One of the first memories I have of Bruce Springsteen happened in 1985 at the peak of his popularity. A friend of mine went across the Øresund (the water that separates Denmark and Sweden) to witness one of only two concerts in Scandinavia on the Born in the USA Tour: Gothenburg. I don't know if he went to the first or the second of the Gothenburg shows and that's not important. The important thing is that when he returned he talked about the show as if he'd witnessed the Second Coming.

At the time, I didn't know much about Bruce. I was aware of songs like "Dancing in the Dark" and "Born in the USA". And during a recess in school someone had written "We learned more from a 3-minute record than we ever learned in school. - Bruce Springsteen" on the blackboard. But I had no real concept of who Bruce was or what he stood for.

My friend's account was one of several things that little by little increased my interest in Bruce. Another thing was when someone wrote a review of the same Gothenburg show in my brother's high school newsletter. Again, I was left with the impression that here was something truly unique, something completely extraordinary that didn't fit with the usual trivial context that music was normally put in. Flashy teenage magazines, silly after-school radio shows, etc. This was new and big... and dangerous.

While I have since heard countless of bootlegs from that tour, including the now legendary Gothenburg shows, and I have watched whatever video footage has emerged, it wasn't until I recently watched the newly surfaced Paris DVD - Breathless in Paris - that I truly felt I knew what it must have been like to those lucky people who had gone. It starts out slow, but little by little the intensity builts up until the incredible climax where Bruce kneels on the stage and roars his "prisoner of rock 'n' roll" confession into the dark Paris sky. Over the cause of the show, he goes from being just another figure on a huge stage bathed in daylight, to being an unstoppable natural force driving the crowd into a frenzy out there in the warm summer night. Back in the summer of 1985 Bruce may have been extremely popular thanks to radio airplay and the "Dancing in the Dark" video, but few people in that crowd, and other European crowds, probably had much of an idea what they were in for. That he was much more than a cool looking dude with a toothpaste smile and a nice butt.

After that night, and after all the other nights of the European tour, everything he has done since has been and always will be measured in the light of what happened that summer. The expectations to a Bruce Springsteen show will never again be anything less than gigantic. And though he often lives up the expectations he can no longer exceed them by the same margin he could back then. The Paris DVD documents that last innocence when there were no two opinions as to who was the greatest performer ever. And although we all wish it could continue to be like that (as long as we could still get the tickets we need), the laws of nature simply dictate that no one is entitled to that status for more than a brief moment in time.

Of course, we all know better.

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