Springsteen on Broadway

Bruce Springsteen’s historic sold-out series of his one man show Springsteen On Broadway at Walter Kerr Theatre in New York City comes to an end on December 15th, 2018.

Springsteen, is known to have the ability to use his music as a narrative. His lyrics are often about what tears people apart and what keeps them together and their character have changed throughout the years. His show takes off in his autobiography Born To Run. Alone on the stage, in the small intimite venue Walter Kerr Theatre, with only a guitar and a piano (apart from the two songs in which his wife Patti Scialfa takes part) Springsteen restates incidents from the novel- songs are interspersed with spoken word passages. The show has been described as unique, strong, intimate and emotional- a once in a lifetime experience.

From the time of the premiere on October 12th, 2017 Springsteen has played 236 shows. What was first meant to be only a few weeks series of exclusive shows was extended three times due to exceptional demand since its first announcement. The total turnover is around 106,8 million dollars. As an addition to that, Netflix is paying 20 million dollars for the exclusive rights to air the show.

Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king

The ticket prices and the Ticketmaster’s new “Verified Fan” on-sale method have been a subject of debate among Springsteen fans since the first tickets became available on August 30th, 2017. The whole system has been a bloodbath for fans, as high prices and hurt feelings has dominated the process. For every new extension fans, who once again got cold-shouldered in the code distribution process, were outraged, feeling as though they weren’t considered good enogh fans to get a ticket, and those that were successful in the lottery weren’t that happy either. In the end it all came down to luck – plus how much money you could afford on a Broadway show (with a price range of 75-850 dollars per ticket).

Springsteen and promoters have cashed in on the highest price tickets in Broadway’s history adding to Springsteen’s wealth that estimates at 200 million dollars or more; his role as a working-class hero seriously bedraggled (?)

The past week was rather turbulent. A Sunday Times interview that was published on December 2. went viral and the reason was that it contained “tour news”.

I read that article letter by letter and found a very vague Springsteen statement (“I’ll soon be back to my day job”) that the journalist had interpreted as a tour announcement. It was pure speculation and an example of bad journalism in my opinion.

That assumption lead to a lot of discussions on social media as many fans believed it was true. Both Little Steven and Nils Lofgren denied any knowledge of a tour on Twitter and sure enough a couple of days later an official statement was published:

I’m confident there will be a new tour but, as stated, probably not in 2019 (and perhaps not even with the E Street Band). Springsteen also has his mother to consider. Rumours say that her health is a reason for him not travelling far and wide. However, the mentioned “various recording projects” sound very interesting and I can’t wait to see what will come out of that.

There’s no way to stop people from reporting every wild unproven rumour as fact on social media, and I don’t even know if it’s desirable. There is a certain joy in speculating, hoping and dreaming (we all have high hopes) but I certainly hope we all are clever enough to ignore unscrupulous agencies that offer tickets to shows that don’t exist yet and wait for official announcements before booking any flights or hotel rooms.

Next up: Springsteen On Broadway on Netflix on December 16th, the soundtrack available on December 14th.