Frank McNally on how Bruce Springsteen concerts became a luxury product

‘Hey Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks?” asks the unnamed protagonist at the start of Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 song Meeting Across the River.

As his narrative unfolds, we gather he needs this small loan to help negotiate a larger one, from a “man on the other side” of the Hudson, which separates New Jersey from New York.

It’s a fraught journey, clearly. The prospective lender of “two grand” is not a registered credit institution.

Thus the hero tells Eddie that if he wants to come along, he should keep his mouth shut and look like he’s carrying a gun: “’Cause this guy don’t dance/And the word’s been passed, this is our last chance.”

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The narrator of Meeting Across the River is a typical Springsteen character: poor, marginalised, living on his wits: a victim of harsh, unregulated capitalism, in which everything has a price. He definitely couldn’t afford to attend, for example, a Bruce Springsteen concert. Certainly not in 2020s Ireland, where the two grand from the Mob might just cover his tickets for the RDS shows and a night in a Dublin hotel. But in the hierarchy of human needs, attending rock concerts is hardly a priority. Certainly not when your immediate concerns include how to avoid being fitted with cement shoes.

Also, on the plus side, at least Bruce’s oppressed heroes never have to negotiate with the Bank of Ireland computer payment app. The Mob’s corporate slogan might be less “we’re backing brave” and more “we’re breaking legs”. But their money transfer system is admirably robust.

Anyway, for those of us who thought the Springsteen tickets were a bit steep – €131 for standing and up to €156 for seats – the market had an instant riposte. To the two concerts advertised, the inevitable third was immediately added to meet demand. And the market is always right, we know. Even if it does mean that, like another pastime once associated with the working class – English football – Springsteen concerts are increasingly the preserve of the bourgeoisie.

Speaking of which, I recall attending the magisterial 2009 and 2012 shows in Kilmainham of Leonard Cohen, where in age, dress, and demeanour, the average audience member would not have been out of place at the Wexford Opera Festival.

As Springsteen does, Cohen too played for more than three hours, surrounded by a large band of virtuosos. And yet, according to my diary for 2012, we paid a mere €79.50 a ticket, a price that already looks quaint.

As for Bruce, on two previous occasions I saw him at the RDS, tickets were also well shy of €100. But if enough people are happy to pay more for such luxury products, who can argue that the music industry should be different from any other upmarket retail operation?

To quote another doomed Springsteen hero, who should have been a concert promoter: “We only run for the money, got no strings attached/We shut ‘em up and then we shut ‘em down.”

I won’t bore readers with my story of the time Bruce played Slane in 1985. Oh all right then, if you insist. The tickets for that were only £15 – everything in Ireland was cheaper then, including life. But it too must have been beyond my budget because I at first decided not to go.

Then the day arrived, sunny and beautiful. And in darkest Templeogue West, where I heard the start of the concert live on a radio news report, regret was overwhelming.

But suddenly a voice in my head sang: “Lying out there like a killer in the sun/Hey, I know it’s late we can make it if we run.”

Of course, had I been a typical Springsteen hero, despite crushing poverty, I would have owned a car: a 69 Chevy, typically. But I didn’t. Tramps like us, we were born to get the 15 bus, which I did. Then a 19 to Finglas. And from there, I hitched.

The first lift was for only a few miles, to a crossroads called “The Ward” (“The Ward’s been passed”, I noted ominously). The second took me as far as Ashbourne. The third to Balrath. And from there, a farmer in a battered Ford Anglia brought me as far as the hill overlooking the river Boyne and Slane.

There was an eerie silence (it was the concert interval) as I walked down and crossed the old stone bridge into the village. Then, just as in the song, I met a man on the other side.

On an otherwise deserted street, this shadowy underworld figure approached and said: “Are you looking for a ticket?” “Maybe” I replied, affecting nonchalance to mask the tension.

“A fiver,” he said. And with that I was in, for the last hour-and-a-half and 14 songs.