October 7, 2024
EDITOR'S NOTE: We're very happy and honored to present this essay by sports-journalist and filmmaker Julian Garcia, reflecting upon his being a veteran Springsteen fan getting to witness the most recent concert by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band on the shoreline of Asbury Park, NJ with his daughter Abby:
When I was growing up in New Jersey back in the 1980s, on the outskirts of the Meadowlands, my father and I used to sit on our living room couch on spring and summer nights and watch the Yankees play. I was a big fan of Don Mattingly back then, and had a hard time believing anyone could have been better in pinstripes than Donnie Baseball was in 1984, ‘85, ‘86 and ‘87, when he averaged 30 home-runs and 120 RBI.
“You should have seen Mantle,” my father would say, “Now that was a ballplayer." My father would go on to describe the tape-measure home runs that Mickey Mantle hit, helping to make the Yankees the Yankees through much of the ‘50s and early ‘60s. I heard all about Mantle’s ability to glide across the outfield to make over-the-shoulder catches, and how he not only possessed legendary power, but also the speed and baseball savvy to lay down a bunt and sprint to first in what my father made me believe was less than two seconds flat.
“It’s a shame what happened to him,” my father said, explaining how Mantle’s struggles over his final four seasons cost him the chance to finish with a career batting average of .300 or better. “Held on too long,” he'd say. “His knees were shot. I wish you could have seen him when he was younger.”
I was fortunate enough to see Mattingly play in person many times during that magical four-year mid-’80s stretch, sitting in the backseat of my father’s car as we crossed the George Washington Bridge and took Jerome Avenue towards the Stadium. I also watched as Mattingly went from a certain first-ballot Hall of Famer to a player who had to settle for being elected into the New York-Penn League Hall of Fame, due to a back ailment that ultimately derailed his career.
I thought about Mickey Mantle and Don Mattingly as I drove north on the Garden State Parkway late on the night of September 15th, my ears ringing and my feet and back stinging, after spending the previous twelve hours or so planted in the sand in Asbury Park. I had just watched Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band perform live for the fiftieth time or so in my life. For more than two hours of that three-hours, fourteen-minutes performance, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with my daughter, Abby, who was working at the Sea.Hear.Now music festival for the fourth straight year, helping attendees with various issues encountered over the course of two days. On Night Two, her boss allowed her a break to watch the headline act, but wanted her back at her post about an hour before The Boss wrapped up.
This was the second time Abby and I watched Bruce and the E Street Band perform live, but the first time in about eight years, and the first time since she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him after the American Music Honors ceremony at Monmouth University last spring, both smiling into her cell phone as she took a selfie with her father’s lifelong idol.
Over the past two decades, one of the things Abby and I have bonded over most is music, and a wide variety of it. From the time I started driving her to and from school, Abby would take control of the aux cord in my car, turning me on to the music of Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus (and her alter ego, Hannah Montana,) Selena Gomez, and eventually Taylor Swift. Yeah, I admit it... I’m a sucker for the kind of pop music that makes tweenage girls scream. But I also found ways to slip in an occasional Bruce song or two, starting with obvious hits like "Dancing in the Dark" and "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" before introducing her to some of his deeper cuts. Eventually, she became a fan, though a bit later in life than I did.
One can only imagine the thrill of watching my daughter become a student employee at The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University (my alma mater, no less,) or how crushed we both were when she missed the opportunity to meet him early in the spring semester of her junior year, when she was visiting her mother in the hospital on a day Bruce happened to drop in on her coworkers at the Archives. (They posted pictures to prove it.)
My own lifelong obsession with Springsteen's music started in 1982, when my brother pushed a Nebraska cassette tape into the stereo in our bedroom. Three years later, I saw Bruce live for the first time just weeks ahead of my 11th birthday. I remember almost nothing about that first show, other than where I sat - somewhere in the far right corner end zone, all the way across the field from where Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band were onstage.
In the nearly forty years since that first show, I’ve seen Bruce perform live on Broadway and in the Stone Pony, back when I was in college. I’ve seen shows on every Bruce Springsteen tour over the past four decades except for the Tunnel of Love Express Tour, which fell in that awkward post-Born in the U.S.A. period when my mother had lost interest in him and I did not yet possess either the money to buy my own ticket or a car to get me anywhere close to where he was playing.
What I am about to write has been stated to just two people in the days since I last saw Bruce Springsteen live three weeks ago. At first, I was met with polite incredulousness. And then, when speaking to my brother - the person most responsible for lighting the spark that led to my forty-plus-years love affair with Bruce - I was flashed a look that suggested something along the lines of “You have to be fucking kidding me,” before he actually came right out and said something along the lines of “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
I was not. So I’ll state it again... Thirty-nine years after seeing Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band for the very first time, I have never seen him and his bandmates put on a better show than the most recent show I attended.
I could get into all the details of why I think that is true, but the performance speaks for itself and is officially available for download/streaming. Still, you had to see it to believe it. I’ve listened to most of the show two or three times since seeing it, and hearing a clean mix of it only helped convince me that what I felt standing there, and while driving home that night, was right. Bruce and the Band have very often been just as good as they were on the beach that night, but they’ve never been better.
And that is exactly what I thought about as I drove home after the show. How is it possible that forty-two years after laying in bed at night, my big brother just feet away as we listened to the dark howls on Nebraska echo through our shared bedroom, I was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with my adult daughter, and watch Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band perform at the level they did? How is it possible that nearly forty years after seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for the very first time, I still have never felt the need to tell my daughter what Bruce and his band used to be like?
Over the years, as I introduced my daughter to more of Bruce’s music, I eagerly awaited the day I could finally show her what all the hype was about. I finally got the chance when she was 14, and it was a great show. Now, eight years later, just days after my 50th birthday, and Bruce’s 75th, I sit here listening to the same man I was listening to as a young boy, appreciating and marveling at the fact that because of what we witnessed together on the beach in Asbury Park, I will never have to say to my daughter what my father once said to me about Mickey Mantle: “You should have seen him when…”
Julian Garcia is a lifelong resident of New Jersey, and has been a sports writer and editor at the New York Daily News since 1996. He also is the producer/director of the short documentary film It Will All Seem Funny, about the legendary 1978 "Rosalita" stage-crash that took place in Phoenix, Arizona.