David Letterman’s last episode on NBC featured a memorable performance from Bruce Springsteen

There was no better way for David Letterman to tell the leaders of NBC that they were not the boss of him: by deploying the real Chief!

On June 25, 1993, Letterman left NBC with a spring in his approach, going from the 30 Rockefeller Center to the Ed Sullivan Theater and a new concert at CBS. He also made sure that his latest show in the old shop was an absolute barn burner – with clips of biggest successes (including the moment he tried and failed, to bring a basket of fruit to his new business leaders), a particularly hilarious visit to Tom Hanks, and Bruce Springsteen tearing him away with one of his best television appearances and a proud version of his “Glory Days”.

Letterman’s departure since Late night with David LettermanWith Jay Leno taking control of the Tonight show Johnny Carson’s concert that the Bread-Indiana Funnyman thought it was rightly so, was a story of major showbiz, leading to a well-published auction war for the talents and letterman’s lawyers declaring that some of his gags were NBC’s “intellectual property”. (Indeed, the legal term “intellectual property” was not part of the popular vernacular language as it is now, and we have the letterman-nbc to blame.) All this song-and dance has even been transformed into a HBO film called HBO The late quarter of a time Directed by Betty Thomas.

By presenting Springsteen, Letterman said that in 11 and a half years, the show had been on, the New Jersey Rocker was the only guest he wanted to have but never. With a “better late than ever”, he welcomed the boss.

Dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, he joined the most dangerous group in the world, the group of Paul Shaffer who would soon change his name to the CBS orchestra. Springsteen were, on battery, Anton Fig; On guitar, SIG McGinnis; On the keys, Shaffer; Sitting the sax and the tambourine for the night, David Sanborn; And for reasons that remain elusive in our research on the superficial internet, Francisco Centeno at the bass, and not Will Lee. (Strangely enough, apart from Shaffer, Lee was the musician with the group’s longest mandate – but he was not there that evening!)

They played the appropriate melody for a shipment – “Glory Days” – and if you have never seen the clip, fortunately, he lives forever on YouTube thanks to some people who downloaded him, in a gentle violation of NBC intellectual property rights.

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“GLORY Days”, a piece of the 1984 Springsteen album Born in the United Stateswas already a beloved classic in 1993. When he left single in 1985, he reached n ° 5 Display panelThe Hot 100 graphic, thank you largely to the energetic video, produced by the famous filmmaker John Sayles.

The sequences of the video bar were shot in the Hoboken, NJ, the Maxwell’s club, a legendary establishment which opened its doors in 1978 and lasted until 2018. (It was the basis for two very important independent rock groups, the Feles and Yo La Tengo.)

But as cool as this video was, it was not as cool as Springsteen jumping on the Shaffer keyboard platform – the letterman leading to a joke later, “if I had known, I would have climbed the piano years ago!”

“Glory Days” is a 4 -minute and 14 second song on the album, but the Late at night The performance was about six minutes. This journalist remembers that the episode spending a little in his time, a final “so long!” From the show to NBC.

The boss would make three other appearances on a Letterman scene. In April 1995, he and the street group E were stopped by the Late show with David Letterman And played “Murder, Incorporated” and “Secret Garden”, then again in December of the same year, he came with just his acoustic guitar to sing “Youngstown”.

In 2002, Springsteen and the E Street Band played “The Rising” and “Loneesome Day” – and for the first time, he sat on the letterman sofa to exchange zings. Click below to hear a nice replica when Letterman asks Springsteen if he ever sings on his own songs in the car.