In 2002, my wife and I were at a Springsteen concert in Albany.  Looking for a restroom before the show, she accidentally wandered into the backstage area.  Nothing if not resourceful, she talked Bruce's tour manager, a wonderful guy named George Travis, into giving her a pair of backstage passes.  (He also moved us from the nosebleed section to seats right beside the stage.)  After the show (which was of course amazing), George escorted us backstage to the room he was using as an office for the night and told us to wait there.  So we did, chatting with various crew members, etc., for an hour or so.  Around midnight, just as we were deciding to start the drive back to Boston, the door next to us opened and out came a smallish guy, in an old army jacket and a dirty baseball cap, hunched over and walking very gingerly.  It took me a few seconds to realize it was Bruce -- suffering a bit from having spent the night jumping off of speakers and sliding across the stage on his knees.  He stopped and chatted with us for a minute, and then shuffled out to the tour bus.  We've subsequently met him a couple more times; and yes, he's every bit as nice a guy as he seems.