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The Night in 1984 That Changed My Life Forever
I became one of “those who had seen him”
I have written on multiple occasions that one of the pivotal moments in my life came at nine years old when, in August of 1975, the Born to Run album was released. On that occasion I had a St. Paul-like, Road-to-Damascus experience during which the scales fell from my eyes. At the time, I didn’t think it could get better than that.
But if you’ve read St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, you know that it did get better for him. In verse four of chapter 12, he says he was “caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” I haven’t seen heaven yet, but I got my own glimpse of musical paradise on November 26, 1984 (37 years ago today) when I saw Bruce Springsteen live for the very first time.
It was a Monday night at Reunion Arena, a Dallas “landmark” only four years old at the time and known mainly as the home of a really bad NBA team. It had rained earlier in the day, but the skies had cleared for Bruce (even though the show was indoors), because of course they had. My buddy Mike, who had seen Bruce both during The River tour in 1980 and the night before (there were two shows in Dallas in ’84), tried to prepare me, but how do you describe a sunrise to a blind man?
