When you’re an influential musician, people tend to ask you what you’ve been listening to lately. Here at 5 for 20, we’re just as keen to find out what records loom large in our favourite artists’ memory banks. So, we’re asking folks for their top five records of the last 20 years.
This week, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play the Rogers Centre in Toronto on Aug. 24 and Moncton's Magnetic Hill on Aug. 26. To commemorate this, we reached out to super Springsteen superfan Jeff Cohen for his personal highlights since first being taken in by the Boss's power.
Cohen lives in Toronto and is the owner of Collective Concerts, the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern and Lee's Palace, and he oversees Toronto Island Concerts. He's seen his fair share of amazing shows, but clearly none compare to seeing the E Street Band.
"Oddly enough I came to be a Springsteen fanatic through listening to punk rock, new wave and rockabilly," Cohen explains. "My fave bands at the time, the Clash, the Jam, Specials, Stray Cats, Robert Gordon, U2, Undertones all had an affinity for '60s soul, horns and saxophone, and easily mixed passionate and intense political and serious social issues/imagery with high-energy, pogo-your-face-off, no-holds-barred rock 'n' roll.
E Street drummer "Mighty" Max Weinberg and Jeff Cohen in October 2010.
In the summer of 1980 Cohen bought his first Springsteen record, The River. Along with London Calling by the Clash, he says that these two records became the soundtracks of his life. He saw his first E Street Band show at the Montreal Forum on Jan. 23, 1981, and he hasn’t looked back since.
“The upcoming Rogers dome show in Toronto will be my 201st lifetime Bruce Springsteen experience, which includes seeing him jump onstage in venues like the Stone Pony or Big Man's West (on the New Jersey shore) solo concerts, Seeger Sessions hootenannies and travelling throughout Europe and the U.S.A. in search of the perfect setlist, rarities and any and every “Racing in the Street,’” he says.
“So I realize I'm only supposed to detail the greatest Springsteen moments in my life over the last 20 years, but true rock ‘n’ roll has no rules, so like those 11 p.m. curfews the band likes to ignore, I'm gonna break ‘em as well and list my five fave cathartic Bruce moments since time began.”
1. July 1981: Philly Spectrum & Brendan Byrne Arena, N.J., The River tour.
Cohen's Philly ticket stub.
My best friend Barry Caplan and I graduate CEGEP, buy a car and plan out a 12-week summer vacation visiting as many MLB baseball parks as possible – only, for the first time in the history of MLB, the players go on a prolonged strike.
There is no internet in 1981 so we bought all these tickets and, in order to get our money back, we have to physically visit each stadium box office in the likes of N.Y.C., Baltimore and Philly.
Sitting in the northeast of the U.S.A. with nothing to do, we decide to catch as many E Street Band shows as possible, specifically in Bruce's two most important markets, Philadelphia and Rutherford, New Jersey.
Gary “U.S.” Bonds joins Bruce onstage for both “Jole Blon” and “This Little Girl,” and the second set always starts with “Hungry Heart,” “You Can Look,” “Cadillac Ranch” and “Sherry Darling.”
Each show ends with a knockout punch of an extended "I Hear a Train," “Detroit Medley” (Mitch Ryder) into Otis Redding's “Shake,” into the Dovells’ “You Can't Sit Down,” into Arthur Conley's “Sweet Soul Music.”
In between these uplifting moments of great, energetic rockabilly and soul, we are treated every night to the life and death catharsis of “Jungleland,” “Racing,” “Backstreets,” “Born to Run,” “Darkness” and “Thunder Road.”
Looking back, The River tour is still today the greatest series of consecutive live shows I have and will ever see.
2. June, 8, 1984: Stone Pony, N.J, pre-Born in the U.S.A. club show.
The late Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen.
Courtesy of legendary Canadian fans Howard Bloom and Denise Richards and Bruce’s guitar tech Mike Batlin, I find myself sitting backstage with the entire E Street Band (minus Steve Van Zandt) for Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa’s debut, and the official club warm-up gig of the BITUSA [Born in the U.S.A.] tour.
John Cafferty and Beaver Brown have just finished playing and Bruce is teaching the band “Dancing in the Dark,” “My Hometown,” “Glory Days” and “Born in the U.S.A.”
Twenty minutes later, I weasel my way to the front row when the entire E Street Band jumps on a tiny club stage and the place goes absolutely bananas. For 75 minutes, time stopped as I was literally pinned to the stage by a crush of hundreds of flashing cameras and local tapers who would ultimately capture the event through the "magic of bootlegging."
3. March 7, 2003: Boardwalk Hall Atlantic City, Rising tour.
Springsteen's handwritten setlist from this stop supporting The Rising.
I flew to South Jersey with a woman I had been dating casually on and off. She is big into live music but did not know much about Springsteen. The poor girl. I make her line up and do general admission pit check-ins, two days in advance, every three to six hours, including a 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. on day of show, promising her a unique front-row experience and, despite being numbers 41 and 42 in line for 48 hours, Bruce’s tour manager decides to hold a lottery for order of entry, pushing us to the end of the line.
She's a trooper though, despite the fact she wants to pummel me when I warn her not to drop her ticket in the shore boardwalk slats. Bruce opens with “Atlantic City” and, by the end of the song, my date is mesmerized by his passion. By the time "Roll of the Dice" ends the show, we indeed roll the dice of life, and some 16 months later Tara King walks down the aisle to “Atlantic City” and becomes the only music tramp I ever want to run with.
4. July 21, 2009: Torino, Italy, Working On a Dream tour.
In the 1980s the places to see Springsteen were Philly and/or Jersey but, by the 2000s, the audience in North America got much older and much less receptive to Bruce's new material.
However, in Europe, specifically Sweden, Spain and Italy, Bruce cultivates a much younger, energetic and wildly expressive set of new fans who not only collectively hum his tunes but also do weird, shaky hand movements on cue and jump up and down excessively.
My friend Jeff Ross and I fly to Italy for three shows. We line up 18 hours in advance to procure a second-row stand in the front of the centre of the stage and, for the next five hours, it's a war of survival as we have no choice but to pogo, sway, shake our hands weirdly or be crushed. We feel like we’re 17 and at the Police Picnic again.
During the "stump the band" request segment, Italy's most known fan, Corrardo, has a little boy hand Bruce three large, sealed envelopes. Bruce opens up the first one and shows us a large “Drive All Night” sign (a River opus). He opens up the second one: the same “Drive All Night” sign. Bruce yells into the mic, “I think I've been tricked!” before opening up the third envelope, and yup it's “Drive All Night.” Bruce shakes his head and starts into it. It'll be the very first “Drive All Night” I will hear since my first inaugural show back in 1981.
The Torino Springsteen fans are the loudest, most energetic, wildly expressive single live music audience I have ever seen, felt or will experience in my life
5. Nov. 8, 2009: Madison Square Garden, N.Y.C., full-album shows, The River.
Springsteen's handwritten setlist from this show at Madison Square Garden.
In the fall of 2009, Bruce announces that he will do full-album shows, mixing in Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born in the U.S.A. from start to finish amongst his usual set.
I travel throughout the U.S.A. to see each of these shows, but I spend a lot of time on the internet and chat rooms trying to get info if Bruce will announce a full show for The River, my first and all-time fave Springsteen record.
I'm visiting my family in the Bahamas when he finally announces a River show, only four or five days in advance. I proudly search the secondary market for a GA ticket, paying more than I've ever paid for a single concert ducat, book a flight to JFK from Nassau and then come up with an excuse as to why I have to shorten my family visit, not to mention explain to my wife why I'm leaving her alone with my parents.
I'm obsessed. Worse, I'm going to fly in my business partner and musical best friend Craig Laskey to join me. But the shenanigans do not end there. I end up buying a "paperless" ticket on the secondary market and have to have a pro scalper "sneak" us into the building and then we're in the back of the floor. Somehow Craig and I devise a whole plan involving carrying trays of food into the pit area so we can get as close as possible to the stage without being arrested.
Words cannot describe hearing The River from start to finish in the greatest arena in the world, “Stolen Car” being the one cathartic moment when the world stood still and I've never felt more glad to be alive.
To most that night at [Madison Square Garden], watching the greatest live band that will ever exist play the, IMO, greatest record ever recorded was spellbinding.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play the Rogers Centre in Toronto on Aug. 24 and Moncton's Magnetic Hill on Aug. 26. Jeff Cohen will likely be at both shows, in the front row.
Do you have any Bruce Springsteen stories to share with us about shows or memorable moments? If so, please share below.
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