Who's the boss?
Bell, Robert H.
WHITS THE BOSS? SCALPED & REBORN IN LONDON Like a lot of modern parents, my wife and I have equal responsibility for the care of our two-year-old daughter. My wife teaches her the basics, like...
...With this love for the philosophy and poetry of Bruce Springsteen...
...Binpe tpw» what.the Royal-Shakespeare Company chsadiulcbl "Well, honey, we don't exactly have seats...
...The guy knows what it means to dream: "Everybody has a hungry bean...
...exclaimed my wife...
...Well, what me beck, I had my Springteen tickets...
...I asked, trying to speak British...
...Booos...
...To roe goes the larger responsibility of molding the child's morals...
...What I admire about Bruce, besides his dynamite guitar licks, are the character traits that enable him to brush off an insult like the one he got from Esquire...
...I'll teach you ail the words...
...if we'd gone to Henry V, we'd have eaten at an Indian restaurant instead of mooching cold sandwiches and Cadbury chocolates out of a brown bag...
...It's a task I take seriously...
...I yelled at my wife, who had arrived a few days earlier than I. "Completely sold out...
...you've gotta get out while you're young...
...Forty pooixb a ticket...
...On the bridge to the stadium were thousands of fans filing to the conceit — and nearly as many guys lined up against the wall hollering, "Springsteen tickets...
...I would look at flowers on Thursday if she would agree to bag the Royal Shakespeare Company and scalp Springsteen tickets...
...We finally got into the stadium some three hours later, and Springsteen began performing a couple of hours after that...
...I myself had a temporary letdown, during which I was unable to help with the housework...
...which I'd been practicing for months on our daughter...
...It was a little hard to tell if the Boss was blowing diem out of the water...
...1 got them," he said, "but I'm afraid they did cost the full forty pounds apiece...
...But it's a bargainl How often do you have a chance to see and hear me future of rock and roll ?" Here I gave her my rendition of'' Bon in the USA...
...I noticed that Sam Sheptrd began scowling more, and wrote six or eight really depressing plays...
...I could try to find them for you, but you'd have to pay what the market is demanding...
...That's right, darling...
...Calling a ticket agent, I atked, I'I don't suppose you've got any Springsteen tickets...
...Bruce Springsteen is the Boss...
...Conspicuously omitted from their list of "The Best of the New Generation: Men and Women Who Are Changing America," Bruce bounced right back...
...1 explained that "sold out" only means that tickets aren't available at the box office...
...Other Esquire omittees had a harder time coping with the affront...
...Other people can be fortified by paying attention to Brace's poetry—because that's what it is...
...After all...
...I inquired...
...It's too late anyway...
...poetry...
...And you didn't get tickets...
...Bnice stayed cool because he is fortified by a pfafloaqphy of-fife...
...It's general admission, so we have to get out to Wembley Stadium a little early to wait in line...
...I must have looked dismayed, be cause he quickly added, "but I'll negotiate...
...And he's known the gut-wrenching pain of shattered hopes: "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse...
...His songs use a lot of poetic devices, like emphatic repetition...
...I might be able to get them a few pounds cheaper,'' he said, "but don't count on it...
...You may recall my account of a precocious dialogue with my daughter which appeared in the May 17 Commonweal: "Kaillin...
...You mean I have to take a train to look, at flowers all day...
...I walked around the Mock for an hour, poked into the British Museum to check out the Rosetta Stone, and, bustied back to me ticket office...
...who's the Boss...
...I was awfully excited to discover, when 1 arrived in London this summer, that the Boss was giving a concert...
...ROBERT H. MOA (Robert H. Bell teaches English at Williams College and airs hit humor on National Public Radio...
...She hadn't thought of scalping tickets...
...Aad what, pray, might that be...
...My wife teaches her the basics, like how to eat...
...Get your Springsteen tickets right here...
...See his picture on the album cover...
...she replied...
...If I hadn't actually had the tickets in hand, I would .have worried myself sick...
...A great record...
...But rushing right .over to his office in Oxford Circus, I showed him that this was one Yank who wasn't going to be exploited...
...Streets of Fire" repeats the title thirty-seven times, while the chorus of "I'm Goiu' Down" makes the direc tion very clear...
...Twenty pounds...
...How much...
...Boy,that's a lot fora ticket...
...That's the Boss...
...Jeez," I mumbled, handling him eighty pounds...
...Well," I explained to my wife, "how can you value peace of mind...
...But he finds comfort the only place you can — in girls, in cars, in busting out of town with your radio blastin': "It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap...
...When she made it clear that Sissinghurt is a garden...
...climb, draw...
...Quickly calculating that forty pounds is about fifty-five American bucks, I was thrilled, but cleverly pretended to be surprised...
...I objected...
...Bruce...
...As is our custom, we negotiated a settlement...
...Still, 1 did get a dim sense of being blown out of the water, and my wife found out who was BOSS...
...share, read, and feel...
...From where we were seated, be looked like a berserk Lilliputian hopping around screaming "Streets of Fire...
...then sit through Henry V - while the Boss is blowing them out of the water...
...By going out to Wembley Stadium at 2:00 we saved scads more money...
...I've never seen such demand for tickets," he replied...
...With my canny knack for business, even in a foreign land, i took the ball by the horns...
...she said "We're going to Sissinghurt on Wcdncvia) and to the Royal Shakespeare Company that night...
...1 figured I would happily have driven to Boston or New York liar a concert, and that with gas and expenses, it could very well have added up to eighty pounds...
Vol. 112 • September 1985 • No. 16
