October 26, 1996 : Bruce Springsteen walked onto the Event Center stage to perform with a few black acoustic guitars, harmonicas and the spirit of John Steinbeck.
At the solo concert benefiting what is now San José State's Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, Springsteen played to a crowd of nearly 4,500 -- a show that yielded for the center more than $110,000 in ticket and merchandise sales.
"Springsteen has been a real champion for the Steinbeck Center and for San José State," says event director Ted Cady, who wrote the letter of invitation that brought the Boss to campus. "He was here to pay homage to John Steinbeck."
Steinbeck surely would have been honored that Springsteen read from the author's work between songs from "The Ghost of Tom Joad," an album named after the protagonist in Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath. He would have been pleased, too, with the bluesy version of "Born in the U.S.A." and the evening's two encores.
To thank him, Elaine Steinbeck, the author's widow, presented the Boss with a signed copy of The Grapes of Wrath, along with the Steinbeck Center's first annual Steinbeck Award. Two men with a belief in the dignity of the "souls of the people" were honored that night -- one in spirit and the other in blue jeans.
Were you at the Springsteen concert? The Event Center's 1996 bill also included performances by Tori Amos, Gin Blossoms, Cypress Hill -- and a certain purple dinosaur, who you'll hear more about in the winter issue. Post your '96 Event Center stories and photos on the WSQ Facebook page.
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