Today we took the train to Uppsala to meet Niklas, who saw his first concert at the Globe arena, June 17th 1992. The weather was lovely, spring is in the air and the sun was warm.

Niklas told us about the adrenaline kick when the gates open and you rush to get a good spot as close to the stage as possible. “I want to be in the front row to feel the fellowship of the other fans. Those in front are the most dedicated, those who have spent a lot of time in line to get there. I want to share my experience of the concert with the same people I’ve been talking to outside the arena. Of course it’s fun to get eye contact with Bruce or the band, but being there with other fans is more important to me.”

Niklas is the man behind the swedish fanforum Springsteen.se that started in June 2003. Niklas was lucky to register the domain and then he started developing the site. He knew he wanted to make a site where people could talk about Springsteen. Prior to Springsteen.se there had only been a few mailinglists in swedish and Niklas wanted to make an alternative to the english fanforums.

Today the site have about 600 members aged from 12 years up to almost 70. “First we got a lot of people from the mailinglist Born to Run, but now we have a lot of young people who register. Those who are most active are in their twenties or early thirties”, Niklas said.

There are a lot of work with the site, but Niklas has help from a couple of moderators. And he is planning on developing the site so people could add more to their personal profiles. Even though the discussions are not so intense when Bruce is not on tour, Niklas think the forum will live on. And as soon Springsteen and the E Streeters will go on tour again he thinks that will add new members to the forum.

We thank Niklas for the interview. We will now take a break until April 24th when we will go to Jönköping to film the performance of Hungry Heart – a tribute to the music of Bruce Springsteen. We will join a lot of fans from Springsteen.se for a night with good music. Then we will go back to Stockholm for the last interviews before we start the editing of our documentary.

First we aim to produce a 10-minute showtrailer that will help us promote our idea for SVT, the swedish national television, and we hope they will buy our film.

Today we have met Daniel and Staffan who saw their first Springsteen concert at Konserthuset, Stockholm, November 21st 1975.
They had both listened to Springsteen’s first albums, but still the show was a complete shock to them. “It was great to hear the songs live, but we never expected the band to be so tight. They could start with those partysongs, then Bruce came out for a solo piano performance and then suddenly they could play covers like the Detroit medley. We’d never seen anything like it before”, Staffan said.

Konserthuset, Stockholm.

Daniel has a special memory of the concert. He didn’t get a ticket to the show, and buying one from the scalpers was too expensive. But he managed to sneak in, thanks to a friend standing in the door. As Daniel was waiting for the show to begin he got to hear the soundcheck and he saw Bruce walking around checking that all was OK. But nobody in the band saw him where he was sitting.
“My expectations were huge before the show, and seeing the soundcheck without being noticed just enhanced them”, he said.

Staffan and Daniel also saw the show at Hovet in 1981. Their experience was that much of the spontaneity, the intimacy and the power of Bruce’s monologues were lost because of the bigger arena. “It was more of a staged performance, you knew that the monologues were rehearsed. In ’75 we still had the feeling that it all happened spontaniously”, Staffan said.

“It was difficult to go home after the show in ’75. At first the audience had been a bit quiet, sitting down and listening. By the end of the show everyone was standing and cheering, filled with euphoria. Afterwards we were telling eachother how good it had been and then we just drifted off home”, Daniel remembered.

Daniel who is a celloplayer with the philaharmonic and work at Konserthuset, was very impressed by Bruce’s ability to lead the band. “It was fascinating to see how everything went through him, everybody else in the band was always looking at him to see what would happen next. He’s controlling everything, almost like a conductor.”

Staffan also told us about a private meeting with Bruce. “I shook hands with him during the dinner at Grand Hotel in 1997 when he got the Polar Prize. We didn’t talk much but it was great to hear him perform some acoustic songs that night.” Springsteen shared the prize with famous choire conductor Eric Ericson, Staffans father.

We thank Staffan and Daniel for sharing their great stories with us in the beautiful setting of Konserthuset. Our next interview is tomorrow.

Today we have met Måns Ivarsson, journalist at Expressen. His colleague Mats Bråstedt was prevented from coming, but we’ll interview him in April.

Måns saw his first Springsteen concert in Copenhagen in 1981. He thinks that the heart of Springsteen’s production is centered around the albums Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River, and he ranks the tour in 1981 as the best he has seen.

Måns thinks that the reason Springsteen is so popular in Sweden is that he is so genuine, a “bluecollar rocker, a nice working class guy”. That appeals to the swedish audience, because Springsteen personify pretty much the same ideals as were developed in the socialdemocratic People’s home.

In 1992 Måns was invited to Hollywood to attend the rehearsals before the Human Touch/Lucky Town-tour. Ivarsson spent four days together with Springsteen and the members of the new band Bruce had put together after the break with the E Street Band.

“That was very exciting, the new band sounded very promising, but later on the tour Bruce didn’t manage to use their capacity. They ended up sounding like a bad version of the E Street Band because Bruce didn’t have the nerve to let go of the E Street-sound and try something completely different”, Måns told us.

Micke, preparing to shoot.

In 1992 Måns got a personal interview with Bruce in Hollywood. That also happened in Stockholm, just before the world premiere of the HT/LT-tour. “I was at the Globe arena, watching the soundcheck, when the manager came up to me and said ‘There’s somebody who wants to talk to you’. I went to check who it was and there to my surprise, Bruce sat, waiting for me. It was great to interview him. There are few artists who can really express their musical achievements in words, but Bruce and Keith Richards are two of them. Bruce is very intelligent and has a great verbal ability.”

Since 1981 Måns have seen most of the shows Bruce have played in Sweden. “Unfortunately I think he have become boring over the years. He doesn’t tell these fabulous monologues as he used to do, and he doesn’t change the setlists as much. During the eighties you never knew what would happen during a show, today there is less variation in the performances. But you have to remember, even when Bruce is boring he still is better than most artists today.”

Måns also thinks that The Gost of Tom Joad and The Rising are bad albums. “They just don’t touch me. They are writingtable products. The first is based on newpaper articles about illegal immigrants. I’ve read somewhere that Bruce tried to write happy songs about a comfortable familylife, but the audience didn’t like them. If you want to be cynical you could say that he needed an event like 9/11 to give him something more painful to write about, because he doesn’t find that in his own life anymore.”

But Måns still has high hopes for the future. He says it would be great with a new album and another tour. “But I do hope it will be more of a garage rock album, with a rougher sound”, he said.

We thank Måns Ivarsson for an inspiring conversation. Next interview will be on Tuesday, when we will meet celloplayer Daniel who saw Springsteens first show in Sweden, at Konserthuset in 1975.

Today we have met Andres Lokko, who work as a music critic at the eveningpaper Expressen. Andres is also a scriptwriter for Killinggänget, a group that have made a number of humoruos tv-programs and films.

Andres saw hist first Springsteen concert in 1981, at Hovet, Stockholm. As he knew only one song (Hungry Heart) he was completely surprised by the intensity and energy, and he still ranks that show as one of the best he has seen. Since then he hasn’t seen that many Springsteen concerts, he didn’t feel that was necessary since it would be almost impossible to top the preformance in 1981.

“What makes Bruce Springsteen a unique artist is that he has the ability to merge serious monologues about his upbringing or political statements with tremendous partyrockin’. He is also one of the very best actors in the musicbusiness, because his performances are very carefully staged to make people feel that they are taking part in a onetime experience. This night he is singing for them only, and that kind of spontaneity can only happen in a very carefully directed show.”

Andres also told us that one of the reasons the swedish media, and especially the eveningpapers Aftonbladet and Expressen, write so much about Bruce when he comes here is that the papers have developed a style which is centered very much around events. This started in the mid eighties and have reached it’s peak today when the papers writes endless articles about the Eurovison song contest or what happens in the most popular reality show. It’s also Andres opinion that this “eventjournalism” has created the use of stars, bumblebees or other symbols for rating the concerts, instead of longer articles that analyse the show in a deeper way.

Andres also said that the reason Bruce have gotten so big in Sweden is that swedes are suckers for melodies. And Bruce knows how to turn out songs that get you straight in the heart. “Take a song like Drive All Night, it’s so beautiful in it’s simplicity. Here Bruce manage to combine an extremely romantic ideal with very ordinary things. In the lines ‘I swear I’ll drive all night just to buy you some shoes’ the man isn’t giving his girl diamonds or pearls, just a pair of shoes. That’s very moving.”

If Bruce has one hidden tallent that is seldome noticed, Andres like to point out his ability to write very simple about complicated things.

We also talked a bit about the fact that Bruce has become almost as untoucheable as Ingmar Bergman in Sweden. It’s very hard to write a bad word about Bruce. This may be the result of the swedish music critics beeing rather hesitant about Springsteen’s performances during the late seventies and early eighties. “Now they regret it and give him high ratings on old merits rather than on what he actually performs today”, said Andres.

We thank him so much for a very interesting interview and move on to our next meeting with critics Måns Ivarsson and Mats Bråstedt on Saturday.

We are building our documentary around the experiences of the fans and the analysis of a group of music critics. But we also hope to get an interview with Bruce Springsteen himself. We have sent to letters to Sony NY and Jon Landau Management to ask for a meeting, but so far we have heard nothing yet.

Apparently we got the wrong address to Landaus company, because we got the letter in return, with the comment “forwarding order expired”. But we’ve found another address that we hope will be the right one. In case we fail again we hope that the letter via Sony have reached it’s right address.

We’re shooting again next week. Then we’re going to meet the critics Andres Lokko, Måns Ivarsson and Mats Bråstedt, who all write for swedish eveningpaper Expressen.