Reviewed on Tuesday February 7
“That’s a long way, man!” says an unusually hesitant Bruce Springsteen. He’s peering down at the crowd from atop his runway at the middle of the arena floor, a sea of hands beckoning him for a lift back to stage. The 67-year-old performer chuckles, closes his eyes and leans into the throng.
Springsteen has always known how to throw a party. These are not party times – already on this tour, the veteran songwriter and activist has had his say about President Trump – but tonight’s show is more about generosity than protest. That generosity goes both ways: not only from the devotees in the audience bellowing “Bruuuuuuuce!” and singing every lyric, but from The Boss himself, courtesy another of his famous three-hour sets.
The program is built around The E Street Band’s piano-driven heartland rock, from ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’ to ‘The Promised Land’ and the parade of classics in the finale – ‘Badlands’, ‘Thunder Road’, ‘Born To Run’ and more. It’s during an early audience request for ‘Hungry Heart’ that Springsteen takes his opportunity for the stage dive.
But while Springsteen doesn’t outwardly discuss the political climate in his native US, the implications of his most important lyrics are as vital as ever. In ‘American Land’, he sings of the multicultural immigration on which modern America is founded: “The Muslims and the Jews … They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re dying now”. Later, ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ sees saxophonist Jake Clemons hold up his hands in surrender; hundreds of hands in the audience return the gesture in an affecting moment of solidarity.
Ultimately, however, this is the Bruce Springsteen show – save for an incredible guitar solo or two from Nils Lofgren – and The Boss is as watchable as ever. He injects what would be an otherwise forgettable song like ‘Mary’s Place’ with irresistible character, and bounds past the three-hour mark without even leaving the stage (at least until his James Brown death-and-resurrection impersonation in ‘Shout’).
Springsteen speaks to the masses in 2017 as loudly as ever, and while the lyric on ‘Wrecking Ball’ mightn’t be his most poetic, it sums things up in the stony-faced language of the working class. “Hard times come, and hard times go,” he sings. And through it all, the music of Springsteen stands eternal.
Publicity photo supplied (by Brandon Todd)
