Springsteen Forgets Some ‘Run’ Lines, Explains Why

Bruce Springsteen sat backstage at the Centrum arena with his wife, actress Julianne Phillips, chuckling about how he could ever have fouled up the words to that song.

“Born to Run”--a statement of identity and desire--has played a key role in every Springsteen concert since he wrote it in 1975.

But when he came out for the encore Sunday night at the second show of his new U.S. tour (which is expected to hit Los Angeles next month), Springsteen forgot the words of the opening line, stopping after “The day we . . . .” After joking with the audience, he started again and got it right.

The reason for the muff, apparently, was that he was concentrating so much on the spoken introduction, telling the audience how the song has assumed a new meaning to him over the years.

“I wrote this song when I was 24 and it was about a guy and a girl who wanted to run and keep on running,” he said standing alone on stage, ready to play a new solo acoustic arrangement that changed the song from a youthful declaration of independence to a poignant remembrance of things past.

“As I got older,” he continued, “I realized how much that song was me and how much I didn’t want it to end up being me. . . . I wanted to make a home for myself somewhere, try and grow up a little bit. . . . A home is a hard thing to find, and a hard thing to hold onto. . . . Good luck in your search.”

In its revised form, “Born to Run” underscores one of the key messages of what may be Springsteen’s most personal concert approach. Instead of just talking about growin’ up, he’s also speaking of settling down--but he does the latter with an anxious realism and convincing warmth that don’t violate the celebration and tension that have been his trademarks in concert.

Rather than do mostly hits, Springsteen supplements songs from his recent “Tunnel of Love” album and some of his hits with some new songs and lesser known material.

“I felt I had to make a major change,” Springsteen said during an informal interview in his dressing room. “If I wasn’t going to have something different to say, it wouldn’t have made sense to go out on this tour at all. You move on . . . you change . . . you’re not the same person you were. You can’t come out and play oldies because then you’re a damned oldies act. . . . It’s a waste of time. . . . A waste of my time and a waste of their time.”

The singer-songwriter said he had considered a series of solo concerts, even going so far as to have his manager prepare to book various 3,000-seat halls around the country.

But he eventually rejected the idea, feeling the tone of the show would be too dark. He felt more comfortable with a more physical and well-rounded approach.

Still, he felt the need to shake things up.

“Basically, the way we’ve toured every time is that the shows grew and grew and grew,” he said. “On every tour, we added new songs to the old songs . . . and that felt completely natural.

“But then on the last tour (“Born in the U.S.A.”) it did not feel natural. It felt a little embarrassing. . . . It’s not that I’ll never play the songs again, but . . . when I went to put this show together, I said, ‘Well, what were the songs that were the kind of cornerstones of what I had done?’ Those are the ones I automatically put to the side.”

Among the cornerstones left out: “Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “The Promised Land.”

Springsteen acknowledged that last year’s “Tunnel of Love” album--a more delicate, sparsely arranged and personal work--was a deliberate step from the larger-than-life symbolism of his massively successful previous album, “Born in the U.S.A.”

“I think the (“Tunnel of Love”) album just sort of happened on one hand, and at the same time I was interested in personalizing my music. . . . It’s just a natural thing you have to do. You put something out there, it gets pulled in and taken up and becomes part of the culture and part of people’s lives. And then you have to re-invent . . . yourself. I felt that made sense after ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ ”

Springsteen says he never got caught up in trying to match the sales of “Born in the U.S.A.”

“The main thing you’ve got to stop worrying about is how much the record’s going to sell. My main concern was this: I want to make the best record I can, and I want to help that record find its audience, whatever that is.

“Maybe ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ found an audience that was what, 16 million or something, and ‘Nebraska’ found it at 800,000. The important thing to me, which was one of the reasons behind thinking of doing this tour, was that I really felt that the ‘Tunnel of Love’ record was one of my very best records, and I said, ‘Look, I just want to make sure this record finds its audience.’ ”

Springsteen seemed extremely comfortable sitting on a sofa with his wife in the dressing room area--a picture that seemed to contradict the speculation that “Tunnel of Love’s” songs of troubled romance reflected signs of trouble in his own marriage.

About the album, he said: “I didn’t start out with something that was autobiographical. Some songs are stories, some are more a part of my life. The main thing I tried to do is find real people in the songs. You have to make them live and make them be, and then you have a song.”

Springsteen said songwriting is easier these days. In the past, he said, he’s spent six months or longer on certain songs, often sitting on a bed with a note pad for six hours at a time trying to figure out the next line. Looking at his wife, he added: “Part of it is, you realize I really didn’t need all that time. . . . I could have done it in a shorter time if I had something else to do.”