Daniel Rubin: A 'moral compass' for his generation

I'm sitting with the savages in Section 205. The woman behind me keeps knocking me in the head as she tries to plant her foot on my shoulder and clamber onto the back of my seat for a better view.

There goes her beer, down my wife's suede coat.

"Yoooo-woooo!" the two Springsteen fans to my left shriek, and it would drown out the gorgeous trumpet, bass, and piano rendition of "Meeting Across the River."

Except that back here, 14 rows off the Spectrum floor, I'm barely hearing it anyway.

Surprisingly, only the highs are sharp. I've paid $100 a ticket and, sonically speaking, I'm waist deep in the Big Muddy.

Why do I keep doing this? Didn't I learn my lesson in 2003 at the Linc, when we sat so high up in the brand-new stadium that we couldn't tell Springsteen's species, let alone identify his songs?

Or how about in 1992, during the Lucky Town/Human Touch tour when he'd shed the E Street Band for those younger, hipper L.A. musicians, and it was like running into your dad at a club and seeing him dance with a woman who was not your mom?

But I go. I go because I believe, because years ago Bruce Springsteen put on some of the most wondrous shows of my youth, and I keep trying to rekindle that flame. I go because I keep hoping to see what I saw that made me feel so alive.

For his last shows at the Spectrum he'd be playing whole albums. That was the draw this time. Who has the occasion to hear whole albums these playlist days, let alone hear them performed?

Tuesday's showcasing of Born in the U.S.A. would mark his 36th concert in the decrepit old warhorse. I needed to bear witness, just as The Inquirer chronicled his debut in the hall, in 1973, when he opened for Chicago.

(The paper sent its pipe-smoking classical writer, Samuel L. Singer, who complained about the noise and unintelligible lyrics, though he liked the marimba break in "Spirit in the Night.")

I was late to the Boss' party. Living in the Midwest, I picked up on Springsteen in 1975 after the release of his second record, The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, and didn't see one of his legendary marathon shows until The River tour in 1980, even though I owned a bunch on bootlegs.

Haven't missed a tour since. Each time he comes to town I ask if we should try to get tickets and my wife says of course, and we go looking for regeneration.

I asked Dr. Dennis Charney, a Springsteen fan who is dean of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, why we keep turning out.

Charney, a psychiatrist who has lectured on Springsteen and resilience, wrote me that the singer's music is "optimistic yet real, a moral compass for individuals, community and country. For those of us Bruce's age it has been a sound track of our lives and keeps on giving."

Seeing Springsteen in concert reminds Charney of something Joe DiMaggio once said. "Asked why he plays hard every night, Joe said 'because someone might be seeing me for the first time.' "

Seeing Springsteen these last couple of nights, first as a groundling and then from the Spectrum's press box, I've come away both renewed and a little spoiled.

The press box is a dirty, cramped, amenity-free zone that delivers the only thing that counts: access. Such great real estate is a thing of the past in modern arenas. The building owners can make too much money from selling that space as luxury suites, so the media are penned farther from the action.

I saw the same Born to Run show Monday as I did last Tuesday, when I was sitting low in the back of the hall, and I must say, it was a completely different experience.

Springsteen may be a working-class hero, but one of his shows lays bare the class divisions in our culture. To really see and hear him, you've got to get close, which means you have to know someone, pay a small fortune, or get real lucky in a lottery for standing-room-only access by the stage.

From my rarefied perch it was a much more emotional experience on Monday. I got to feel the release of songs from The Rising, which is as close to a shared 9/11 experience as I get, seeing as how I was living in Berlin at the time and returned to a different country.

The summer of 2002 I remember taking the train into Center City, while playing that CD for the first time, looking out my window at the industrial ruins as he sang of catastrophic loss.

Monday night I got close enough to see the girls in the front rows reach up to touch Springsteen's pant leg as he wailed away on guitar. And I got to study his expression of bemusement, then marvel, after he picked an Elvis impersonator from the crowd to sing "All Shook Up."

The fake Elvis had the gall to stretch out his cameo, leading the band into "Blue Suede Shoes" and then, to top it all, yelled "take it, Bruce," when he felt it time for Springsteen to solo.

Which Springsteen did, uproariously, before showing the King to his seat and observing, "We are truly in Philadelphia."

This is why I keep going.

Because Springsteen always seems to be coaxing his band to give the people one more song.

Because his music makes my wife pull me close and hang on tight.

Because when he's up on stage, grinning with a guitar slung around his back, he looks like he's more alive than anyone else in the room, and that, too, has got to be contagious.