New for 2024: Review for 1976 and 1981; article for 1993; video for 2009 and 2013
1968: The Castiles play a gig at The Hullabaloo in Freehold.
1969: Child plays an outdoor show at Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
1973: Bruce and his unnamed band open for Richie Havens at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Columbus, Ohio.
1974: Bruce and the band play a show at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
1976: The Chicken Scratch Tour moves on to Auburn University in Alabama, where a few songs were captured on Super-8 color film. Friend of the blog Bud McLaughlin shares why Bruce went into the stands on “Spirit in the Night.”
1981: Bruce kicks off a sixteen-show run in the U.K. with a show at City Hall in Newcastle.
1982: Bruce records “I’m on Fire,” “This Hard Land,” “Baby I’m So Cold” and “Common Ground (Stay Hungry)” at The Power Station in New York City. “This Hard Land” will remain unreleased until 1998; the latter two songs will remain unreleased to this day.
1984: Nils Lofgren officially joins The E Street Band and rehearses with his new bandmates at the former home of Big Man’s West in Red Bank.
1985: On the night before his first wedding, Bruce hangs out with friends and soon-to-be-family at a bar in Lake Oswego, where he sings along with his own records on the jukebox.
1988: Bruce and Nils drop by the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans and catch the New Orleans Blues Department’s first set. The boys join the NOBD for a few songs in the second set.
1993: Bruce concludes his tour of Spain with a show in Barcelona.
Meanwhile back at home, the Asbury Park Press reports that the E Street Band is auditioning new frontmen to replace Bruce for the band’s upcoming album and tour.
2005: One of the standout shows of the first leg of the Devils & Dust Tour. At the Rosemont Theater outside of Chicago, Bruce debuts “Dream Baby Dream” (with slightly different lyrics and phrasing than the version it would soon morph into) and plays the banjo for the first time (on “I’m on Fire”). During “Land of Hope and Dreams,” Bruce breaks a guitar string and continues a capella without missing a beat until Kevin Buell restrings the guitar in the nick of time–a truly remarkable performance.
2009: By request, Bruce plays the tour premiere of “Good Lovin’” when the Working on a Dream Tour stops at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Earlier that day, Governor Pawlenty signs “Springsteen’s Law,” passed by the state legislature to protect consumers from predatory behavior from online ticket sellers.
2013: For their third and final night in Sweden, Bruce and the band play a third complete album–this time Born in the U.S.A.
2018: Springsteen on Broadway continues its theatrical run at the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City.
