I watched “Springsteen on Broadway” on Netflix during the week. It’s a recording of a sold out stage show on Broadway where Bruce Springsteen comes on stage with guitar and piano and just talks to and sings for his audience. It’s a very powerful show and Bruce speaks from the heart about his background, his home town, family and faith.
His love for music is palpable and the sincerity of the story told, unquestionable. Through that story he speaks of his relationship with his father saying he was his greatest hero and greatest foe. A tension, for sure, but one that does not blind Springsteen to the role his father played and continues to play in his life. He said when he looked for a voice he found his father’s because “there was something sacred in it”. He said he had a dream after his father’s death of him performing on stage but leaving the stage and going to his father in the audience, kneeling beside him, brushing his forearm and, with his father, looking at himself on stage – the “man on fire” – and then telling his father: “Look dad, that man on stage, that’s how I see you.” He speaks near the end of the show about his father arriving to visit him, unannounced, a few days before the birth of Springsteen’s first child. He says it is as if his father is encouraging him to be a good father – maybe in a way, he hadn’t been. He said it was an apology of sorts without apology ever being mentioned.
Through it all he sings – sings well known hits in a way that maybe we’d not hear them before but spellbinding. He is honest that many of the things he sings about are not things he knows first hand. He speaks about being drafted for Vietnam but being lucky enough not to be sent. A sadness comes over him and he said he often wonders who went in his place. He then sings “Born in The USA” … something very real about it. He talked about being like most young people and reacting against his home town and rallying to get away from it, shake it off and leave it all behind. Now he says he lives “ten minutes” from that home town and would want to be nowhere else! Life teaches us lessons but it can take us a while to let them in.
I think the most remarkable moment of the show comes near the end when he speaks again about the local church. He grew up beside it, the convent, priests’ house and local school – St Rose of Lima. As a child he said the sense of church and family was everything to him. He said he was surrounded by God. Towards the end he comes back to this. Says that they say “Catholics are never let go” – and that what was given to us in childhood stays with us forever. He says he remembers saying prayers and singing hymns that meant nothing to him. Maybe he even resented them but standing near the church, remembering his father and all that is important to him, he said these words came to him – words that are ingrained. The camera x-rays his face – his Soul and he speaks – no, he prays:
“Our father
who art in Heaven
hallowed be thy name
thy Kingdom come
thy will be done
on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day ……
The words then become his – “Just give us this day ….. forgive us our sins … our trespasses
as we forgive those who might trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil – all of us, for ever and ever.. Amen”
Wonderful. The camera holds, the face is solid, the heart is touched and he blesses his audience: “May God bless you, your families and all those you love; and thanks for coming out tonight.”
I’m so glad I watched this. I don’t know much about Bruce or listen much to his music but he reached me. I had hoped to see this show sometime but it’s over now and was fully sold out so glad to have been able to see it in this way.