It felt like watching Jagger in his heyday, jumping around all over the place. He was such a great performer.”

Catanzaro and his friends had been turned on to Springsteen through constant rotation on KDKB.

“At that point, it was just Phoenix and New Jersey that really knew of him, it seemed like,” Catanzaro says. “So we were fortunate. It was before he really took off. But he was huge in Phoenix.”

Steve Adams had trouble believing he was seeing Springsteen's second concert of the night.

“He did two shows that night and I went to the second show, which started probably 10:30, 11 o’clock,” he says.

“So he had already done his first show. Well, the one I went to, my goodness, it went on for, like, two-and-a-half, three hours, nonstop, way beyond the amount of time that was expected. The intensity of that show and the amount of time he played, we were all so impressed with not only his music and his uniqueness but the effort that he put into the show.”

Adams’ favorite memories of that show include performances of “Blinded By the Light,” “Growin’ Up,” “For You,” “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” “Spirit in the Night” and “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).”

But “Rosalita” was the highlight among highlights.

“That was probably the biggest song of that show, just the intensity of it,” Adams says. “The place went nuts.”

3 nights at Gammage Auditorium on 'Born to Run' tour

It took three nights to meet the demand for tickets when Springsteen arrived at Gammage Auditorium in late 1975 on the “Born to Run” tour, playing Nov. 3, 4 and 6.

In a column announcing the three-night stand in The Republic, Hardy Price, the paper's music columnist, wrote, “Springsteen says he doesn’t like working in the round and thus the exit from Celebrity.”

The shows at Gammage were promoted by the Boss’ manager, Mike Appel, through the Associated Students of Arizona State University.

Price was on hand for the first of those three concerts, giving Springsteen his first proper concert review in The Republic under the headline “Springsteen wild on stage.”

The Republic on Springsteen's energy level: 'At times overwhelming'

“The august interior of Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium was turned into a rock and roll madhouse Monday night by the current darling of the pop music scene, Bruce Springsteen,” Price began.

“Springsteen and his E Street Band commanded the stage at Gammage with a force and energy level that was at times overwhelming.”

According to Price, “The self-admitted rock and roll street punk from Freehold, N.J., carried on nonstop for almost three hours before a near-capacity audience of more than 3,000.”

Noting that people had compared the rising star to Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, Price wrote, “The 26-year-old Springsteen has been acclaimed the new king of rock and roll with his picture on the cover of both Time and Newsweek in the same week. But when one gets down to the nitty-gritty, Springsteen’s music, be it an opening “Thunder-road” or a midway “Born to Run,” is straight-ahead rock and roll with a heavy accent on the rhythm section and Clarence Clemons’ blaring saxophone.”

What separated Springsteen from the other young contenders for the crown, Price figured, was “his sheer on-stage intensity.”

As Price wrote, “He attacks not only the microphone but throws his blue-jeaned, white T-shirt and black leather jacket-clad body around the stage with an abandon exceeded only by Joe Cocker or Peter Wolf.”

He even spilled into the front row during “Spirit in the Night,” Price added.

Gregory Allen Bucher was in high school at the time.

“He played for an amazing amount of time,” Bucher recalls. “It was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen, unbelievable. I saw Pink Floyd four times but this one really stood out. How he ran around onstage, jumped everywhere, it was absolutely amazing.”

Adams remembers being blown away by the saxophone solo Clarence Clemons played on “Jungleland” at Gammage.

“That was Goosebump City,” he recalls.

He was also impressed the version of “Thunder Road” with just Springsteen on vocals and Roy Bittan on piano.

“It was beautiful," he says.

There was also a mournful rendition of “For You” with just Springsteen alone of piano and vocals.

“He did it real soulful and totally different than the ‘Asbury Park’ recording,” Adams says. “It was just so touching.”

When the balcony began to sway at Gammage Auditorium

Those Springsteen concerts led to the announcement that all future rock concerts at ASU would be held at the University Activity Center, not Gammage, after damage to the auditorium during Springsteen’s three-night stand, which drew more than 8,500 fans.

According to an article in The Republic, “Officials said that during the concerts, seats were torn out of the floor and ripped, and the walls were scratched. In addition, they said, the grand tier, which is supported by a single-span box girder, began to sway as members of the audience jumped up and down.”

Events coordinator Timothy VanLeer told The Republic that jumping in the grand tier could damage the structure and conceivably hurt people, adding “The opera seats in Gammage just aren’t meant to be jumped on.”

As Adams recalls, “Looking up there, it was almost as if the balcony was moving. And I remember at the time thinking to myself, ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t have had that second brew before the concert because this can’t be happening.’ They didn’t have a Bruce Springsteen concert in mind when they built that venue.”

Thompson Smith recalls having similar thoughts.

“It was scary,” she says. “Because people were pounding their feet and being loud in that first balcony and you could see it moving, kind of shaking. I had never seen anything like it.”

It was a thrill for Thompson Smith to see an artist she’d been playing since his first release explode the way he did with “Born to Run.”

“He was on his way,” she says. “’Born to Run’ came out and it was like, ‘Oh geez, you’ll never him in the Celebrity again.’”

Having seen Springsteen right before and then immediately after the success of “Born to Run,” Adams says they were remarkably similar performances.

“Same quality, same tightness, same intensity, same effort, same longevity, same everything,” he says. “They were the same guys. The only thing that was different was they were playing some new songs. When they got bigtime, they did not bigtime the fans.”

When Springsteen brought the Lawsuit Tour to Veterans Memorial Coliseum

Springsteen’s next appearance on a Phoenix stage was when he launched the Lawsuit Tour at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on Sunday, Sept. 26, 1976. It’s referred to as the Lawsuit Tour because Springsteen and Appel, now his former manager, had taken each other to court.

The E Street was fleshed out on that tour with a horn section billed as  The Miami Horns .

Tickets for the Coliseum date were $7.

Price slammed Springsteen’s Coliseum concert.

“Bruce Springsteen’s Coliseum show Sunday night, before 6,800, pointed up Springsteen’s biggest problem in becoming an across-the-board star. His show, which pleases his cult following to no end, lacks the direction, pacing and timing needed to put him over the top. A couple of backup vocalists would help take the constant raw edge off his vocals.”

When Springsteen returned to the Coliseum on the Darkness Tour

Springsteen returned to the Coliseum on Saturday, July 8, 1978, on the Darkness Tour in support of “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”

The Republic skipped that show, much to the chagrin of John K. Hughes, a local Springsteen fan.

“A week ago, Phoenix was treated to one of the most explosive, excellent and unselfish displays of musicianship the Valley has ever witnessed,” Hughes wrote.

“Bruce Springsteen, the man who rocked down the house at Grady Gammage Auditorium, came to town and for 3½ hours rocked the socks right off the 8,000 plus fans attending. It is beyond my comprehension, then again I’ve come to expect it, how in the name of reporting, Hardy Price can write a review on the David Bromberg concert and ignore Springsteen’s show that was four times as large.”

Bob Petrie was at that second Coliseum show with a last-minute ticket.

“I got a call out of the blue from a friend of mine from college,” Petrie says. “I was going to ASU at the time. He says, ‘Hey, my date just stood me up. You want to go see Springsteen?’ So we drove down in his yellow Camaro to the Coliseum.

"And man that show went on for hours. It was just non-stop energy. And then these encores kept going and going. They were actually bringing the lights up and he comes back on and he screams, ‘I ain’t through workin’ yet’” and he went into ‘Quarter to Three,’ the Gary ‘U.S.’ Bonds song.”

Petrie says his ears were ringing as he left what he recalls as an “incredible” performance, even from his seat up in the rafters.

“I was really happy that my buddy Art’s date stood him up. I mean, I wasn’t happy for that, but I was happy that I got to go to the show for free. I couldn’t afford to go concerts at the Coliseum. I don’t know what the tickets were. It had to be at least 10 bucks. I don’t know who his date was, but she missed a good show.”

Desiree Komar McDonald was 17 and didn’t know much more than Springsteen’s great hits until her boyfriend took her to that second Coliseum concert.

“I wasn’t the hugest Springsteen fan,” she says. “But I got there and it was probably one of the longest concerts ever, which that in itself was amazing. And everybody had so much energy. You had Clarence Clemons, this huge linebacker kind of guy, bouncing around on stage in his colorful suit. And Little Steven, everybody. I had been to so many concerts by then and it was one of the most super-energetic concerts I have ever seen. And Springsteen had his own sound, this, I don’t know, blue-collar music.”

She came away from the experience a true believer.

“Of course, my boyfriend went out and got the 8-tracks of ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’,” she says. “We went to Disneyland later that summer and played them straight, just one after the other, the whole way there.”

That Coliseum date was Springsteen’s eighth and final Phoenix concert of the ’70s, a decade he defined as much as any artist of his generation.

Springsteen only played two Valley concerts in the ‘80s but came here four times in the ‘90s. His concert with the E Street Band at Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix on Tuesday, March 19, will be his seventh metro Phoenix date since the turn of this century.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band in Phoenix

When:  7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 19.

Where:  Footprint Center, 201 E. Jefferson St., Phoenix.

Admission:  Verified resale tickets are available at  ticketmaster.com .

Details:  602-379-7800,  ticketmaster.com .

Reach the reporter at  [email protected]  or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter  @EdMasley .

Support local journalism.   Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Bruce Springsteen was huge in Phoenix before he was famous. Here's why

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Bruce springsteen cancels european shows over ‘vocal issues’ — months after he battled peptic ulcer disease.

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The Boss has been sidelined again.

Bruce Springsteen postponed at least four shows on the E Street Band’s European tour this week due to “vocal issues” — just months after nixing US dates as he battled peptic ulcer disease.

“Under doctor’s direction, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s concert this evening at the Orange Vélodrome in Marseille has been postponed to a later date,” the legendary rocker announced Saturday , just before the show was slated to start.

Bruce Springsteen postponed at least four shows on the E Street Band’s European tour this week due to “vocal issues”

“We thank you for your understanding and will keep you informed of the new date very soon. Show tickets will be valid for the new date and, for those who want, they will be eligible for reimbursement at point of purchase.”

On Sunday, however, “further examination and consulting has led doctors to determine that Bruce should not perform for the next ten days,” according to a statement Springsteen, 74, shared on social media .

Also postponed were Tuesday’s show at the Airport Letnany in Prague and two shows at the San Siro Stadium in Milan on June 1 and June 3.

“Bruce is recuperating comfortably, and he and the E Street Band look forward to resuming their hugely successful European stadium tour on June 12 in Madrid at the magnificent Civitas Metropolitan,” the statement added.

Springsteen’s vocal issues come just two months after the “Glory Days” singer resumed the US leg of the tour after canceling all dates in September , when he revealed he was diagnosed with peptic ulcer disease .

Springsteen performs at Nowlan Park on May 12, 2024 in Kilkenny, Ireland.

The rocker — who is known for performing marathon shows that run up to three hours — worried that the disease would affect his voice.

“When I had the stomach problem, one of the big problems was I couldn’t sing,” Springsteen said in March on SiriusXM’s “E Street Radio With Jim Rotolo.”

“Before people told me, ‘Oh no, it’s gonna go away, and you’re gonna be OK.’ [But] you’re thinking like, ‘Hey, am I gonna sing again?’” the “Born to Run” singer admitted. “And you know, this is one of the things I love to do the best, the most, and right now I can’t do it.”

Springsteen said it took a while for doctors to say he’d be able to bounce back from the health scare.

“At first, nobody was quite saying that, which made me nervous, you know? And at the end of the day, I found some great doctors, and they straightened me out, and I can’t do anything but thank them all.”

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Bruce Springsteen postpones shows for 10 days under ‘doctor’s direction’

Bruce Springsteen announced additional tour dates are postponed due to “vocal issues.”

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released a statement on Instagram on May 26 announcing that their tour dates in Prague and Milan would be postponed “under doctor’s direction,” with the band’s tour to resume on June 12 in Madrid.

The postponement comes one day after the “Born to Run” singer released a statement on Instagram that his concert in Marseille on May 25 was postponed “due to vocal issues and under doctor’s direction.”

“Following yesterday’s postponement in Marseille due to vocal issues, further examination and consulting has led doctors to determine that Bruce should not perform for the next ten days,” the May 26th statement read, noting that the singer was “recuperating comfortably.”

Springsteen was initially scheduled to perform in Prague on May 28 and in Milan on June 1 and 3. Rescheduled dates for the postponed concerts are not yet available.

The rock ‘n’ roll icon’s tour is currently scheduled to run through November, including performances across Europe, the United States and Canada.

This isn’t the first instance that Springsteen has had to postpone concerts. In September 2023, Springsteen postponed the remainder of his tour dates that year due to health issues.

Why did Bruce Springsteen postpone his shows?

Due to various health issues, Springsteen postponed several concerts during his tour in 2023.

Last August, he initially postponed two concerts in Philadelphia due to an unspecified illness. At the beginning of the following month, he postponed all planned performances for September , a decision made by “his medical advisors.”

In a statement at the time, it was revealed that Springsteen was “being treated for symptoms of peptic ulcer disease.”

According to the American College of Gastroenterology , a peptic ulcer — often referred to as a stomach ulcer — is an open sore in the stomach lining or the first part of the small intestine.

Symptoms can include belching, bloating, feeling full too soon or uncomfortably full after eating a meal, as well as nausea and vomiting, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases reported.

By the end of September, it was announced that the rest of the 2023 tour would be postponed until 2024 due to Springsteen being treated for peptic ulcer disease.

“Bruce Springsteen has continued to recover steadily from peptic ulcer disease over the past few weeks and will continue treatment through the rest of the year on doctor’s advice,” a statement shared on X read, with rescheduled dates announced at the beginning of October.

What Bruce Springsteen has said about his health

Months after postponing several shows, Springsteen got candid about his health in March when he called into SiriusXM's E Street Radio .

“When I had the stomach problem, one of the big problems was that I couldn’t sing,” Springsteen explained. “You sing with your diaphragm. My diaphragm was hurting so badly that when I went to make the effort to sing, it was killing me. So I literally couldn’t sing at all.”

Springsteen said he endured his health issues for “two or three months,” in addition to “a myriad of other painful problems.”

“During the course of it — before people told me, ‘Oh no, it’s going to go away and you’re going to be OK’ — you know, you’re thinking, ‘Hey, am gonna sing again?’” he added. “This is one of the things I love to do the best, most. And right now, I can’t do it.”

Previously, Springsteen’s bandmate Steven Van Zandt told USA Today that he and the band “had no idea how much pain he was in.”

“We were just as surprised as everyone else to learn the extent of his illness,” Van Zandt said. “It was remarkable when we found out that. He is just a tough guy.”

Springsteen has also been open about how he keeps his mental and physical health in check. In a 2012 profile in  The New Yorker , Springsteen revealed that he experienced “intervals of depression.” The singer's wife, Patti Scialfa, said that therapy has helped.

In the same interview, Springsteen said that he opts to run or walk on the treadmill, as well as use weight training, for his workouts.

The "Born to Run" singer has also credited healthy eating habits to his health and longstanding career performing for hours onstage into his 70's.

“The biggest thing is diet, diet, diet,” Springsteen said during a  podcast  with country singer Tim McGraw in 2021.

“I don’t eat too much, and I don’t eat bad food, except for every once in a while when I want to have some fun for myself,” he continued. “So I think anybody that’s trying to get in shape, exercise is always important of course, but diet is 90% of the game.”

Francesca Gariano is a New York City-based freelance journalist reporting on culture, entertainment, beauty, lifestyle and wellness. She is a freelance contributor to TODAY.com, where she covers pop culture and breaking news.

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However, they are hardly the only act dealing with the harsh realities of touring in 2024. While live-entertainment companies have reported record revenues in the two years since pandemic restrictions fully lifted and top tours continue to do extremely well, that rush has clearly cooled off for artists below the very top tiers. 2023 may come to be regarded as a watershed year, with Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Drake, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and others thundering across North America. But ticket prices have also reached a new peak, and combined with the bad press the industry has received amid the Justice Department’s recently filed but long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster owner Live Nation, many fans have apparently decided to be more selective with their spending.

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Bruce Springsteen Forced to Pause Tour Due to Vocal Cord Issues

Bruce Springsteen has hit a bump in the road during his world tour.

The iconic singer has been forced to cancel several concerts due to problems with his vocal cords, as he announced on Instagram.

Unexpected Cancellations

The vocal cord issues first surfaced during Springsteen's world tour, leading to the last-minute cancellation of his concert in Marseille.

This unexpected development has necessitated a ten-day rest period for the singer's voice, resulting in further cancellations of shows in Prague and Milan.

Disheartening health update from Bruce Springsteen

Despite these setbacks, the mood in Springsteen's camp remains positive.

"Bruce is recovering, and he and The E Street Band look forward to resuming their highly successful European tour on June 12th in Madrid," stated a hopeful post on Instagram.

Fans Disappointed but Hopeful

While these cancellations have disappointed many fans, there is still optimism for future performances. Notably, the concert scheduled in Denmark on July 9th at Dyrskuepladsen in Odense is expected to proceed as planned, provided Springsteen's recovery continues smoothly.

Springsteen's message to his fans underlines his determination to return to the stage as soon as possible.

For now, fans can only hope for a speedy recovery for "The Boss" and look forward to his return to the spotlight.

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  • All setlist songs  ( 2915 )

Years on tour

  • 2024  ( 23 )
  • 2023  ( 67 )
  • 2022  ( 7 )
  • 2021  ( 37 )
  • 2020  ( 4 )
  • 2019  ( 7 )
  • 2018  ( 178 )
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  • 1979  ( 8 )
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  • 1977  ( 38 )
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  • 1969  ( 3 )
  • 1968  ( 2 )

Show all tours

  • Born in the U.S.A.  ( 156 )
  • Born to Run  ( 86 )
  • Bruce Springsteen 1992–1993 World Tour  ( 106 )
  • Chicken Scratch Tour  ( 35 )
  • Darkness  ( 112 )
  • Devils & Dust  ( 72 )
  • Forward  ( 7 )
  • Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.  ( 166 )
  • High Hopes  ( 34 )
  • Human Rights Now!  ( 20 )
  • Lawsuit Tour  ( 57 )
  • Magic  ( 102 )
  • Reunion Tour  ( 133 )
  • Seeger Sessions  ( 58 )
  • Springsteen & E Street Band 2023 Tour  ( 66 )
  • Springsteen On Broadway  ( 236 )
  • Springsteen On Broadway 2021  ( 30 )
  • Springsteen & E Street Band 2024 World Tour  ( 18 )
  • Summer '17 Tour  ( 14 )
  • The Ghost of Tom Joad  ( 133 )
  • The Rising  ( 123 )
  • The River  ( 145 )
  • The River Tour 2016  ( 75 )
  • The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle  ( 207 )
  • Tunnel of Love Express  ( 68 )
  • Vote for Change  ( 10 )
  • Working on a Dream  ( 88 )
  • Wrecking Ball  ( 136 )
  • Avg Setlist
  • Concert Map

Songs played by tour: Lawsuit Tour

  • Jun 8, 2024
  • Jun 7, 2024
  • Jun 6, 2024
  • Jun 5, 2024
  • Jun 4, 2024
  • Jun 3, 2024
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bruce springsteen lawsuit tour

COMMENTS

  1. Born to Run tours

    The Born to Run tours were the unofficially-named concert tours surrounding the release of Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run which occurred between 1974 and 1977. The album represented Springsteen's commercial breakthrough, and was marked by a grueling and meticulous recording process. To make ends meet Springsteen and the E Street Band toured constantly during the first set of ...

  2. Bruce Springsteen 1977 Lawsuit Tour That Nearly Ended His Career

    Fortunately, Bruce chose not to throw in the towel when the tour ended. Two months after the final performance on May 28, 1977, he finally reached a settlement agreement with Mike Appel. Just ...

  3. Bruce Springsteen Setlist at Central Maine Youth Center, Lewiston

    Get the Bruce Springsteen Setlist of the concert at Central Maine Youth Center, Lewiston, ME, USA on March 19, 1977 from the Lawsuit Tour and other Bruce Springsteen Setlists for free on setlist.fm!

  4. How Bruce Springsteen Settled a Lawsuit With His Original Manager

    It's an argument that began — at least in the courts — on July 27, 1976, and went on for 10 months. Springsteen filed the lawsuit against Laurel Canyon, Ltd., owned by his manager and ...

  5. Bruce Springsteen Setlist at The Music Hall, Boston

    Get the Bruce Springsteen Setlist of the concert at The Music Hall, Boston, MA, USA on March 25, 1977 from the Lawsuit Tour and other Bruce Springsteen Setlists for free on setlist.fm!

  6. Bruce Springsteen Setlist at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto

    Get the Bruce Springsteen Setlist of the concert at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, ON, Canada on February 13, 1977 from the Lawsuit Tour and other Bruce Springsteen Setlists for free on setlist.fm!

  7. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S 1977 'LAWSUIT TOUR' GIGS COMING TO ...

    A combination of two of the E Street Band's rarest and most beloved string of shows from the legendary "Lawsuit Tour" have finally gotten the nod from Springsteen's team Por: Pulse Of Radio , 4 ...

  8. Bruce Springsteen

    Bruce Springsteen info along with concert photos, videos, setlists, and more. Search Browse Concert Archives ... Venues; Locations; Photos; Videos; Comments; Bucket Lists; Past Concert Search Engine; Login; Sign Up (it's free!) Home; Concerts; Bruce Springsteen. The Lawsuit Tour Feb 8, 1977 (47 years ago) Auditorium Theatre Rochester, New York ...

  9. For four scorching nights in 1977, Bruce Springsteen owned Boston

    On the 'Lawsuit Tour,' you got both. There was a magic when he was onstage during that tour. ... Story updated to correct Jon Landau's quote describing Bruce Springsteen after seeing him ...

  10. Bruce Springsteen: 'People thought we were gone. Finished'

    On 27 July 1976, Springsteen filed a lawsuit against his manager and publisher Mike Appel, who had co-produced Born to Run, with Springsteen's future manager, Jon Landau.

  11. Bruce Springsteen on tour Lawsuit Tour

    Bruce Springsteen on tour Lawsuit Tour Bruce Springsteen performed 57 concerts on tour Lawsuit Tour, between Boston Music Hall on March 25, 1977 and Monmouth Arts Center on May 12, 1977. 1977 13 May. Monmouth Arts Center Lawsuit Tour. Red Bank United States. 1977 12 May.

  12. Bruce Springsteen's Manager Responds to Ticket Price Outrage

    For fans of legacy rocker Bruce Springsteen, ... a class-action lawsuit for $16.5 million filed by fans who claimed the company tricked them into buying more expensive tickets. The lawsuit was one ...

  13. How Phoenix radio made Bruce Springsteen the Boss: He 'just ...

    When Springsteen brought the Lawsuit Tour to Veterans Memorial Coliseum Springsteen's next appearance on a Phoenix stage was when he launched the Lawsuit Tour at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in ...

  14. Bruce Springsteen Setlist at Utica Memorial Auditorium, Utica

    Get the Bruce Springsteen Setlist of the concert at Utica Memorial Auditorium, Utica, NY, USA on February 10, 1977 from the Lawsuit Tour and other Bruce Springsteen Setlists for free on setlist.fm!

  15. The Lawsuit Tour

    Bruce Springsteen (main performer) The E Street Band (main performer) Steve Paraczky (guest performer) The Miami Horns (guest performer) ... Born to Run tours#U.S. Tour a.2Fk.2Fa Lawsuit Tour 2 : Wikidata: Q4946014 : Series information Type: Tour Ordering type: Manual. Tags Genres (none) Other tags (none) See all tags.

  16. Bruce Springsteen

    Me, I put together an album that consists of all the songs he debuted live in the first leg of the Lawsuit Tour, plus all songs known to have been written around the same period, after Born to Run but before 1977. Take a look: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - AMERICAN MADNESS (1976) Darkness on the Edge of Town ...

  17. Bruce Springsteen cancels European shows over 'vocal issues'

    00:54. The Boss has been sidelined again. Bruce Springsteen postponed at least four shows on the E Street Band's European tour this week due to "vocal issues" — just months after nixing US ...

  18. Tour

    Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band kick off their 2023 international tour with performances across the United States, before heading to Europe, and then returning to North America. The shows mark Springsteen and The E Street Band's first tour dates since February 2017, and their first in North America since September 2016.

  19. Bruce Springsteen Postpones Shows for 10 Days Due to Health

    Bruce Springsteen announced additional tour dates are postponed due to "vocal issues.". Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released a statement on Instagram on May 26 announcing that ...

  20. Bruce Springsteen Average Setlists of tour: Lawsuit Tour

    Lawsuit Tour (57) Magic (102) Reunion Tour (133) Seeger Sessions (58) Springsteen & E Street Band 2023 Tour (66) Springsteen On Broadway (236) Springsteen On Broadway 2021 (30) Springsteen & E Street Band 2024 World Tour (18) Summer '17 Tour (14) The Ghost of Tom Joad (133) The Rising (123) The River (145) The River Tour 2016 (75)

  21. Springsteen stiffed my dad after using his GTO on album cover, N ...

    Springsteen stiffed my dad for using GTO on album cover, N.J. man says in suit. The son of a deceased Ocean County man has filed a lawsuit against Bruce Springsteen, alleging that representatives ...

  22. Black Keys Split With Management After Canceled Tour Debacle

    The band's 31-date "International Players" tour, scheduled to begin on Sept. 17 in Oklahoma, was quietly cancelled over Memorial Day weekend, with the dates disappearing from the ...

  23. Bruce Springsteen Forced to Pause Tour Due to Vocal Cord Issues

    Bruce Springsteen has hit a bump in the road during his world tour. The iconic singer has been forced to cancel several concerts due to problems with his vocal cords, as he announced on Instagram ...

  24. Bruce Springsteen Setlist at Palace Theatre, Albany

    Get the Bruce Springsteen Setlist of the concert at Palace Theatre, Albany, NY, USA on February 7, 1977 from the Lawsuit Tour and other Bruce Springsteen Setlists for free on setlist.fm!

  25. 2024 Tour FAQ

    Information about each individual show, including details regarding refunds, is available through the official ticketing company for the specific date. Rescheduled dates for Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band's shows in Canada will be announced next week, all taking place in 2024 at their originally scheduled venues.

  26. Bruce Springsteen Tour Statistics: Lawsuit Tour

    1. Twist, Twist Senora ( Gary "U.S." Bonds cover) Play Video stats. 1. View the statistics of songs played live by Bruce Springsteen. Have a look which song was played how often on the tour Lawsuit Tour!