MatR: U2 and Bruce Springsteen: Stand By Me

Ben E. King was listening to Sam Cooke’s “Stand By Me Father,” recorded by The Soul Stirrers in 1959, when inspiration struck.

Inspired by Cooke’s spiritual, King came up with a first verse for a secular song and the main part of the chorus, and he sang it one day for famed songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Together, they finished the song that we know today as “Stand By Me.”

“Stand By Me” was an instant hit when King released it in 1961, peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. But hit records tend to be of the moment, and few of them go on to become enduring classics. It seemed like “Stand By Me” wasn’t destined to be among them.

And then along came a 1986 movie by Rob Reiner.

Reiner’s film was based on a Stephen King coming-of-age novella called The Body, but Reiner thought he needed a different tile–The Body sounded too much like a horror movie. No one was able to come up with a more suitable title, however, so in the end Reiner decided to go with the name of the song he selected to play over the movie’s end credits, a song that captured the movie’s themes of loyalty and friendship.

Once the movie became a hit, the song re-entered the charts. “Stand By Me” was almost as popular in its re-release as it was originally, peaking at #9 during the 1986 holiday season.

And this time, it didn’t go away.

Over the years, “Stand By Me” has been covered more than 500 times(!), by just about every artist you can name. BMI (which tracks performances and collects royalties for artists) ranked it as the fourth most-performed song of the 20th century, with over seven million individual live performances.

One of those seven million performances was shortly after the song re-crested on the Hot 100, and the cover artists were two of the biggest names in the business, both then and now.

In 1987, the Irish rock band U2 was exploding in popularity. Their latest album, The Joshua Tree, topped the charts in more than 20 countries and became one of the best-selling albums of all time. Their accompanying tour was also a smash, and in the midst of it the band graduated from arenas to stadiums.

On September 25, 1987, The Joshua Tree Tour made a stop at Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium, where their opening act was Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. In the crowd to catch his old friend and former bandmate was Bruce Springsteen, still riding high on the heels of his mammoth Born in the U.S.A. Tour and Live 1975-85 box set, and with a brand-new hit single (“Brilliant Disguise“) on the radio.

As for the headliners, well, Bono was a bit worse for the wear at the time–he’d fallen from the stage five days earlier and dislocated his arm. He performed that night with his arm in a sling, and while it didn’t dampen his on-stage charisma one bit, it meant he was guitar-challenged for a while.

Good Samaritan that he is, Bruce agreed to play Bono’s guitar during the encore since its owner couldn’t. He took the stage to thunderous applause (this was Philadelphia, after all) and proceeded to do a loose, fun cover of “Stand By Me” with a little bit of improvised back-and-forth with Bono at the end (including a few lines from “Drive All Night,” which Bono rolled with unhesitatingly).

It was the first time Bruce and Bono had ever shared a stage together, and amazingly the moment was caught on film by director Phil Joanou, who was filming the show for U2’s Rattle and Hum rockumentary. Even more amazingly, the footage was cut from the final film–but it managed to leak out into the hands of collectors, anyway.

If Bruce seemed particularly comfortable with the song that night, that’s probably because he’d been playing it that summer with a variety of bands in Jersey shore clubs–including an E Street Band performance at The Stone Pony in August.

In all, Bruce would play “Stand By Me” more than a dozen times in the few years following the song’s re-emergence, almost always at surprise club appearances or special events. After a final club performance in 1991, “Stand By Me” disappeared from Bruce’s setlists for a decade, before returning during the Alliance of Neighbors pair of 9/11 benefit concerts in October 2001.

But no Springsteen performance of “Stand By Me” has ever matched the energy, excitement, and surprise fun factor of that first team-up with U2–except, perhaps, their encore performance in 2015.

This time the venue was Madison Square Garden. Once again Bruce was a surprise encore guest star, and once again, he borrowed one of Bono’s guitars. This time, though, Bono wasn’t injured (although Bruce had filled in for a banged-up Bono several months earlier in a Times Square performance for World AIDS Day).

And the crowd… the crowd was just as electric. Let’s watch that moment–Bruce’s last performance of “Stand By Me” to date, with echoes of one of his very first.

Stand By Me
First performed: January 17, 1985 (Greensboro, NC)
Last performed: July 31, 2015 (New York City, NY)