Why do people always boo when I walk onstage? (Guest column)
By Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen is a 20-time Grammy-winning musician from New Jersey who has sold more than 140 million albums worldwide as a solo artist and more famously as leader of the E Street Band. This is his first guest post for Hashtag Blessed*.
I feel as if I work pretty hard. I’m well into my 70s now, and I still get out there and play to crowds all over the world when a lot of musicians my age are content to reflect on past achievements and collect easy money when it comes — if they’re even still alive, that is.
Well, that ain’t how I do it, brother. Me and a little group called the E Street Band (heard of them?) are just about finished with the European leg of our latest tour, and, if you don’t mind me tooting the old horn a little bit, I think we’re sounding better than ever.
It’s not as easy as it seems, but that’s the whole point. At a rock show, the part you see is just the tip of the iceberg when you consider all the rehearsal, stage production, light design, security, logistics, travel, etc., that is required for the magic of rock and roll. Part of the grand illusion that I’ve worked so hard to perfect. A good rock show can change the course of a young person’s life, or provide an older fan with some much-needed escapism from the stresses of day-to-day life. So I still play my guts out every night like the fate of the whole world depends on it. What are you doing with your time?
Sorry. If I sound a little salty, it’s because I’m irritated. Something has been bugging me for a while, and I haven’t been sure how to bring it up. It’s going to sound weird after so many years of doing what I do, but here goes: I don’t understand why people always boo when I walk out onstage.
I probably should have mentioned this earlier
It’s the damndest thing — every time walk out at the beginning of a concert, or when the band finishes a song, or when I’m a guest on a TV show, I hear the same thing: people booing me and the musicians who have been playing alongside me all these years.
Doesn’t matter what song it is. The classics like “Born to Run,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” or “Badlands”? Booooo! The stuff from our most recent record, Letter to You? Booooo! Obscure songs from my upcoming lost-albums box set that the longtime fans should appreciate? BOOOOO! I’ve been doing this long enough to be able to handle honest criticism, but what kind of greeting is that?
This most recent tour has been an important one for us. It’s our first time out on the road since the pandemic, and the new album was written in a state of pretty deep reflection that was inspired by that collective trauma, along with the broader questions of mortality that everybody reckons with if they’re lucky enough to get to be my age. I looked around and started to realize how many of my peers from the old days are no longer with us, and there’s a sadness in my bones when I think of all the friends I’ll never see again, casualties of rock and roll or just time.
Letter to You is for them, and so is the setlist we’ve been playing. The E Street Band used to be famous for never doing the same show twice. I get why that spontaneity appeals to a lot of people, but this time around I had a very specific story I wanted to tell every night, so for the first time in longer than I can remember (maybe ever), we’ve got a static setlist. I realize that nowadays anybody can go online and look up exactly what they’re going to hear, but the trade-off is that we’ve got this list of songs down. It’s as tight as we’ve ever been. Last year, we put out a documentary on Hulu that I think does a pretty good job of explaining the how and why of it:
But what does the crowd think of all this? You guessed it: Booooo!
I don’t come to your office and heckle you, do I?
Looking back, I seem to remember that this all started when I was still tooling around in clubs on the Jersey Shore and the rest of the East Coast, trying to make a name for myself in this difficult business. By the time the E Street Band was coming together in the early to mid-’70s and we started playing some bigger venues, people were already booing me pretty regularly at shows. I saw it as a challenge. It built character and motivated me to work harder, thinking one day I might win a whole crowd over.
But even when we finally hit it big with Born to Run in 1975 and straight on through Born in the USA in the mid-’80s — what most people consider our golden period — crowds still booed. That was decades ago, and nothing’s changed. Now I’m a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which you’d think would close the book on this discussion. Nope: Booooo!
Today I just find it confusing. Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, and there’s certainly a lot of music that just doesn’t do it for me. But why would you buy a concert ticket — which, admittedly, is pricey — then take work off or get a sitter and drive all the way to an arena if you’re going to boo the artist? It doesn’t make sense. Sometimes I look out in the audience and I notice that some of the same people booing are even holding up signs that say how much they like me, or requesting specific songs that probably mean something to them, which, again, is straight-up weird.
It’s also pretty discouraging, and it makes me wonder how long I want to keep doing this if it looks like I’ll never win your approval. But hell, on the other hand, the idea that I’m still fighting to convert people after all this time is pretty enticing. Thus I labor on, with the goal that one day, I’ll perform a show that’s long enough, passionate enough and transcendent enough that, maybe even just once, you won’t boo me or my band. I’ll see you out on the road.
*Satire, you dipshits.
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