Setting Up Bruce
Read about the incredible experience Robert J. Rosen ’84 and wife Benette had when they volunteered to help set up the stage for Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl halftime show in February.
July 1, 2009
Robert J. Rosen ’84 and wife Benette volunteered to help set up the stage for Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl halftime show in February. It was an incredible experience as Bob tells it:
“My wife and I will forever cherish our time together with each other, the production staff, the professional crew and all of the other volunteers. For me, this all started off as a Bruce Springsteen thing. But it evolved into so much more. I never expected how much fun this was going to be. It was a privilege to participate in, and be exposed to, the inner workings of the production of the most-watched television event in the world. It was all about teamwork, focus, trust, leadership, following instruction, paying attention and looking out for each other. It was rewarding to share my experience with fans all over the world through my postings on a thread/blog on the Greasy Lake Web site (http://www.greasylake.org). More than 9,500 people have looked at this, and people wrote back with such encouraging words of thanks. It inspired me to write on. These fans were able to live vicariously through me while waiting for the show at halftime. The most touching note was one from a fan following along from her laptop in her hospital bed in England.
Hours of rehearsal resulted in a coordinated effort of physical poetry. We allowed Bruce to be Bruce. There were so many sacred moments, and the details are on my thread on Greasy Lake: the cold rain of the dress rehearsal, my moment in the cheerleader bathroom, cart 17 losing two wheels, and learning how to use our thumbs (read the blogs for details!). The band itself is kept at a distance and was fairly untouchable. I did have my squeeze of Bruce’s hand on stage and a hello in the tunnel. My friend Jimmy shook his hand, and Benette patted his leg on stage. During one of the rehearsal runs, Bruce sang a few lines of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” directly to Benette about eight inches from her face. She was like jello. It was not a complete fantasy come true. There were no shots of tequila in the green room. What I got was far more real and rewarding. For two weeks, I got to work alongside, hang out and talk football with Bruce’s guitar tech Kevin and Cap Spence, the leader of the production company. Our ballet of 600 ants set up the stage in 4.5 minutes, allowing the band to do its thing. The end result was a phenomenal performance on TV for 150 million people. Together we performed a very detailed, complicated, hazardous task on cue, crisply, without error.
Humans are capable of incredibly difficult tasks when they are properly motivated and instructed. Cap, like Bruce, is an excellent storyteller. One of Cap’s tales to our volunteer squad was about the building of the transcontinental railroad. If men could build such a railroad with their hands and my enslaved ancestors could build the pyramids we could certainly build a stage in less than five minutes.
If you can ever work it out to participate in something like this, you will have the time of your life. The only way the NFL can top this next year would be to have Bruce in Miami and allow him to play for 24 minutes.”