This Week in Rock History: Bruce Springsteen And More

This week in rock history, Bruce Springsteen trespassed on Elvis’s property, Joy Division played in concert for the final time, rock critic Lester Bangs died, the Eagles reunited in style and TLC diva Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes passed away.

April 30, 1976 – Bruce Springsteen hops the fence at Graceland

Anyone who’s attended a Bruce Springsteen show knows that the man can talk a blue streak: his legendary three-hour sets are littered with long anecdotes, and there’s no story the Boss loves telling more than the time he got booted from Elvis Presley’s front porch.

In 1976, while in Memphis on their hugely successful Born to Run tour, 26-year-old Springsteen and his E-Street Band cohort Steve Van Zandt decided to pay a 3 a.m. visit to Graceland. When he saw lights blazing inside the mansion, Springsteen climbed over the wall and ran to the front door; just as he was about to ring the doorbell, he was intercepted by security. Explaining his newfound rock fame and his recent covers of both Time and Newsweek, Springsteen poured on the charm and begged to be let inside ”“ but instead, the unimpressed guards told him that Presley was out of town (which was true) and escorted him promptly to the sidewalk.

Elvis died at Graceland the following year. Regardless, he is united forever with Springsteen on the cover of Born to Run, where the Boss’s guitar strap proudly bears an Elvis fan club button.

May 2, 1980 – Joy Division play their final concert

The meteoric rise of young English post-punks Joy Division reached its untimely end when singer Ian Curtis committed suicide on May 18, 1980, the eve of their first American tour. Two weeks prior, the band played Birmingham University in what would become their final show. The concert was taped and released as the second half of Still, Joy Division’s 1981 double album of previously unreleased studio sessions and live recordings.

Joy Division formed in Manchester in 1976 and released their first record, the seminal Unknown Pleasures, in 1979. Their follow-up, Closer, was released in July of 1980, two months after Curtis’s death. The surviving members of Joy Division ”“ guitarist-turned-singer Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook, and drummer Stephen Morris””regrouped later that year as New Order, and their 1981 debut single, “Ceremony” was an unreleased Joy Division cut that the defunct group performed just once: at that very last Birmingham University gig.