Live 10 Jun 2018 version
[Earlier in the show:]
[Billy Joel (presenting Springsteen):] Thank you. I am honored to be back at the Tonys to present a special award to a fellow musician and old friend whose intimate show is Springsteen On Broadway. It's all about the man and his music, not to mention the heartfelt stories behind 40 years of incredible songs. This extraordinary event began as an eight-week limited run, but by the time it wraps up in December, will have played 236 performances. The Boss is working hard. So for bringing hundreds of thousands of theatergoers to Broadway, it's my pleasure to present the Special Tony Award to my good friend Bruce Springsteen.
[Bruce Springsteen (acceptance speech):] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, uh, thank you. This is deeply appreciated and thanks for making me feel so welcome on your block. Being a part of the Broadway community's been a great thrill and an honor for me. It's been one of the most exciting things that I've ever experienced. I've got to thank Patti Scialfa, my beautiful wife and artistic partner, for her love and inspiration every night. I've got to thank Jon Landau, George Travis, Barbara Carr, and Jordan Roth for great work of getting our show on stage. And last but not least, our wonderful audiences who've made these shows so exciting and fulfilling. Evan, Jesse, Sam, daddy loves you. And, uh, in fact you've been wonderful to me this season. Thank you so much. God bless all of you.
[Later in the show:]
[Robert De Niro (introduction):] Now I'll get back to this─ my introduction. Do you have any idea back how hard it is to get tickets for Bruce Springsteen's show on Broadway? It's easier to get tickets for Hamilton. And that's got a much bigger cast, actual dancing, and a history lesson. So when I got the call last year if I wanted to see Bruce perform, I said yes without asking any questions. Bruce, you can rock the house like nobody else. And even more important in these perilous times, you rock the vote, always fighting for, in your own words, truth, transparency, and integrity in government. Boy, do we need that now. So congratulations on your Tony for Springsteen On Broadway, or as I like to call it, Jersey Boy. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Bruce Springsteen.
I grew up on Randolph Street with my sister Virginia, she was a year younger than me, my parents Adele and Douglas, my grandparents Fred and Alice, and my dog Saddle. We lived spitting distance from the catholic church, the priest's rectory, the nuns' convent, the Saint Rose Of Lima Grammar School, all of it just a football's toss away across the field of wild grass. I literally grew up surrounded by God. Surrounded by God and, and all my relatives. We had cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, great grandmas, great grandpas, all of us were jammed in five little houses on two adjoining streets. And when the church bells rang, the whole clan would hustle up the street to stand witness to very wedding and every funeral that arrived like a stale occasion in our neighborhood. We also had front row seats to watch the towns when in their Sunday suits carry out an endless array of dark wooden boxes to be slipped in the rear of the Friedman's Funeral Home long black Cadillac for the short ride to Saint Rose cemetery hill on the edge of town. And there all our catholic neighbors, all Zirillis, and the McNicholases, and all the Springsteens who came before, they patiently waited for us. Now when it rains in Freehold, when it rains, the moisture in the humid air blankets the whole town with the smell of moist coffee grounds wafting in from the Nescafe plant on the town's eastern edge. You know, I never cared for coffee, but I loved that smell. It was comforting, it united our town just like our clanging road mill in a common sensory experience. It was a place here, you could hear it, you could smell it. A place where people made lives, where they danced, enjoyed small pleasures, where they played baseball, and where they suffered pain and had their hearts broken. Where they made love, had their kids, where they died, and where they drank themselves drunk on spring nights. And did their very best, the best that they could to hold off the demons outside and inside that sought to destroy them, their homes, their families, their town. Here we lived in the shadow of the steeple, crookedly blessed in God's good mercy one and all, in the heart stopping, pants dropping, race rioting, fricating, soul shaking, redneck, love and fear making, heartbreaking town of Freehold, New Jersey.
I was eight years old running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick, steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around
This is your hometown
It's your hometown
Your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
The above lyrics are for the live 10 Jun 2018 performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, NY, during the 72nd Annual Tony Awards ceremony. A brief portion of the song was played, solo on piano, and was preceded by a monologue from Springsteen On Broadway.
Bruce Springsteen, who was in attendance with his family, was honored with a Special Tony Award for his ongoing Springsteen On Broadway concert residency. Billy Joel presented Springsteen with the award and Springsteen gave an acceptance speech. Later in the show, Robert De Niro introduced Springsteen who took the stage again to perform on piano a monologue from his Springsteen On Broadway show and a brief portion of MY HOMETOWN. The 72nd Annual Tony Awards, which recognized achievement in Broadway productions during the 2017-2018 season, was hosted by Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban and was broadcast live by CBS.
List of available versions of MY HOMETOWN on this website:
MY HOMETOWN [Album version]