BOSTON (AP) -- Long before the glory days, Bruce Springsteen was just an opening act at a small theater here, playing to a crowd that did not yet know each word of his songs.
Watching one night in May 1974 was a Boston music critic who would soon write: "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen."
Now the Boss is traveling the well-worn path back to his Boston roots, to play a venue whose legend matches his own. On Saturday and Sunday nights, Springsteen will perform the first-ever rock concerts at Fenway Park, bringing his working-class ballads to the quirky 91-year-old home of Red Sox heroics and heartbreak.
"Boston's become over the years just one of our really special places," said Jon Landau, the writer who penned the famed review and became Springsteen's manager in 1978. "I'm guessing that we won't have any shows that are any better than the shows at Fenway. We just felt like it would be a special thing."
The chance to see a rock legend on Fenway's near-sacred turf has led to fierce demand locally, with the 36,000 tickets for each show selling out in less than an hour.
"It is seen as something special," said Christopher Phillips, editor and publisher of Backstreets, a quarterly Washington, D.C.-based magazine dedicated to all things Bruce. "He's playing quite a few ballparks, but I think there's some special attention being focused on Fenway, just because of its history."
"Literally, as fast as technology could handle the demand, the tickets were gone," said Dave Marsden, a vice president at promoter Clear Channel. "This is a level above Bruce Springsteen. This is 'Bruce Springsteen at Fenway Park.' It's a magical combination of a very special artist and a unique setting."
The stage will be set up in center field, in the shadow of the towering Green Monster, with about 9,000 lucky spectators given lawn seats. The field's carefully groomed grass will be protected by thick plastic coating called Terraplas. According to Fenway management, all remnants of the stage and set will be removed by midday Monday, more than four days before the pennant-seeking Red Sox retake the field.
As for Springsteen's widely known predilection for the New York Yankees, who are serendipitously hosting the Red Sox this weekend, the less said the better -- at least for Bruce's Boston fans.
But Springsteen and his entourage have a special feeling about Fenway, where many of the band members played an impromptu game of softball a few years ago during a tour of the fabled park.
The Fenway dates were a late addition to Springsteen's worldwide tour, announced in June as part of a new ballpark leg of the schedule, along with Chicago's Comiskey Park, Detroit's Comerica Park and Milwaukee's Miller Park. Springsteen later added concerts in San Francisco's Pac Bell Park and Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium.
In winning permission from the Red Sox' new owners, Springsteen will tread where musicians as illustrious as Sir Paul McCartney and Boston Symphony Orchestra legend Seiji Ozawa have tried but failed to go -- McCartney because the former Red Sox owners denied his request and Ozawa because the BSO determined a Fenway concert would be too expensive. The last concert at Fenway was 30 years ago, when the Newport Jazz Festival relocated there for a two-day event that drew about 15,000 people.
The Fenway concerts will be the latest milestone in the rich partnership between Boston and the Boss.
Back in the early '70s, when, as Landau puts it, Springsteen "was just scrounging around, trying to get started, barely making enough to keep his little operation afloat," the city offered him a progressive music scene just a few hours up the highway from his New Jersey base.
A devoted following began to grow, thanks in part to Landau, then a writer for the now-defunct Real Paper. Springsteen made one of his earliest radio appearances here, on WCBN. He opened for Radcliffe dropout Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theatre. He played at places called Charley's Bar, Joe's Place, and Paul's Mall.
In 1978, despite grave concerns about the acoustics, he performed at the Boston Garden -- a venue nearly as revered and quirky as Fenway -- in what Landau says was his first arena concert.
After the show Springsteen said, "This is the worst building and the best audience I've ever played for," said Landau.
In 1999, he played five sold-out concerts at the FleetCenter.
"Each night was better than the last," said Backstreets' Phillips. "My favorite shows have been Boston shows. For whatever reason, maybe there's something in the water, but there certainly does seem to be some kind of connection there."
