Saw Bruce Springsteen on Saturday night. Before I get into a bit of a review, I’d like any of you to tell me you’ve seen Bruce in a more spectacular setting than this:
I missed the first half an hour due to a meeting I had running over time, so the first six songs. Blinded by the Light I went to take a piss, then was in the thick of it from Spirit in the Night onwards.
For me the highlights were Wrecking Ball (that song rocks and the Irish influences sound so great), Youngstown (fucking rocked, was loud and aggressive), Johnny 99 (fun as hell), The Rising (still so wonderfully uplifting), Rosalita (had the crowd going nuts), Bobby Jean.
Other thoughts… the studio version of Hungry Heart is actually pretty nice, better than the live version. Glory Days is heaps of fun live. During Born to Run it started raining, that was amazing, and what a tune, I will never ever get tired of that song, also up there with Heroes and Dreams for best song ever claims. Dancing in the Dark was played with synths, not guitars/horns like last tour, and is still fucking stellar, I enjoy the hell out of it. And the joy of seeing Bruce pull up a bunch of people in the front few rows to dance with Jake, Steve, Max, Patti, is fucking infectious, just makes you smile like hell. 10th Ave is possibly his most underrated song, I don’t know how that doesn’t get more love than it does. They showed a heap of old pictures of Clarence after the “big man joined the band” line (although it’s not as poignant as the last tour, when they stopped the music altogether and they all look up at the screen in tribute). Will also never tire of the “you’ve just seen the…… E Street Band!” bit, that’s so great. Bobby Jean was the closer, and it was awesome, and then Bruce did a solo acoustic Thunder Road, which was nice enough but kinda felt like a bit of a slap in the face, there’s a million other songs he’s got that he could close with acoustically to give Thunder Road a proper treatment.
But the big highlight was obviously Jungleland. Was not expecting it at all, and would have been fine if it didn’t appear as I’d heard it on the last tour, but it’s one of my all-time favourite songs. I went absolutely nuts screaming and singing the lyrics, a shame that many around me didn’t seem as into it as I was. It was more like a festival atmosphere (and people had been there since 2pm, Jet was one of the openers ughhh) so you had people drunk as fuck and making noise during the quiet parts of Jungleland, but in the end it didn’t matter, the song is that good. Fucking amazing.
On the whole, a great show, but nowhere near as good as the 2013 tour. I know Little Steven is sacrosanct, but Tom Morello was streets ahead. Mr Van Zandt looks and sounds pretty haggard and though it was really heartwarming seeing the connection between him and Bruce and the crowd (he’s got quite the fan club), Tom Morello had way more energy. The music was pretty much equal but I really missed the heavier renditions that the 2013 had like Ghost of Tom Joad, Death to My Hometown and a few others. There was also a bigger band on that tour, the sets were structured better and the arena was actually better too. And I really miss Waitin on a Sunny Day, that was an absolute highlight every show on that tour.
I must listen to the Tom Joad album.