Growin' Up

7/7/78 The Roxy, LA,CA

There I was one night as a normal guy and then there I was the next night goddamnit I
was still just a normal guy.

    Well I stood stone like at midnight...

I think, I ain't sure, but I think that my mother and father and my sister they here again
tonight. Are you guys out there? You over there? For six years they been following me
'round California trying to get me to come back home. Hey ma! Give it up, ma!
Gimme a break! They're still... [fan yells "Where are they?"] I don't know, they're
over there somewhere. But they're still trying to get me to go back to college. Every
time I come in the house, you know, "It's not too late, you could still go back to
college" they told me. I said all right, all right.

But it's funny cause when I was growin' up there were two things that were impopular
in my house. One was me and the other one was my guitar. And my father used to sit
in the kitchen and we had this grate like the heat's supposed to come through except it
wasn't hooked up to any, like, heating ducts... it was just open like straight down to the
kitchen and there was a gas stove right underneath it. And when I used to start playing
he used to turn on the gas jets to try to smoke me out of my room. I'd end up out on...
out on the roof or something. And he used to always refer to this guitar, never the
Fender guitar, the Gibson guitar, it was always the goddamned guitar. Whenever he
stuck his head on my door that's all I hear "Turn down the goddamned guitar." He was
trying to get me to be a lawyer and it was funny cause when I was in a motorcycle
accident when I was seventeen and like, this cat, just, you know, ran head on into me
and then got out and yelled at me for ruining his Cadillac, and we had like a suit, a
legal suit, and my father took me down to this lawyer in town and he said "Oh man I
gotta defend this?". I looked about just about exactly the same way that I look right
now.

And I remember we were going to the court the day of the suit like I got, I'm like in
the right, I just got hit and my legs messed up and I remember my lawyer telling me:
"If I was the judge I'd find you guilty", you know? I don't know for what, just for
being there I guess. But anyway my father always said "You know, you should be a
lawyer, you know, you get a little something for yourself" and my mother and my
sister said "No no no he should be, he should be an author, he should write books."
You know, it's a good life if you can get a little something for yourself. But like they
didn't understand was that I wanted everything. [fan: "you got it"]. And... so one of you
guys want a lawyer and the other one want an author, well tonight you'se are both just
gonna have to settle for rock'n'roll.

     I took a month long vacations on the stratosphere...

It was bye bye New Jersey, we were airborne!

8/9/78 Angora Club, Cleveland, OH

It was... I remember I was 12 years old, I was going to this Catholic school, and I got
sent home for pissing in my desk [audience cheers]. Obviously, a popular pastime,
right? [giggle]. And the sisters told my mother that I needed psychiatric attention. So
my mother... the only people that were more scared of the nuns than the kids were the
parents. I remember my old man and my old lady, they were terrified of them sisters,
so downtown they take me to this doc. And I was sitting down there on the couch and
he says: "Son, how did you get this way?" I thought about it and said "Doc, I'm glad
you asked, because, up to now, I've kept it a secret, but the fact was... I WAS A
TEENAGE WEREWOLF" [cheers]. I said "Doc, I was out in the street, it was
midnight, I looked up, there was a full moon, I felt this hair growing all over my face,
I felt my fingers get longer and my nails pop out, and the guitar pop out on the left
side. My pants got tighter and my hair got longer and a man with a cigar came up and
stung me on the ass. And [giggle], all of sudden, I looked up, and there was this light,
and for just one second...

     I stood stone like at midnight...

And I remember, years later, I grew up, and I came home from high school one day,
my old man was sitting there in the kitchen table, with my old lady, and they looked
pretty serious, they said: "Son, sit down, please". I knew I was in trouble cause they
called me 'son', for the other stuff they used to call me I can't say over the radio. So,
anyway, I sit down, and my mother she does the talking, she's the Italian, right? She
says "We decided, me and your father, you got to stop fooling around with yourself".
How'd they know what I was doing in my room at night? [cheers] "You gotta get
serious. It's time you put the guitar down, that thing's OK for a hobby, but you're
never gonna get anyplace with that". And my father said: "You should be a lawyer,
because lawyers, they own the world." My mother said "You should be an author, you
should write books". But we decided, this is too big a decision, what you gotta do is go
over to the rectory, you gotta talk to Father Ray about your vocation. We set up an
appointment, you gotta go over there in an hour." That's the thing they used to do those
days. I go over to the rectory, whoop, before I went over there, my father says: "When
you go talk to the priest, you tell him you want to be a lawyer, you tell him you want
to be an author, but don't you tell him NOTHING about the goddamned guitar." I said
OK, OK.

I go over to the priest's house, I ring on the doorbell, "Father Ray, this is Mr.
Springsteen's son, I came to talk to you about my vocation". So he comes out, and we
start walking around the church, and all the priests, those days, they all had like the
illusions of the "Bells of St. Mary's", from seeing that movie too many times. They all
do Patrick O'Brien, is that the name, Pat O'Brien imitations. We talked for a while and
he says: "Listen, I decided that this decision is too big for me to make; what you gotta
do is go direct to God, you got to talk to God about this. And you tell Him you want to
be a lawyer, you tell Him you want to be an author, but don't you tell Him nothing
about, [woman in the audience screams] what, an interior decorator? that's you?, but
don't you tell Him NOTHING about that goddamned guitar..." I said OK, OK.

So I figure I gotta go see God, and all I have to go see Him in was my mother's
rambler, which is all beat up, all smashed up, paint scraped all off the side... So I drive
over to Clarence's house, I say: "Clarence, I got the word, I gotta go see God tonight"
and he says: "You can't go in that car" "So what do you mean I can't go with this car,
it's the only car I got". He says " That thing is ugly as hell, it's like do you think He's
gonna see you in that car? There's gonna be guys up there with Montecarlos, Lincolns,
Continentals, you think He's gonna notice you?" I said OK, OK, I went down to Earl
Scheib [cheers] At the time it was 39.95$, I went by the other day, I seen that Earl since
upped it 10 bucks! But anyway, he does the car, midnight blue, I leave the windows
down and he does the interior for free. If I had my brother on the back seat he'd done
him free of charge too.

Anyway, me and Clarence we drive out to see God, Clarence says he knows where He
is. So we get out there, and I don't see nothing but this dark hill next to the cemetery. I
say "Clarence, uh, are you sure He's up there? Like, there ain't, there ain't other... is
this the right place?" And while I'm about, do I ask him about? The tape player
somebody stole from his room. So I had these two big questions to ask: about
Clarence's tape player and what am I gonna do with my life. So up the hill I go, and it's
dark, and it's scary, all these noises coming out of the woods. And when I got to the top
I realized the place was packed with people all over the place. I'm walking around, and
I bumped into Kid Leo! [cheers] I said "Kid, what are you doing?" He said "Praying
for more watts! I gotta blast this baby all the way to New Jersey" Crazy man up there...
So I find myself a quiet place and I kneel down. I say "God, my father wants me to be a
lawyer, my mother wants me to be an author, but I got this guitar, you see?" And all of
a sudden, I heard this thunder [drum rolls], seen this lightning coming out of the sky, it
was real quiet for a while, and then I heard just three words: "LET IT ROCK!"

Once upon a time in a land east from here...

     I stood stone like at midnight...

Well now there I was, I was but a young lad.  I was still in high school, but I was in
trouble. I was anti-social, so they sent me down to see the guidance counselor. He said
"Mr. Springsteen, what's the problem?" I said "Sir, my problem is, I don't know what I
want to do with myself, I don't know what I want to be, I got no faith, I got no hope,
I'm lost in the wilderness. And he says "Oh oh, that's too big a problem for me, you
better go home and talk to your folks about it."

So I went home, I went in the kitchen, and my father was sittin' in the kitchen table. I
said "Dad, I got a problem, I got something I really gotta talk to you about. Here, you
see, I don't know what am I gonna do with myself, I don't know what am I gonna be,
ain't got no guidance, ain't got no faith, ain't got no hope, I'm lost". He said "Gimme
another beer out of the icebox".

I was almost finished. I was thinking about giving up, but then, I saw a new friend of
mine, the Big Man.  We sat out on his front porch, and we decided that we were both
lost, we both didn't have no hope, we needed some faith, we needed some confidence,
we needed a close-personal-relationship-with-members-of-the-opposite-sex!

So Clarence, my new buddy said he knew two girls who lived just out on the highway,
and he could get me a date with one of them. Thanks pal. So we got in his Oldsmobile
and we drove south, south down the turnpike, deep into southern Jersey, deep into the pines. It
started raining, a storm blew up, a hurricane came by, tornadoes started happening. We
got hit by a heatwave. But we kept driving on. And finally, the fanbelt busted, steam
started boiling out of the radiator. We got outside on this dark ??? wood. But Clarence
said he knew where there was a gas station, just on the other side of those woods.

Now the wood was dark, and it was spooky, with noises coming out everywhere,
sounded like werewolves [crowd howls], sounded like lions [roars], sounded like
homicidal cows [moos], and the wind was whistling through the trees [whistles]. We
passed this big shade tree, we could tell it was a shade tree beacuse, it had its shades on!

Big Man, there ain't no, like, dangerous killer wild animals or something? I never
heard of no killer animals here in New Jersey. What about Bigfoot? There ain't no
Bigfoot. What about the Jersey Devil?

I think I heard something behind us... keep walking, keep walking. Ooh ooh, keep
walking, ooh ooh OOOOOOH!!!!

And there was this big man eatin' Grizzly bear! But! But he was acting kind of
friendly! He said he wasn't really mean, he was just lonely out here in these woods. He
said he ran away from the circus and he was just looking for a couple of buddies. I
could tell by the way he wore his hat that he was "smarter than the average bear".

We told him our problems, and he told us to follow into the woods. And there, in this
clearing, the clouds came away from the moon, and we saw the answers to our quests
[ed note: Clarence's sax and Bruce's guitar]. And we stood there in the moonlight, and
then, when we touched...

     I took a month long vacations on the stratosphere...

It was bye bye New Jersey, we was airborne.
And the rest is hysterical, I mean, is history!