ROCKSPOSURE.....Be Heard

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This song that I knew, but didn't really know, comes bursting out of this band. I mean, blazing. This is a stadium-sized sound and I'm 30 feet in front of it, hanging onto the barricade for dear life, feeling like the guy in those Maxwell cassette ads. The guitars are driving, the drums and kicking, bricks are hurtling over my head, livestock is whizzing past my ears and this invisible bolt of lightning is traveling right through my chest on its way to the rest of the audience.

And then Bruce opens his mouth. And he starts to roar, too.

He begins with nostalgia, singing of sepia-toned '60s days, of lessons learned in song, of reckless fun, of aligning your heartbeat with the drumbeat. So, yes, rah-rah, rock 'n' roll. Fist pump. Boom.

But things get a little more interesting. "Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold," he sings. Daring young boys can't stay that way forever. They can't help but get fat, lazy, boring. They sell out to, well, life. It's a battle against time and there's no way to win, right?

Not so fast. "I'm ready to grow young again," he bellows with smirk. "Maybe we could cut someplace of our own / With these drums and these guitars."

Damn right. Who's to say you can't re-spark that fire? Who says rock 'n' roll is only a young man's game? Who says you can't harness the energy of youth and ride it clear through middle age? Well, whoever did hasn't meant the 53-year-old gentleman on stage right now, sweating through his shirt, swinging on a mic stand and sliiiiiiiiiiiding across the stage (on his knees!) with an AARP card in his pocket and these romantic dreams in his head.

"We made a promise we swore we'd always remember."

"No retreat, baby, no surrender."

"Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend."

"No retreat, baby, no surrender."

Let life kill me, but it's not going to break me. The lights may grow dim. The walls will close in. The war will get harder and harder and harder. Yes, I will age, but I refuse to get old. Hand me my guitar.

"No Surrender" was written about 20 years before I saw this performance, but Springsteen might as well have been writing it as he was singing. This defiant, honest stand was perfect for the moment, whether it was thought up at age 33, 43, 53, 63.

Bruce and the E Streeters, coming off a reunion tour and the release of their first album-length collaboration since "U.S.A.," seemed to be out to prove their relevance beyond rollicking versions of their oldies. And they did. They played new stuff, old stuff, hits, misses and an on-the-fly cover of Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie" to polish the night off. Funny that it was an oldie, and not a song from "The Rising," that most clearly defined their declaration.

I don't know that this occurred to me at the time, but this performance of "No Surrender" was an invitation to a rock 'n' roll middle ground between "My Generation" and "Not Dark Yet" that wasn't "Silly Love Songs." In most of the songs I knew, middle aged guys were sad, they were getting divorced, they were wishing they were younger, they were creeps, they were jerks, they were weirdos and they were mostly looking back.

After that night, I no longer hoped I'd die before I got old. If it was going to be anything like this concert, I couldn't wait to get old.

Now, before you go running to listen to "No Surrender" on "Born in the U.S.A." I need to make something clear. That version doesn't do the song justice. Here's a postscript to the lesson:

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