BY ADAM BONANNI “How does he do it?” was the question that lingered in my mind up to The Boss’s appearance at the Spectrum Wednesday night. Over 30 years of touring, and I couldn’t imagine him mustering up the same kind of energy rushing through me as I headed down Broad St. to see him with the rip-roarin E Street Band for the very first time! Which only proves the shortcomings of my imagination, because the guy put out like a man half his age. Taking the stage with the ground-shaking opener “Thundercrack,” Springsteen was smiling ear to ear, eyes skyward, making direct eye contact with the cheap seats, as if to say ‘I’m still lookin’ out for the little guy.’ Couldn’t help but do the same myself, although, unlike The Boss, I wasn’t looking at a banner that said I had sold out every seat in the Spectrum 47 times.

Every song was an absolute pleasure for Springsteen and the E Street Band to work through, and it’s doubtful I’ll see another family of musicians so seasoned and at home on stage. Even songs like “Hungry Heart,” which has probably been done to death and back onstage, was given a rowdy spin. Trading his pipes for the register of 18,000 voices, Springsteen allowed his audience to sing alongside the band as he busied himself with a run through the crowd.  “Can we do it?” The Boss shouted as he allowed a hundred people to hoist him across the floor back to the stage. This may be a spectacle performed at every one of his shows, but to witness such an enthusiastic and excited bond between and a superstar of his caliber, I’d believe you if you said it was the first time he’s pulled this off. Which is sorta the magic of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, I suppose — they make every night feel like the first time.

Things got a bit more serious when he settled into the heart of his show; tonight’s centerpiece was a full run through Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s an album I find myself returning to, but I feel, as Springsteen himself conceded many do, its tough what to make of it compared against its predecessor Born to Run. At any rate, its clear the album holds a great deal of meaning for all of us gathered here tonight. Anthems like “Badlands” and “The Promised Land” sent the crowd into a fervor, while “Racing in the Street” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” had the arena hanging on his every word. Springsteen bookended the tail-end of Darkness with a dozen or so of his greatest hits, unable to resist playing “Born to Run” one more time. On stage at least, he’s a young man again, living vicariously through his storied back catalogue, cruising through the Jersey wilds of a gloriously misspent youth, chrome wheel fuel-injected and stepping out over the line. Hail, hail, rock n’ roll!

DAN DELUCA: On this three-hours-plus night, which began boisterously with the roller-rink organ obscurity “Seaside Bar Song” and ended with the final, delirious release of “Rosalita,” Springsteen found himself in the same old dump that he had played 32 times before. “The Spectrum will live forever!,” he bellowed early on, celebrating the grimy old venue that he first performed at in 1973, and where he played his first arena-sized headlining gig anywhere, in October 1976. The album Springsteen was promoting at the time was Born to Run, the breakthrough opus that turned him into a household name to readers of Time and Newsweek. And it was that operatic tour de force that Springsteen chose to perform in its entirety at the first of his final four shows at the Spectrum, which will close its doors for good after a final Pearl Jam show on Halloween. MORE

OBAMA/BIDEN CAMPAIGN:  Bruce Springsteen is coming to Philadelphia this weekend to perform an acoustic set at a rally on the Ben Franklin Parkway in order to assist the Obama campaign’s voter registration and volunteer recruitment efforts. The concert will take place on Saturday at Benjamin Franklin Parkway between 20th and 22nd Streets. Gates open at 2:00 and the program will begin at 3:30. DEVELOPING…

UPDATE: Rolling Stone just asked me to cover this, and TIME is literally on the other line and wants to know what I think about the bailout. I am not making this up.

[Ticket info after the jump.]

For access to the best viewing area, preferred tickets will be distributed to those who sign up to volunteer. This can be done beginning at 10:00 AM on Wednesday at the Obama-Biden campaign for change offices listed below.General admission tickets can be secured HERE

Ticket locations:

Center City
1500 Sansom, Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19102
267-886-8591

South Philly
1501 Christian St
Philadelphia, PA 19146
267-298-8615

West Philly
246 S 52nd St
Philadelphia, PA 19139
267-975-3529

Fishtown
260 East Girard Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19125
267-298-8673

North Philly
2221 N. Broad, 4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19132
267-298-8680

Frankford
7727 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19136
215-904-6004

Ward 23
4915 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19124
267-343-8912

Germantown
7102 Germantown Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19119
267-298-8768

Oaklanes
6521 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19126
215-224-9410

University City
4001 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
267-972-7315

Norristown
1790 Markley St
Norristown, PA 19401
484-684-6072

Pottstown
235 East High St
Pottstown, PA 19464
484-624-5882

Jenkintown
1657 The Fairway
Jenkintown, PA 19046
215-884-2884

Ardmore
6 Greenfield Ave
Ardmore, PA 19143
610-649-7218

Ambler
1123 Bethlehem Pike
Ambler , PA 19002
267-470-4782

Media
362 West Baltimore Ave
Media, PA 19063
484-442-8611

Upper Darby
1404 Bywood Ave
Upper Darby, PA 19082
484-461-1435

Bristol
234 Mill St
Bristol, PA 19007
267-812-5719

Doylestown
72 North Main St
Doylestown, PA 18901
267-880-6673

Bethlehem
531 Main St
Bethlehem, PA 18108
610-807-3690

Allentown
4140 West Tilghman St
Allentown, PA 18104
610-564-4361

Easton
355 Ferry St
Easton, PA 18042
610-564-4777

West Chester
543 East Gay St
West Chester, PA 19380
484-947-5573

Phoenixville
22 South Main Street
Phoenixville, PA 19460
610-241-0247

Reading
147 N 5th St
Reading, PA 19601
610-370-7031

York
200 West Market St
York, PA 17401
717-668-8536

Lancaster
252 Harrisburg Pike
Lancaster, PA 17603
717-435-8197

Harrisburg
401 North 2nd St.
Harrisburg, PA 17101
717-695-6912

Scranton
222 Wyoming Ave 1A
Scranton, PA 18503
570-909-9386

Wilkes-Barre
238 Kidder St
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18702
570-951-9259

Pittsburgh
213 Smithfield St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
412-867-6673

This eulogy was delivered by Bruce Springsteen at Danny Federici‘s funeral on April 21 in Red Bank, New Jersey:

FAREWELL TO DANNY

Let me start with the stories.

Back in the days of miracles, the frontier days when “Mad Dog” Lopez and his temper struck fear into the band, small club owners, innocent civilians and all women, children and small animals.

Back in the days when you could still sign your life away on the hood of a parked car in New York City.

Back shortly after a young red-headed accordionist struck gold on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and he and his mama were sent to Switzerland to show them how it’s really done.

Back before beach bums were featured on the cover of Time magazine.

I’m talking about back when the E Street Band was a communist organization! My pal, quiet, shy Dan Federici, was a one-man creator of some of the hairiest circumstances of our 40 year career… And that wasn’t easy to do. He had “Mad Dog” Lopez to compete with…. Danny just outlasted him.

Maybe it was the “police riot” in Middletown, New Jersey. A show we were doing to raise bail money for “Mad Log” Lopez who was in jail in Richmond, Virginia, for having an altercation with police officers who we’d aggravated by playing too long. Danny allegedly knocked over our huge Marshall stacks on some of Middletown’s finest who had rushed the stage because we broke the law by…playing too long.

As I stood there watching, several police oficers crawled out from underneath the speaker cabinets and rushed away to seek medical attention. Another nice young officer stood in front of me onstage waving his nightstick, poking and calling me nasty names. I looked over to see Danny with a beefy police officer pulling on one arm while Flo Federici, his first wife, pulled on the other, assisting her man in resisting arrest.

A kid leapt from the audience onto the stage, momentarily distracting the beefy officer with the insults of the day. Forever thereafter, “Phantom” Dan Federici slipped into the crowd and disappeared.

A warrant out for his arrest and one month on the lam later, he still hadn’t been brought to justice. We hid him in various places but now we had a problem. We had a show coming at Monmouth College. We needed the money and we had to do the gig. We tried a replacement but it didn’t work out. So Danny, to all of our admiration, stepped up and said he’d risk his freedom, take the chance and play.

Show night. 2,000 screaming fans in the Monmouth College gym. We had it worked out so Danny would not appear onstage until the moment we started playing. We figured the police who were there to arrest him wouldn’t do so onstage during the show and risk starting another riot.

Let me set the scene for you. Danny is hiding, hunkered down in the backseat of a car in the parking lot. At five minutes to eight, our scheduled start time, I go out to whisk him in. I tap on the window.

“Danny, come on, it’s time.”

I hear back, “I’m not going.”

Me: “What do you mean you’re not going?”

Danny: “The cops are on the roof of the gym. I’ve seen them and they’re going to nail me the minute I step out of this car.”

As I open the door, I realize that Danny has been smoking a little something and had grown rather paranoid. I said, “Dan, there are no cops on the roof.”

He says, “Yes, I saw them, I tell you. I’m not coming in.”

So I used a procedure I’d call on often over the next forty years in dealing with my old pal’s concerns. I threatened him…and cajoled. Finally, out he came. Across the parking lot and into the gym we swept for a rapturous concert during which we laughted like thieves at our excellent dodge of the local cops.

At the end of the evening, during the last song, I pulled the entire crowd up onto the stage and Danny slipped into the audience and out the front door. Once again, “Phantom” Dan had made his exit. (I still get the occasional card from the old Chief of Police of Middletown wishing us well. Our histories are forever intertwined.) And that, my friends, was only the beginning.

There was the time Danny quit the band during a rough period at Max’s Kansas City, explaining to me that he was leaving to fix televisions. I asked him to think about that and come back later.

Or Danny, in the band rental car, bouncing off several parked cars after a night of entertainment, smashing out the windshield with his head but saved from severe injury by the huge hard cowboy hat he bought in Texas on our last Western swing.

Or Danny, leaving a large marijuana plant on the front seat of his car in a tow away zone. The car was promptly towed. He said, “Bruce, I’m going to go down and report that it was stolen.” I said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Down he went and straight into the slammer without passing go.

Or Danny, the only member of the E Street Band to be physically thrown out of the Stone Pony. Considering all the money we made them, that wasn’t easy to do.

Or Danny receiving and surviving a “cautionary assault” from an enraged but restrained “Big Man” Clarence Clemons while they were living together and Danny finally drove the “Big Man” over the big top.

Or Danny assisting me in removing my foot from his stereo speaker after being the only band member ever to drive me into a violent rage.

And through it all, Danny played his beautiful, soulful B3 organ for me and our love grew. And continued to grow. Life is funny like that. He was my homeboy, and great, and for that you make considerations… And he was much more tolerant of my failures than I was of his.

When Danny wasn’t causing chaos, he was a sweet, talented, unassuming, unpretentious good-hearted guy who simply had an unchecked ability to make good fortune and things in general go fabulously wrong.

But beyond all of that, he also had a mountain of the right stuff. He had the heart and soul of an engineer. He learned to fly. He was always up on the latest technology and would explain it to you patiently and in enormous detail. He was always “souping” something up, his car, his stereo, his B3. When Patti joined the band, he was the most welcoming, thoughtful, kindest friend to the first woman entering our “boys club.”

He loved his kids, always bragging about Jason, Harley, and Madison, and he loved his wife Maya for the new things she brought into his life.

And then there was his artistry. He was the most intuitive player I’ve ever seen. His style was slippery and fluid, drawn to the spaces the other musicians in the E Street Band left. He wasn’t an assertive player, he was a complementary player. A true accompanist. He naturally supplied the glue that bound the band’s sound together. In doing so, he created for himself a very specific style. When you hear Dan Federici, you don’t hear a blanket of sound, you hear a riff, packed with energy, flying above everything else for a few moments and then gone back in the track. “Phantom” Dan Federici. Now you hear him, now you don’t.

Offstage, Danny couldn’t recite a lyric or a chord progression for one of my songs. Onstage, his ears opened up. He listened, he felt, he played, finding the perfect hole and placement for a chord or a flurry of notes. This style created a tremendous feeling of spontaneity in our ensemble playing.

In the studio, if I wanted to loosen up the track we were recording, I’d put Danny on it and not tell him what to play. I’d just set him loose. He brought with him the sound of the carnival, the amusements, the boardwalk, the beach, the geography of our youth and the heart and soul of the birthplace of the E Street Band.

Then we grew up. Very slowly. We stood together through a lot of trials and tribulations. Danny’s response to a mistake onstage, hard times, catastrophic events was usually a shrug and a smile. Sort of an “I am but one man in a raging sea, but I’m still afloat. And we’re all still here.”

I watched Danny fight and conquer some tough addictions. I watched him struggle to put his life together and in the last decade when the band reunited, thrive on sitting in his seat behind that big B3, filled with life and, yes, a new maturity, passion for his job, his family and his home in the brother and sisterhood of our band.

Finally, I watched him fight his cancer without complaint and with great courage and spirit. When I asked him how things looked, he just said, “what are you going to do? I’m looking forward to tomorrow.” Danny, the sunny side up fatalist. He never gave up right to the end.

A few weeks back we ended up onstage in Indianapolis for what would be the last time. Before we went on I asked him what he wanted to play and he said, “Sandy.” He wanted to strap on the accordion and revisit the boardwalk of our youth during the summer nights when we’d walk along the boards with all the time in the world.

So what if we just smashed into three parked cars, it’s a beautiful night! So what if we’re on the lam from the entire Middletown police department, let’s go take a swim! He wanted to play once more the song that is of course about the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something unknown and new.

Let’s go back to the days of miracles. Pete Townshend said, “a rock and roll band is a crazy thing. You meet some people when you’re a kid and unlike any other occupation in the whole world, you’re stuck with them your whole life no matter who they are or what crazy things they do.”

If we didn’t play together, the E Street Band at this point would probably not know one another. We wouldn’t be in this room together. But we do… We do play together. And every night at 8 p.m., we walk out on stage together and that, my friends, is a place where miracles occur…old and new miracles. And those you are with, in the presence of miracles, you never forget. Life does not separate you. Death does not separate you. Those you are with who create miracles for you, like Danny did for me every night, you are honored to be amongst.

Of course we all grow up and we know “it’s only rock and roll”…but it’s not. After a lifetime of watching a man perform his miracle for you, night after night, it feels an awful lot like love.

So today, making another one of his mysterious exits, we say farewell to Danny, “Phantom” Dan, Federici. Father, husband, my brother, my friend, my mystery, my thorn, my rose, my keyboard player, my miracle man and lifelong member in good standing of the house rockin’, pants droppin’, earth shockin’, hard rockin’, booty shakin’, love makin’, heart breakin’, soul cryin’… and, yes, death defyin’ legendary E Street Band.