Sometimes real life just gets in the way. As I wrote in my last column, I’m in the midst of a serious attempt to quit smoking, and that’s just doing wonders in terms of my being cool, calm and collected. And I’ve just completed searching for a new place to live. Assuming you are not on an unlimited budget, like Li Ka-Shing or an expat banker, you know how painful that can be. Now comes the move and all its preparations. And then comes the email from my editor here: “Next column in three days, okay?” There are a lot of topics I’d like to cover but most of them will have to wait for some future time when I can properly develop them. For now, if you don’t mind, I’ll write about the No 1 musical obsession for most of my life, Bruce Springsteen.

Springsteen’s music has changed a lot over the years. From the young street kid singing about girls and cars to the Woody Guthrie-esque troubadour to his current politically-charged rock, the one consistent thing that has always defined him for me has been the power of his live shows, his belief in rock music as an elevating, all-encompassing force communicated more fully when he’s in front of an audience than shut away in a studio. The moves, the stories, the roar of the tightest band in rock music history, all come together to produce transcendent moments night after night, tour after tour. But just as he sings, “It’s hard to be a saint in the city,” it is hard to be a Springsteen fan in Hong Kong.

Springsteen has been on my mind lately because it just hit me that the first time I saw him perform live was over 35 years ago. Talk about time flying and feeling old. In January 1973, I was going to school in Boston when he was scheduled to play at Joe’s Place, a small club that held perhaps 200 people, right across the river in Cambridge. I went to that show, which turned out to be the night he met Boston’s premiere rock critic (and his future manager and producer) Jon Landau. I’d enjoyed both of his albums before seeing him live but after that show I became a rabid fan, to the point where I was running around my dorm pulling people into my room to play the records for them, whether they wanted to hear them or not.

A few months later, Bruce opened two shows for Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theatre, also in Cambridge. Everyone in my dorm was going because they all loved Bonnie Raitt: she was not to be missed on her home turf, especially in those days.

The late show was supposed to start at 10pm but started an hour late. Bruce came out to a crowd there to see someone else and audaciously opened with a slow ballad, a long version of New York City Serenade, with just piano and violin backing him up. The entire audience was transfixed. He got a standing ovation after the first song, the rest of the E Street Band came out and the audience remained on its feet throughout the rest of his set. Most public transportation stopped in Boston around 12:30am, but at 1am Bruce was still on stage. Bonnie Raitt could be seen dancing on the side of the stage. Every time Bruce tried to end his set, you could see Bonnie urging him to stay on and keep going. She finally came out around 1:30am and even she was exhausted from his set, doing just a half hour of mostly slow blues. The next day, everyone was in my room asking me to play those Springsteen records for them again.

From 1973 to 1995, I never missed a tour, sometimes going to multiple shows on a single tour since he’d never do the same set list twice. I saw him many times at the Bottom Line, a 500-seat club in New York. And at New York’s Central Park, when he opened for Anne Murray, and the entire audience walked out after his set, not sticking around for her bland versions of country pop. I’ve seen him in venues ranging from 200 seats at Joe’s Place to 80,000 plus at Giants Stadium. From the ’70s through to the ’90s I got to see almost every band that mattered in concert. I worked concert security, I consulted to record companies, I’ve managed bands – and I’ve never seen anyone else come close to doing what he does on stage.

I got to meet Bruce in 1981. I was driving a taxi in those days, and one day I saw him standing on a corner, arm outstretched. First of all I couldn’t believe it was him. Then I couldn’t believe there was no other taxi between me and him and that I was going to be the one to pick him up. So by the time I stopped in front of him, I managed to convince myself it wasn’t him. I just didn’t have that kind of luck. But when he got in and I heard his voice, telling me his destination, all I could do was turn around and scream, “It is you!”

He was in a chatty mood, too. Looking to say something that wouldn’t come off as completely stupid, I told him that one of many reasons I liked his music so much was because, even though I was down on my luck at the moment, his songs told me to hold on to my dreams and keep trying to make them happen. I took him a slightly longer route to his destination to keep him in the taxi longer, to talk with him more. And when it was time to drop him off, the meter said $4 and I told him he didn’t need to pay me, just give me an autograph. He did that and then handed me a $10 bill, paused for a moment and then told me to keep the change.

The last time I saw him live was in 1999. I was living in San Francisco and saw him play two shows at Oakland. Hard to believe that was nine years ago. I’m pissed that his ‘world tours’ rarely include Asia – he occasionally gets to Japan and Australia but he has never played in Hong Kong.

I suppose his audience in this part of the world is too small to make it economically feasible for him to play here, even in some stripped down Tom Joad version. Should I dare to dream that one day he might bring the E Street Band to the Venetian in Macau? “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true or is it something worse?” Bruce once sang that he believes in the Promised Land. Hey, Boss, how do you know Hong Kong is not the Promised Land till you bring your band here and prove it all night?