SLANE SPECIAL: 95,000 reasons Bruce Springsteen can never forget his epic Slane show

Bruce Springsteen threatened to pull his European tour of 1985 during the interval of his Slane Castle concert that year, as he was angry at the “dangerously swaying” crowd close to the stage.
He recounts the concert in his autobiography, ‘Born To Run’, and says that Slane Castle was his first stadium tour, ever.

“Precariously perched in a field fifty miles outside of Dublin were 95,000 people. The largest crowd I’d ever seen. They completely filled a grassy bowl bounded by the Boyne River at our stage’s rear and Slane Castle, perched in front on a high green knoll, in the distance. The crowd closest to the stage, an immediate couple of thousand, were deeply into their Guinness and dangerously swaying from left to right,” Springsteen writes.

It was in the early years of Slane, the year following the riots at the Bob Dylan gig, and the earlier Thin Lizzy inaugural concert in 1981.
Springsteen continues: “They were opening up gaping holes amongst themselves as audience members by the dozens fell to the muddy ground, vanishing for bearable seconds ‘til righted once again by their neighbours. Then, once standing, they’d slosh back the other way, and the whole interminable, nerve-grinding exercise would be repeated again, ad infinitum. It was a sight too hairy for my tender eyes. I thought somebody was going to get killed and it would be my fault.”
He said that at stage right, Pete Townshend and a variety of rock luminaries bemusedly watched him break into the big time.

“At stage left stood my wife; this was our first trip together as a married couple, and I felt like I was going to come apart before her eyes. I was singing, I was playing, I was thinking .... I can’t stand up here and sing these songs, not these songs, while putting people in a situation where they could be grievously injured.” I kept singing, I kept playing, but I was in a pure rage and simmering panic. Okay, Mr Big Time, how’d you get here?”
Springsteen said he was seething when they broke for intermission, and when his manager, Jon Landau joined him in his trailer at the interval, in the middle of the biggest concert of his life, they had a highly charged debate about cancelling the entire tour.
“I could not face what was happening in front of the stage at Slane on a nightly basis. It was irresponsible and violated the protective instinct for my audience I prided myself on.

Fans were pouring, red faced, soaked in booze and heat exhaustion, over the front barriers to be taken to the medical tent or to flank the crowd, throw themselves back in and take another crack at it.
The crowd settled during the second half of the Slane show, and he observed there was a sketchy but ritual orderliness to what appeared on stage to be pure chaos. The crowd protected one another.
“If you fell, the nearest person to your left or right reached down, grabbed an arm and pulled you upright. It wasn’t pretty (or to my eye, safe), but it worked.

 

“To them it was just a beautiful day with a rocking band. In the end, Slane joined a rising number of other performances to attain a “legendary” status, and, despite my distraction, turned out to be a solid show. If you were there, you were there. I was certainly there.”