September 28, 2024
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band opened their historic September 15, 2024 Sea.Hear.Now Festival concert on the beach in Asbury Park, NJ - viewing the Atlantic Ocean on one side of their stage and the town's boardwalk on the other - with a performance of "Lonesome Day." But it was by no means the first time that Bruce Springsteen sang "Lonesome Day" live on Asbury Park's beach. In fact, it wasn't even the second time... or the third, for that matter.
Twenty-two years ago this month - on September 20, 2002, to be precise - Springsteen filmed a music-video for "Lonesome Day," the opening track from his 2002 album The Rising. Released to outlets like MTV and VH1 in October of that year, it was the first music-video issued to promote the album, and it was filmed on beach and boardwalk locations in Asbury Park, NJ. In multiple filmed takes, he sang live vocals for "Lonesome Day" while the instrumental tracks from the officially released studio recording of the song played through a hidden earbud system. This live-on-set-vocals approach had been used previously in Springsteen's music-videos for "Brilliant Disguise" and "Streets of Philadelphia." For the "Lonesome Day" music-video, The Rising's producer Brendan O'Brien selected and edited together the best of Springsteen's vocal moments from hours of filming on and around the Asbury Park beach/boardwalk.
“The most striking thing about making this video," director Mark Pellington (who also directed the striking music-videos for Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" and U2's "One") told Billboard, "was the fact that Bruce sang every take live, nailing the vocal take after take, each time. The final take came sixteen hours after the first one, and he never missed a note.” You can watch the complete music-video for "Lonesome Day" below:
More than a few fans probably viewed opening with "Lonesome Day" at this month's Asbury Park, NJ Sea.Hear.Now Festival concert as simply sticking with a frequent (and strong) 2024 Tour set-opener, as well as a song from The Rising that obviously holds additional weight and relevance when played onstage in Northern New Jersey just a few days after the 9/11 anniversary. But "Lonesome Day" does indeed have another very strong connection to the Asbury Park beach and boardwalk area, thanks to that music-video filmed there twenty-two Septembers ago.
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