Today we have met journalist Mia Gerdin. She worked for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter in 1975 and saw her first Springsteen concert in november that year, at Konserthuset.

That was such an mindblowing experience for Mia, that she didn’t see any other show until 1992, because she didn’t want anything to ruin her memories. She also told us a story of how she was chosen with three other journalists to interview Bruce in a restaurant in Gamla Stan (the old town). The four of them waited for hours, with no sign of Bruce. Mia thought about leaving, but the possibility that the other papers could get an interview and she wouldn’t if she left, made her stay. Finally Bruce showed up, he was very slim and shy, wearing a leather jacket and obviously not so sure how to behave with the journalists.

“He had a Hell’s Angels pin in the zipper of his jacket and I remember one of my first questions was if he liked motorbikes. He smiled a bit shyly, but then he opened up and said he did, and so we started talking”, Mia told us.

In 1992 Mia went to see Bruce with his new band, she found him to be as good as ever as an entertainer, but the band couldn’t fully match him, not int the way E Street Band did. “But I really liked the backround vocalists he brought along, that was someting new that I would liked to have seen more of”, she said.

In 1996 Mia saw him again at Cirkus. “He performed in March, at a time when people always get a cold, but you couldn’t hear a single sneeze or cough during the show, and that doesn’t happen often! Going to that show was like attending a mass at church, people sat very silently but attentive. I liked it, but I missed the partyrocking. My body wanted to dance and move, but during this show you weren’t allowed to”, Mia said.

She also told us about how some of her women friends and collegues had found Springsteen’s music macho, dull and out of date during the eighties, but she meant that they had failed to see the tenderness and complexity that also exists in the songs.

Mia thinks that one of the things that makes Bruce such a good live performer is that he really enjoys being on stage and he sets out to deliver something more personal to his audience than just a run through his greatest hits.

We thank Mia for a very interesting conversation, sha also showed us som pictures she took during the show in 1975, pictures that has never been published. Hopefully we can use some of them in our documentary too.

Next we meet journalist Håkan Lahger on Wednesday, so stay with us!

Two days ago Mikael and I went to Jönköping to film the performance of The Hungry Heart Band. They played at the local theatre for two nights, and gave the audience an intense show with some of Springsteen’s best songs.

We filmed the band during soundcheck, and afterwards we made an interview with Hans “Ludde” Ludvigsson, singer in the band and the man behind the tributeshow.

Ludde has a long relationship with Springsteen’s music, he first got in contact with it in his teens, when he heard The River. But it would be some time before he got to see his first concert, although he had tickets to the show at Hovet in 1981. But his father said he was to young to go, so he had to wait until 1985 when he finally managed to see Springsteen live.

Ludde who is a singer in the coverband Fun Club, and he has been dreaming of putting together a show based totally on Springsteen’s material. “I wanted to do this simply because of egoistic reasons. I’ve found a lot of comfort in these songs and I wanted to share my love for this fantastic music with an audience.” The Hungry Heart Band has been rehearsing since December and it hasn’t been easy to find their special touch to Bruce’s music. “The music is very complex. Take a song like Jungleland, it’s like an opera. And each song also vary quite a lot in tempo in itself, which make it difficult to play well”, Ludde told us.

Lasse Strand, bass, Hans Ludvigsson, lead singer, Ingemar Albo, guitarr, harmonica.

But apparently Ludde and his band did well, the comments from the audience after the performance was overwhelming. Funny and touching was his presentations of the songs, small monologues very reminiscent of what Bruce himself used to do during the seventies and early eighties.

Hans Ludvigsson, in close contact with the audience.

Hopefully Ludde can take his dream project out on the road and perform in other cities as well. We give the Hungry Heart Band a big hand and hope they will reach a bigger audience, they have really proved they can play Springsteen’s music with great feeling.

A few days ago we received an e-mail from Jon Landau Management about our request to interview Bruce.
This is what they told us:

Mikael & Johanna,
We are in receipt of your request to interview Bruce. Unfortunately, Bruce
has declined. Bruce is not taking on any projects this year. We would like
to thank you for thinking of Bruce and wish you much success with your
tv-documentary.
Thanks!

Tammy Comstock
Jon Landau Management

We thank the staff att Jon Landau Management for their response and maybe we will have a better chance for an interview next year.

Now we are preparing for our next shooting. We will be in Jönköping on April 24th to film the performance of Hans Ludvigsson & The Hungry Heart Band. A lot of fans will attend the two shows and we will interview the band before we go back to Stockholm for the last interviews with the remaining critics.

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.

Today we’ve spent our time at the National archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images, looking through some news broadcasts and TV shows.

We found some newsfootage of people in line for tickets outside Konserthuset in Stockholm in 1981 and 1985 and there were also pictures from the ticketdrop in Gothenburg 2002.

In a program called Magasinet from November 3rd 1988, wellknown swedish journalist Göran Rosenberg, went to Freehold to check out how the inhabitants reacted to the closing of 3M-factory and how they would vote in the upcoming election between George Bush Sr and Michael Dukakis. A very interesting programe with quite a few Bruce references.

Then we looked at a very sweet portrait of Nils Hilmer Lofgren, broadcasted June 7th 1985. We were amazed by Nils’ acrobatic skills, a video showed him doing backflips, handstands and turning cart wheels while playing the guitar… The man has talent! We could also follow Nils on a visit to his swedish relatives in Värmland, among them Lars Löfgren, former head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre.

A more bizarre presentation was the program Äntligen en vit älg (Finally a white moose) from 1993. It featured wellknown swedish TV personalities like Harald Treutiger, Ulf Elfving and Jens Orback in an overcrowded studio. Among pictures of rubberboats in the moat at Kalmar Castle, interviews with all kinds of people, live music with some unknown band and a short version of Antique’s roadshow, there suddenly was a glimpse of Springsteen’s concert at Stadion. We could to our surprise see the most part of Better Days and Atlantic City.

After looking at the BBC documentary Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen we could enjoy another funny translation of a Springsteen song. This time it was a few lines from TV Movie that caught our attention.

My wife rolled over and told me
That my life would be immortalized
Not in some major motion picture
Or great American novel, you see
No, they’re gonna make a TV movie out of me

Had become:

Men då sa min fru i sömnen
att mitt liv skulle bli legend
nu har det blivit storfilm
en sann amerikansk dollarsuccé
och nu ska det bli
en tv-film om mitt liv

Next round of interviews will be made in four weeks.

Today we have met Mattias who saw his first show at The Globe arena, June 15th 1992.

He told us about his gigantic expectations before the first concert in 1992 and how the show had been so much better than he ever could imagine. For many years Mattias have been a very devoted fan, but after the concert at the Globe 2002 he was a bit disappointed. And the first night at Ullevi in 2003 didn’t change that feeling.

“When I walked out from the arena I thought it was all over. It felt like Bruce and his music couldn’t touch me, like I had grown apart from it all. And on the second night I went to the concert in a bad mood, feeling uneasy, I even thought about not going at all. But then I could see that Bruce had picked up another guitar and then he started with The Promised Land. That song is one of the best in the world and it just hit me, it got me straight through the heart. It was like Bruce reached out his hand and said ‘come on, let’s try again’ and the rest of the night it was like he sang just for me, picking out my favorites. After that I started to listen to the records again and got back to a feeling for the music that I hadn’t had in years.”

Mikael preparing to shoot at Mattias’ place.

Mattias also told us that he likes when Bruce is political. “For me both Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad are political statements. I would really like Bruce to turn out another acoustic album that would center around what has happened after 9/11 and how the war in Iraq has affected the American people.”

We also talked about the swedish fanforum springsteen.se and Mattias thought it was really fun that there are so many young fans in their early teens who discuss Springsteen’s music with great gusto.

After the interview we met with Håkan Lahger, a journalist who have written a lot about Bruce Springsteen in magazines like Schlager and Slitz. We discussed some ideas and Håkan will be one of the critics we are going to interview later on.