Why I’m saying goodbye to Bruce Springsteen

When news broke that Ticketmaster was charging fans up to $5,000 a seat to see Bruce Springsteen on his 2023 tour, I told friends not to worry. This was a mistake, and Bruce would fix it. He didn’t spend his life building an intimate relationship with his audience just to tear it down in a week over money he didn’t need.

It turned out, the mistake was mine. Bruce was fine with charging all the market could bear.

For 50 years, the House of E Street has been my church, and now I’m leaving.

I skipped seeing Bruce at the Wells Fargo Center in March, and passed on tickets for Citizens Bank Park in August — the dissolution of a deeply personal, completely one-sided relationship in which the Boss has been central to the most important moments of my life.

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At my wedding, my wife and I danced to “I Wanna Marry You.” When I became a father, I swept my new daughter into my arms and sang to her, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” an oath that always, I’d stand by her side. The sole instruction I left for my funeral was to play “Thunder Road.”

I loved more than the music. Bruce stood up for poor people, for workers, for those who, in his words, needed a place to stand, a decent job, or a helping hand. He spoke truth to power, at commercial cost.

I was proud of him.

I liked how he winked at the irony of his life, recognizing that as the symbolic embodiment of the working man, he had accumulated wealth beyond measure. This high school outcast from my maligned home state of New Jersey had shown them all, coming to loom so large in the American psyche that, in the words of Richard Ford, he became time, not the watch.

The first time I heard Bruce’s voice, I was in ninth grade, growing up in Burlington County. A friend owned the first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

The characters in those songs sounded familiar — Wild Billy, Jimmy the Saint, Sandy, and the rest — and even a 15-year-old could see that Bruce possessed singular poise and presence.

In my hometown, stories circulated about fans who bumped into him on a Jersey boardwalk, and Bruce, not being particularly busy or maybe just hungry, accepted their offer to come home for dinner.

In 1975, Born to Run exploded and suddenly Bruce was everywhere. In English class, I quietly put aside the novels of Salinger and Conrad and studied the lyrics of Springsteen.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Bruce in concert. A lot. Every time I could.

In college, I saw him at a minor-league hockey rink in Virginia. Years later, I packed in to see him at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, when even that gargantuan arena had become too small to hold him.

I saw Bruce on the night he broke a quirky, 24-year boycott against performing “Drive All Night” in concert, an exclusion that had come to fascinate and frustrate his fans. I saw his last show at the Spectrum, as the venue where he found fame faced the wrecking ball, an evening defined by Bruce’s poignant version of “Save the Last Dance for Me.” I saw his longest show on U.S. soil — four hours and four minutes at Citizens Bank Park.

I’ve sat close up, far back, and high behind the stage, nearer the rafters than the band.

What did it mean? Everything. It was communion, for us and for him.

“If you’re here, and we’re here,” he told us after the deaths of E Street Band members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, “then they’re here.”

Those bruising losses infused the shows with new urgency, with a blunt recognition that this thing between us could not last forever. We had reached the point, as Bruce puts it, of having more yesterdays than tomorrows.

Now friends tell me to savor what’s left while it’s there. That everybody does it, all the big stars embracing dynamic ticket pricing where demand sets costs, often at absurd heights.

The difference is, Bruce isn’t everybody. Or at least he didn’t used to be.

An apology and a promise not to do it again would have fixed it. Everyone makes mistakes. But when Bruce finally spoke, he made it worse.

“If there’s any complaints on the way out,” he joked to Rolling Stone, “you can have your money back.”

In recent weeks, ticket prices have floated back to Earth. Lots of seats are available for Citizens Bank Park. Not that it matters.

Once, covering Bruce’s book tour, I stood 15 feet from him. I thought it would be disappointing to be stranded in the press pen, watching others shake his hand and say hello. But I found that being close was enough.

I didn’t need to tell Bruce how I felt. To thank him for all he had done and to try to explain all it meant. He knew.

I don’t know what I’d say to him now. Maybe what he’s told us in a thousand songs: No one can hurt you as much as someone you love.

Always, someday, I planned to write about Bruce, to try to explain his importance to me. To measure the impact of a relationship that, save for my parents, has been the longest of my life.

It’s odd that here, the first and last time I write about Bruce Springsteen, is to say goodbye.