by TOM WALDRON

      In the summer of 1975, I moved to Hightstown, New Jersey – at about the same time that this fellow, Bruce Springsteen, from down the road in Freehold, was getting just a bit of notice.

     I had heard of him a couple of years earlier as he toured through the South, being hailed as the new Bob Dylan but skipped his performances, preferring, ahem, Jethro Tull and Elton John. But now I was in New Jersey, and the new album, Born to Run, was out.

     I was fascinated by the lyrics – over the top (Jungleland), deeply alluring (She’s the One) and simply beautiful (Thunder Road) – and the layers of sounds coming out of the E Street Band (a glockenspiel on Born to Run!) I must have listened to it a thousand times that summer and fall.

     Of course, the jaded Jersey kids I came across – the ones who had grown up hanging out at places like Greasy Lake and the Asbury Park boardwalk – informed me that yeah, the new album was good, but not as good as the first two albums.

     It took me another couple of years to make a show, winning a mail-in lottery for seats at the Garden in New York for one of the legendary Darkness performances. More shows followed, grueling sweaty nights – 25, 30 songs or more, lasting 3-plus hours, with Springsteen diving, jumping, hamming it up with saxophonist Clarence Clemons and guitarist/alter ego Steve Van Zandt, and presiding over a celebration of music, love and life. “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive” summed it all up.

     Then Springsteen got caught up in marriage and divorce and put out solo albums that never captured my attention. It just wasn’t the same without the E Street Band.

     Finally, the band reassembled in 1999 and my wife – a Jersey girl – and I made it to the opening night in the Meadowlands and then the final show a year later at the Garden. Exuberant sing-alongs like Out in the Street were balanced by captivating poetry such as American Skin, about a police shooting.

     A few years later, my wife Stephanie managed to meet the man himself backstage after a Seeger Sessions Tour stop in Camden, N.J., courtesy of a friend whose nephew played in the band. (She and I had come in separate cars and I decided to skip the backstage trip, wanting to beat the traffic back to Baltimore. The shame of that decision remains palpable.) Onstage, Springsteen had worn a bandage on his strumming hand to cover a callous, and backstage, Stephanie reported, he had a truss-like wrap around his mid-section; decades of jumping off of pianos and sliding across the stage had taken a toll.

     We introduced our sons to the Springsteen/E Street Band phenomenon and they understood. They were there in 2003 the night after Johnny Cash died and Springsteen opened the show with “I Walk the Line” – drawing a straight line through decades of American musical tradition, connected forever to my boys.

     Friday night, Springsteen and the band come to Baltimore, my hometown now, for the first time in 35-plus years. The show will be the next-to-last after two years of nearly continuous touring, with a final stop in Buffalo Sunday.

     It’s assumed that the band will then take a lengthy break. But will they ever re-assemble as the same musical force?

     Danny Federici, the original organist has died. Drummer Max Weinberg is often busy with Conan O’Brien; his son Jay sometimes fills in on the drums. And Clemons, the heart and soul of the band, is moving gingerly at age 67.

     Will we be saying years from now that we were there for the last E Street Band performance of Thunder Road? Will Clemons’ bluesy solo on Jungleland be his last performance?

     Let’s hope not. But since Springsteen seems to play every show like it’s his last, I plan to return the favor. I’ll be on the floor of the creaky old Arena, a bit sheepish about bopping around and singing along a little too exuberantly – but doing it anyway.

     If this is the last dance with Springsteen’s band, we ought to relish every last moment.