My Bruce Journey - Part 5

‘You can’t shut off the risk and the pain without losin’ the love that remains‘


1992 was a big year for us. We moved to Leeds - Mike’s home town, we got married and Leeds United won the last ever League Division One before the Premiership was formed.  There’s a great article reflecting on this here http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/jul/17/leedsunited

We still live in the same house 18 years later - the longest I have lived in one place and the house where we have had the happiest times.

We also bought 'Human Touch' and 'Lucky Town' and I liked both albums.  For me they were better than any other Bruce album I already owned except for 'Born in the USA'.  At the time I had no idea how much they were hated by the fans and I had no E Street Band history to colour my judgement.  Listening again this week I still like his voice which some think is twangy and I love the guitar sound which is definitely twangy.

‘Human Touch’ is a great song and, although I have no children of my own, I can’t believe that any parent doesn’t think ‘Living Proof’ isn’t beautiful.  I have to confess that ‘Man’s Job’ was a favourite but now? - well we all make mistakes. It’s still a good singalong but a favourite - perhaps not.

‘If I should fall behind’ is lovely - in Mike’s top ten - but I know the controversy is all about the sound rather than the lyrics.

I know nothing about production, mixes, drum machines etc etc - it sounds just fine to me.

But my album of the year (released in June) was ‘Change Everything’ Del Amitri.  I played this to death and to Mike’s distraction for months.  I had a portable CD player at the time and this album was my constant companion whenever I was outside the house.  This was one of those occasions when I bought their next album, played it once, didn’t like it and never played it again.  Didn’t buy another and although there has been no official announcement of a band break up they haven’t released anything for a while.

Other album purchases were Michael Bolton ‘Timeless’ and Charles and Eddie ‘Duophonic’ both of which we still have and neither of which we play at all.  We fell out with Michael Bolton a couple of years after this. A story that might crop up later.

My nomination for worst song of the year has to be Whitney Houston’s ‘I will Always Love You’.  This is one of my all time favourite songs and she just ruined it.  I can’t bear to think that people only know her version and don’t know that the wonderful Dolly Parton wrote it…and performs it with so much more restrained emotion.  There’s more to singing than just belting out a tune.



Oddly for a city as big as Leeds there is no concert venue.  We need to travel to Sheffield about 32 miles away down the M1 or Manchester which is about 40 miles across the M62.

So on 15th April 1993 we found ourselves heading to Sheffield Arena to see Bruce for the first time…