Springsteen was touring his Tunnel of Love concert. I was dating a woman who was making a documentary film about Ron Kovic.

Tunnel of Love was a bit of a departure for The Boss. His previous album, Born in the USA, had been a mega-hit, selling tens of millions of copies. Its supporting tour had sold out stadiums everywhere. Even I, who generally prefer my music in smaller settings, like coffeehouses or modest concert halls, had splurged for a cheap seat at the mighty Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. I was surprised to find that, even from there, a football field away from the action, with the musicians rendered as small as television cartoon characters, Springsteen’s anthemic gestures registered forcefully. I recall him, in mid guitar solo, rapidly sliding across the stage on his knees, the action ending in a full-lips kiss with saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

Tunnel of Love was a more intimate album. Sure, it sold millions of copies, but not tens of millions, like its predecessor. Born in the USA’s title song expansively described a man with few options who is sent off to fight in Viet Nam and returns home broken and disillusioned. Tunnel of Love’s title song amorously crooned “We’re gonna ride down, baby, into the tunnel of love.” So the concert was booked into the Los Angeles Sports Arena, whose 15,000 seat capacity, though still huge by my standards, was a fraction of what the coliseum could hold. A more intimate setting by Springsteen standards.

Ron Kovic was the inspiration for Born in the USA. Kovic had volunteered to fight in Viet Nam, where brutal combat wounds earned him a Purple Heart and a wheelchair. Back home, he led actions against the war, including a hunger strike, and wrote a highly successful memoir, Born on the Fourth of July. By the time I met him, he had been arrested numerous times. He had disrupted the 1972 Republican National Convention that nominated Richard Nixon. And at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, he had seconded the nomination of a draft resister for Vice President. Ron was the kind of trouble-maker who was hard to ignore.

Loretta Smith, the documentary filmmaker, was a friend of folksinger Rosalie Sorrels, my long time colleague. After accompanying Rosalie at a local concert, I hosted an ad hoc after-party at my place. Loretta attended and we began a sweet but short-lived relationship, more friendly than passionate. Her intense political conscience, having already led her to Guatemala and Cambodia, now focused on telling Ron Kovic’s important story to the world.

Seemingly on a whim, Ron suggested that he, Loretta and I should attend Springsteen’s concert. Knowing something about rock-and-roll security for high-profile artists, I was skeptical. But Ron seemed supremely confident, so we loaded his wheelchair into his van and made our way to the venue. Ron’s enthusiasm was contagious, and I began to imagine sitting down with Bruce and my companions to explore the big questions of life, politics and music.

Getting in proved ridiculously easy. Kovic popped a wheelie on his wheelchair, and the guards waved us through. Down a long ramp we ventured, until we found ourselves in the bowels of the arena. The décor was more industrial storage than pop music glamour. A couple of forklifts loomed over the poured concrete labyrinth. I looked around for any sign of drugs or sex or even rock-and-roll but came up empty.

More to the point, we found ourselves nowhere near access to any view of the stage or even of the audience. Were we going to spend the entire concert confined in this dungeon?

Even Ron, self-assured and optimistic up to this point, seemed to be losing steam. “If I could only talk to Bruce…” he pondered. But The Boss was off doing whatever The Boss did to prepare to entertain and inspire 15,000 people for more than three hours. Whatever that was, it was happening in some other place, one that even Ron’s wheelies could not penetrate.

Pondering the problem, I was suddenly approached by a man. “Aren’t you Mitch Greenhill?” he asked.

“Um, yeah,” I ventured.

“I’m Jon Landau. You were my guitar teacher, Cambridge 1963.”

I certainly knew that Jon Landau was Springsteen’s producer and manager. And had a hazy knowledge of his rise from rock journalist to mover and shaker. But I could summon only the vaguest recollection of the somewhat nerdy guitar student, one of many who helped me pay my college tuition, some 20 years earlier.

This new Jon Landau, in a generous gesture, summoned an assistant who showed us to really good seats. The concert began and Bruce was in fine form. As I watched him propel his band and galvanize his thousands of acolytes, my fantasies now turned to the possibility that maybe my guitar lessons to Jon Landau had obliquely helped The Boss find his way through Woody Guthrie to Nebraska.

Shortly after the concert I tried to reach out to Jon. I wanted to thank him and, I admit, I hoped to develop the relationship. But of course he had moved on to other, more pressing concerns.

Tom Cruise and Oliver Stone eventually got wind of Ron’s memoir. Their film Born on the Fourth of July became a huge success. When Oliver Stone accepted his Oscar as Best Director, a tuxedoed Ron Kovic looked on from his wheelchair.

Loretta’s documentary, in a Hollywood version of collateral damage, got put on the backest of back burners. Last I heard, she was driving a cab in Chicago.

I never did get to meet Bruce Springsteen.