Bruce Springsteen @ Villa Park, Birmingham, 16 June 2023

I’ve seen the Boss a bunch of times before. The first time was at Wembley Arena as a wide-eyed 18-year old, and it’s been one hell of a ride since then. Jobs, friendships, relationships and Prime Ministers have come and gone, and there have been endless ups, downs and roundabouts. It almost feels like Bruce has been beside me every step of the way, not only soundtracking my life but encouraging me, guiding me, cheering from the sidelines and chastising me when I needed it. Whenever I hear Born to Run I am 16 again, and my life is a blank canvass. Trouble River will always remind me of being stuck on a bus in the middle of a torrential flood in New York city circa 1999, and Follow that Dream transports me to a summer’s day at the San Siro in the midst of a break-up in 2003 when I first heard it.

I didn’t spend anything like the couple of grand for a ticket for this gig often touted in the press, but it didn’t come cheap. Add on travel expenses, a night in a city centre hotel during peak season, and a few £7.50 pints, and the cost probably weigh in around the £600 mark. It’s a lot. I could probably have gone on a package holiday anywhere on the contiednent for less. But having missed the last couple of tours, and then Covid sticking its oar in, I felt this one is important. I hope I’m wrong, but I have a sneaky feeling this might be the last global outing for Bruce and the E Streeters.

To be brutally honest, I wasn’t expecting much. There are a few reasons for this. For starters, Springsteen and the original E Streeters are all well into their seventies now. You can’t expect the same level of performance they gave in their thirties. Nobody other than Father Time is to blame for that. There’s also the much-derided ticketing drama which left a sour taste in many mouths, and a set-list that has barely changed since the tour kicked off in Tampa back in February. This is unusual for Bruce and, perhaps unfairly, not what fans have come to expect. In fact, some shows have been identical to others, which is almost unheard of in Bruce folklore. One thing I have always admired about the Boss is his inherent ability to be spontaneous and make every show special. If you look back over pre-2023 set lists, you’ll be hard pressed to find any duplicates, especially after the original River tour, something which makes each and every show unique. On recent jaunts, Bruce has taken sign requests from the crowd, some of them pretty obscure, in an attempt to ‘challenge’ the band.

Then there’s the choice of material. The general theme is one of introspection, retrospection and loss. This is exemplified by Bruce’s story, one of the few monologues he indulges in, about being the last surviving member of his first band going into Last Man Standing. Ghosts, a stand-out track from his most recent album Letter to You deals with the same subject matter, and while I initially thought the title track was a love song, after seeing it performed live, and Bruce’s constant gesticulations to the crowd, it becomes clear that the song is, in fact, a message to fans:

Things I found out through hard times and good

I wrote ’em all out in ink and blood

Dug deep in my soul and signed my name true

And sent it in my letter to you

But it isn’t all maudlin contemplation. It’s almost as if the show is structured to reflect the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, with one last stage tacked onto the end for good measure: joy for a life lived well. It makes sense. We don’t realise it so much when we’re young, but as we progress through life, death becomes an ever more prevailing aspect until, inevitably, we all succumb. Most shows on this tour so far have started with a defiant No Surrender, almost certainly a response to the Covid nightmare, and maybe the fragility of life itself, and have included stompers like Bobby Jean, Glory Days, Mary’s Place, Out in the Streets and Backsteets. However, the songs seem to take on a new context in this setting, and the sometimes whimsical lyrics are highlighted. This is never more evident than during a stripped-down My Hometown, which drew one of the biggest cheers of the evening.

Miami Steve Van Zandt said on Twitter recently that though there would be the odd surprise, generally, this time out Bruce had a particular story he wanted to tell, and chose to perform songs that fit the narrative. Despite featuring nothing from a clutch of albums including Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, Human Touch, Lucky Town, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Magic, Working on a Dream, Devils & Dust, Tunnel of Love, or Western Stars, the songs he does play tonight offer a pretty fair and balanced representation of his life and work.

True to Miami Steve’s word, most nights he manages to shoehorn in a track mid-set that he hasn’t played much (if at all), this swiftly becoming the mechanism by which to make each gig special. At other dates he has busted out I’m on Fire, Brilliant Disguise, Trapped, Jungleland, Pay Me My Money Down, Working on the Highway and a cover of Dirty Water. We got the tour debut of The River. I’ll take that. All things considered, it’s a cracking set-list, and I couldn’t have done better if I’d sat down and written it myself, except perhaps for including Human Touch, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Living Proof somewhere and substituting Incident on 57th Street for Kitty’s Back. But meh, we all have our whims. Perhaps the greatest advantage of sticking to the same basic set is that each member of the band has the opportunity to nail their parts and polish them to the nth degree.

The thing that will stay with me is the outpouring of joy when Bruce stepped on stage, which was maintained for most of the show. I looked around and everyone in attendance was smiling and hugging it out. It was clear that a large percentage of these people were strangers, or at least had been until today. There were even a few tears. I think that’s part of the Bruce live experience. It’s been a long, bumpy road for a lot of Bruce fans, and there is a kind of solidarity to be found in that. These songs bind us all inexorably together. In the words of local news outlet Birmingham Live: “If you could have somehow harvested the loving energy that the Birmingham crowd were expressing for this troupe, you’d have had enough electricity to illuminate the city skyline for the rest of the year.”

The high-octane set flagged a little in the middle, with an extended Kitty’s Back and The E Street Shuffle either side of his cover of the Commodores’ Nightshift, but I think we all needed a breather by that point. At least this section gave some fringe members of the band, like the backing singers and the E Street Horns, their moment in the spotlight, not to mention Max Weinberg, who is still one of the best drummers on the planet.

Bruce plays with the format from time to time, as is his want, and is not opposed to doing the unexpected, but he is the consummate performer and knows how to work a crowd like nobody else. There were many highlights, but for me, a blistering Prove it all Night stood out and closing out the main set with one-two punch of Badlands and Thunder Road, was a stroke of genius. Both songs are equally anthemic and powerful, and carry the same message of hope and optimism. It’s songs like these, with lyrics about yearning for more from life and looking for a way out of a humdrum existence, that set me on my own path in life. Judging by the crowd reaction, I wasn’t the only one.

After barely time to draw breath, the encores begin with a fired up version of Born in the USA, a song misunderstood for so long which has now become a crucial cornerstone of Springsteen’s repertoire. Even before the last notes of a rollicking Dancing in the Dark have faded out, the big screens either side of the stage start carrying tributes to Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, two members of the E Street Band not with us any more, to complement a stirring rendition of Clarence’s unofficial theme song Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, another ode to the past. These days saxophone duties are handled by Jake Clemons, Clarence’s nephew, who deserves a special mention. When first inducted into the E Street band in 2012, a year after his uncle’s passing, he had some pretty big shoes to fill. He dropped a few bum notes here and there and lacked the range, power, and stage presence of an on-form Clarence. There’s no shame in that, the man was a force of nature, but Jake has really blossomed in recent years. Now, his playing is almost indistinguishable from the Big Man’s, and that’s probably the highest compliment you can give him.

The mammoth almost three-hour set closes with a poignant solo acoustic version of I’ll See You in my Dreams, another track from Letter to You. A melancholy, yet fitting way to round out an unforgettable evening. Despite ostensibly being about losing someone close, the song provides hope in the line: “For death is not the end, and I’ll see you in my dreams,” reaffirming for the last time the core narrative that one often overlooked consequence of death is a new perspective, or even appreciation of life. It doesn’t always seem like it, but it could be said in that regard death is a gift to the living.

All dodgy photography by me. GO HERE for previous Bruce Blogs.

RetView #71 – Hellraiser (1987)

Title: Hellraiser

Year of Release: 1987

Director: Clive Barker

Length: 93 mins

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Claire Higgins, Sean Chapman, Ashley Laurence, Doug Bradley

Liverpool-born Clive Barker has always been a bit more cerebral than your average horror writer, which is probably why his work translates to the screen so much more successfully than some of his contemporaries. There’s just a bit more depth and substance, much of which lends itself very well to horror imagery. Though he has written many more works of note which have been turned into movies or TV series, including Rawhead Rex (1986), Nightbreed (1990), and Candyman (1992) this, Barker’s directorial debut, remains his tour de force. It was based on his novella, The Hellbound Heart, which was first published in the 1986 anthology Dark Visions 3. At the time, Barker was riding a wave of popularity on the back of his Books of Blood series, and had recently been dubbed “the future of horror” by none other than Stephen King himself. No pressure there, then. In a scathing retort to this accolade, critic Roger Ebert gave the film half a star when he reviewed it, saying, “This is a movie without wit, style, or reason. I have seen the future of implausible plotting, and his name is Clive Barker.”

A simple, yet fiendishly clever plot begins when hedonist Frank Cotton (Chapman) comes into possession of an antique puzzle box said to be a portal into an extra-dimensional realm of ‘unfathomable pleasure.’ He opens the box and unleashes the bloodthirsty cenobites led by Pinhead (Bradley) who literally rip him to pieces (“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering”). The Cenobites are revealed elsewhere as being members of a religious cult in hell called the Order of the Gash (as names go, that has to be in the top few per cent) who exist solely to explore the further regions of human experience and grant sadomasochistic pleasure to those who call upon them. Okay.

Years later, Frank’s brother Larry (Robinson, best known for his portrayal of the psycho killer in 70’s classic Dirty Harry) and his wife Julia (Higgins), who once had a lusty affair with Frank, move in to the house to try to repair their fractured relationship. Whilst moving in, Larry cuts his hand on a rusty nail. The blood drips down through the floorboards and brings Frank, or what’s left of him, back to life. He needs more blood to become more solid so persuades Julia, who still has the hots for him, to bring home a succession of men who she then viciously murders. Frank’s daughter Kirsty (Laurence), who slowly becomes the star of the show, rumbles them, and then has her own close encounters with both the rejuvinated and perpetual horndog frank and the Cenobites. The whole thing ends with Kirsty escaping and the puzzle box ending up with its original owner, so the cycle can begin again.

Several cuts were made post-production to enable the movie to be down-graded from an X (18) to an R (15) rating in order to reach a wider audience. The sex scenes between Frank and Julia were originally a lot more explicit and included sadomasochistic overtones to further enhance Frank’s decadence. Desire is front and centre in Hellraiser, as Barker later explained, “Sex is a great leveller. It made me want to tell a story about good and evil in which sexuality was the connective tissue. Most English and American horror movies were not sexual, or coquettishly so – a bunch of teenagers having sex and then getting killed. Hellraiser, the story of a man driven to seek the ultimate sensual experience, has a much more twisted sense of sexuality.” He added that, “The MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] told me I was allowed two consecutive buttock thrusts from Frank, but three is deemed obscene.” I suppose you could say three would be pushing it. Nevertheless, the movie was still banned in Ontario.

Despite the controversy, the reviews were generally positive, especially in the UK. Time Out London called Hellraiser, “Barker’s dazzling debut,” that “Creates such an atmosphere of dread that the astonishing set-pieces simply detonate in a chain reaction of cumulative intensity.” The Daily Telegraph agreed with these sentiments, stating that, “Barker has achieved a fine degree of menace,” while The Daily Mail went one step further and described it as, “A pinnacle of the genre.”

A reboot directed by David Bruckner appeared in 2022 meaning that to date there have now been a total of eleven Hellraiser movies, alongside various comics and spin-offs, making it one of the most enduring franchises in movie history. For the record, the other movies are: Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), Hellraiser: Decader (2005), Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005), Hellraiser: Revelations (2011), Hellraiser: Judgement (2018). Barker himself has had very little to do with any of these, though he has written and released two sequels in The Scarlet Gospels (2015) and Hellraiser: The Toll (2018) but neither have been adapted for the screen (yet).

In an interview with Game Radar, Doug Bradley, who played Pinhead, said the success of Freddy vs. Jason (2003) led Hellraiser distributor Dimension Films to flirt with the idea of a Hellraiser vs. Halloween film. “Clive said he would write it and John Carpenter said he would direct it,” Bradley said. But Moustapha Akkad, who owned the rights to Halloween, vetoed the idea. Thankfully.

Trivia Corner:

During filming, Doug Bradley had difficulty seeing through the black contact lenses he wore as Pinhead, and lived in constant fear of tripping over stuff. According to Barker the character of Pinhead who quickly became one of the most recognizable and terrifying horror icons ever, was inspired by a hardcore S&M club he visited in New York, where he, “Watched people get pierced for fun.”

The Power Hour

As a freelance writer of over twenty years, I’ve produced hundreds of articles and features for a variety of magazines all over the world. And as a staffer on some of the biggest lifestyle magazines in the UK, I’ve produced hundreds more. I never missed a deadline. Not once. That’s a great source of pride for me. Some writers I’ve worked with, especially the younger Millennial-types, missed deadlines on a regular basis. It just wasn’t a big deal to them. Maybe it’s a generational thing but it’s important to understand that on a magazine, the writers are not gods. Sure, we are often the public face of the magazine and get most of the accolades, but in reality, we are very small cogs in very big machines. Writers are given deadlines for a reason. People further up the chain, like the section editor or sub editor, as well as the designers and the picture desk, are relying on you to file your copy on time so they can do their jobs and maintain their own schedule, all to ensure that the magazine goes out on time.

Now, it isn’t always easy to hit your deadlines, especially if you find yourself waiting on other people. Building a feature is rarely a case of just sitting down and writing it. If only. No, nine times out of ten, as your deadline looms ever-closer, you find yourself waiting for some random PR person to send you some information or hook up an interview, or maybe you’ve requested some expert opinion or analysis and the designated expert has been too busy to do what they said they would. Once, I waited all day to carry out a 15-minute phoner with tennis legend John McEnroe, who has something of a fiery reputation to say the least. I had one shot at it, and a deadline, so failure was not an option. When I asked what time my slot was scheduled for, I was told by his manager to just ‘stay by the phone.’ So that’s what I did. I went into the office early and stayed late. I didn’t even leave my desk for lunch. In true prima dona fashion, John McEnroe didn’t call. Well, he did, but instead of calling my office line he called my mobile at about 9pm when I was on the train home. I had to disembark before I lost my connection in a tunnel, and transcribe the entire interview long-hand in a cafe on Waterloo Station. He was lovely, by the way. And I made my deadline.

Sometimes, you can’t even blame other people. Maybe you’ve had a last-minute change of heart and decided to change the structure or approach the article from a different direction, or perhaps the photographer you commissioned is late submitting the images. There are so many variables, you have to be flexible. Stuff move around a lot on magazines. Things happen, and things fall through. At the last moment you might have to cut a feature by 30% to make room for a late advertorial that just came through, or on the other hand you might be asked to double your word count to fill some space after an ad gets dropped.

Anyway, one way to ensure you always hit your deadlines when the pressure is on is to have a daily ‘power hour.’

A power hour is when you eradicate all distractions – disconnect the internet, turn off your phone – and focus entirely on knocking out some words. You don’t stop to edit, you don’t check your email, you don’t cross-check that fact you think you might have just made up, you don’t even get a glass of water. You can do all of that later. For the entirety of that hour you sit at your desk and completely immerse yourself in the task at hand. Everything else, even the important stuff, can wait. It will still be there in an hour.

Pro tip: put on your headphones or ear buds; this is an almost universal way of communicating to everyone around you that you don’t want to be disturbed. You don’t even have to turn on the music.

The power hour is a concept I have carried with me throughout my career, and it’s got me out a lot of tight spots though it helps enormously to do any required reading or research beforehand. You can’t write if you have nothing to write about. In my experience they are generally most effective in the morning, as soon as possible after waking up. That’s when I have more energy and when I am most focused. Next time you have a deadline, or even if you don’t, maybe you should try it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.