The night was dark; the young musician pumped from an earlier performance in Memphis that day. He was close - so close - to one of his influences, his idols. So Bruce Springsteen, 25, decided to do what millions of fans have attempted before him. He caught a cab to Graceland and scaled the wall, hoping to catch the eye of the self-professed king, Elvis Presley.
As he used to tell it in concert,"Me and my guitar player Steve were sitting around the hotel room, and we decided we wanted to go out and find something to eat. So we called up a taxicab."
When the cab arrived, the rockers asked if he knew a good sandwich place. "Yeah, there's a place right out by Elvis Presley's house," came the answer.
Bruce continued,"So we said, "You mean, like, you know where Elvis lives?" He says, "Yeah. Yeah. It's just about a couple of miles." We said, "Well take us there right now."
So the taxi travelled through the night to Graceland. "And I remember I got out of the taxicab. I had never been there before," Bruce said.
"And I stood in front of those two gates that he had with the guitar players on the front. You could see through them. You could see up the driveway into the house. And I could see on the second floor of the house there was one light on. So I figured, must be Elvis up reading."
"And I said, "Steve, Steve, man, I gotta go see if he's home." Despite the taxi driver's warning, the young rocker scaled the wall and started running up the driveway.
What would have been said in a meeting between the aging King and the young Boss will be left to the imagination, one of those ultimate rock-n-roll fantasies. Instead, Bruce was "apprehended" - chased down by Presley's security team and held as just another manic fan. "Can we help you?" the guards asked Springsteen just as he was going to knock on the door.
"Well, is Elvis home?" Springsteen responded.
"And they say, "No, no, he's not home now. He's in Lake Tahoe."
Undeterred, Springsteen attempted to sway the guards. "Yeah, I play guitar too,you know," he told them. "And I got a band, and I made some records. I was on the cover of TIME and NEWSWEEK."
The guards remained unimpressed. "They said, "Oh sure you are. Oh? Oh? Great, great," but I don't think they believed me."
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