By Kristen Rauschenberger
It’s December 1980. My mom has two and a half years left of high school. She’s 16 and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are coming to the Nassau Coliseum for The River Tour. Her boyfriend Tom is a ticket scalper, known for getting the best seats for the best shows. He either stands in line himself waiting for Ticketmaster to open or pays someone else to do it for him. At James Caldwell High School they call him “Ticket Tom.” Together, he and my mom have sat within the first five rows to watch The Marshall Tucker Band, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Yes and Rush – bands I’ll grow up loving. For Bruce’s upcoming show, they are front row center for $12.50 each.
Come Dec. 29, Ticket Tom and my mom walk past security guards, elbowing their way to the main floor inside Nassau Coliseum, capacity: 18,000. The place seems to take notice of the two teenagers making their way to the best seats in the house. Tom’s curly dark hair is a goofy mop on top of his tall skinny body. My mom’s petite 5-foot 3-inch stature disappears and reappears as they move through the crowd. The arena has a strong odor of beer, pot and sweat and the concert hasn’t even started.
Their eyes search the stage. Instruments await their musicians.
Bruce’s voice over the microphone looms above.
The house lights go out.
The crowd screams.
Thirteen songs later Bruce has finished the first set. After the intermission, set two begins with “Cadillac Ranch” and when that’s over “Sherry Darling” begins to play. Mom had gone into the concert merely liking the song, not loving it. She had complained the first time she heard it.
“Why Sherry,” she’d ask. “Mary, Wendy, Sandy, Candy but never Tammy. He should write a song about me.”
Sweaty and swaying across the stage, knocking shoulders with Clarence Clemons, Bruce performs the song while scanning the crowd. After the second chorus he smiles as he locks eyes with my mom and reaches down for her hand. She feels his hand clasp hers as she is pulled up and onto the stage. Lights are flashing. Both the heat and the energy are high. Bruce slings his Telecaster around his shoulder and wraps an arm around Mom’s waist and holds her hand with the other. Together they dance up and down the stage, an original E Street tango. Her brown feathered hair bopping as they move, heart pounding. The crowd cheering and singing jealously.
He gripped her hand as tightly as she squeezed his, as if assuring her she wouldn’t trip in front of the sea of people as Clarence wailed away on the saxophone. After Bruce twirled her around on stage, he pulled her in and quickly kissed her on the cheek. She held his shoulders and looked into his squinting brown eyes. Then, turning to take her first and only look out into the crowd, she saw what seemed like the entire tristate area population gathered in front of them: bobbing heads and raised hands, too dark to make out their blurry faces. She looked down at Ticket Tom’s expression – a mixture of happiness and shock, but not a trace of jealousy. He helped her down from the stage, the girl who’d been kissed by The Boss. Then they tuned back into his raspy voice as the song howled to an end.
Hanging on a wall in my house is a blown up 28-by- 28-inch framed picture of Bruce and Mom on stage. That moment: her hands squeezing his shoulders as they stand staring at each other, just after he’d quickly kissed her, mouths open frozen in time. Her white knit sweater and Levi jeans stand out against his dark black jeans and black blazer, the only pop of color his blue shirt peeking out from underneath, soaked through with sweat.
For years I’ve been looking on YouTube for the video from that night. I’ve typed in every possible keyword that would bring it up. Each video I click on looks, at first, exactly like Mom – but it’s not. I’ve found the audio of the concert but not the video, video from The River Tour but never 12/29/80. We like to think that the footage is in somebody’s camcorder, in a forgotten box in somebody’s basement. We are patiently waiting for it to resurface. Today, Justin Bieber will pull a girl up on stage for a song and she’ll get 10,000 new followers on Twitter, a few death threats, and photo and video evidence of the night forever. All Mom has are 10 pictures – the negatives sit in an envelope in a fireproof safe along with birth certificates and other valuables – but they are more valuable to her than any amount of followers.
Three summers ago, Bruce and the E Street Band toured through North America putting on show after show for The River Tour 2016. This concert tour celebrated the 35th anniversary of the same tour from 1980. What could have been a more perfect tour for my first Bruce concert? It was finally my turn to see him.
Picking out my outfit of a tank top and shorts, I thought how I wouldn’t see any white sweaters in the sea of people since it was the end of August. On the way to the stadium I couldn’t help but wonder what they talked about, or what the energy must have felt like on the drive back. As we pulled into the parking lot I knew that I was hours away from getting to see the man my mom and I have loved and talked about for years, perform in front of me 36 years after he danced with her.
In classic Bruce fashion, without fail, song after song played with no breaks or intermissions. He broke his own record for longest concert played in New Jersey clocking in at four hours and one minute. Hearing the songs live is more than what I imagined it to be. “Hungry Heart,” “The Ties That Bind,” “The River” and the eight encore songs were incredibly moving and heartfelt. Amazingly, they even played “Santa Claus is coming to Town.” I couldn’t believe that the concert was slowly mimicking the concert from 1980.
But of course, the song that I waited for him to play was “Sherry Darling.” After seeing my mom dance for 18 years, I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong. She danced her hardest right there listening to him sing this song. Throughout the 35 songs I didn’t know whether I should watch her or watch him. During “Sherry Darling,” I pictured the whole event from that December night as if it were happening live in front of my eyes. I could imagine my mom still not knowing she would be up there in less than a minute. During the instrumental, dancing with him, and after coming back down, feeling the heat and the eyes of everyone around her. It felt like I had just been up there with him. It was over just as quickly as it began but to me, it felt like it lasted forever.
I could see the framed picture of them in my mind. Just the two of them – strangers but so close for a few moments. Sharing a dance, a kiss, a touch. Two people in the spotlight together. The background of the picture holds nothing but darkness, enclosing the two of them inside of it. They are the center, the focus.
Perhaps we don’t need the video, after all, when the memory prevails so vividly.
Kristen Rauschenberger is graduating from Rutgers University this month. She spent Mother’s Day with her mom – Tammy Darling – and family.
