No, wait! I swear I'm not insane! Come back and read what I have to say. Or write. You know what I mean.
December 15th/16th is an important anniversary in my family. Because on those same dates in 1978, my mother and father attended their first Springsteen concert(s) - setting in motion a chain of events that eventually led to me!
My father recounts hearing Springsteen on the radio ever since his popular Born to Run album released in 1975. When Darkness on the Edge of Town came out in June of 1978, he purchased a copy and fell in love with the music. To this day, he counts Darkness as his favorite Springsteen album.
Springsteen was touring the West Coast that December, with two concerts scheduled at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on the 15th and 16th. Winterland is a former skating rink that was also used as a music venue. It closed down shortly after those shows (because no other rock concert could possibly live up to the awesomeness of those two Springsteen shows. Or so I've been told...)
My father and mother, students at San Francisco State University at the time, purchased tickets to the December 15th show and were in attendance along with some friends. The two of them were still just getting to know each other - there was still a long way to go before I entered into the picture. However, as my mother recounts, by the end of that night on December 15th, 1978, she had not only fallen in love with Bruce Springsteen, but with my father as well.
Even as the two of them tramped their way back across half the city on foot following the concert's end around 2:00 a.m. the next morning, she felt the stirrings in her heart.
"No buses were running that late, so we had to walk all the way back to campus!" mom said. "In that moment I wanted to kill [your father]! But overall I knew I was in love."
Both that love and frustration didn't dissipate after my father called up his brothers to invite them over to attend the second show on the 16th with him ("I was pissed he didn't invite me!" my mother recalls).
"I called my brothers and told them about this wonderful concert I'd attended seeing this Springsteen guy," dad said. "I couldn't believe what I'd been through! I knew I had to go again and so I invited my brothers to come too."
Within 12 hours, the Hoff boys were all assembled and waiting in line to grab some of the few remaining tickets to the second show.
"That first night was great! I got to touch Bruce's boot when he jumped into the crowd during 'Spirit in the Night'," my father said. "But the second night was even better."
And so the obsession grew in both of them. My eventual mother and father grew closer to one another while also traveling near and far to catch Springsteen concerts every time he came through California. With the Winterland Ballroom closed down, Springsteen rarely came to San Francisco anymore. So they made treks to Oakland, Mountain View, and as far as Los Angeles to see him perform live.
But they never forgot that first show together at Winterland. That magical night that started it all. To this day, more than 15 years since they divorced, the two of them fondly recall that night together. In recent years they've even called each other on the anniversary of Winterland to reminiscence.
Now this is where I come in. The way I see it, my birth was preordained because of that concert. Had the two of them not attended that show, there's no guaranteeing they fall in love. There's no guaranteeing they get married and eventually have a son named Dylan. None of that might have happened if not for whatever rock n' roll magic was in the air that night!
I owe my existence to Bruce Springsteen playing concert in San Francisco in 1978! How weird is that?!?! The least I can do to repay the man is follow his career with as much zeal as I can muster.
Which is why every year on the 15th or 16th of December, I remember to take a break from the Christmas and New Year preparations to sit back and listen to that first concert. By good fortune, the first of those two shows was broadcasted live via radio, which was subsequently recorded on tape. For decades, that bootleg has circulated among hardcore Springsteen fans like myself, especially proliferating during this modern digital age; you can find "Winterland '78" across the Internet. Within the Springsteen community, "Winterland '78" is regarded as one of the finest concerts ever recorded.
So every year around this time I sit down, I dim the lights, I crank up "Winterland '78" and pretend like I was there. It may have occurred 11 years before my birth, but it's still an important point in my family and personal history.
