Death of Bruce Springsteen's cousin prompts Kansas City concert cancellation

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band called off their show Monday night in Kansas City, Mo., after the death of Springsteen’s cousin and road crew member, Lenny Sullivan.

“Lenny Sullivan, Bruce's cousin and the assistant road manager of the E Street Band for the last ten years, passed away today at the age of 36,” said a note posted on Springsteen’s website. “A warm and sensitive person, he was beloved by Bruce, the Band, the crew, and the entire Thrill Hill family.”

Sullivan was found dead in his room at the Intercontinental Hotel shortly before the show was to start, according to reports from Kansas City. Police are investigating it as a “nonsuspicious” death.  No other details were immediately available.

--Randy Lewis

Bruce Springsteen unveils love letter to Giants Stadium

There's been plenty of Bruce Springsteen envy on Pop & Hiss of late.

The artist, who recently turned 60, has been hopping on the latest trend in live music by exploring a number of his classic albums from start to finish. Chicago was recently treated to "Born to Run," and Springsteen's home state of New Jersey is getting the reverential treatment from now through Oct. 9.

Last night, the artist launched a five-night stand at Giants Stadium, a rock 'n' roll farewell to the East Rutherford, N.J. stadium, which will be torn down in 2010. The song, dubbed "Wrecking Ball," plays out as part tribute to the football, and part statement of rebellious survival.

There's working-class tailgating images of dirt and beer, and a sturdy lead-in to a reliant chorus. There's references to Boeing-sized mosquitoes and shout-outs to the Giants. Beginning with a feisty acoustic build, the song stands on protective ground, and is ready for a fight. Growls the Boss, "So if you got the guts, mister / If you’ve got the balls / If you think it’s your time, then step to the line and bring on your wrecking ball."

New Jersey's Star Ledger has a clip of the concert's opening moments leading up to the initial verses of the song. Full versions can be found on YouTube, and are embedded below. Springsteen said the song was "something I wrote for tonight." A spokesman had no further information on the cut. 

Bruce Springsteen to continue exploring classic albums in concert

It was just a week ago that we raved here on Pop & Hiss at the spectacle that was the Bruce Springsteen show at Chicago's United Center. A three-hour epic rock concert with a tasty nugget lodged in the middle: a complete performance of the 1975 classic "Born To Run".

After the show, many in attendance, including yours truly, ranked the concert as their favorite from Springsteen. Apparently The Boss agreed. 

Notes from Chicago: Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run' concert

Los Angeles Times blog czar Tony Pierce was in Chicago this past week to meet with the mother ship. While spending time with our Tribune brothers and sisters, Pierce also took in Bruce Springsteen's visit to the Windy City. Pop & Hiss told him to have a Goose Island and enjoy the show, but he threatened to come back to Los Angeles with a blog post. We weren't surprised when it arrived, but Pierce's rant about what constitutes an encore caught us off guard. Here are his thoughts from Springsteen's concert:  

Most Bruce Springsteen shows are special in one way or another, but Sunday night he and his E Street Band rocked the United Center in Chicago with the energy of twentysomethings.

The spirited show, which many in attendance now consider their favorite Springsteen concert (thanks to an informal exit-polling strategy), was based on a bit of the novelty but rooted in the overwhelming power of the veteran group. The concert was said to be just the second time the band has performed its classic 1975 album, "Born to Run," in its entirety. The first performance of the full collection of songs was for a 2008 benefit gig at the quaint Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, N.J.

The soon-to-be 60-year-old singer explained to the sold-out arena that "Born to Run" was the make-or-break record for him and the band. Columbia Records, he said, was unhappy with the sales of his first two records, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J."  and "The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle," both released in 1973. 

After the explanation, he placed a harmonica to his mouth and the man who decades ago was hailed as the next Bob Dylan led his band through "Thunder Road" followed by the rest of the tracks of what many consider one of the finest rock albums of all time.

Quick takes of the stellar show after the jump.

Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, Dave Brubeck among Kennedy Center honorees

Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, jazz musician Dave Brubeck and opera singer Grace Bumbry are this year’s recipients of Kennedy Center Honors, which will be bestowed at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6 and telecast on CBS-TV.

The recipients will be feted by President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House before the performance gala at the Kennedy Center, where each honoree will be saluted by various peers from the arts world.

-- Randy Lewis

John Fogerty recalls an all-star night at the Rock Hall, Creedence at the Forum in '69

John Fogerty has had his share of ups, and maybe more than his share of downs, in the music business over the last 40-plus years. But there are times he has to think, “Boy, it’s good to be me.”

Like this story that he shared with me this week about what had to be a pretty cool evening not long after the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened.  Each year following the induction ceremony, the honorees and the musicians on hand to fete them typically gather for a jam session.

"I remember one night — Bob Dylan was there. I don’t know if this was all in one night, but I’ll say it was one night. Mick Jagger was there, and Neil Young starts playing the guitar lick for ‘Satisfaction,’ but instead of the guitar part he’s playing the bass part. You know when they talk about a sprinter coming out of the blocks and within three strides he’s at full speed? Mick Jagger was in full stride in one and a half steps. He heard that riff and that wiry body of his went Boink! You know the thing he does on stage? I was like, 'Wow!'

“Springsteen’s standing right next to me; I think George Harrison was right here [pointing a few inches away]. It was amazing. We’re all playing ‘Satisfaction.’ At the end, somebody goes into ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ and I remember because I’m standing there tapping Bruce on the chest; I went, ‘How does it FEEL?’ -- We’re having such a good time -- ‘How does it FEEL?’

“At some other moment, [Living Colour guitarist] Vernon Reid starts playing ‘Purple Haze,’ and [now] I’m standing between Keith Richards and Johnny Cash. I look out and there’s June Carter and she’s just smiling like crazy. Johnny leans down and whispers to me and says, ‘Well. . . .’ " Fogerty recalls, mustering his best impression of Cash’s deep, quivering voice, “I  think I met my match!”

“If you know Johnny Cash, you know he knows all about ‘Purple Haze,’ because he’s plugged into everything. . . . He’s the guy who loved Bob Dylan long before anybody else knew who he was.  But that was a magical time on that stage.” That was 1992, when Cash was inducted.

Fogerty, with Creedence Clearwater Revival, also shared a memorable bill with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and all the rest who played at Woodstock 40 years ago this month.

That anniversary has been hard to miss, but some Southern Californians may also recall that a couple of  weeks after Woodstock, Creedence was on stage Aug. 29 at the Forum in Inglewood, at a show that also featured Booker T. & the MG’s and ‘50s rocker Wilbert Harrison.

"That was a great bill, wasn't it?" he said when I reminded him of the show, which I'll never forget because it was the first rock concert I ever attended. I decided to shell out the big bucks for loge seats rather than settling for nosebleed territory in the colonnade section. I still have the ticket stub, which offers a reminder of how much things have changed over those four decades.

The cost for my loge seat? $5.75, including 25 cents city tax.

I returned to the Forum a couple months later to see the Moody Blues, but I must have been watching my budget, because I settled for the colonnade on that one.  That one set me back $3.75.

-- Randy Lewis

Social Distortion's Mike Ness joins Bruce Springsteen at Sports Arena

Bruce Springsteen is all about community -- in his songs and his actions. Besides giving publicity to local service organizations during concerts at each city he visits on tour -- in L.A., it's the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore -- the Boss often reaches out to the local music community as well.

At Wednesday's opening of his two-night stand at the venerable L.A. Sports Arena, Springsteen welcomed Tom Morello of the Nightwatchman, Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave for help with "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and Stephen Foster's "Hard Times." On Thursday he turned to one of the stalwarts of the Southland punk scene, Social Distortion singer and songwriter Mike Ness.

The two paired for Springsteen's post-9/11 anthem "The Rising" and Social D's standard "Bad Luck." "The crowd response when Mike came on stage was amazing," Social Distortion road manager Shane Trulin said Friday. "I think we all were pretty surprised."

Ness met Springsteen backstage at the Honda Center in Anaheim on his last swing through Southern California. Springsteen invited him to call when Ness' solo tour reached New Jersey and wound up joining Ness for four songs when his band played in Asbury Park.

So Ness was invited to return the favor when the Boss got back to L.A.

"It was one thing for him to come out and play four songs with the Mike Ness Band in Asbury Park," Ness said Friday. "But for me to do two songs with the E Street Band in front of his crowd, that's an entirely different thing."

Ness said it was Springsteen's choice to do "Bad Luck." "He likes to solo on that riff."

That was to be their only duet, but after rehearsal, as Springsteen thanked him and started to leave, Ness said, "I learned 'The Rising' last night!' " So into the set it went.

"What a nice group of guys -- every one of them -- including the crew," he said. "I'll never forget it."

Springsteen is not the first classic rocker to display his admiration for Orange County's punk torch-bearer. Neil Young tapped Ness & Co. to open for him nearly two decades ago on a tour that also placed him onstage at the Sports Arena.

 -- Randy Lewis

Photo by Christine Marie

Bruce Springsteen returns to Los Angeles with a 'Dream' tour*

It was no accident that on tax-reckoning day, the same day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was holding a forum in downtown L.A. to address the Golden State's buckling economy, Bruce Springsteen put a decidedly California spin on his overarching musical message about holding onto hope even in the face of such hard times.

Springsteen invited local political firebrand Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine/the Nightwatchman fame, to join him on stage Wednesday at the first of two consecutive nights at the Los Angeles Sports Arena for a savage duet on "The Ghost of Tom Joad," the Boss' 1995 Steinbeck- inspired treatise on those who've been let down or forgotten in the promised land:

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waiting for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass

He and Morello traded impassioned verses, with E Street Band guitarists "Miami" Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren ceding the spotlight to Morello for a rapid-fire solo that screamed outrage. During the encore segment, Morello returned for a choir-like reading of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More."

Springsteen might have stumped for Barack Obama and played at the White House following his election, but he knows that systemic change doesn't happen overnight and that hope remains a fragile thing in troubled times.

Rifling through his ever-expanding songbook, he stitched together a set focused less on promoting his latest album, “Working on a Dream,” than on shoring up hope while acknowledging how much work still needs to be done to fulfill the American dream.

"We're here with a mighty purpose in mind!" the 59-year-old Jerseyite told a sea of cheering onlookers after the first handful of songs. "We're gonna rock the house! But we're not only going to rock the house, we're going to build a house. We're going to take fear and build a house of love; we're going to take sadness and build a house of joy; we're going to take doubt and build a house of faith; we're going to take despair and build a house of hope."

Bruce Springsteen, tour 2009: working on a dream

As he and the E Street Band kick off a world tour, the troubadour for troubled times reflects on where he’s been and where he’s headed.

"There are a lot of ghosts in this place," Bruce Springsteen said as his boots clomped on an ancient staircase at the Asbury Park Convention Hall. It was here in this old seaside venue that Springsteen, as a teenager, watched Jim Morrison prowl the stage and Keith Moon thunder away on drums for the Who. It was also in the corridors here that he brushed past a wild-child named Janis Joplin. "Our elbows, they came this close," said Springsteen, somehow still amazed that a Jersey kid could come within arm's reach of rock history.

Unlike those lost icons, Springsteen was built for the long haul. He will turn 60 in September, and he'll do so while on the road with the E Street Band supporting their latest album, "Working on a Dream." The world tour (which comes to the Los Angeles Sports Arena on April 15 and 16) officially began Wednesday in San Jose, but it was in late March, here at this creaky boardwalk venue, that Springsteen began working on "the conversation" of the concert tour, as he calls it, trying out the new songs in front of a live audience for the first time.

On a blustery Monday afternoon, just hours before the first of two charity shows, Springsteen arrived at the venue with a 155-year-old surprise for his bandmates. During sound check he told the singers in the group to line up along the lip of the stage and, looking down at the lyrics, Springsteen coached them through a late addition to their opening-night lineup, a Civil War-era lament by Stephen Foster called "Hard Times Come Again No More":

It's a song that the wind blows across the troubled wave

It's a cry that is heard along the shore.

It's the words that are whispered beside the lowly grave

When hard times will come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.

Hard times, hard times, come again no more.

Time for a replica of Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run' Telecaster?*

Guitars, like their owners, aren’t immortal, which is one reason why Eric Clapton decided to donate his celebrated “Blackie” Fender Stratocaster for a charity auction five years ago. (It fetched just under a cool $1 million.) Years on the road and in the studio had taken its toll, he said, so it was time to move on.

Bruce Springsteen, the subject of a Sunday Calendar profile, may be feeling the same way about his most famous Telecaster, the one he’s holding on to on the cover of the “Born to Run” album, which was fairly road-tested when that album came out 34 years ago. The Boss recently started exploring the idea of getting a clone to take on tour so the original doesn’t suffer further abuse, asking the folks at Fender’s Custom Shop about building him a doppelganger.

One of the Custom Shop’s innovations has been its Tribute series of replica guitars, which are copies of famous instruments duplicated down to the nick, scuff, scratch and cigarette stain. Currently the company has an Andy Summers Telecaster and a Rory Gallagher Strat copied from those players’ own guitars. They’ve also mirrored guitars played by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Clapton and other guitar heroes.

After Springsteen expressed interest in a copy of his signature Tele, Custom Shop marketing director Mike Eldred suggested a limited run of the iconic guitar, with maybe 100 instruments from which proceeds could be donated to the charity of Springsteen’s choice.

“He sent us a note back, saying, ‘That sounds like about 99 too many,' ” Eldred said recently. They’re still awaiting word on whether the Boss wants to move forward with just the one. In any case, fans may never know if he ever does get one, since the copies are virtually indistinguishable from the original. That one is currently on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland as part of a Springsteen exhibit, where you can look, but you'd better not touch.

— Randy Lewis

UPDATE: An earlier version stated that Springsteen has the "Born To Run" Telecaster with him on his current tour. It is on loan to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for an exhibit that opened this week.