Forty years ago, on June 29, 1984, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off their Born in the USA tour at the St Paul Civic Center in Minnesota. It was a key moment in Springsteen’s career. His new single Dancing in the Dark had recently reached the Billboard top 10, and an accompanying video, released in late July, would take his fame to a new level. It would also jumpstart the career of a young actress.
My sister and I were among the 17,500 fans present that night, our $15 tickets putting us somewhere in the middle rows, stage left. They were good seats, with a clear view across the stage. But we saw something that audience members with much better seats might have missed.
For Springsteen fans, the concert was a major event. It was the band’s first auditorium performance since The River tour had wrapped up three years earlier, in September 1981. It was also the debut live performances for two new members: guitarist Nils Lofgren, who had replaced Steven Van Zandt, and singer Patti Scialfa. Both became essential members of the band; Scialfa married Springsteen in 1991.
It also heralded a shift in the singer’s popular appeal. Springsteen had been a star since 1975, when the success of the album Born to Run had landed him on the covers of US magazines Time and Newsweek in the same week. But he became a superstar in 1984, starting with the release of Dancing in the Dark as a single in May. It was one of the year’s defining songs, only denied the Billboard number one position by Prince’s When Doves Cry.
The album Born in the USA appeared in early June. It produced six further hit singles (including the title track) and became one of the best-selling albums of all time.
I was just completing my first year at university, and Dancing in the Dark divided opinion among the Springsteen fans in my circle. After the spare folk of his previous album, Nebraska, the last thing we expected was an upbeat, synth-driven pop song. I remember sitting in my dorm room, parsing the lyrics, wondering what to make of this new direction in Springsteen’s style.
After the semester wrapped up, I returned home to Nebraska for summer break. When the Born in the USA tour was announced, my older sister, who lived in Minneapolis, bought us tickets for that opening night show.
Neither of us had seen Springsteen perform live, though we had tried. In early 1981, while I was in high school, an Omaha radio station ran a contest asking listeners to identify a dozen sound clips taken from Springsteen songs. Winners would go to Ames, Iowa, for the January stop of his The River tour. My sister and I spent hours deciphering the songs, then sent in postcards with the answers for her and my brother (I was too young to enter).
My brother’s card was picked (he later claimed that this occurred because he scribbled “I deserve to win!” across the bottom of his postcard; this strategy hasn’t worked for me since). He wasn’t much of a Springsteen fan; he was more into jazz. But he went with the other lucky ones to the show, and the next morning I hung on every word as he provided a detailed report.
Now, three years later, this was our chance to see the Boss, and it felt like a big deal. Not only was it the opening night of the tour; it had also been announced that Brian De Palma would be filming a video for Dancing in the Dark.
I must admit that I don’t remember many specifics about the concert. According to a contemporary newspaper review, he opened with Thunder Road and he played a mix of new and old songs through the first half of the concert. This would have been the first live performances for many songs from both Nebraska and Born in the USA.
Memories become clearer when I think about the second set, which opened with Hungry Heart, his biggest hit until that time. And then, as several cameramen appeared on stage, Springsteen announced that we were all “going to be film stars”. The familiar drum and synthesizer intro to Dancing in the Dark kicked in, and the crowd exploded in cheers.
That was nothing compared to the roar when, near the song’s end, Bruce pulled a seemingly random young woman out of the crowd and danced on stage with her. It felt extraordinary. The moment seemed to capture something special about Springsteen. He was just a regular guy with a remarkable talent, and he was happy to share his fame with one of us. She was the luckiest person in America.
Or so we thought.
The song wrapped up, and the young woman disappeared from the stage. And then Springsteen asked us if we thought the performance was fun. We cheered in agreement (of course we did). Then he told us that, when something’s fun, “you do it twice!” And the band started playing the song again.
Fair enough, I thought; after all, they were making a video, and some extra footage might be useful in the editing room. But I was also thinking: who’s going to get pulled out of the crowd this time?
Springsteen might have been wondering the same thing. When he reached the key moment (“Hey Baby!”), it was clear that he was looking for someone who wasn’t there. You can listen to a recording on YouTube, as the band vamps and Springsteen calls out to saxophonist Clarence Clemons, “Big Man! Where’d she go?” Meanwhile every woman (and probably a few men) in the front of the stage were hurling themselves forward, desperately holding out their hands, begging for that invitation from the Boss.
But those of us high up in the arena knew what had happened. We could see that the young woman who had just been dancing so charmingly and awkwardly with Bruce was now far from the stage, in the middle of that sea of humanity, fighting her way back to the front. From our view, it looked as if she thought her dance was done, and she was leaving the concert—not the reaction of a superfan.
She eventually reached the front, pushing her way frantically through the mass of bodies, and Springsteen picked her out for a second twirl.
It was that moment, the young woman trying to get back to the front of the stage, that stays in my mind. I’ve read that there were plans for a “concept” video, following this superfan; and perhaps this was also part of the plan, to get footage of her fighting to the front. But the important thing was: we knew it wasn’t real.
Later we learned that much, if not most, of the video had been filmed the day before, with several hundred extras moving around the arena to give the illusion of a live gig. It’s old news now that the young girl planted there was none other than Courtney Cox, unknown at the time but soon to become a familiar face on film and television.
I wouldn’t say that seeing the set-up soured my opinion of Bruce; but there was something a little disheartening about it. He was becoming a different kind of artist. Soon there was a Blaster remix of Dancing in the Dark by hip-hop producer Arthur Baker. The video became an MTV staple. A year later, there he was with Lionel Ritchie and Kenny Rogers in We Are the World.
My tastes were changing, too. REM and a new generation of post-punk British bands were on my radar. Under the influence of Bono, and much to my parents’ chagrin, I grew my hair long that summer. When I next visited my sister in Minnesota, it was to see Joe Jackson and then The Cure.
Those early Springsteen records had meant so much to me. When Rosalita or Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out came on the radio, I put aside my homework and lay on my bed, losing myself in the song. I studied the album photos and notes; I wrote terrible poems inspired by his lyrics. And I continue to admire him and his extraordinary music. But after the summer of 1984, Bruce Springsteen belonged to everyone. I bought a CD of his next studio recording, Tunnel of Love, which remains one of my favourites. But that was the last.
What was lost? It’s hard to say. I wasn’t the only teenager whose musical tastes changed at college. I probably would have parted ways with the Boss with or without the video. And, of course, something was gained. Friends.
Thomas McLean is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Otago