Visiting the Boss's Office

About a month ago, an email got spammed into one of my internal mailboxes at the beeb...

Ticket for Sale. Great seat for Bruce Springsteen at Earl's Court. Will sell to highest bidder. Concert is sold out. Ticket cost me £32.70

The particular list is sent to hundreds of people. I was the only one to reply, and so snagged the ticket for £20.01. It was one of the best shows I've been to. They played for more than three hours. To be honest, I'm not really a dedicated Springsteen fan. I think I still have a copy of "Born in the USA" on vinyl in Rusty's garage somewhere, but that's about it. I hadn't realised he was such a blues-meister. I asked him about it later after the show. Well, actually, I meant to ask him, but I couldn't find him.

It's not like I went to the concert just to chat to Bruce. The idea didn't really occur to me until I was deep in the bowels of backstage trying to find a way out of the building. I took the road less-travelled, you see.

After the show was over, I took the first exit I saw. Everyone was streaming past it, but I was in a melancholy mood and wanted to get away from people and be outside with the cold night air. This door appeared to lead directly outside to some weird enclosed concrete terrace, so I went through it. I stood there, just soaking up the experience and thinking back on my life in Canada when I used to be a redneck, pickup-driving, Springsteen kind of guy. Then I wandered off towards another door that promised to lead me to a stairway to street level. This lead back in the building. Right in front of me was a door with a sign on it that said "DANGER! Authorised Entry Only! Roof Access! Keep this door locked at all times!". It was held open by a box of broken lights.

What to do? Hmm? No one seemed to be around. Perhaps I should just peek around the corner. I peeked. Then I stepped over the box and through the door and walked down the corridor a bit.

But I was in a kind of quiet, skittish mood and there was some sound up ahead that might have been a roadie or a giant rat with poisoned fangs or anything, really. So I stepped back over the box of broken lights and headed back down the stairwell, thinking paradoxically that (A) I was really cool and almost snuck onto the roof of Earl's Court Olympia, and (B) that I was a chickenshit, candyass, punk who *almost* snuck onto the roof of Earl's Court Olympia.

Earl's Court Olympia has that look of indeterminate age common to many public buildings in London. Maybe it was built five years ago. Maybe it's something left over from the Romans? It's hard to tell. There are new looking doors and ancient looking doors. As I walked down the stairs towards the exit I stopped on a landing that had ancient-looking doors as opposed to new-looking doors. They were impressive structures of heavy wood held together with bolts as big as walnuts. There were no handles on these doors but I was able to pull them open by grasping one of the bolts with my steely fingers. Everyone beyond this door wore a pass around their neck and I noticed a hand-lettered sign directing the way to catering.

I've always made it a rule to head for the munchies when crashing a social event. When I was younger and less prosperous a significant portion of my caloric intact was cheese and crackers at show-openings and the like. I had to follow the sign to catering. Besides, maybe I could find a souvenir to send someone back home.

"Dear Deb, I stole this egg-salad sandwich from Bruce Springsteen's snack table. It's conceivable he may have touched it.

Enjoy.

Love, Chris"

Things went well for a while. There were many security types floating around but I managed to look busy and preoccupied enough to get past two sets of them. It was at this point that I began rehearsing my interview with Bruce about his blues influences. Unfortunately, I hit the third set just as I hit an unlabelled fork in the passageway. I paused. One of them asked for my pass. The gig was up.

"Sorry," I said, "I'm lost. Just trying to find my way out."

"You know, I'm not exactly sure either," she said. She then proceeded to guide me away from my catering goal and back the way I came.

I found it interesting that the outer perimeter of security guards were all burly men with bald heads. Here, presumably near the inner sanctum, they all seemed to be lovely young women. Odd, don't you think?

My consort asked for directions at the next set of security guards. They shrugged and pointed further down the passage, past the door I had come in. After walking quite a distance past photographers dressed in black, hangers-on dressed in scraggly hair and bell-bottoms, and progressively more masculine and brutish security guards, we ended up at an stairwell.

"Good-bye," said my escort. "Better luck next time."

"Thanks," I said. "You wouldn't, by any chance, have an egg salad sandwich on you?"

She looked at me as if I were a lunatic and I went through the door and down the stairs out into the street.

'You can't start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart'
  -- Bruce Springsteen