Bruce Springsteen played, by my estimation, about 210 shows in 1973 (the only time he ever came close to that number again was in 2018, when he played around 175 shows). It was his busiest year by far, as he released two albums—his debut, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and its quick follow-up, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle—in 11 months, transforming from a bright-eyed Jersey kid in a band called Steel Mill to a leather-clad, blue-collar hero commanding the stage all on his own. If Dylan was the voice of a generation, then Springsteen was the voice of everything else.
Bruce had not yet stepped into Born to Run by this point (though he had apparently come up with the title around then)—he wasn’t yet consumed by the towering haunts of memory and regret and fleeting innocence. No, he was 24 years old and infatuated with the summer vibrancy of the nearby…
