Bruce Springsteen Said 1 of His Concerts Was a ‘Nightmare of a Mind-F***’
Bruce Springsteen normalized three-hour-long concerts and has seemed to come alive onstage for decades. He has spoken about the way live performance invigorates him, but he said one show was a bit too much. While Springsteen was still early in his career, he played a show in London. He said he went into it in a terrible headspace.
Bruce Springsteen found a concert extremely stressful
In 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band traveled to London as part of the Born to Run tour. Immediately upon arriving at the Hammersmith Odeon theater, Springsteen began to feel uncomfortable.
“As we pulled up to the outside, the brightly lit marquis reads, ‘FINALLY!! LONDON IS READY FOR BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.’ Reflecting, this is not exactly the tone I’d have preferred been struck,” he wrote in his book Born to Run. “It feels, perhaps, a little too … presumptuous? Once I am inside I am greeted by a sea of posters on every available flat surface and in every seat proclaiming me THE NEXT F***ING BIG THING! The kiss of death!”
Springsteen explained that he wanted to prove his talent with his music, not tell the audience he was a star with posters. While he ripped the posters down, he said he got onstage with a persistent uneasiness. He couldn’t shake it throughout the concert. Even years later, he looks back on the show as one of his most unpleasant.
“Something heavy to push up against,” he told Rolling Stone in 2016. “It was a nightmare of a mind-f***, so it remained with me for a long time.”
Bruce Springsteen has a higher opinion of the show when he looks back on concert footage
Though the show was recorded, Springsteen said he avoided looking at the footage for years. When he finally reviewed the tapes, he felt pleasantly surprised.
“I guess the main thing that surprised me was, we just had an amazing setlist,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015. “‘Born to Run’ came up in the middle of the set! It was just like, your new song. And I remember that was hard to play because it was a studio production and I never felt like we had a strong enough version of it for it to be a closer for the first year or two. It’s interesting how really good the band was — it’s a relatively new band you’re seeing, really.”
While he didn’t feel good throughout the concert, he acknowledged that the group sounded excellent together.
“So the band was new, and it had just morphed into what would be its defining shape,” he said. “So it was fun seeing that when it was just poppin’ out of the box. We were just very good. We were very good.”
He shared what live performance is like for him these days
After the show at Hammersmith Odeon, Springsteen swore to himself he would “never be joined onstage to such a degree by my infidel again.” While he has dealt with stress and depression in his daily life, he said that being onstage helps him let go of that.
“I may feel down or confused at a certain moment,” he said. “It’s very rare, because touring is so emotionally and physically cathartic. If you work yourself physically to the point of near exhaustion, you’re too tired to be depressed, and that may be one of the reasons I’ve done it my whole life. Your mind is not on overdrive — it doesn’t have the energy to start looking for trouble in the weeds. Instead it’s a very mind-clearing, centering experience, and you don’t have the kind of space that depression thrives in.”
