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Springsteen helps the healing, brings a rebirth
By Sean Piccoli
Pop Music Writer
Posted November 24 2002
Miami ? The sense of mission that Bruce Springsteen brought to the making of his latest album, The Rising, helped carry him, his band and the audience through a rousing concert on Saturday night at AmericanAirlines Arena.
It also contributed to an occasional sense of disconnect: Springsteen was here in part to reckon with life after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the subject that pervades The Rising, while a near-sellout crowd of 17,000 was happiest hearing "the Boss" and his E Street Band play the sing-a-long standards from life before.
This was not, however, the collision of expectations that occurred in 1996 on Springsteen's pensive, comparatively hit-free solo acoustic tour in support of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Springsteen was canny and good-humored enough on Saturday to adapt to the wants of his spectators, knowing that healing and inspiration come in many forms. He sprung the surprise of the tour by bringing out special guests, singer Bono of U2 and guitarist Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, for a bracing cover of Patti Smith's Because The Night -- a song remarkably Springsteen-like in its dramatic pitch and dynamics and well handled by the all-star cavalcade on stage.
The 10-piece band that includes Springsteen's wife, singer-guitarist Patti Scialfa, and friends since the early 1970s played songs from The Rising to invoke the pain and sacrifice of that awful day, easing maybe a little too contemplatively with the title track and the new single Lonesome Day and delivering eight more from his latest offering. But they also reveled in the classics from Springsteen's imposing songbook and struck a mostly satisfying balance between the needs of today, as Springsteen sees them, and the pleasures of old: Badlands, She's the One, Glory Days, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark and several others from a seemingly endless train of gripping tales about American yearning. The set ran a generous two hours and 40 minutes, with only a short break preceding a flurry of encores.
Not every song on The Rising is a requiem. Waitin' on a Sunny Day, a stock piece of Springsteen-style uplift on record, bobbed along a raucous enthusiasm helped by the frontman's relentless working of the audience. Any singer doing a knee-slide across the stage gets some reaction; the 53-year-old Springsteen, looking invincibly fit, drew approving roars.
He was such a riveting and focal presence, in fact, he sometimes eclipsed even his most fabled comrades. Saxophone player Clarence Clemons looked a bit lonely and underutilized at moments, tapping out time on a tambourine as he waited his turn to blow the horn. On Promised Land, the whole band sounded a half-step behind its energized singer, his voice in explosive form, his eyes closed as if he were trying to shut out distractions and find the heart of the song.
Conversely, Worlds Apart, from The Rising, had so many elements -- a synthesized pulse, a Middle Eastern flavor, violin, accordion and a message about the estrangement of cultures -- it all but inundated Springsteen. He sang it as a lament, when what it really seemed to need to pull all the pieces together was a shot of purifying anger.
But the man and his band found harmonic convergence almost everyplace else. Candy's Room reached for, and found, the delirium of the burning love described by the song. The Fuse smoldered, its strange brew of menace and lust pushed toward a boil by the layered guitar work of Springsteen, Nils Lofgren and "Miami" Steve Van Zandt.
Springsteen also pared back the accompaniment, sometimes going it alone, for songs that served effectively as emotional pauses and grace notes. On Empty Sky, about a Sept. 11 widow, he harmonized intuitively with Scialfa and played stark acoustic guitar lines that underlined the song's sense of loss. One of Springsteen's gifts, and he had great command of it on Saturday, is a range of emotion and empathy that makes the agony of Into the Fire and the ecstasy of Born to Run possible, even compatible.
Springsteen helps the healing, brings a rebirth
By Sean Piccoli
Pop Music Writer
Posted November 24 2002
Miami ? The sense of mission that Bruce Springsteen brought to the making of his latest album, The Rising, helped carry him, his band and the audience through a rousing concert on Saturday night at AmericanAirlines Arena.
It also contributed to an occasional sense of disconnect: Springsteen was here in part to reckon with life after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the subject that pervades The Rising, while a near-sellout crowd of 17,000 was happiest hearing "the Boss" and his E Street Band play the sing-a-long standards from life before.
This was not, however, the collision of expectations that occurred in 1996 on Springsteen's pensive, comparatively hit-free solo acoustic tour in support of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Springsteen was canny and good-humored enough on Saturday to adapt to the wants of his spectators, knowing that healing and inspiration come in many forms. He sprung the surprise of the tour by bringing out special guests, singer Bono of U2 and guitarist Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, for a bracing cover of Patti Smith's Because The Night -- a song remarkably Springsteen-like in its dramatic pitch and dynamics and well handled by the all-star cavalcade on stage.
The 10-piece band that includes Springsteen's wife, singer-guitarist Patti Scialfa, and friends since the early 1970s played songs from The Rising to invoke the pain and sacrifice of that awful day, easing maybe a little too contemplatively with the title track and the new single Lonesome Day and delivering eight more from his latest offering. But they also reveled in the classics from Springsteen's imposing songbook and struck a mostly satisfying balance between the needs of today, as Springsteen sees them, and the pleasures of old: Badlands, She's the One, Glory Days, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark and several others from a seemingly endless train of gripping tales about American yearning. The set ran a generous two hours and 40 minutes, with only a short break preceding a flurry of encores.
Not every song on The Rising is a requiem. Waitin' on a Sunny Day, a stock piece of Springsteen-style uplift on record, bobbed along a raucous enthusiasm helped by the frontman's relentless working of the audience. Any singer doing a knee-slide across the stage gets some reaction; the 53-year-old Springsteen, looking invincibly fit, drew approving roars.
He was such a riveting and focal presence, in fact, he sometimes eclipsed even his most fabled comrades. Saxophone player Clarence Clemons looked a bit lonely and underutilized at moments, tapping out time on a tambourine as he waited his turn to blow the horn. On Promised Land, the whole band sounded a half-step behind its energized singer, his voice in explosive form, his eyes closed as if he were trying to shut out distractions and find the heart of the song.
Conversely, Worlds Apart, from The Rising, had so many elements -- a synthesized pulse, a Middle Eastern flavor, violin, accordion and a message about the estrangement of cultures -- it all but inundated Springsteen. He sang it as a lament, when what it really seemed to need to pull all the pieces together was a shot of purifying anger.
But the man and his band found harmonic convergence almost everyplace else. Candy's Room reached for, and found, the delirium of the burning love described by the song. The Fuse smoldered, its strange brew of menace and lust pushed toward a boil by the layered guitar work of Springsteen, Nils Lofgren and "Miami" Steve Van Zandt.
Springsteen also pared back the accompaniment, sometimes going it alone, for songs that served effectively as emotional pauses and grace notes. On Empty Sky, about a Sept. 11 widow, he harmonized intuitively with Scialfa and played stark acoustic guitar lines that underlined the song's sense of loss. One of Springsteen's gifts, and he had great command of it on Saturday, is a range of emotion and empathy that makes the agony of Into the Fire and the ecstasy of Born to Run possible, even compatible.
