Be forewarned, “Springsteen on Broadway” isn’t for everybody.
It is, however, for anyone who has ever dreamed big, let rock ‘n’ roll into their heart, taken a leap of faith, hungered for a parent’s approval, had a love-hate relationship with their hometown, been a practicing or recovering Catholic and at the end of every hard day still finds some reason to believe.
And for Springsteen fans lucky enough to score a ticket, they are going to feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven. And who knows, maybe they have. In the course of an evening, Springsteen evokes the spirits of the dearly departed, most notably his father and beloved E Street Band saxophonist Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, as well as a few local heroes who The Boss lost along the way.
For the most part, the performance comprises the same scripted stories and songs every night, and the show - which runs for roughly two hours and 20 minutes, with no intermission - is a far cry from The Boss’ legendary marathon stints with nightly revolving set-lists performed in arenas and stadiums 10 to 20 times the size of the intimate Walter Kerr Theatre, which seats a cramped 975.
“Springsteen on Broadway” is a combination of most revealing passages from Springsteen’s best-selling memoirs “Born to Run” and the most intimate moments of his “Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Devil and Dust” solo tours. Despite featuring 15 songs, the music takes a backseat to the stories, until the very end. What you get is Springsteen at his most unguarded and his most real. It’s also The Boss at his funniest, most poignant, most profound and most foul-mouthed.
In the beginning of his early life, Springsteen said he was trapped in a “lifeless, black hole of homework, church, school, homework, church, school, homework, church, school … and green beans.”
Springsteen relives on stage how his life was totally changed one Sunday night when Elvis Presley split the world in two and made Springsteen want to be just like Elvis.
True, Springsteen admits that Elvis was a “human Adonis” while he was “so pathetically creepy,” but, he added, he could work on that. A young Bruce concluded that the only thing Elvis had that he didn’t was what his father christened as “that (expletive) guitar.”
“I took (guitar) lessons, lessons for two weeks and quit,” Springsteen recalled. “It was too (expletive) hard.”
But before his mom returned the rental guitar to the music store, a pint-sized Springsteen took it out in the backyard and, for the neighbor's kids, gave his first performance.
"I slapped it! I shook it! Most importantly, I posed with it! I did everything but played it,” Springsteen said. “Oh, yeah, I smelled blood.”
From an early age, Springsteen’s plan was to say, “Bye, bye, New Jersey.”
“I was born to run, not to stay,” Springsteen explained. “New Jersey, it’s a deathtrap. It’s a suicide rap. What do you think I’ve been writing about for the last 50 years? (pause) I currently live 10 minutes from my hometown.”
With the precision of a great American novelist, Springsteen spins a yarn about growing up in “spitting distance” from St. Rose of Lima Church in Freehold, N.J., and how, literally, he was surrounded by God and his relatives.
And how in front of his boyhood home existed the grandest tree in town, a towering, beautiful copper beech tree which becomes the basis of the performance’s richest and furthest-reaching metaphor. And in the tall branches of that tree, an 8-year-old would dream big.
Shifting to the piano, Springsteen sang a heartfelt “My Hometown” and introduced the audience to the first towering figure in his life, his father, and amusingly recounted all the days he had to retrieve his dad from the confines of a Freehold bar, which he painted as being “citadels of great mystery” and the “mystical realm of men.”
An open and unguarded Springsteen talked about his dad’s clinical depression (which he confesses he was too young to understand) and his lifelong struggle to get his father’s approval and acceptance.
“Those whose love we wanted but couldn’t get, we emulate,” Springsteen confesses. And despite dying 20 years ago, Springsteen’s father still cast a giant shadow in his son’s life.
Before sucking all the air from the room, Springsteen exclaims, “Allow me to remove you from suicide watch right now” as he introduces us to his mom, a legal secretary who loved to work, loved to laugh, loved people, loved to dance, “could make conversation with a broom handle” and “gave the world much more credit than it deserves.” In short, Springsteen’s mom was the polar opposite of his dad.
In honor of his mom, Springsteen sings “The Wish,” a sentimentally sweet trifle buried in the “Tracks” box set, before uttering the evening’s most painful revelation - “My mom is 92 years old, and seven years into Alzheimer's … but dancing to her is still essential.”
Springsteen muses how the magic of this great tree was too old and too strong to end or be erased and the tree’s spirit still remains in the empty space it once occupied. This is also true of our departed loved ones, family, friends and E Street Band members, whose spirits live on in our stories, in our memories and in our songs, he said.
Then, "the words of a very strange but all too familiar benediction" suddenly come rushing back to Springsteen and he recites, “The Lord’s Prayer,” asking the Almighty up above to “Give us this day, just give us this day,” while revealing that his mission in life has always been to learn the "whole American story" and "celebrate its beauty, its power, to be able to tell it well" to his friends, to his children, and to all of us.