Forty years ago tonight, Bruce Springsteen said goodbye to 1980 with an appropriate cover for its final minutes.
“In the Midnight Hour” might have been a well-timed audible, but it would be hard to believe that Bruce didn’t at least have it in the back of his mind that evening. After all, the E Street Band had already played it twice in recent months, starting with their first-ever performance in Milwaukee on October 14th.
This one was indeed an audible–we can clearly hear the delay of game as the band scrambles to figure out the song.
(In an interview with Dave Marsh a couple of weeks later, Steve recalled that Bruce “turned around and called ‘Midnight Hour’ and we all just about fainted. Funky didn’t even believe we were doing it until about the second chorus.”)
The E Street Band may not have played it before that night, but Bruce certainly had. In fact, he played it with Steel Mill exactly eleven years to the day prior to that famous Nassau Coliseum New Year’s Eve show.
“In the Midnight Hour” was still a fairly new song at that point, released by the great Wilson Pickett only four years earlier in the summer of 1965.
“In the Midnight Hour” was Pickett’s greatest hit to date, topping the Billboard R&B chart and crossing over to the Hot 100 to peak at #21. It’s considered one of the greatest Stax recordings and ranks #134 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Although Bruce wouldn’t play “In the Midnight Hour” at a proper E Street Band concert for more than three decades following that New Years Eve 1980 show, he played it frequently with just about everyone else, usually at surprise club appearances.
(Bruce did play “In the Midnight Hour” live once during the intervening years, but it was with his 1992-93 touring band, along with guest-star Peter Wolf.)
Over the years, Bruce has played “In the Midnight Hour” over two dozen times with about as many artists and bands, but I suspect that for Bruce, one of those occasions ranks above the others: the time he got to perform it with the original artist himself.
That occasion was supposed to happen eight years earlier than it did, however. Wilson Pickett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1991, and Bruce was on-hand along with a host of other rock icons to pay tribute.
The evening would undoubtedly have culminated in an all-star jam with Pickett that included “In the Midnight Hour,” but there was only one problem: Pickett’s flight was delayed due to fog, and he missed the entire event. (It was the start of a bad decade for the notoriously flawed Pickett.)
Instead, John Fogerty, Chaka Khan, and Phoebe Snow traded lead vocals with Bruce (backed by Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley, and more) on “In the Midnight Hour.”
It was a great performance, but it couldn’t match the experience of Bruce and Wilson sharing a stage together. Bruce would have to wait another eight years, but that moment finally came at his own Hall of Fame inauguration in 1999.
It was worth the wait.
With no one else to share the spotlight but Wilson and Bruce (although Billy Joel joined Roy Bittan at the keyboards), the two legendary bandleaders tore up the stage with their trademark growls and provided one of the more memorable highlights of an evening that introduced to the public the reunited E Street Band).
The next time Bruce performed “In the Midnight Hour,” it would be in memory of Pickett, who passed away in January 2006.
We’re fortunate to have had that one-time-only pairing on one of rock’s iconic songs.
Bonus:
In May 1995, Bruce attended John Fogerty’s 50th birthday party at John’s house, where Bruce and John jammed for a set that included at least nine songs–a previously unknown gig (featuring a previously unknown Springsteen original) until actor John Stamos posted his home video from the evening earlier this year.
Here’s a brief snippet of John and Bruce performing “In the Midnight Hour” together in John’s living room.
Happy new year, everyone–we made it!
In the Midnight Hour
First performed: December 31, 1969 (Big Sur, CA)
Last performed: January 17, 2020 (Wellington, FL)
He also sang In the Midnight Hour at midnight at the rain delayed infamous Birthday show at MetLife Stadium on 9/22-23/2012
Bruce saves a messy “In the Midnight Hour” arrangement at the 1991 “Rock Hall” with his impeccable sense of timing (see 3:47) when things go sour… and rejuvenated (“Let’s give it a shot!”) with Wilson, Bruce, E Street and others at the March, ’99 Hall of Fame. All masters at work.