Highway 81 Revisited, Bruce Springsteen's Longest UK Tour, AUTHOR SIGNED COPY Mike Saunders

MIKE SAUNDERS is a freelance music writer, archivist, historian and keen amateur concert photographer. He has written extensively for Backstreets magazine and website, and the Badlands publications For True Rockers Only and The Ties That Bind. Mike has contributed to Facebook fan groups for Jersey shore musicians, such as Jukebox, The Stevie Files, Point Blank, and Follow That Dream. He has featured in The E Street Café Podcast and guested on Pulse Internet Radio.

THE 1981 UK TOUR: THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT

Bruce Springsteen’s month-long, 16-date 1981 UK tour with the E Street Band was his first full-scale tour of this country, over five years after his two concerts at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1975. It remains his longest, and was the last time that UK fans were able to see him and the band completely indoors, playing provincial theatres as well as big-city arenas.

The story behind the 1981 UK tour is long and convoluted, involving five years of rumour, speculation, near-misses and close calls before the first three dates were announced in December 1980. A further nine shows were slowly added until the beginning of March 1981. The entire tour was then rescheduled because Bruce was suffering from exhaustion after his US tour. The addition of a final four dates in April brought the total to 16 shows.

Chronicling the years of rumours, the gradual build-up of dates, the last-minute postponement and the concerts themselves, from the smallest in Newcastle on May 11 to the largest in Birmingham on June 8, and featuring more than 100 pages of meticulously-researched information and images, Highway 81 Revisited is the first and definitive full account of a unique and crucial tour in Springsteen history. It is an essential read for fans and an important addition to the growing archive of Springsteen reference works.