Wow. I guess my own death won't be quite so celebrated when it happens. But what a perfect song to memorialize someone:

There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away

They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets

They scream your name at night in the street

Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet

And in the lonely cool before dawn

You hear their engines roarin on

But you get to the porch and they're gone

On the wind

So Mary climb in

It's a town full of losers and we're pullin outa here to win.

I mean, Jesus. The song's about living so well that you basically defeat death. You don't let yourself drop into the abyss of what you're supposed to be, you follow that dream wherever that dream may lead (an Elvis song that Bruce covered live) you live and dammit you live and you come out above where you're supposed to.

I was listening to Bruce live 75 at the Hammersmith Odeon driving home after work tonight, and I've been listening to Bruce since 75, and I still feel like a fucking exuberant kid when I hear him. It's like when I first read Kerouac and realized, oh yeah, it's LIFE, this is what we're here for, and sometimes we let ourselves sink into the mediocrity of other peoples' expectations or just get worn down by survival - it can be fucking hard to make a living, to raise a family, to get by on your own - and we are damn fortunate there are artists out there who can remind us how vast the world is, how much there is to be a part of, how much we should be investing in this only life we can know we're getting.

Feel the pleasure, feel the pain, take some chances and look out for other people. There is very little we cannot survive (I'm guessing that "The Love Guru" may be an exception) and we need to live in this world, not just let it beat us up. Hi, my name is Rob and I'm a Bruce-aholic, and I'm taking another drink right now.

Thanks for the post. He's only been playing this song at least 33 years, he's bound to play a non-great version sometime, I'll keep watching and listening for when that might occur.

Hey, thanks for digging this up and bringing it home. I have a bud who saw the show, and she was nearly speechless in the voicemail she left me about it. One of the posts says that the heterogeneous crowd resembled one only the pope could draw, and I'm pretty sure my friend felt she was in the presence of someone even greater.