Paul Scraton on Bruce Springsteen’s 1988 East Germany concert…
At almost fifteen years old, Peter didn’t dream of seeing Bruce Springsteen in concert. He liked some of the songs he’d heard, but as he sat poised by his tape recorder in East Berlin waiting for the RIAS broadcasts from the other side of the Wall, his preferred artists were Peter Gabriel and Michael Jackson. The station Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor–Radio in the American Sector–would play albums in their entirety, uninterrupted, for exactly people like Peter to record.
But not dreaming about concerts wasn’t only a matter of musical taste. “To see Bruce Springsteen wasn’t a dream for me,” says Peter today, because in the GDR “you didn’t dream of things, you didn’t wish for things, that had no possibility of coming true.” His words sound, ironically, like a line plucked from a Springsteen song.
Klaus, on the other hand, was a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. “I was back then,” he says, “and I still am today.” He knew all the songs, and the opportunity to see Springsteen and the E Street Band live in concert was something Klaus had long hoped for—when the chance came there was no question as to whether he would be there.
Klaus’s eyes light up as he remembers the day. 19th July 1988. Thirty degrees. A summer evening of the kind Bruce sings about, only this was not New Jersey but Berlin-Weißensee, and not a grand U.S. Stadium but Weißensee’s former race track that was about to play host to the single biggest gathering of people in the GDR to that point—a crowd not matched in size until the following year, when mass demonstrations would lead to the end of the German Democratic Republic.
Records show that some 160,000 tickets were printed for the concert, though it seems likely that there were many more in attendance. In his book Bruce Springsteen: Rocking the Wall, Erik Kirschbaum estimates the true figure as at least 300,000. Search for a recording of the concert today and aerial footage shows simply a mass of people.
Klaus had no ticket for the event, “but even in the GDR, there was a black market”. He paid twice the face value for a ticket that cost 20 Marks, and that he thinks he still has somewhere, complete with the faded picture of Springsteen, logos of the FDJ (the official youth movement of the GDR) and the ruling SED (Socialist Unity Party), and the slogan: Konzert für Nikaragua (Concert for Nicaragua).
Doors were to open at 4pm, and the concert would start at 7pm. Peter, who was not yet fifteen, still cannot believe his parents let him go. “You wouldn’t do that today,” he says, but back then it was clear that now only would it be safe, but “that Springsteen wouldn’t ever be coming back.” In their recollections, both Peter and Klaus speak of the crowds on the long walk from the closest public transport to the venue; masses and masses of people, many of whom didn’t have tickets but were determined to see or hear the concert no matter what.
As the pressure built up outside the venue’s entrance long before the concert was due to start, the gates were opened early, at around 2pm. Later they would be abandoned entirely as security fences were tipped over by the crowd. “And then we were in,” grins Klaus. “The next job was to find a beer, and then find the best spot to see the concert. Of course, there was no chance to get close to the stage.”
Somewhere else in the crowd, Peter and his friends were waiting for the concert to start. He didn’t know many songs and he was a long way from the stage, but ultimately it wouldn’t matter. “It was music,” he says. “Different music. Something from the real world out there that had somehow dropped in through a hole in the space-time continuum, through a crack in the matrix, and had landed in East Berlin.”
The first song of the four-hour set was Badlands, a song that hadn’t previously opened any show on Springsteen’s mammoth Tunnel of Love world tour, and clearly a carefully considered choice. A song about escape and freedom, performed by one of America’s biggest rock stars at a concert promoted by the GDR’s own socialist youth organisation. No wonder the 14-year-old Pe…