The night a Jewish St. Louis family had Bruce Springsteen over for late-night eggs

Sarah Fenske, Special To The Jewish Light
Published November 14, 2022

This story originally appeared on RiverfrontTimes.com and is repurposed with permission

Here’s a story that sounds apocryphal, but isn’t: Bruce Springsteen made friends with a teenager after they met randomly in the lobby of a St. Louis movie theater in 1980 — and the friendship continued for years.

Talk about the coolest celebrity encounter ever! And get this: The details actually check out.

The story, which the Boss recently relayed on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show, dates back to 1981. Springsteen had released The River the previous fall and, after initially playing two nights at Kiel Opera House (now Stifel Theatre) in October, he came back to St. Louis in January for a show at the Checkerdome, the now-demolished arena across I-64 from Forest Park.

At some point during the trip, the nation’s biggest rock-and-roll star wandered into a movie theatre.

On the bill: Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, which had debuted in September of 1980.

People didn’t like the movie. Here was the director of Annie Hall and Manhattan, and he seemed to be painting his fans as pretentious (and potentially murderous) grotesques.

Springsteen nevertheless wanted to see it. But then, in the lobby, he was approached by one of his fans, whom he describes to Norton as a “kid.”

“He was there with his girlfriend and said, ‘Do you want to sit with us?'” Springsteen says.

Springsteen tells Norton he said yes, to Norton’s consternation. “That’s a hard no!” the BBC host interjects.

“So I went, and I sat,  and we watched the movie,” Springsteen continues. “And he said, ‘Is that how you feel about your fans?’ I said, ‘Not so much.’ He said, ‘I’m going to go home now. Will you come home and meet my parents?'”

“You didn’t!” another guest on the show cuts in.

“I said, ‘OK,'” Springsteen says, smiling modestly. “So, I went somewhere in St. Louis, with this kid, and we walked in the door, and it’s about 11 o’clock at night. And he says, ‘Mom! Mom! I have Bruce Springsteen with me!’ And she goes, ‘Who?’

“And he runs in his bedroom and comes out with the album cover and goes ‘BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.'”

And then the mom gets it.

“Oh my God,” she said, per Springsteen. “Let me make him some eggs!”

“And so around  midnight,” Springsteen continues, “I was sitting in a little house in St. Louis, having some eggs with this kid and his mom, and I saw them for decades after that every time we came to town.”

 

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