After nearly two solid years on the road, Bruce Springsteen finally forgot where he was on Friday night. While playing at Michigan’s Palace of Auburn Hills, he made three separate references to Ohio before E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt had to tell him where he was.
Springsteen onstage: photos from the Working on a Dream tour.
The Spinal Tap-esque gaffe led to headlines across the globe this weekend, so this afternoon while chatting with Van Zandt for a tour wrap-up piece in the next issue of Rolling Stone, we asked him what happened. Here’s what he said:
“The first time I was like ‘Did I just hear that?’ The second time I looked at [bassist] Garry [Tallent] and said, ‘Did you hear what I just heard?’ At that point I knew I had to get Bruce’s attention, but I couldn’t get it through the rest of ‘Wrecking Ball.’ There was no time to really have that conversation [laughs hysterically]. I’m like, ‘Please, God, don’t give him a chance to do it again before I get a chance to talk to him.’ Sure enough, he did it a third time and I’m like, ‘That’s it. This crowd is about to rebel. They’re going to attack us!’ I just grabbed him and said, ‘You don’t realize it, but you’re saying Ohio and we’re in Michigan.’ He was like ‘What!?’
He just goes to a place onstage. At certain times he’s down on earth where we can have a conversation and a lot of the times he’s not. It’s a full adrenaline rush where you can’t have a conversation. I looked him right in the eye and he knew I wasn’t just saying something casual. It took him two or three times for him to come down to earth and hear what I was saying. He made a great joke out of it. He said, ‘I’ve been worried my whole life I’m going to do that and I finally did that.’ I guess the ...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily