It’s Not About The Music (How to create a 50-year fan base)
It was a muggy August night in 1978, and Gary Sikorski was cruising around downtown with his buddies, doing the same as most other teens with a free evening in Cleveland’s blue-collar neighborhoods: twisting the volume dial on the car radio to near deafening.
The windows were down on the old blue-and-white Corvair and his pals were crammed in the back, belting out lyrics on a night off from their summer jobs toiling in local factories and machine shops or tending bar. Gary was the lucky one; he worked as an usher at some of the city’s music halls. He’d already heard the man whose music had defined his teenage years, growing up in the rust belt in the ‘70s.
The night he first experienced his music live, he fell to his knees. He still remembers the smell of the carpet and the sensation of being overwhelmed. “The music was so real and alive—sort of unpracticed. You never knew what the band was going to do. It felt like it was happening for the first time.” Once, Gary got so close he caught a black cap the rocker tossed his way. He still has it. That night in 1978, he was about to have his closest encounter yet. The guys with him – high school buddies who called themselves “the crows”— dreamed that, somehow, they could get close to their idol, a rock star who, by then, seemed like he was unstoppable. He was the man they’d gathered a day early for outside a Cleveland bar, to make sure they could get a good seat.
They’d packed sandwiches and snacks to make it through camping out outside the concert venue but abandoned their spots in hopes that they could find the star of the show in a hotel parking lot.
And they did. At the downtown Holiday Inn parking lot, Gary threw the car in park, and they all ran out, slamming doors and sprinting toward the lobby. It was another friend, Scott McLaren, who had the only moment’s hesitation: He couldn’t go empty-handed. He grabbed a baloney sandwich from their stash and joined the others.
The guys were almost too late. Just as they made it into the lobby, they saw him behind closing elevator doors. They shouted out his name and held their breath. What happened next was like a dream.
Bruce Springsteen stopped the doors and waved them over.
They talked for a few minutes, the boys from Cleveland in awe that he was taking time with them, even though that’s what they’d hoped for in their hearts. They kept telling him how much they couldn’t wait to see the show the next day. Their idol chatted and signed a few autographs. Then he asked whether there was anything to eat around town at that hour. Scott, remembering his token, offered a baloney sandwich, no cheese. To their amazement, Bruce grinned and accepted the gift, signing a “thanks for the baloney sandwich, Scott” note. As the elevator doors closed again, one of them called out a final request: “Do a song for the Brookpark boys tomorrow.” He paused for a second, “For who?” The guys responded in unison: “The Brookpark boys.”
Their other buddies didn’t believe them when they gathered for the concert the next evening. The band played just two rows ahead of the guys from suburban Cleveland, hearts “beating like a jackhammer” as they saw the band they’d waited three years to see live again. The first three songs had the whole place rattled, shaking with intensity as the singer paced a makeshift runway. Before the fifth song, one they all knew by heart, the singer paused.
Bruce Springsteen—The Boss himself—stopped and dedicated the song “Factory” to a special crew: “Gonna do this for Scott and the guys from Brookpark. Met you guys last night, driving around all night trying to find me.”
Bruce Springsteen remembered them. They felt like the rock stars, on top of the world, if only for a few moments of wild whistling and back-slapping. It was unbelievable.
Most shocking, Gary says, is that, when the same gang gathered six months later for a larger Springsteen show—one with about 10,000 people at Cleveland’s Richfield Coliseum, Bruce spotted them again, in the fifth row this time. He gave another shout-out to the “guys from Brookpark.” “It’s not that we saw him before the show or anything,” Gary says, still with a note of surprise in his voice, nearly 40 years later. “He looked at us and recognized us.”
The guys would follow the band around as often as they could manage for years, together when they could pull it off. Their shared love of Springsteen provided a point of connection as the men finished college and launched across the globe—Tokyo, Boston, Dallas—to pursue careers and start families, Gary says. “A big part of our friendship was music, and especially Springsteen.” When a few of them met up at a small theater show in Rhode Island in spring 2017, their talk went back to that unbelievable August night, as it usually does. That was the night Springsteen, whose lyrics spelled out their families’ lifestyles—their struggles and triumphs—singled them out. “When we were going to see Bruce and the E Street Band, we felt like we were going to see our friends,” Gary says. “A lot of people felt that way.”
Brian Schmuck, another of the guys and one who missed out on the in-person encounter but spent his entire $60 life savings to hawk a ticket outside the show, spent thirty years listening to a recording of the tape from that show, one he says is still the best Bruce Springsteen concert ever. “Every road trip, it was with me, beginning to end,” he said. “You can hear the eruption—‘Scott and the guys from Brookpark’—and you can hear our group, everybody, yelling and my amazingly loud whistle.”
That was 1978, a turning point for Bruce and the band, who had just returned from three years of court-ordered silence. Bruce had hit what seemed like the top; he’d been on the covers of Time and Newsweek in 1975, his songs providing anthems for teens of that era. After the band came back, finally, with Darkness on the Edge of Town, band members focused on the raw intimacy of small, live venues and connecting with the audience with songs that spoke straight to the plight of the working class. Springsteen and his bandmates played longer and harder for their audiences; his hard-working fans spent hard-earned money to see him perform, and he’d give them every penny’s worth with shows that were three or four hours long. Just like he still does.
Moments like the baloney sandwich story—and fan interaction from the stage—didn’t stop after the band had proved they were here to stay or as Springsteen rose to international superstardom.
In a 1981 Musician interview with music critic Dave Marsh, Bruce shared a telling story:
“The other night I went out, I went driving, we were in St. Louis. Got a car and went out, drove all around. Went to the movies by myself, walked in, got my popcorn. This guy comes up to me, real nice guy. He says, ‘Listen. You want to sit with me and my sister?’ I said, ‘Alright.’
“… And he had the amazing courage to come up to me at the end of the movie and ask if I’d go to his home and meet his mother and father. I said, ‘What time is it?’ It was 11 o’clock, so I said, ‘Well, OK.’
“So I go home with him, he lives out in some suburb. So we get over to the house and here’s his mother and father, laying out on the couch, watching TV and reading the paper. He brings me in and says, ‘Hey, I got Bruce Springsteen here.’ And they don’t believe him. So he pulls me over and he says, ‘This is Bruce Springsteen.’ ‘Aw, g’wan,’ they say. So he runs in his room and brings out an album and he holds it up to my face. And his mother says, ‘Ohhh yeah!’ She starts yelling ‘Yeah!’ She starts screaming.
And for two hours I was in this kid’s house, talking with these people, they were really nice. They cooked me up all this food, watermelon, and the guy gave me a ride home a few hours later.
“I felt so good that night.”
He wasn’t annoyed with the fan who asked him first to sit next to him and then to go home with him. He admired him. He said he was courageous. And he said yes to meeting his family and then spent three hours in their suburban St. Louis home—and he left full of gratitude. It made him feel good.
Enjoying people, getting to know them—that wasn’t a performance. It was who he was and who he still is. He’s still known for shows that go hours longer than others and for unforgettable interactions with audiences, like the time in 2014 in Houston when he sang “No Surrender” with a 16-year-old skipping class whose brother held up a “Can We Sing?” sign at a concert. That attitude and the time Bruce takes with his fans—joining a street musician, bringing a fully costumed Elvis impersonator from crowd to stage with him to sing two songs, or switching the couple who’d scraped together just enough to see him from the most distant seats to the very best in the house—are constant reminders of his awareness of others and his recognition of who they really are. That’s how he makes people across generations feel like they belong, like they’ve been rooting for him for years, as Brian Schmuck says. Bruce has been rooting for them right back.
If his music—his Competency—gave Springsteen his star power, his personal connections gave him his staying power. His ability to communicate that he sees fans where they are has inspired the lasting, enthusiastic fans, people who are almost zealous in their devotion to the “Church of Bruce.” That’s a point Linda K. Randall explores in Finding Grace in the Concert Hall, a book that compares Springsteen concerts to church revival meetings in their ability to bring thousands together in some kind of “communion.” Bruce’s goodwill, his kindness, and his willingness to break bread—or sandwiches—with everyday folks have helped to create in fans a sense that they belong with him, and with each other, too. Springsteen creates that belonging not only through lyrics that call out to the working class and music that resonates, but also through his accessibility, through gestures that aren’t impossible to achieve. Other celebrities have done this, but Bruce has done it consistently, for decades. It’s part of what makes him who he is and why people still love him.
In the case of folks like “the crows,” the buddies from Brookpark who still gather to talk music and Bruce, they’ve formed their own sort of communion around the man who took the time to recognize them with his songs and with a personal mention from the stage, twice. (You can hear for yourself at the 21:25 mark: https://youtu.be/L8kUyBoHfTo)
Scott, the now 58-year-old who presented a foil-wrapped baloney sandwich to the Boss, said it’s that accessibility—remembering names and punctuating his concerts with memorable moments—that makes them all feel knit together. “I see the whole band as an inspiration. They were a diverse band and they all never forgot where they came from. You have friends like that, you have friends for life.” Even as the venues got bigger and newer generations found a shared passion for Bruce, Scott says, Bruce has held onto a version of that intimacy that makes him feel like a friend.
“I honestly can’t think of any other performer with that fan base and loyalty through all the years,” he says. “He attracts everybody. Grandfathers will bring their sons and grandsons and granddaughters. He’s firm about his beliefs but also about enjoying the good things in life: family and working hard and being true. You see it in the way he interacts with people. Even if there’s a concert I’ve seen three times on cable, I’ll tune in again because I’ll catch those moments that are just like magic.”
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How did Bruce Springsteen become one of America’s most famous singers and songwriters, a man who’s sold more than 120 million albums worldwide? How did he build a fervently loyal fan base that lasted more than 40 years? He met the three needs: Safer, Easier, Better. Relentless in his perfectionism, he made music that demonstrated his skill, but he also built a solid sense of Belonging. Springsteen fans have found someone who is like them—who understands them and includes them—but also someone who takes the time to recognize who they are. He does that through music that speaks to how they live and also by creating unforgettable on-stage moments where he makes individuals feel recognized.
Bruce became the star he is because he didn’t forget the people who made him a star. It’s the reason you’ll see those who experience over-the-top success in the entertainment industry repeatedly thank their fans. Those who do so in extraordinary ways—and those who put in extraordinary effort to recognize who they are, to understand their situation and sometimes call them out by name—are the most memorable, the ones with true staying power.