‘LE PATRON’ ON FIRE IN FRANCE

Forget Gene Kelly. The new American in Paris is Bruce Springsteen.

It’s hard to go more than a few hours without hearing--or at least seeing an album cover of--Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” After years of rock stardom in America, Springsteen has finally become the rage in Europe too.

Like most of the passengers on Metro line 7, the young French couple and the three American teen-agers were on their way last weekend to see the second of Springsteen’s two sold-out concerts at an outdoor, 50,000-capacity park near here.

The shows had been scheduled at a local soccer stadium, but officials there added so many security restrictions after the recent Belgium riot that promoters moved the date to the spacious Parc de La Courneuve on the northern edge of town.

The French couple and the vacationing Chicago girls met at the mammoth Gare Saint-Lazare train station and discovered that they were all headed to the concert. So they banded together to try to figure out the vague directions listed in one of the local papers.

As the Metro headed through the Parisian tunnels, the Springsteen fans tried to communicate the best they could. But the teens spoke little French and the husband and wife were far from fluent in English.

They settled on a game that eliminated the language barrier. They tried to see how many Springsteen song titles they could come up with. But the fans lost interest after passing 30, and silence set in. Finally, one of the Chicago girls had a question: How do you say Boss in French.

“ Le Chef ,” the husband responded quickly.

“ Non ,” his wife corrected. “ Le Chef is too formal . . . too militaristic. Le Patron is warmer . . . more friendly . . . more like Bruce Springsteen.”

“ Bonjour ,” Springsteen greeted the crowd at the start of both shows here, and the audience roared with delight. Because this was his first European tour since last year’s “Born in the U.S.A.” album made him a superstar throughout the Continent, ticket demand was extraordinary, especially in England.

More than 1 million orders were received for the 300,000 available tickets for five stadium concerts in London, Leeds and Newcastle. The record shops along London’s busy Oxford Street were turned into virtual Springsteen shrines. The displays in the largest shop, HMV, featured 22 American flags hanging from the ceiling and red, white and blue paper on the walls.

All the key record racks in the front of the store were filled with Springsteen albums, and there were at least a dozen paperback/souvenir books in stock.

The demand for tickets was so great in London that thousands of English fans traveled to Paris, where admission was apparently easier to obtain. Along with vacationing fans from the United States, they accounted for nearly a third of the audience at both shows here.

The surprise in all this is why rock fans in England and throughout a Europe that is supposed to be uneasy about American influence could embrace a pop personality whose symbolism is so thoroughly American.

Melissa Roper, a 20-year-old American student here, doesn’t know why Springsteen-mania is sweeping England, but she isn’t surprised about the lack of backlash in France over the Americanism of his music.

“Young people here love America and identify with it,” said Roper, who also works at a pizza parlor whose decor is based around Chicago themes and plays tapes of Cubs and White Sox games in the bar.

“You ask young people where they want to go and it’s always New York or Los Angeles,” she continued. “They look to America for what’s happening. The resentment is more with the older people who don’t like all this American influence. They want to keep French tradition.”

But what about Springsteen’s popularity in the rest of Europe?

Bettina Glock, 28, works for CBS Records in West Germany, where “Born in the U.S.A.” is the No. 1 album.

“People respond to Bruce on two levels,” she said, sitting in a VIP area at the park before the first Springsteen concert. “Some are into him mainly because of the music. It is great rock ‘n’ roll and they don’t care all that much about the message of the songs.

“Others, however, do respond to what he is saying because his message is very international. We have a lot of unemployment too. His songs could be about Liverpool or Munich. We may not have the Jersey Turnpike, but we have the Autobahn.”

Based on the success of this European stadium tour, you can expect Springsteen to do his first series of outdoor shows in the United States late this summer or fall. Inquiries have already been made about the availability of several facilities around the country, including the Rose Bowl, the Coliseum and Anaheim Stadium in Southern California.

More than 900,000 people will have seen Springsteen during the 18-city concert tour, which ends today. The “success” of these shows hasn’t just been tied to attendance.

They are an almost essential step in view of his escalating popularity. They also provide him with a new challenge.

The secret to stepping up to these larger, more impersonal facilities was in maintaining the complete emotional spectrum that has long characterized his performances.

From his early 2,000-seat hall days, Springsteen has felt it essential to present all sides of his music in concert--both the celebrative numbers and the more poignant ones--if he is to fully convey his artistic vision about the desires and disappointments of life.

In the shows here, Springsteen continues to showcase both areas in a more than three-hour set that followed roughly the same old arena format. Rather than add several opening acts to establish an all-day festival setting, Springsteen continues to use no support bands, thus maintaining a strongly personal tone.

He also made sure that technical matters were taken care of. He employed a massive sound system and a giant video screen. The audience, most of which was seeing him for the first time, seemed enthralled. They were attentive during the slow numbers and dancing vigorously on the upbeat ones. One difference between seeing Springsteen in Europe and in the United States is that the audiences here aren’t as familiar with his pre-”Born in the U.S.A.” material.

The response was so quiet during the first show here to 1975’s “Thunder Road” that Springsteen good-naturedly introduced the song the second night by saying, “Here’s a song for the old fans.”

As an American at the concert, it was a good feeling to have someone as respected as Springsteen be recognized as a symbol of your country.

But these concerts aren’t about America or France. They’re about artistry and the ability of the performer to touch so universally on deeply human issues.

Because of the language problem, he cut down on the number of raps between songs, generally limiting his talk to an occasional “Merci” or other familiar French phrases. But he did talk at length in the introduction to “My Hometown” about the responsibilities of citizenship everywhere, and during the introduction of “I’m on Fire” about the impatience of youthful ambition.

But it took no introduction to convey the energy and idealism of “Born to Run,” his 1975 rock anthem that stirred the audience here as deeply as it would the hometown fans back in New Jersey.

At a CBS Records reception at the band’s hotel after the first show, Springsteen seemed delighted with the response of the European audiences.

Asked if he was surprised there hadn’t been some sort of backlash against the Americanism of his music, he said, “Naw, rock ‘n’ roll has always been able to cut through all that. That’s what’s great about it. . . . You don’t have to intellectualize it. Everybody feels the same emotions.

“It’s great out there when everyone sings ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ They put so much feeling into it that it’s real for them--even if it’s not technically true. They know what the song is about and they can relate to it. That’s the