http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?151+sum+SB1362
When young Robbin Thompson first arrived in Richmond in
the fall of 1969, it was ostensibly to bone up on book learning as a
student at Virginia Commonwealth University. However, it was plain to
anyone who talked to Thompson about what he'd done just before he got
there that he was there for an entirely different kind of education.
"I had been in bands all through high school, I'd already
had a few singles that I'd written out when I was 17, and I'd just come
from Woodstock right before I got to VCU," he says. "So I wanted to be
in a band."
Given his songwriting acumen, plus the fact that he owned
his own PA system, it took mere weeks for Thompson to find a spot in
progressive rock group Mercy Flight. At around the same time, he caught a
show at a VCU-area club called the Center by a band he has never
forgotten.
"They were called Child, they did their own stuff, and
they had this great frontman and guitar player," he says. "He was
animated, and he had a look about him, this intangible magnetism, and an
honesty about what he did."
That was Thompson's first impression of 19-year-old,
long-haired Bruce Springsteen. Over the next year, the bespectacled
Floridian and the wiry New Jerseyan became well acquainted as Child
changed its name to Steel Mill, and practically made Richmond its second
home, frequently sharing the bill with Mercy Child for concerts around
the VCU and University of Richmond campuses.
"We became good friends pretty quickly," says Thompson of
Springsteen. "They were the same age as us, and he would always crash at
my apartment. I'd do the same when we played up there, so we got to
know each other for that whole year."
The culmination of all those gigs in tiny clubs like
Hullabaloo and the String Factory came on August 14, 1970, when Steel
Mill and Mercy Child teamed for a show that still looms large in
Richmond lore.
"We rented all the spaces on the top level of the Marshall
Street parking garage and put on a concert for free," says Thompson.
"Several thousand people showed up for it."
After seeing the response Thompson got from such a large audience, Springsteen approached him with a proposition.
"He told me they were thinking of adding another person,
and asked if I'd like to come to New Jersey with him for a weekend, and
see how it went with me singing with Steel Mill," he recalls. "My first
thought was 'why?' but I didn't dare ask that out loud. So I went up,
and the next thing I know, I'm in the band."
So, putting his studies on hold, Thompson moved to the
small Jersey Shore town of Wanamassa and took up residence with
Springsteen, bassist Steve Van Zandt, keyboard player Danny Federici,
and drummer Vini Lopez in the Challenger Eastern Surfboard factory.
"Being from Florida, I was a surfer, so this was exciting
for me, because I thought I might get a free board out of the deal,"
says Thompson. "Bruce surfed, too, but most people in New Jersey sucked
at surfing, and he wasn't very good."
That wasn't the only cultural difference Thompson noticed between himself and Springsteen.
"I had lived for the day I could go get my driver's
license when I was a teenager," says Thompson, "but Bruce still hadn't
gotten his. I couldn't believe it. He was like, 'Yeah, maybe I'll go get
it next week.' So we took him out for a few practice runs. He wasn't
bad, and he finally got his license when he was 21."
After just a couple weeks' rehearsal, the new Steel Mill
lineup was ready to make its debut at Clearwater Swim Club in nearby
Atlantic Highlands. But it turned out, not everyone at the show was a
fan of their brand of rock 'n roll.
"There were police lined up behind the stage ready to cut
the power at whatever time the curfew was," says Thompson, "but when
they did, our manager unscrewed a light bulb and jerry rigged it so the
power came back on and we could keep playing. Then the police decided
they'd get up onstage and try to stop the music that way, but one of the
cops tried to use one of our amplifiers for leverage to climb up, and
it fell on another one. That started a riot. The band got out unscathed,
but people out there were getting billy clubbed. It was like a film
clip out of the '60s."
Thompson and company managed to avoid such melees in
future gigs, crisscrossing the East Coast, both headlining and opening
for the likes of Roy Orbison, Black Sabbath, and the Ike & Tina
Turner Revue at a homecoming show at Richmond's Mosque (now the Landmark
Theater). While Springsteen is known as a larger-than-life frontman
now, Thompson says the man who would be Boss was happy to share the
spotlight with him.
"There wasn't really any structure of who would do what,"
Thompson says. "Bruce was the leader of the band without question, but
if I had written a song I thought was good, he'd let me sing it, and
sometimes he'd write a song and ask me to sing it because he thought I'd
sound better on it."
But as Thompson had suspected when he first saw him in
Richmond, Springsteen would not be sharing the spotlight with anyone for
long. In December 1970, Springsteen disbanded Steel Mill.
"I always knew that if anyone was going to get signed, it
wasn't going to be Steel Mill, it was going to be Bruce Springsteen,"
says Thompson. "For me, nothing but good came out of that moment. It
gave me the confidence to know I could write and sing with the best."
Fellow Steel Millers Van Zandt, Federici, and Lopez went
on to form the core of the Bruce Springsteen Band, soon to be known the
world over as the E Street Band. Thompson did not achieve the same
heights, but has been a successful singer-songwriter in his own right,
earning a Billboard Top 100 hit with "Brite Eyes," and
endearing himself to Virginians everywhere with what has become the
unofficial state anthem, "Sweet Virginia Breeze."
Through it all, Springsteen and Thompson have remained
friends, and when the Boss had a date at the Richmond Coliseum on March
6, 2003, he made sure his former bandmate was backstage for the show.
But as Thompson soon discovered, it wasn't just to reminisce.
"One of his people came up to me and said, 'If you hear
'Thunder Road,' head below the stage,'" he recalls. "So after the song
he walks beneath the stage, Bruce Hornsby's there with his accordion,
and he says we're all going to do the Hank Ballard song 'Let's Go, Let's
Go, Let's Go,' in A."
There was just one problem.
Thompson says, "I had never even heard of the song."
Still, he figured he was still safe from embarrassment in
front of thousands of fans as long as he strummed along to the right
chords.
"Then Bruce comes up to me during the song and says, 'I'm going to take a verse, then Hornsby, then you.'"
Not having a clue about the words, Thompson proceeded to
do as Springsteen had taught him to do in the days of Steel Mill–
improvise.
"I made up some words that rhymed and made sure to include
something about Richmond," he says. "Everyone went crazy, and I looked
over, and there was Bruce laughing his ass off."
Thompson says that while he will be in attendance for the
show at John Paul Jones Arena, he hasn't a clue if he'll be asked to do
an encore.
"If Bruce asks me," says Thompson, "I guess I'll just have to be ready to figure it out as I go."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbin_Thompson
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