Bruce Springsteen greets fans at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Freehold to promote the release of his new book, STAFF VIDEO BY BOB BIELK STAFF VIDEO BY BOB BIELK
(Photo: CBS)
FREEHOLD -- What if I told you that Bruce Springsteen once played a show in the gymnasium of his old Catholic grammar school?
Sounds crazy, right? But it really did happen, 20 years ago.
The date was Nov. 8, 1996. The place: the gym at St. Rose of Lima School during Springsteen's acoustic "The Ghost of Tom Joad" tour.
And to make such a small venue even more exclusive, ticket sales were restricted. Only residents of Freehold Borough were allowed to buy the $30 tickets, with proceeds from ticket sales going to St. Rose of Lima's Hispanic community center.
For lifelong Freehold resident and author Kevin Coyne, that made the concert even more special.
"You had to be from Freehold Borough -- not the township, only the borough -- to buy a ticket, so the line at St. Rose that day was like a family reunion," Coyne recalled. "I live on Broadway, a street that extends from the borough into the township, so the ticket seller had to check to make sure that my street number was on the borough stretch. I've always been proud to be from the borough -- I'm a fifth-generation native -- but never more so than that day, and never did my address confer such benefits as it did that day."
About 1,300 people filed into the school gym that night, and my Asbury Park Press colleague Kelly-Jane Cotter reported it was not the normal Springsteen crowd.
A ticket stub from Bruce Springsteen's show at St. Rose of Lima in Freehold. (Photo: Brucebase)
"Fans in their late 30s and early 40s did not dominate the concert," Cotter wrote. "Instead, there were little kids sucking lollipops, elderly people with canes and walkers, fidgety teenagers with their parents, priests and nuns, neighbors and relative sharing kindergarten photos of the rock star. It was like a snapshot of suburban America, an episode of 'This Is Your Life.' "
Freehold resident Susan Sweetman had worked with Springsteen's aunt, Ida Z. "Eda" Urbelis, and said she said spoke the night of the concert to Ida and Springsteen's mother, Adele.
"The concert was fantastic. "Freehold" song was the best!" Sweetman said, referring to Springsteen's last song that night, a composition about his childhood in his hometown.
"My daughter and I were there along with Sister Charles Marie and sat in the front row center seats," said Kathleen Potter Morrison. "Sister Charles Marie taught us in fourth and fifth grade. She was awesome. Obviously Bruce felt the same about her as his group sought her out and invited her to come."
Indeed, Springsteen dedicated "The Ghost of Tom Joad" that night to Sister Charles Marie, saying she taught him a lot about kindness. Kindness was not something that the young Bruce always experienced in his hometown.
Photo Asbury Park Press story about Springsteen's Nov. 8. 1996 Freehold concert (Photo: Asbury Park Press archives)
To say that Bruce Springsteen has had a bit of a love-hate relationship with his hometown might be a bit of an understatement, but it's clear that his formative years there helped define his life.
In his 2016 autobiography, "Born to Run," Springsteen says "the grinding hypnotic power of this ruined place would never leave me."
During a recent interview with Anthony Mason for CBS Sunday Morning, Springsteen took Mason on a tour of his hometown, showing Mason the site of his paternal grandparents' home on Randolph Street, where Springsteen lived until he was six.
The home was torn down decades ago to build a parking lot for St. Rose of Lima church.
Springsteen also took Mason inside his old grammar school, but admitted walking those halls again made him uneasy.
"I'm getting the willies," he joked as he walked down the hallway. When Mason asked how he had done at school, Springsteen responded, "Uh, not particularly well, I was...I didn't fit in the box so well."
Perhaps that's why his 1996 concert at St. Rose was filled with songs intended to make at least part of the audience just a little bit uncomfortable.
"I just remember him talking about sex a lot," said Tony Pallagrosi, who produced the St. Rose concert as co-president of Swing Street/Legend Entertainment. "I was very shocked to see the nuns chuckling and tittering. I thought, 'Why is he talking about sex with all the nuns here?' "
Cotter noted that Springsteen "surprised the audience with 'Red Headed Woman,' a raucous ode to oral sex."
"I asked Father McCarron, 'Can I sing a song about cunnilingus in a Catholic school?'" Springsteen asked from the stage. "And he said, 'I'm not sure.' I took that as a yes. I'm talking about marital sex here.
"If there are any kids here," he added,"cunnilingus is a Latin word that means, 'Go clean up your room, please.' "
Buy Photo Headline on the front page of the Asbury Park Press on Nov. 9, 1996, the day after Bruce Springsteen performed at his grammar school gym. (Photo: Asbury Park Press files)
Joined that night by his wife, E Street Band member Patti Scialfa, and violinist Soozie Tyrell, Springsteen also paid tribute to his roots with songs like "The Wish," which honors his mother, Adele. He remembered going to her downtown office, where she worked as a legal secretary.
Cotter quoted Springsteen:
"She used to work downtown," he said of his Mom. "She'd get out at 4:30 and I remember I would go down and meet her. It was a big deal, like going to the White House. She worked all the way in the back of the office, and I'd walk down the aisle, filled with perfume from all the ladies working there. I'll always remember how it smelled."
Before playing "Ramrod," he reminisced about his truck getting impounded by the Englishtown police after a mix-up over unpaid traffic tickets.
"In my day, the Englishtown police looked like they'd seen 'Deliverance' one too many times," Springsteen said.
He dedicated "This Hard Land," to Marion Vinyard, wife of Tex, who served as manager of Springsteen's first real band, "The Castiles," and was in the audience at St. Rose that night.
At the end of the set, The Boss debuted a song named after his hometown. Before playing "Freehold," Springsteen told the crowd that, "I'm only going to sing this song once in my life. It's going to be right now." (He did actually play it a few more times, but, you get the idea.)
"I was born right I was born right here on Randolph St. in Freehold," the song begins. "Here, right behind that big red maple in Freehold. Well, I went to school right here, got laid, and had my first beer in Freehold. Well, my folks both lived and worked right here in Freehold.
"I remember running up the street past the convent to the church here in Freehold. I chased my daddy down in these bars, first fell in love with this guitar, here in Freehold."
The song wistfully name-drops locals like Tex and Marion Vinyard, George Theiss, Springsteen's Castiles bandmate, then-Freehold Mayor Mike Wilson, and Maria Espinosa, who gave him his first kiss after a dance at the YMCA canteen.
But Springsteen also sings about the difficulties of growing up in a place he describes as "a bit of a red neck town back then."
Buy Photo Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, at a party at the St. Rose of Lima School cafeteria in November 1996. (Photo: Asbury Park Press archives)
"I got outta here really hard and fast in Freehold, everyone wanted to kick my a -- back there in Freehold," Springsteen said.
Coyne said the show was "like a family reunion. Bruce spoke from the stage with a whole new level of familiarity and intimacy, making references to places and people we all knew."
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the night was the story that Springsteen told before playing "Born in the U.S.A.," a song about a working-class Vietnam veteran who finds himself isolated from his community when he returns from the war.
Coyne remembers how Springsteen told a story about asking his mother, as a boy, why there were white crosses clustered at Elks Point, near the Elks Lodge downtown.
"They're for the men from our town who died in the war," she told him. Coyne is the author of "Marching Home: To War and Back With the Men of One American Town," a book that tells the stories of young men from Freehold who fought in World War II and their experiences at war and back home.
"And then he said, 'This is for my Aunt Edie,' and played a slashing acoustic version of "Born in the U.S.A.," Coyne said. "His aunt Edie was there, and there were plenty of other people who understood, as I did, what he meant. One of those crosses bore the name of Frank Bruno, the last man from Freehold killed in World War II, who was married to Bruce's aunt, Edie Urbelis, and who never met the son they had together.
"Edie had tears in her eyes when I saw her after the show," Coyne said. "So did I."
Setlist for Springsteen's Nov. 8, 1996 concert at St. Rose of Lima, Freehold:
THE RIVER (with Soozie Tyrell) / ADAM RAISED A CAIN / STRAIGHT TIME / HIGHWAY 29 / DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN / JOHNNY 99 / MANSION ON THE HILL (with Patti Scialfa and Soozie Tyrell) / THE WISH / RED HEADED WOMAN / TWO HEARTS (with Patti Scialfa and Soozie Tyrell) / WHEN YOU'RE ALONE (with Patti Scialfa and Soozie Tyrell) / OPEN ALL NIGHT / USED CARS / BORN IN THE U.S.A. / THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD / SINALOA COWBOYS / THE LINE / BALBOA PARK / ACROSS THE BORDER / GROWIN' UP / THIS HARD LAND / MY HOMETOWN(with Soozie Tyrell) / RACING IN THE STREET (with Soozie Tyrell) / THE PROMISED LAND / IN FREEHOLD.
Setlist courtesy of Brucebase.
Jean Mikle: (732) 643-4050, jmikle@gannettnj.com