A popular subplot in “The Light in Darkness” — I touch on it in the essay I wrote for the book — is that there are a lot of people out there who really, really wish they were of concert-going age in 1978. That was the year Bruce Springsteen released “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and mounted a seven-month tour that many fans say eclipsed any other before or since, and cemented Springsteen’s reputation as a live act for the ages.
But there were also a lot of people who did experience that tour, and who say to this day that it changed their life. It’s those people whose reminiscences make up the bulk of the stories in editor Lawrence Kirsch’s latest fan-driven Springsteen anthology, and believe me: If you weren’t there, they will make you feel worse.
Oddly enough, though, like the “Darkness” album itself — on which Springsteen’s ragged baritone manages to wring hope out of the direst of circumstances — the stories in Kirsch’s book make you feel better at the same time, to know that an artist can touch people in the way Springsteen did during that seminal tour, and still does for newer generations of fans.
It’s worth getting your hands on “The Light in Darkness” for the amazing photos alone, both amateur and professional — they capture Springsteen and his bandmates at turns both jubilant and intense, often possessed of a fervor that seems to go beyond religious. The best of these pictures, with Springsteen’s face taut and his guitar thrust forward like a weapon of mass destruction, paint a picture of man so in command of a room it looks like he could make it spontaneously combust at will.
But it’s the stories that make up the heart of the book, just as they did in Kirsch’s last collection, “For You.” That book was more general, which meant a wider variety of submissions, some more moving or funny than those you’ll find in “The Light.” But if there’s a certain sameness that comes from this volume’s laser focus, it’s just indicative of what a galvanizing force this album and tour were to the fans who got to experience it.
A long and rollicking account of Springsteen’s famous Agora Theater concert in Cleveland by Brian Schmuck may best capture the way these shows grabbed people and haven’t let them go to this day. Writes Schmuck of how he feels listening to the bootleg recording of that concert today: “Still 30 years after the show … like Pavlov’s dog, I get a physical reaction … a release of adrenaline or endorphins shooting through me in waves.”
