It
killed me when he said something like, "
I know you folks might find these new songs weird", and he's playing these amazing career defining songs for a first time audience. The chick in the go-go boots and mini behind him did not seem too impressed with his style, not that he would have cared.
I can remember seeing him in concert, halfway through he takes a break from the heavy electric and pulls out a stool and just starts playing a mic'd acoustic song (no lyrics) that none of the long-time fans around me recognized. It was really very good, many fine bridges along the way, and afterwards there was silence, like everyone was waiting because they didn't know if it was over yet. Then just an explosion of applause, and when he said, "
Yeah, I'll have to remember that one for later", you realized he had played that version of it for the first time, maybe refining an earlier arrangement, but the spontaneity made it work for all of us. I read years later that he apparently has every one of his concerts recorded partly for that reason. There are pieces of that embryonic song in "I'm the Ocean" off Mirror Ball, many years later.
