May 9, 2024
Fifty years ago tonight, Jon Landau saw his second Bruce Springsteen concert, just under a month after seeing his first (and first meeting Springsteen) at the long-gone Charlie’s Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On this second in-concert encounter, Landau watched Bruce and his band open for Bonnie Raitt at Cambridge's Harvard Square Theatre, also long gone. After that May 9, 1974 show, Landau went home and wrote “Growing Young With Rock and Roll,” his essay-as-concert-review for the long-defunct Boston-area alternative weekly newspaper The Real Paper that contained this now-famous (and, certainly 'round these parts, now-prophetic) sentence: “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
Barry Schneier was the only professional photographer to have captured images from that historical evening. To celebrate the evening's fiftieth anniversary in high style, he's produced fifty "Gold Anniversary Edition" prints of "For You," one of his greatest images from May 9, 1974. It's a "very special limited edition," as Schneier's website notes, "to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the night Bruce Springsteen was hailed as 'Rock and Roll Future.' A 10” x 17” print in a custom 16” x 20” gallery matte. Each image is printed with real gold in the toning solution, giving it a higher than typical archival quality." Click here for details on how to purchase a "Gold Anniversary Edition" print of "For You."
The "For You" image also serves as the cover-image of Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Roll Future, the beautiful 2019 photo-essays book that Barry Schneier produced in collaboration with Chris Phillips of Backstreets. If you don't own a copy of this book already, we strongly encourage you to click here to buy one (or more, for any loved ones who also would enjoy the book.)
Finally, check out today's 50th-anniversary-video posted on Bruce Springsteen's official social-media sites, featuring many of Barry Schneier's photographs from May 9, 1974: