No Retreat, Baby

(March 27, 2023)

Fathers and daughters, man — it’s a whole thing. A whole thing. Let me recite something for you off the top of my head.

Schnitzel von Krumm with a very low tum
Bitzer Maloney all skinny and bony
Muffin McLay like a bundle of hay
Bottomley Potts all covered in spots
Hercules Morse, as big as a horse
And Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.

Those are the dogs in Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, a New Zealand children’s book we were given by someone a long time ago. I read it to both daughters so many times that even now, 12 and 16 and 20 years later, I know it by heart. I remember it deeply. I’m at an age where I lose simple words and famous names all the time and find myself Googling embarrassing queries such as, “Name of villain in that movie with Jodie Foster and the guy who played Thor’s father,” or “synonym for move” because I could not immediately think of the word “transfer.”*

*Oh yeah, to borrow from our old friend Vin Scully’s line about statistics, I use the Thesaurus the way a drunk uses a lamppost — for support rather than illumination, but also for throwing up on, for friendship, for conversation, for misidentifying, for climbing …

Point is, I don’t remember anything — but I remember every word from Hairy Maclary.

Fathers and daughters, man.

They’re about to leave the house. Well, one, the older one, Elizabeth (Liz, now), she’s already at college. The younger one, Katie, leaves in August. There are a million feelings about it, some I can express, and others I cannot. A lot of the feelings, I admit, have to do with time. The older they get, the older I get, the further we move away from Hairy Maclary.

Faded pictures in an old scrapbook
Faded pictures that somebody took

Liz is the Springsteen fan. The girls didn’t embrace many of my specific passions — it was more my job to love what they loved, Disney princesses and Harry Potter and “Hamilton” and Taylor Swift and, oddly, the wives of Henry VIII — but Katie did take up tennis and, for a time, the Cleveland Browns, and Liz became a Bruce Springsteen fan. She started loving Springsteen sometime in high school, when her friends were mostly locked in on the pop star of the moment.

She always regretted not making her yearbook quote, “For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside/That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive” — the same quote kids like her used in their yearbooks 40 years ago.

At some point, I promised her that if Bruce and the E Street Band went back on tour, I’d take her. The moment happened on Saturday night, Greensboro, N.C., and if I’m being honest, I was just a little bit nervous about it. It was the 15th time that I’ve seen Bruce in concert, which makes me both an obsessive fan and also no fan at all, depending on your point of view.

Telling a regular person I’ve seen Bruce play 15 times: “Wow, you must really like him, that’s a ridiculous number of times to see one performer.”

Telling a Bruce fan I’ve seen him play 15 times: “Huh, I’ve seen him 149 times. Have you ever seen him in Europe? No? Australia? No? Did you go on “The River” tour? No? Did you see him at the Stone Pony? No? Sheesh. You’re not fit to wear that Springsteen shirt you have on.”

Anyway, my own Springsteen journey has gone on for many, many years … and it makes sense to me because we’ve been getting older together. Bruce is 17 years older than me, which seemed like a lot when I was young, but now barely feels like anything at all. I remember Bruce the rocker, Bruce the scorned lover, Bruce the acoustic dreamer (who would ask crowds to be quiet while he worked through his songs), Bruce the wanderer, Bruce feeling what we felt during 9/11, Bruce at the Super Bowl, Bruce on Broadway, Bruce winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom and so on.

But Liz … she doesn’t remember any of that because she’s 52 years younger than Bruce and only knows him through the music. And the music doesn’t get old. In the music, Bruce is forever 21 asking Rosalita to jump a little higher, forever 25 wanting to die with Wendy in an everlasting kiss, forever 35 and reminiscing about the good old days when his friend could throw that speedball* by you.

*Fastball, dammit.

So, yes, sure, I knew Bruce would put on a good show. He always puts on a good show. But, I mean — he’s 73 years old, closing fast on 74. Garry W. Tallent is 73. Professor Roy Bittan is 73. Little Steven is 72. Mighty Max Weinberg turns 72 next month. Nils Lofgren turns 72 in June. The Big Man is gone.

And this was Liz’s first Bruce show. She’d built it up so much in her mind after all the stories she’d heard. What would she see? Old people singing young songs? Willie Mays falling down in the outfield? Faded pictures in an old scrapbook? Faded pictures that somebody took?

Well, now young faces grow sad and old
And hearts of fire grow cold
We swore blood brothers against the wind
I’m ready to grow young again

The Greensboro Coliseum is the sort of place that, frankly, cities across America are tearing down. It was originally built in 1959, and it has the extremely narrow concourses and knee-scraping seating arrangement of another time. There also isn’t a drink holder to be found anywhere in the arena. This last fact, along with the Coliseum’s odd policy of removing and confiscating all bottle caps, led to the inevitable water bottle spill before the music even began. Liz and I spent the show standing in a puddle.

But the Coliseum does have soul, lots of it, Elvis played here — both Elvises, actually — as did Elton and Hendrix and Queen and Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder and Prince and Willie Nelson and the Stones and The Who and Taylor Swift. The place creaks with music. Bruce himself had been here three times before. Echoes were everywhere.

Sure, yes, I did have some reservations about having Liz’s first Springsteen show be in Greensboro. I mean no disrespect to that fine city — birthplace of Dr. Frank Jobe! — but as Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song” said of nearby Wake Forest University: “Nice place, but, uh, well, not exactly center ring, you understand?”

And I wanted this night to be something ultra-special for Liz … and for me. Bruce Springsteen is one of those things between us, something that has stayed true through all the years. People love to laugh about how Bruce is the favorite musician of every white sportswriter over a certain age, and there’s truth to the charge, but this was something different. Once we were in a gift shop at the Harry Potter amusement park, and she couldn’t choose between a bag and a stuffed owl. Once we were in a Broadway balcony watching “Hamilton” and tears streamed down her face. Once we were at a baseball game in Toledo, and she looked up and said, “These are the best nachos I’ve ever had in my entire life,” and she has never stopped talking about those nachos.

Once we were …

No. Liz leads her own life now. She does her own things. She makes her own mistakes and has her own triumphs and, yes, goes by Liz. You know, she was always Elizabeth to me.

Hercules Morse as big as a horse.
And Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.

I wanted this night to be perfect. I needed Bruce to take us away. I mean, how many more concerts will we have? How many more magical nights can there be? Yes, I needed Bruce to take us to the top of the world.

Could Bruce do it in Greensboro? That was my question before the night began.

And the answer surprised the heck out of me.

Greensboro would turn out to be as big a star as Bruce.

When all the summers have come to an end
I’ll see you in my dreams

Bruce began the show with “No Surrender,” a pretty solid message that he was going to do a little raging against the years. Do you know how many shows Bruce Springsteen has done in his life? Well, if the Internet is to be believed, the answer is 3,516. That’s public shows. That doesn’t count rehearsals or private gatherings or recording sessions or anything like that.

Think about how many times he’s played “Born to Run,” or “Thunder Road,” or “Dancing in the Dark,” or “Badlands.” How do you find meaning in the words after playing those songs thousands and thousands of times? How do you find depth in the music?

Somehow, he always does.

It’s that “somehow” that has always fascinated me.

And this time, maybe, I finally caught the secret, maybe met the riddle, because this time I wasn’t watching Bruce and the band as much as I was watching Liz. I wanted to see her reaction to everything.

“Oh, you’re going to love this,” I told her as Bruce began “Out in the Street,” which I think is the song with the biggest gap between the sound on the record (it’s a fine song) and the sound in concert (transcendent). And Bruce sang, “When I’m out in the street,” and Liz and everybody sang, “Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh!” And Bruce sang, “Meet me out in the street!” and Liz and everybody sang “Wha-oh! Wha-oh! Wha-oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!”

And Liz’s face was as bright as the sun.

“That was the greatest thing ever,” she said, and then came an improvised jazz thing for “Kitty’s Back” and then came the conga line for “The E Street Shuffle” and then Bruce went out alone to pay tribute to the years in “Last Man Standing” and then came the most hectically wonderful wall of sound for “Because The Night” and Liz was floating some three feet off the ground and then the lights all came on because the show was no longer a performance but a giant house party — and “Badlands” became “Thunder Road” became “Born to Run” became “Rosalita” became “Glory Days” became “Dancing in the Dark” became “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” The horn section blared. The backup singers rocked. The percussionists dueled on drums. The guitarists rocked. One giant house party.

And, here was the biggest part of all: The crowd was absolutely incredible. And hey, most of us, we were as old as Bruce, older even, before the show, I joked that it would be the only rock concert where the people in the audience would be saying, “Hey, turn it up, I can’t hear you.”

But, as I say, the crowd was incredible. I’ve been to my share of concerts through the years, and crowds tend to range from a passive audience to an into-it audience. This was something different. The crowd was part of the show. Nobody sat down. Everybody sang along to every song. Everybody danced to the beat. Everybody thrust their arms in triumph. Bruce, probably 10 times during the show, just held up the microphone and let the crowd handle the singing.

Yes, it was Bruce Springsteen AND the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagara-taking, history-making E … Street … Band … AND the hearing-aid-bringing, soul-singing, arms-swinging, bell-ringing, audience of Greensboro, North Carolina, all of us, together, in one big grocery bag, on top of each other, smooshing each other, loving each other, pushing the sound higher and higher, all of us ready to grow young again.

And I could see, in a whole new way, that this was a circle. Bruce powered the crowd. The crowd powered Bruce. Bruce powered the crowd. The crowd powered Bruce.

And Liz got to be inside the tornado.

“Greeeeeeeeensboro!” Bruce shouted. “What’s in the water down here?”

And then he said something else. I heard, “You are the best audience we’ve had!” The guy next to me heard, “You are the best American audience we’ve had on this tour!” Liz heard, “You are the best f-in audience!” I suppose it’s all the same thing. As Little Steven tweeted the next morning:

Am I saying the Greensboro show was somehow more magical than other Springsteen shows on this tour? Well, yes, I am. I mean, sure, it’s possible Bruce tells every audience they’re the best, and it’s likely Little Steven throws praise to every city they visit, and Bruce’s great gift, I think, is making everyone around him feel like tonight is the best night.

But … this was Liz’s first show. That makes it the best. And when it ended, she was speechless, in part because her throat was raw, and in part because there seemed no words to say. She called it the best night of her life but admitted that those words didn’t capture all the feelings she had. No words could, I suppose.

So we sang to each other. Just a few lyrics. When we left “Hamilton” all those years ago, it was raining in New York, and we sang “The Story of Tonight.”

When we left the Greensboro Coliseum, arm in arm, both of us dizzy, we sang the least likely of Bruce songs. I don’t know why. Fathers and daughters, man.

In my letter to you
All that I’ve found true
And I sent it in my letter to you

Bonus Because You Asked!

Several of you wrote in asking if I would reprint the short postscript I wrote the day after Hamilton appeared. You ask, we answer!

Postscript: The response to this essay has been overwhelming … and it has been humbling. I have heard from so many people who have shared their own stories about Hamilton, about family, about connection. I suppose that speaks to the power of the arts. More, it speaks to the power of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s crazy genius.

And speaking of Lin … there is one more story to tell.

In the hours after I posted this essay, I got a notification from Twitter that Lin had tweeted something. Well, he had tweeted this:

Whoa. Of course, after he did that, there was a flurry of activity, and the thing went viral and all that. But the key question my wife Margo asked was this: Do we wake up Elizabeth to tell her?

We decided, in the end, not to do that. We could wait until morning. When morning arrived, Elizabeth was as groggy and grumpy as any 14-year-old who wakes up in the morning, and when I told her that we had something to show her, she was as skeptical as any 14-year-old would be. Show what? Some educational video? A lame adult meme that isn’t at all hip with the kids (Elizabeth and our other daughter Katie have started saying again and again that I’m just not “hip with the kids”).

When I handed her the iPad, she looked blankly at it, and you could see her mind working around it.

Hey, this is a tweet from Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Hey, he mentions someone named Elizabeth. 

Hey, wait, that Elizabeth is actually me.

And then she just started bawling. It was the most overwhelmed with emotion I think I’ve ever seen her, including when her favorite Harry Potter character died (no spoilers). She just cried and cried, and she didn’t try to stop, and we didn’t try to stop her. I talk about never really knowing what you will remember and what you will forget, and that’s true. I’m pretty sure we won’t forget that.

Kathleen’s Corner

• Joe mentioned the new Pope, so I need to share this Chicago Sun-Times story, which has a photo of him in a White Sox hat.

• The National Baseball Hall of Fame also shared this fascinating photo of a baseball Pope John Paul II signed for Sparky Anderson.

• Today would have been Tony Gwynn’s birthday, so I dug up this Baseball 100 piece from the JoeBlogs archive.

• As a Kansas City native, I’d be remiss not to mention the Royals, who have won 15 of their last 17 games. Of course, that includes a sweep of the White Sox, but hey, I’ll take it.