photo by Marc Millman

Until a couple of weeks back, I’d never been to a Bruce Springsteen concert. I’m merely an informal fan. Yes, we do exist: 34 years old, Caucasian … and yet only casual supporter of The Boss. I own used copies of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town on vinyl, have three other Bruce records on my iPod, and it pretty much ends there.

Anyway, after I clear the security line for Feb. 10’s show in Hartford, Conn., the first person I see is (shockingly) a middle-aged white sportswriter, who I happen to know but was not aware would be at the concert. It could not have been more cliché nor a more appropriate coincidental introduction to my first Springsteen experience. There’s a long-running meme in American sports media about how every white male sportswriter between the age of 30 and 60 is a dieheard Bruce fan. Like any good joke, it’s based in a lot of truth. This man, an affable reporter and dutiful writer, is asking me if I listened “to the tape from Albany” from a couple of nights before, or if I’d seen this other Springsteen superfan (also another sportswriter!) who was at the show that night. Some guy who’d logged more than 200 Bruce shows.

Sorry, man. I’m just here to catch the show and see if it can possibly live up to the decades-in-the-making hype.

My concert-going résumé was incomplete without be exposed to, as reputation would have it, one of the most powerful live-music experiences in American culture. That rep is well-earned. Bruce and his E Street Band are closing in on 40 years worth of of gigs, and in that time they’ve assembled a musical militia to push the cause. That’s the thing about Bruce fans: They’re just as fevered and prideful of their concert stats and ticket stubs as honks for Phish, the Dead and Dave Matthews Band. The difference with Bruce advocates pretty much comes down to an affinity for leather jackets and an overcompensating pride with New Jersey affiliations. They’ve never been burdened with a stigma because the core of the fanbase has always been steeped in upright citizenship and lunch-pail ethos.

Yet there’s definitely a sense of communal elitism to his graying devotees. Springsteen has managed to become one of the greatest American rockers ever, yet still has a distinct insider-appeal to his music. There is a sheen between Bruce’s greater public image within American culture vs. what it actually means to follow the man, adore the band and continually identify with the four or five motifs he’s pushed from his gut and sung from his throat about since 1970.

The Boss does bring in a varied crowd. He is agist-proof. I brought a buddy with me to the show — who was absolutely not a Bruce fan to start but was evangelized by the time we walked out — and we were squeezed 50 rows up between a pair of coeds who sang every word, and this married septuagenarian couple. The man claimed to have been a roadie on Bruce’s crew in the ’80s. He tells me there were about 300 people on the payroll during the Born in the USA tour. He can no longer fully bend his left knee.

In the row directly behind us, a man is asking the couple next to him if “that guy with the guitar” is playing on this tour, a tour promoting Bruce’s 1980 double album, The River. The guy with the guitar he’s referring to is Tom Morello, the inventive Rage Against the Machine songwriter whose sound you’d never think to pair with Springsteen, yet the two have done just that on multiple tours in recent years.

“He’s not, and thank goodness,” a woman interjects. “He’s not part of the E Street Band. I don’t like him.”

Alright then. Let’s do this.

With the house lights still up, the nine-member band comes on stage at 7:59. I can’t help but immediately notice how they all look like characters in a play. Each member stands out because of wardrobe. Bruce in his typical all-dark look, vest adorned, as always; Steven Van Zandt draped in his babushka; Max Weinberg dapper in a three-piece suit, sans sport coat; Nils Lofgren continuing to look like some sort of mix between tortured Euro painter and aging skateboarder; Soozie Tyrell, the lone woman up there and a fine fill-in on this night for E Street queen Patti Scialfa; keys man Roy Bittan looks like he could sit in with the Boston Symphony tomorrow; meantime, it’s bassist Garry Tallent who looks like the coolest guy on the stage, someone straight out of the coolest jazz club in town; and Jake Clemons, nephew of the Big man, asked to do the impossible and step in for dad. He cuts a fun figure, his buoyant hair a square-frame glasses showing a youthful link to his late, great uncle, Clarence.

Max Weinberg’s thunderous tom work starts the show. There is little time wasted on the stage. It’s like: Everybody get up there. Bruce, strap on your classic, well-worn yellow Tele, and it’s off to work for the next three hours and 17 minutes.

The show starts with an outtake from The River sessions, “Meet Me in the City.” If you put all the components into what make a Bruce Springsteen song a Bruce Springsteen song, this is what a computer would spit out. Which is to say it’s a fitting opening. Right before the final verse, Bruce yells out, “Are you ready to be entertained? Are you ready to be entertained? Are you ready to be transformed?”

That’s a hell of a vow delivered in the form of a rhetorical question. Eighty percent of the place is already on its way to transformation. The song finishes, the lights go down, and Bruce goes into explaining this tour, working on The River and what it meant then, and now. It clearly still means so much to him for his fans, be they 15 or 75 years old, to identify with the man who made The River in 1980.

It helped for me, too. There’s massive sonic capacity to Bruce’s music, but for most, unless we have a narrative or story line tied to it, a lot of his songs can be swapped out without much distinction. This is an opinion that will have plenty of Bruce purists scoffing, but the man himself proudly admits to building an empire on four chords, a stockade of sound, and the occasional but reliable, 32-bar sax solo.

Here’s how Bruce set up the night, the tour, the life he was trying to make 36 years ago: “On The River I was trying to find my way inside. By the time I got to that album I’d noticed the things that bond people in their lives: work, commitments, families. I wanted to imagine and wanted to write about those things. I figured if I could write about them I could get a little closer to having them in my own life. So that’s what I did. I wanted to make a record that was a big and felt like life — or an E Street Band show. I wanted a record that contained fun, dancing, laughter, jokes, good comradeship, love, faith, sex, lonely nights. And of course teardrops. And if I figured if I could’ve made a record big enough to contain those things, maybe I’d edge a little closer to the answers at home I was trying to find. So tonight, I want you to come with me on that journey and see what we find 30 years on, as we go down to The River.”

The whole idea of The River tour is to appeal to the diehards. The whole concept of The River is to appeal to the most basic human instincts and wants. It’s not Bruce’s best album, not by a long shot. It’s not his second-best record, nor his third-best record. And for most, not even fourth-best. It’s a bulky double LP with a lot of same-sounding songs, but as always, it’s the muscle of those songs and the force of Springsteen’s will that can reel you in. This is how you build an army.

With Bruce, it’s about comradeship. You see it when he’s strolling along the front part of his massive, three-tiered stage. He and the band use just about every square foot of that stage over the course of a show; it’s really hard to have a bad seat at a Bruce show, because you can really tell the whole band tries its best to give attention to every section in the arena. The frontman poses for selfies, signs posters and croons closely among the desperate arms flung up front. With the ax draped across his back, he seems vulnerable and fully in control.

You can see how people become converts at concerts. It’s understandable the minute you witness a 66-year-old man body-surfing on his back across across hundreds of hands, being delivered back to his dais during an interlude of “Hungry Heart.” He’s got a wireless mic, and he’s calling out, “Jakey!” to take the sax solo. It’s a goosebumps-inducing moment. Dismiss Bruce’s music if you want, but is impossible not to enjoy the showmanship and undeniable entertainment value of of this kind of performance and trust with an audience.

From “Two Hearts” to “Hungry Heart,” then the flip-switch to the serious swagger of “Crush on You” seguing into “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch),” it’s just a romp. “The River” has a harp sound that can pierce, and “Point Blank” is an awesome, mood-setting slow-down song — one of the best performances of the night. At least until “I’m a Rocker” begins, and then that feels like the best song so far. I get the repeating sensation 10 or 11 times.

After “Wreck on the Highway” finishes, closing out The River, things get ridiculously loud. Metal-show loud. “Cover Me” is an absolute time. I spot Bruce’s lighting director near the back of the arena floor aggressively convulsing his body in time with lighting cues. You gotta figure this guy has heard “Cover Me” 3,000 times and yet he’s a happy marionette.

“She’s the One” booms, then “Loose Ends” is busted out of nowhere with Bruce giving his trademark jerks and stabs at that gorgeously bruised Tele. Lofgren’s moment to shine on “Because the Night” is some of the best solo work of the night from anyone, and by the time we get to “The Rising,” well, it’s Springsteen as doctrine. “Thunder Road” — a song I’ve never really liked, if I’m being honest with myself — starts up and the lights catch a pair of thirtysomething bros hugging and leaning over the front railing at the base of section 136 behind the stage. I fear they might fall and will not regret it one bit.

The encore blitz of “Born to Run,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Rosalita,” “Bobby Jean” and a cover of “Shout!” is dominating, infectious, skull-rattling and total hell on the feet. The band’s played almost three and a half hours with maybe five total minutes of stoppage between songs. At one point during “Rosalita,” Springsteen, Van Zandt, Tyrell and Clemons and unintentionally knock over a mic stand at the front of the stage. Throughout all of this I can’t even see sweat on Bruce’s brow.

The show seemed so long but felt so short. It featured one song written within the past 28 years. It’s a nostalgia trip, and at this point that’s kind of the point. It’s not holding onto the past; it’s trying to keep youth in the room.

There are a handful of bands and artists whose music and output reaches a level of critical and fan appeal that it can seem daunting to even pretend to try and be well-versed (Bowie’s discography immediately springs to mind), but the truth is you can simply enjoy Springsteen on a surface level. His live show allows for it. They will be deep cuts, sure, but more so guaranteed classics and an environment that reminds you rock and roll is at its most powerful when the artist and the fan base are fully committed, no matter the venue, no matter the age.