Final month, Nils Lofgren was watching the Grammy Awards when he came across a well-known sight. After Benson Boone began his efficiency of “Lovely Issues” within the viewers, Lofgren noticed Boone jump atop a piano and execute a aspect backflip; he then launched into yet one more flip halfway by the music. “He sounded nice,” Lofgren says, “however I wasn’t prepared for that. I’m glad to see the custom carrying on.”
Within the corridor of fame of rock & roll stage strikes, a backflip is a class all its personal. Who did it first, nonetheless, is open to debate, and even Lofgren jokes, “Hell, any individual again in historical occasions was most likely doing it with a lute.” However beginning together with his band Grin and up by his solo profession and early excursions with Bruce Springsteen and the E Avenue Band, Lofgren perfected the transfer greater than 50 years earlier than recent Rolling Stone cover star Boone. Carting round a three-foot-diameter trampoline, normally positioned at a 45-degree angle and positioned on the aspect of the stage, Lofgren would frequently step onto the tramp, do a flip — whereas enjoying guitar — and, for probably the most half, stick the touchdown.
“I’d run, bounce up, hit the trampoline, flip backwards in the direction of the viewers, and land, and the band would crash again in,” he says. “I all the time thought you may marry athletics and rock.”
For Lofgren, the backflip grew out of stage survival. As he remembers, Grin have been about to open for the J. Geils Band at a present within the early Seventies. Given the vitality that the Geils Band (and particularly frontman Peter Wolf) put out, Lofgren knew it might be formidable to precede them. “I couldn’t work out what can I do to compete with this that’s genuine,” he remembers. “I wasn’t feeling like I might bounce round stage but.“
Throughout his time on the gymnastics crew at his highschool in Bethesda, Maryland, Lofgren, who’s 5 ft three, had already discovered the best way to do a backflip. Pulling one off with a guitar might be the answer to his stage issues. He contacted his outdated fitness center instructor — who’d additionally been an Olympics coach — to learn to do the acrobatic transfer whereas holding onto his instrument. With the assistance of his coach and coaching belts, Lofgren practiced earlier than the present. “You must violently throw your arms up over your head and again,” he says. “You employ numerous higher physique for the again flip, which matches away should you’re holding a guitar.”
That evening, Lofgren determined to debut the flip — and, it seems, correctly so. “Three-thousand drunk faculty children,” he says. “They have been booing us, yelling for J. Geils, yelling ‘We hate you!’ Bottles have been crashing across the drum package.”
For the final music, Lofgren went for the backflip, however with out his guitar. It labored: As Grin have been leaving the stage, the promoter — who’d warned them in opposition to enjoying greater than half-hour as an opener — begged Grin to return for an encore; the youngsters have been going berserk over his high-flying transfer. Grin went again out and, after the encore, Lofgren rewarded the gang with one other flip, this time breaking out the transfer he’d practiced together with his guitar. “We acquired an encore from individuals who have been throwing bottles at me and yelling at me to get off the stage,” he says. “Now they have been deliriously comfortable. I believed, ‘Wow, welcome to point out enterprise.’”
For roughly the subsequent 15 years, a guitar backflip grew to become an nearly nightly a part of Lofgren’s stage act in no matter group he performed in; he even included one in a video for his 1983 single “Throughout the Tracks.” “I used to be loopy again then,” he says, recalling the second within the present when he felt obliged to catch air. “You’re standing there enjoying rock & roll, sipping somewhat drink between songs, having a ball after which hastily, ‘Oh, shit.’ It was somewhat scary. However I used to be very younger and thought, ‘Hey, man, simply focus.’ On occasion I’d land and fall again on my ass.”
After he joined the E Avenue Band in 1984, Lofgren remembers an early rehearsal the place Springsteen introduced up the signature transfer. “He mentioned, ‘Nils, that flip factor — I don’t know if we should always use it. What do you suppose?’ I mentioned, ‘Nicely, you’re the bandleader — that’s your name.’ He mentioned, ‘Nicely, should you do it 100 occasions, what number of occasions are you going to fall?’ I mentioned, ‘Nicely, 100 occasions — I’ll fall as soon as, however I received’t get harm. I’ll tip again over on my ass and backslide throughout the stage.’ And he mentioned, ‘Okay, let’s put it within the present.’”
With that, Lofgren’s flip grew to become a daily a part of exhibits on the Born in the usA. tour into 1985, which instantly distinguished Lofgren from the person he’d changed, Steve Van Zandt. One evening, he remembers, “I stumbled and put my palms down like, ‘Thank God — I acquired by that,’” he says. “I circled and Bruce is shaking his head, laughing at me on the microphone, and says, ‘Not ok. Do it once more!’ I’m him and pondering, ‘Bruce. It’s me. We’re not within the Cirque du fucking Soleil. What are you pondering?’ However when our bandleader says, ‘Do it once more,’ I do it once more and land on my knees and palms and barely made it round.”
Lofgren wasn’t executed that evening: “I’m beginning to get bruised up and Bruce is able to name it a day. However like an fool, I leap up and in entrance of the entire crowd, I put my finger up, like, ‘No, you began this. I’m going to get it proper.’ I’m going do it a 3rd time, and I belly-flop. I graze the highest of my head. I nearly break my neck, and I actually land face down on my guitar on the stage. At that time I hear Bruce go, ‘Fuck it!’ and I stumbled up in disgrace and embarrassment. However I used to be grateful I didn’t break my neck.”
After that first E Avenue Band tour, and as he was approaching 40, Lofgren determined it was time to retire the stage flip. “It served me effectively for a very long time,” he says. “After which after that, I lastly determined, effectively, perhaps I’m ok now to simply sing and play for individuals and be very animated on stage.”
Nonetheless, Lofgren couldn’t resist being bodily, whether or not it was persevering with to play basketball on concrete metropolis courts or leaping off Ringo Starr’s drum riser when he was a part of the primary All Starr Band excursions. Mixed together with his greater than a decade of doing stage backflips — and the onerous landings they entailed — Lofgren lastly needed to endure hip substitute surgical procedure in 2008. He nonetheless strikes round onstage (as he’ll do with Springsteen on the E Street Band’s European shows this spring and summer time) and he nonetheless has tales to inform (his video series Rockality). However his days of backflips are over. As he instructed RS in 2009, a yr after his surgical procedure, “I can’t pull out my outdated trampoline and do a backflip with my guitar on. I can’t bounce off a drum riser with out actual risking changing into a cripple at this level. It’s not value having myself reduce open once more in 5 years.”
Watching Benson Boone’s personal strikes, Lofgren says he’s impressed together with his capacity to do a roundoff, land backwards and, utilizing that momentum, do a backflip on the bottom. “It’s a basic round-off back-flip that each younger gymnast, boy or woman, does,” he says approvingly. “His aspect flips off the piano are additionally very cool. It’s a distinct model of a barani, the place you go ahead, do a half-twist and land backwards. He’s clearly had gymnastic coaching.”
So far as recommendation for Boone, Lofgren, 73, has somewhat bit to share from his personal expertise, which, he says, resulted in two metallic hips and no rotator cuffs. “I don’t know if the man has a drink occasionally. However watch out to not have too many drinks earlier than you do gymnastics,” Lofgren says. “And it’s 10 or 20 years from now and he’s nonetheless doing all that stuff, simply weigh in with a bodily therapist and a coach if one thing’s not feeling proper. All through historical past, numerous musicians is not going to train. They’re well-known for it. For me, it was a great run, however as you become old and beat up, it’s harmful.”
