Life in the Interstate Propeller Set: The Mild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuttle:

Wings Over Buffalo

By Charles Ribakoff

Note from Charles: Many of my friends (and some not for the first time) thought it was a little over the top, if not flat frigging nuts, when I went to Buffalo for the night for the last show on the Springsteen tour. As always, truth is stranger than fiction. This is, more or less, the truth.

While a bad idea is an orphan, a good idea always has many proud parents. But this good idea could only come from my friend, Crazy Harry. Crazy Harry is the most rabid Springsteen fan I know, and my money’s on him for All World.

This rock fan stuff can take you towards the obsessive, and on through to the other side. Nick Hornby just wrote a terrifically funny novel, Juliet Naked, about Duncan, a depressed middle aged man living in the north of England who has devoted himself to the brief and obscure career of Tucker Crowe. Tucker, whose publicity was such as posters proclaiming “Cohen x Dylan x Simon= Crowe”), made a few cult records in the 70s, and then pretty much disappeared after a disasterous affair (with a woman named Juliet, naturally).

Duncan travels from England to a bar in Minneapolis to visit the urinal where Crowe, it is said, decided to give it all up. He goes to LA to stand outside the house where, it is thought, Juliet now lives, 30+ years later. He posts wildly on a message board, where fellow Crowe fanatics post their ‘discoveries’ daily, even though no one has seen Crowe in more than 20 years.

Of course, everything the Crowologists know is wrong, and real life is real different out there in Tuckerland.

It helped me to have a well developed sense of self-irony while reading this book. But I digress.

As Springsteen fans go, I would like to think I’m above average. I’ve been to maybe 30 shows since 1974, have all the records, even the fiddle and banjo crap one (in multiple formats, of course), know most of the words to all the songs. I can tell you when Mad Dog Lopez, the original drummer, was replaced by Mad Max Weinberg. I know when that change was made uptown, and The Big Man joined the band. I know that Born in the USA was originally a downbeat acoustic song, recorded during the Nebraska sessions, when it seemed Bruce had locked himself in his house all winter, thrown away the antidepressants, and sat with his dog by the fireplace recording sad songs until the dog got bored and died (ok, I made up the dog part). In short, I am a garden variety Spingsteen fan.

Crazy Harry, on the other hand, is as much of an overachiever at Springsteen fandom as he is at pretty much everything else. He can tell you the set list from the Hammersmith Odeon show in London in 1975, or from that show in Chicago in 1982 when the electricity went off. He claims to have once blown off a final exam in Philadelphia to drive all night to see the opening night of the Tunnel of Love tour in Worcester (ok, I was at that show, too, but I simply had to roll down from my office, where, in those days, I had a pull out couch). Harry doesn’t know how many Springtseen shows he’s been to – he doesn’t think 200, but would bet strong on the over on 150. In short, you don’t mess around with Springsteen facts with him.

So we were talking one night last summer about the current Springsteen tour, which had been going on for nearly 2 years, more than 150 shows in 11 countries. We noted that Danny Federici in the band had died last July, that Clarence Clemmons has had more knee and hip replacements than wives (he admits to 5 of those) and can hardly walk, that Mad Max has been banging drums for so long he can hardly hold the sticks. They’ve been doing this as a band for more than 35 people years, and a rock and roll year, like a dog year or a car dealer year, is far more than just a people year.

You didn’t have to be Crazy Harry to process this information and figure out – Holy Stratocasters, Batman – that this could be the last tour. The tour was to end in Buffalo (where, we later learned, their first tour had ended) on November 22. It was clear to Harry that he had to be there, and I had to go with him. It does not occur to either of us that we have both thought the same thing at the end of every tour for maybe the last 13 years.

Now, unlike Duncan (remember Duncan?) we have real lives and families and careers and stuff. To shuffle off to Buffalo for a night to hear a concert is so…well… so 1980s. Further, Crazy Harry had a small family complication – it was his daughter’s 4th birthday. As for me, I’ve spent enough time away on allegedly business related things lately that I’ve nearly taken to wearing one of those smiley faced name badges that say, “Hello. My name is Daddy,” when I see my kids. Clearly, this has to be a strategic, stealth mission – in and out before we are missed.

Which leads to the private airplane thing. Private planes are crazy, illogical, and have no economic justification. So Crazy Harry does the only possible logical thing. He charters one. Quickly, this is turning into Ferris Bueller’s night out.

(Note to varioius creditors and ex-wives: I am only a guest on this excursion.
He charters a cute little King Air, as it half the price of a Lear (which is only about ten times the GNP of many African nations, combined.

Now, one deserves Life to give one a good, solid smack in the face when one gets the hubris to criticize anyone’s private plane. It is a given that the worst seat on the worst private plane is better than the best seat on any other plane. But, still:

The King Air has cute little propellers that, like the wheels on the bus, go round and round. It has seats that would comfortably seat almost any midget, with headroom to match. It is, as they would say, mission perfect for this trip. Ask any double amputee. But they rarely crash and burn, and ours will get us to Buffalo, the Promised Land.

We arrive at Logan in time to see the late Sen. Kennedy’s dogs get off their plane for their van to Hyannis (I swear I’m not making this up; bet you didn’t know that one of Sen. Kennedy’s dogs is the father of the Obama kids’ dog. More than you want to know? Me, too). They, I should point out, are on a bigger plane than ours. Power to the (correct) people, and their dogs. But I digress.

Also on this mission is Crazy Harry’s and my doctor (making me feel almost as cool as Hunter Thompson, who, famously, travelled with his lawyer, the Giant Samoan), and an investment banker friend of Harry’s, another Springsteen fan, this one in the top quartile, a veteran with Crazy Harry of many road trips, and many, many shows.

Now, about all I know about Buffalo I learned in the 5th grade, in that song about the Erie Canal, where you’ll always know your neighbor and you’ll always know your pal on your way from Albany to you know where. The song, naturally, is on Bruce’s fiddle and banjo crap album. Small town, small world.

When we land in Buffalo, we fall into the International Airport Universal Caste System, where the little bitty planes get parked way out on the ramp, and the Great Big Mothers get parked right by the door. So we do the propellar set walk of shame past the larger jets of A, B and C list celebrities to a Great Big Blue Mother Jumbo, the travelling home of the star attractions. I resist the urge to stow away, but stipulate I might have just fondled the landing gear, just a little.

We have arrived a couple of hours before the show, and see there is less happening in Buffalo than in heaven on a Saturday night. Fortunately, The Doctor remembers that we are in the home of Buffalo wings. This leads us to The Anchor Bar and Grill, which claims to have invented the buffalo win in 1934 (we ignore that there are 57 places on the North Shore that claim to have invented the fried clam; we’re on a roll).

The wings, about the same size as the wings on our King Air, crispy and of potency from mild to nuclear, are no less than delicious, with a legend (and accompanying heartburn) that could last a lunch time, if not a lifetime.

It’s at about this time my middle aged back speaks up to let me know it has had about enough of that week’s train to the plane to the bus routine. Seems like a good excuse for another adult beverage to me.

The Arena, the ABCXYZ Financial Centre and Ice Palace, or some such, is a great scale for a show – smaller, than the Garden, good sight lines, really good sound. We randomly bet the under / over on when the 7:30 show will actually start. Whoever had 8:20 in the pool was the winner.

The lights go down, but not so far down that you can’t see Clarence Clemmons has to be put on stage on a lift, and not so far that you can’t feel the place come alive.

I go to stand up with the rest of the crowd, and find out…I can’t. My previously mentioned middle aged back chooses this moment to lock up tighter thanmy high school sweetheart. The person in front of me, a big, rotund, ugly fat person, is able to stand just fine (giving new meaning to the term Buffalo Butt, which I had previously reserved for Hillary Clinton). He doesn’t dance, doesn’t move, he…stands. I…sit.

So we won’t dwell here that Bruce and the band played non-stop for almost 4 hours, more than 40 songs, that they played their first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, non-stop in its entirety for the first time, that it was Little Stephen’s 60th birthday, that they play with the same energy and enthusiasm that I remember from more than 30 years ago, that they still sound great.

Enough about them. Let’s talk about my back. Let’s talk about the fallacy of the healing power of rock and roll. Let’s talk about a highly evolved view of Hell (if not a view that will garner much sympathy) is being in Buffalo on a Sunday night, listening to great music, and staring at a Buffalo butt.

The Doctor is in, right next to me, prescription pad in his pocket, but he clearly isn’t leaving to get me assistyance unless I die, in which case I don’t much care if he leaves or not. I feel like I’d have to get better to die, anyway. I settle on the adult beverage cure, for medicinal purposes only, of course, and am finally able to haul myself up. It is not pretty. I still can’t see over or around Fatso, but at least I get a better view of the wide screen.

The show ends, and we wind up the propellers on the King Air. The Big Blue Jumbo Mother, containing Our Heroes, gets priority clearance to Florida, and cuts in front of us. We limp on back to Boston, landing at the properly rocking and rolling hour of quarter to three. The Doctor hands me a prescription, and, as I try to remember where an all night drug store is, my 8 o’clock meeting starts to seem pretty unlikely

As I hobble my way down the air stair to the tarmac, I announce for all to hear that Bruce and the Band can do whatever they want. This is my last tour.