Bruce Springsteen delivered a humorous monologue about his life and career during his acoustic performance of the classic “Rosalita.” Below is the full piece, courtesy of Live Daily.
In addition to the monologue, I’ve also posted some video clips from the show. In the first video, the finale version of “Rosalita,” watch Badly Drawn Boy’s facial expression when Springsteen signals for him to take the second verse and later in the song watch Craig Finn’s excitement as he takes over for Springsteen on the bridge.
“Well, it’s getting late, unfortunately. And this song is really long. Man, I wrote a lot of lyrics back then! Anyway, you don’t really want to hear the rest of the story. You know the damn story already. Rosie rode off with our hero . . . they got married . . . and they lived pretty much happily ever after, more or less . . . despite what you might read in one or two tabloid stories. Our hero got himself a band . . . Made a fortune and became a star and made a whole lot of people happy with his songs for a reasonable price. . . and then he started to get sort of happy himself. So he broke up the band, and started writing a bunch of songs about being happy. And no one liked them. So he got the band back together. He wrote some new songs. These ones were about being sad. Everyone loved them. And the years went by. Our hero put on a few pounds. His hair started to get some grey in it - at least when he wasn’t touching it up. The United States turned into a kingdom. The whole damn planet got so pissed off about the whole thing that it just started getting hotter and hotter. Some babies came. And then they turned into children. And then they turned into…something else. And our hero came one night to the biggest city in the world. And he found himself onstage at the fanciest music house in the whole world. I know you’re thinking this story is bull****. I know it doesn’t really happen like that . But tonight, I’m telling you, it’s all true. So we might as well just cut to the chase already!”
April 15th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
I think Craig Finn’s expressions pretty much sum up what this show must have felt like. This one will go down in history. Dang, I wish I could have been there.