As Reunion Tour Ends, a Wish for More Springsteen Glory Days

Bruce Springsteen and I have had a long, long relationship. It’s completely one-sided because I’ve never met the guy. But his music has formed the soundtrack to my adult life.

I’ve got all his albums. Seen him in concert 15 times and get a daily dose of Bruce news via e-mail. When my bride and I were married nine years ago, we danced to his version of the song Elvis made famous, “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

On Monday, I made sure I was on hand to see Springsteen and the E Street Band play Madison Square Garden. And, as Bruce lingered for a long time before leaving the stage after the final encore, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Is that it?

The reunion tour ends tonight at the Garden and there’s no guarantee that he and the band will tour again.

Bruce and I, we’re both getting older. This fall, he turns 51; I’ll be 42. And we’ve already been together for 25 years.

Our affair started when I was, to quote a Bruce song, growin’ up. Not in Jersey but near Dayton, Ohio. It was the fall of 1975, our senior year at Northmont High School, and a friend, Martha Hardcastle, told me about this great new album, “Born to Run.”

It wasn’t until the next year, however, when I was away at Northwestern that Bruce and I really began to get close.

The dudes above me in our fraternity house, cordially known to one and all as Void and Buzz, had a simple lifestyle: They stayed up late, smoked dope and played “Born to Run” several times nightly.

In November of my junior year, Bruce played a show on campus. This was my first Springsteen show and I will endeavor here not to fall into idiotic gushing. I say only: He was great. The band was great.

After my dad died in a plane crash in 1983, I listened to a lot of Bruce. The things he so frequently writes about in his spare prose--faith and hope, dreams and choices, how to maintain a passion for life--were much in my mind, and he helped ease my melancholy.

When I went on a backpacking trip around the world in my mid-20s, Bruce went with. It’s quite something to listen to Springsteen at the Taj Mahal.

Much more recently, each of our three children has been walked down to sleep to the strains of daddy warbling “Thunder Road.” It’s probably my favorite Bruce song. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s 25 years old or that I can’t carry a tune.

The thing with Bruce’s music is that so many of the songs tell such great stories. And you never get tired of listening to a great story because every time you hear it, you pick up a nuance or two that perhaps you didn’t notice before.

There were a few points on Monday when it was just Bruce and that guitar out there, alone--moments evocative of Bruce’s acoustic shows in the mid-’90s; I saw two of those shows. But it was again patently obvious at the Garden that the full experience is with the band.

After tonight’s show, the lingering question is: Will he treat us to yet another encore?

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I confess that the idea of a guy in his 50s belting out rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t quite jibe with my leftover teenage notions of what rock is supposed to be.

That said, there’s no question that Bruce can still bring it. The show Monday went for three hours.

So, what now?

At some stops in recent years, Bruce has played a song he calls “The Wish.” Here’s my wish for what I’d like to see Springsteen do next.

No more acoustic albums. He did that recently enough with 1995’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Besides, the songs from that album are better with the backing of the full band. Take as an example “Youngstown,” where Max Weinberg’s hammering on the drums pounds home the song’s sense of Rust Belt futility.

I would happily buy a live album from the ‘99-’00 tour. But I’d do it with a lot less urgency if, like “Live ‘75-’85,” it was a composite of tracks recorded at various venues. I’d be more interested in a complete show; it would be long, yes, and a risk; but it would be a great document.

What I really want, though, is for Bruce to go into the studio with the E Street Band and record “American Skin,” the controversial new song seemingly sparked by the shooting last year by New York police of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant.

I’d also love some of the other new songs that he played Monday. And maybe the best love song he’s ever written, “Back in Your Arms Again,” as well as the Woody Guthrie-esque “Land of Hopes and Dreams.” And whatever else he has skipping around his head.

Then I want him to come back out on tour. With the band.

Maybe we ain’t that young anymore. So what? Show a little faith--I’m here to say there’s still lots of magic in the night.

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Alan Abrahamson is a Times staff writer. He is currently covering the International Olympic Committee.