This is the stuff of rock and roll dreams, as if it were plucked straight from Spinal Tap, but instead of David St Hubbins and co rocking their way to disaster, it was Bruce Springsteen.
Anyone who has been to a Springsteen concert might be utterly unsurprised that the magnitude of it all could lead to a disaster. I’m talking about something like an earthquake as the sound of tens of thousands of people all clapping their hands and stomping their feet to tracks like ‘Born in the USA’ or ‘Born to Run’ could threaten to push up the Richter scale.
It has come close to that on several occasions, where in Barcelona in 2016, 65,000 jumping fans created seismic activity, somewhat akin to a small earthquake, but the primary and infamous event took place in Gothenburg in 1985.
75,000 people with 150,000 hands and 150,000 feet is a lot, and they can make a hell lot of noise, generating vibrations and movements that places need to be fortified against. Luckily, stadiums are built to withstand it, crafted to endure football fans, who make concert goers an easy crowd to handle in comparison, but in ‘85, the sheer excitement of Springsteen’s audience in Sweden led to a genuine near-fatal structural carnage at the venue.
It was during his Born In The USA tour of Europe, at a time when the singer’s power and fame was unmatched, that he touched down in Sweden to play the Ullevi stadium, and his audience was locked in and eager. “It was this big sports stadium,” Springsteen recalled decades on as this story still sticks in his mind, “Towards the end of the night, we were playing ‘Twist and Shout’, and I guess the stadium was built in the ‘20s or ‘30s, and it developed a huge crack after we played, and it was condemned and never used again.”
Springsteen’s retelling makes it seem like, during his encore, the venue cracked in half, opening up a huge gash in the earth in a major, dramatic apocalypse cosplay, so let’s clear up a few details.
It is true that the Ullevi stadium was left with structure damage after the Springsteen show. After he’d brought the house down with a finale Beatles cover, due to the movement of the fans and the clay soil it was built on, the foundations cracked, and it genuinely could have collapsed had the show gone on for that much longer.
It’s also true that the stadium was out of action, where David Bowie was supposed to play after him in 1987, but even still, two years on from Springsteen’s show on June 8th, 1985, the venue remained out of action. However, it wasn’t condemned ‘forever’, as in the years and decades to follow, names like Pink Floyd, Billy Joel, Metallica and more played there.
Springsteen did, however, return as if trying to reopen the wound, playing the venue again repeatedly in 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2023, fortunately with major trust in some heavy-duty concrete pillars built just in time.
