‘The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts’ Captures Explosive Performances From Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Whether by bomb blast or industrial disaster, nuclear armageddon was a constant fear in the late 1970s. The anxiety was justified. America and the U.S.S.R. had been locked in an arms race for decades and nuclear energy came under scrutiny following a partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station on March 28, 1979. Alarmed by the events, musicians Graham Nash, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt and others founded the group Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) and organized two concerts that year on September 21 and 22 at New York’s Madison Square Garden to raise awareness and advocate for a safer and cleaner future. 

The concerts were recorded for posterity and later released as the concert film and triple-LP live album No Nukes. Though they featured performances from The Doobie Brothers, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, and a reformed Crosby, Stills & Nash, among others, the concerts are best remembered for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s incendiary live sets. It was the first time the live E Street Band experience was captured for posterity and set in concrete their reputation as a must-see live act. 

Released in 2021, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts compiles Bruce and the band’s two sets into a stand alone 90-minute concert film. It premiered on Paramount+ this week along with other Springsteen concert films and music documentaries. At the time of the performances, Springsteen was in the middle of the year-long recording sessions for 1980’s The River. The E Street Band was in fighting form from years on the road and presumably salivating at the chance to tear into an audience after months in the studio.

I’m not sure what the running order of the concerts was, but I bet after a few sets of soft rockers and singer-songwriters, Bruce and the band must have provided a much-needed jolt of energy to those in attendance. No longer the scrubby bard of the beaten-down and broken-hearted, Springsteen had transformed into “The Boss,” a populist rock god wielding his Telecaster like a battle axe, hammering out chiming chords or peeling off fuzzed out solos like Neil Young reborn as a Jersey street rat. 

It’s always been my opinion, and perhaps an unpopular one, that Bruce Springsteen’s records suffer from overproduction and an over reliance on keyboards. At MSG that September, however, the guitars were set on stun and the E Street Band tore into the material with the energy of the punk bands only a few years their junior. Springsteen was listening to such artists as Patti Smith, Ramones and The Clash and his newer songs share their directness and musical economy unlike the prog-adjacent working class operettas of his early records. 

Footage from the two nights makes an interesting contrast. Night two is represented first with songs drawn almost exclusively from Darkness on the Edge of Town, released the previous year. One notable exception being “The River,” the title track from Springsteen’s next album which wouldn’t come out for another year. Meanwhile, footage from night two concentrates on songs from Born To Run and the first two records, which are received ecstatically by the hometown crowd who sing along whenever Bruce points the mic in their direction. 

Besides the setlists, the most noticeable difference between the two performances is the band’s stagewear. On night one they still look like hippies. Drummer Max Weinberg wears a purple blouse, Springsteen a western shirt and saxophonist Clarence Clemons’ red suit looks like it was pulled from the wardrobe department of an early ‘70s blaxploitation film. Night two finds them in new wave finery. Weinberg looks like he’s in The Knack, skinny tie and all, Clemons is sporting his Studio 54 best, and Springsteen wears skinny jeans, roach stompers and a sports jacket like any number of punk idols. Most improbably, guitarist and future Sopranos-star Miami Steve Van Zandt makes a beret and knee-length black trench coat look cool.

Over the course of the performances, Bruce and the band pull out all the stops. Watching him run back and forth from one end of the stage to the other, sometimes accidentally unplugging his guitar or jumping on top of Roy Bittan’s piano, I found myself wondering how many calories he must have burned over the course of a single show. Guy must have been able to eat whatever he wanted. The film concludes with a mid cover of the doo-wop classic “Stay,” with guests Jackson Browne and Tom Petty, and a red-hot “Detroit Medley” of Mitch Ryder and Little Richard tunes, which ultimately sees Springsteen collapse on the floor only to be resuscitated James Brown-style for myriad fake endings before literally dancing off the stage.

Though the No Nukes concerts featured showcase artists from across the rock and pop spectrum, the crowd was stacked with Springsteen loyalists from New Jersey and New York who chanted “BRUUUUUUUUUCE!!!” through the other acts. Tom Petty famously remembered Jackson Browne telling him, “If you go on and you think they’re booing you, don’t get thrown because they’re really just saying ‘Bruce.’ And I said, ‘Well, what’s the difference?’.” The performances weren’t the first time Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played the Garden, that occurred a year earlier on the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, but their explosive sets on those two September nights would ensure they’d never play anywhere else in New York City ever again.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.