Day 8: Human Touch

Better writers than I could tell you about last nights gig, Bruce’s first in Adelaide. All the superlatives would be justified. Amazing. Incredible. Life changing. All of it. But I’ll leave that to them to describe. Instead I wanted to write about the other side of being at a Bruce gig. The Bruce fans.

So, as Bruce noticed, it was VERY hot in Adelaide yesterday. 40 degrees (105 Fahrenheit) while we were queuing outside. As soon as we got wristbanded I, along with others, retreated to the shade of the nearby car park. It was much cooler in there, since the concrete had been in the shade all day. While I was there I got talk to the people around me. A woman named Linda was also from Melbourne, Kinglake so right near me. We got talking about Adelaide and the heat and then the bushfires back in Melbourne. She talked about Black Saturday (for those not familiar with this day, it was a severe day of bushfires in Melbourne. 3500 buildings destroyed and 173 people killed) and how she’d lost her home and everything she owned that day.

She told me how they’d only left 10 minutes before the firefront came through. It was 4 in the afternoon but due to the smoke the sky was pitch black. They fled to Yea (a nearby town) and that waiting there was the worst. All the families there weren’t being told anything, they were in the dark. But that family members and friends were ringing/texting them with news and rumours of what was going on and that just made everything worse. They couldn’t go back to see the former site of their home until the Tuesday, and that everything was gone.

She said the thing that really got you was the little things you can’t replace. Things you’ve had all your life. A toy from when you were a child. Things your children played with growing up. Things you never really think about until they’re gone. Included in this was a massive collection of Crowded House memorabilia and and equally large collection of Bruce Springsteen things. But that the word had gotten to Crowded House and Springsteen fan clubs and the like, and people had donated things from their own collections to her. For no cash return or incentive or anything. Just because it was someone in need who needed help. What Linda learnt from this, she told me, was that while there will always be people who make you question if there are any good people left, in times of need the goodness in the human race will always come through.

Inside I sat down next to two guys. A guy who looked to be in his 50’s/60’s, and his son. The father was a massive Springsteen fan, had traveled around Australia seeing him but never thought he’d get the chance to see him in his own hometown of Adelaide. The son meanwhile had seen a couple of Bruce DVDs but had never actually seen him live. The father showed me pictures of his Springsteen collection including a Born in the USA era guitar, signed by the whole band including Clarence and Danny. He also told me about seeing him in Sydney last year and how Bruce opening solo with Devils & Dust had brought him to tears.

The gig got underway and the father was loving it. He even got a handshake from The Boss when he was standing up on the walkway in the middle of the pit. He looked absolutely thrilled. Meanwhile the son looked somewhat like me at my first Bruce gig last year. Kind of a stunned, “what in the name of god is happening to me” look on his face. No doubt he’ll now become the kind of Bruce diehard we all are.

And that was just three stories from that pit. Anywhere you turn at a Bruce roll call or in the pit you’ll probably be able to find people and stories like this. Hopefully for Linda and the two gentlemen I was in the pit next to, the gig was everything they imagined it would be.