Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Fox Theater, Atlanta, GA, October 1, 1978
"This is our 86th show, so one more time for the last time!"
Setlist: THE LAST TIME / BADLANDS / SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT / DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN / HEARTBREAK HOTEL / FACTORY / THE PROMISED LAND / PROVE IT ALL NIGHT / IT'S MY LIFE / THUNDER ROAD / MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER / JUNGLELAND / FOR YOU / FIRE / CANDY'S ROOM / BECAUSE THE NIGHT / POINT BLANK / KITTY'S BACK / INCIDENT ON 57TH STREET / ROSALITA (COME OUT TONIGHT) / BORN TO RUN / TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT / DETROIT MEDLEY / QUARTER TO THREE
Capacity: 3,900
An official archive release
“All right, Atlanta, let me see you out there. How you doing? This is the last night of our tour tonight, this is our 86th show, so one more time for the last time!”
A lot of words have been written about Bruce Springsteen’s fandom of soul and rhythm and blues, he has memorialized the impact of seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan, told stories of watching Sam & Dave at the Satellite Lounge or his mom taking him to Atlantic City to see Chubby Checker. But what gets less coverage is the depth of Bruce’s Rolling Stones fandom, which comes to the forefront tonight in Atlanta, which he opens with a sonically perfect rendition of “The Last Time.” The Bruce/Steve Van Zandt harmonies are exquisite replicas of Mick and Keith doing the same. You can absolutely imagine them doing exactly this back when they’d be playing gigs at a Hullaballoo club somewhere down the shore.
This is the last of the rock 'n' roll bands. Combine that with the most underrated songbook in rock history and the Stones have always stood heads about their competition. Still do. - Born To Run, Chapter 76
Of course, this wasn’t the last show of the 1978 tour, but Bruce did not know this at the time he stepped onstage in Atlanta. So we get the benefits of a loose, happy tour finale show from every single member of the band. “The Last Time” rolls right into “Badlands,” just the smoothest little bit of upshift, running like a brand new Cadillac with new tires riding on a road that’s just been repaved, that’s how smooth it is.
(Yes, I absolutely am using a car metaphor to describe a Bruce Springsteen concert.)
You can envision Bruce stalking the edge of the stage during “Spirit In The Night,” slapping hands and bringing every single member of the audience down to Greasy Lake with him. But he didn’t need to, they were already there, you can hear the delight and pleasure in his voice when the audience responds with a loud and perfect “ALL NIGHT!” exactly on cue. You can also hear how delighted the audience is with themselves – Wait, we all know this?! How cool!
This is such an underrated show because it is in the shadow of the previous evening’s FM broadcast and because you wouldn’t have heard it unless you’d specifically hunted down the recording. There is just so much polish to the band’s performance and that is not a bad thing, it is the sound of a group of musicians who have played 86 shows in one year and everyone is entitled to benefit from that, everyone is entitled to enjoy every single minute of it, and you can hear it in every second of this show.
“We closed our eyes and said…” “GOODBYE,” the crowd responds in unison, as one. The audience engagement is at the level of a club but we’re at a 4500 seat theater and it’s the kind of energy that would make any artist pick up their game, but when it’s Bruce Springsteen in 1978, it’s the kind of stuff that creates legends.
His voice is butter during “Darkness On the Edge of Town,” the band accompanies him magnificently, and at the final TOWWWWWWWWWNNNNNnnnnnnnn, he extends the note operatically, just because he can, and it is a triumph. “Heartbreak Hotel” is back in the set -- he introduces it by declaring it as one of his favorite songs -- he wants to channel Elvis, he wanted to BE Elvis, but he’s also singing the song the way Bruce Springsteen would interpret it, there’s Elvis but it’s absolutely an interpretation and not a cover version.
“Factory” is an important song, it’s important to the narrative arc of the album, the problem is that it just isn’t a good song live and there’s no way to make it anything but a bummer. He introduces it as, “Way down at the end of lonely street, next to that hotel, they built a factory” – I can appreciate the arc he’s created here from Elvis through “Factory” into “The Promised Land,” but there were so many other ways to invoke the sense of desperation and loneliness.
But you’re going to forget all about this when “The Promised Land” starts. He’s not oversinging so much as giving it additional oomph. This is the last show of the tour! E Street’s backing vocals remain underrated, especially on this song.
It’s a different band tonight than you heard earlier in this tour. There’s an audible polish that’s about self-assurance. It doesn’t sound like they are striving for attention or to prove they deserve all the accolades, they are just doing what they do.
The guitar solos on “Prove It All Night” have grit, control, agility. It’s less bending strings and feats of strength and more straight-ahead communication and expression; they’re more compressed than earlier solos, because he’s figured out how to express himself in less notes. There is no way you can listen to the solos in this song on this broadcast and not be overwhelmed. He cannot be that good, the naysayers said (and still say).
Miami’s harmonies are particularly nice here, and there’s also so much finesse in Max Weinberg’s drum rolls in the bridge, in Roy Bittan’s accompaniment alongside it -- and then the band comes back in with those harmonies. Danny Federici on the organ is a literal wall of sound, it’s why he and Roy worked so well together because Danny was all about feel and Roy had so much technique but somehow he never overplayed, never made the songs sound overdramatic.
And then Bruce just hovers over them with speed and power and agility. It’s breathtaking, simply breathtaking. He shows off a little bit -- okay, more than a little bit -- at the end, a run of adjacent notes that you can hear in the notes that he is having fun with. He confirms my previous internal dialogue when he gives special acknowledgements to Danny, Max and Roy at the end of the song, when the audience is applauding and can’t seem to stop.
“This is a song a couple guys asked me for last night,” takes us into “It’s My Life.” And I think this is another element of the show that got left out or forgotten later on because there were so many other tremendous songs and performances and moments to talk about. There was definitely a fanclub for this cover of the Animals classic, and it deserves it. It’s such a haunting interpretation, and absolutely fascinating that this is the direction Bruce decided to take what is a pretty straightforward composition, as originally presented by the Animals. It’s not far from where Eric Burdon would go later in his career with War, and also owes more than a little bit to the carnival of sound that was Van Morrison’s band in the mid-70s. It’s also easy to forget that this song came out of the Brill Building era, the Broadway cubicle farms that generated what should be considered the second Great American Songbook.
What Bruce created with his version of “It’s My Life” is adjacent to the worldbuilding he did in songs like “Spirit In The Night.” It’s textured, you can see it, you can feel it, there’s a darkness on the edge of that town. Clarence executes this slinky soprano sax line that approximates an oboe. Roy’s intro is closer to Broadway or cabaret than rock and roll, Max should be rights have some tympani back there. It’s really something else.
And then we get to the chorus:
“‘Cause baby…”
“BABY!” affirms E Street.
“Remember!”
“REMEMBER!”
They’re still a street gang, but like if the Outsiders went to the High School for Performing Arts.
Once again, Bruce’s vocals are almost operatic. There’s so much depth, emotion, pathos. He’s able to pull on the muscle memory behind the teenage angst all these years later. You can’t fake this stuff.
The audience applauds madly, but it’s not your usual rock club barrage of screams. It’s reserved, like they were having a moment to take it all in. Roy Bittan plays a little melancholy piano motif, not unrelated to what you’d hear at the starts of “Racing in the Street” or the place we’re going next, “Thunder Road.” It goes on longer than usual because not only do the audience need an emotional breather, Bruce and the band could use a physical one; it is, improbably, only the 10th song in the set.
There’s a more melancholy flavor to Roy’s melody tonight, which is fitting, given that everyone onstage thought this show was the end of this tour. It’s amazing that a show that happened almost 50 years ago that I wasn’t even at can make me a little misty, but there is something about the story Bruce told all tour about being out west and seeing the sign reading, “This is the land of peace, love, justice and no mercy” next to the sign for Thunder Road. There is nothing about that in the song, except for the shared overarching themes of escape and freedom. Which is the point.
You can hear the audience sing back to Bruce at the “Show a little faith/there’s magic in the night” -- a moment we all think always existed had to literally come into being over the course of the tour, and of course the radio broadcasts helped with this. A month earlier, in Detroit, he has to encourage them a little bit, NYC audiences were better at it but they were in fighting form, you know.
But it is worth noting that the next song, “Meeting Across the River,” hadn’t been played all tour until they got back to New York City. Bruce acknowledges that they don’t play it much at all, dedicates it “for the guy who threw me the hat,” and it would be so fantastic to some day learn what kind of hat this was, or what it said on it. There is an immediate collective intake of breath from the crowd once the music begins.
Tonight’s show features one of the best versions of “Candy’s Room” I’ve ever heard, from any show, any tour, any year. It is perfectly paced, executed, performed. The emotional dynamic is exquisite. Max Weinberg is phenomenal, Roy Bittan outshines more than he usually does, and Bruce’s final sustained guitar note is a firecracker fuse. The band promptly segues into “Because the Night,” and if you didn’t understand what that song was about, Bruce just explained it.
The “Because the Night” intro solo is something supernatural, I have never heard anything like it from Bruce before or since. It sounds like fireflies, starlight, mist rising above the road as you drive home. Clarence shakes a tambourine to add some texture. After about a minute, Roy picks up the intro chords and there’s a smattering of applause. They know what it is.
This version of the song has fully fleshed out lyrics, which one would hope after it being a hit for Patti Smith for four months and the song’s co-writer realizing he needed to get on this bandwagon. Clarence adds a flourish at the end of the bridge that’s just fantastic. Roy is crisp, succinct, and yet completely fluid. And then after all of these superlatives, it is time for the guitar solo which, had I been there when it was played, I would have had to sit down.
This, this right here is exactly why people got sick of Bruce Springsteen without ever hearing him, because we were tireless about how great he was precisely because of moments like this. We weren’t showing off so much as wanting everyone to be able to experience the same things we were.
The solo is breathtaking, it is a rollercoaster, it is the embodiment of that moment when you finally declare your love and then everything you have been holding back since the dawn of time can finally emerge into the daylight. You will be breathless. In the final chorus, E Street are literally a gang, the Sharks dancing behind Bruce, except instead of dancing they are singing in unison, less rock and roll and more musical theater.
If you are Jon Landau or Bruce Springsteen at this moment, you are annoyed, Jon because you knew this was a great song, Bruce because you gave it away without even trying and are attempting to make up for it now.
The audience is ecstatic at its conclusion. They scream and clap but then don’t quiet down, there is this barrage of yelling, requests, repeated cries of BRUCE! from women, other excited utterances. Roy’s noodling in the direction of “Point Blank,” which manages to somehow be a …welcome respite? An emotional palate cleanser? But it is intense and heartbreaking, just in a different flavor. The song hasn’t even been recorded yet, but the audience knows it because it’s been on the FM broadcasts, starting with its debut at the Roxy in Hollywood on July 7. The intro is like a movie soundtrack, Clarence on chimes in between Roy hitting the keys delicately, rococo. Bruce is perfectly poised vocally, emotionally, Steve’s harmonies deft, and the Professor executes these little intricate fillips on the organ.
There’s some off-mic chat and then Bruce comes back to the mic: “Big Man?”
“Yes boss?” he says, just off mic.
“Kitty’s Back!”
The crowd's reaction is how we know how long these people have been Springsteen fans.
Roy is a hero. Danny is a hero. Max is exercising precise restraint. Bruce locks right back into full Scooter mode, scatting like Tom Waits, with the same precision that deftly disguises itself under the fluidity of the vocal delivery. Garry Tallent is the fulcrum here, he is the foundation but still manages to swing a big, but he’s the reason everyone else can just veer off into the stratosphere. Roy and Danny face off against each other, perfectly choreographing the movements of Kitty and the rest of the, uh, cats. Bruce peels off guitar licks, one after the other. The band is almost -- they are -- a jam band behind Bruce while he works.
“Incident on 57th Street” is heart-rending, and as Roy plays through the piano interlude from “Incident” into “Rosalita,” Bruce chuckles just a little bit at the end, because he knows he’s absolutely on top of his game, he’s ending this year on a high note.
During the “Detroit Medley” in the encore, he asks, “Who was listening in on the radio last night?” and although this is obviously not a scientific measurement, I’m confident in my assertion that most of the audience had been listening. He wasn’t asking for the ego boost and not even from a point of information, it’s to explain that what they’re about to do is what they did last night but you couldn’t have seen them doing it because you were listening on the radio. “What was happening…it was pretty visual.” It still is.
