Live Photos: Bruce Springsteen keeps up the glory days at Wembley Stadium
He might be 74, and he might have recently had to cancel a run of dates after a serious health issue, but Bruce Springsteen was every bit the boss of Wembley Stadium as he rolled it back to his glory days in a mammoth set. His world tour got back on the road on June 12th, and last night’s show (July 25th) was his first in the UK since then. Springsteen showed his adoration for a place that has always made him at home with a whopping 31-track set.
Kicking things off with ‘Lonesome Day’, the Boss exhibited a champion’s mastery as he warmed up the crowd – not quite bolting out the gates, more of a gathering gallop, like a prize racehorse who knows it has more to give than the rest of the field. So, after a string of lesser-known tracks like ‘Ghost’ and ‘Letter to You’, he suddenly arrived at ‘The Promised Land’ seven songs which propelled the concert to a different tier, not because of Bruce or his band, but because of a proposal in the front row.
Then, hilariously, Springsteen followed up this tender moment with ‘Hungry Heart’, a track that begins with the lines: “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack / I went out for a ride and I never went back”. Alas, the couple can surely take solace in the fact that any blemishes in the matrimony bliss that lay ahead will surely the transfigured by memories of the Boss’ punchline, after all, there aren’t actually many songs in his back catalogue where love works out alright.
With his band sounding as tight as ever, so attuned to each other that they can riff to each other’s whims like a rock ‘n’ roll jazz group, Springsteen and his E-Street cronies raced through the depths of his discography with an earnest sincerity that made it seem like they were charting the chronicles of their lives as a band too. Rain might have tumbled, but to quote the worst line in cinema history, much of the crowd was quipping like Andie MacDowell: “Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed”.
From 19:15 to 22:25, the songs tumbled through serenely, easing any pain in aching feet as Springsteen didn’t even leave the stage once bar the first encore after 24 songs with ‘Thunder Road’ closing the setlist proper. The following a six song encore that included ‘Born to Run’, ‘Dancing in the Dark‘, and a cover of ‘Twist and Shout’. Even then, he still had more left in him as the band departed and the Blue Collar icon hung around for just one final acoustic rendition of ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’.
Evident more than anything over the course of the evening was the sense that he’s mastered his live show to such an extent that he’s now able to simply treat it as fun. He’s like an architect so attuned to their craft that they can return to the days when they were a kid playing with LEGO blocks. He gathered his show incrementally, building up a wellspring of goodwill before ‘Because the Night’, the song he originally wrote for Patti Smith, arrived 19 songs in, garnered a huge singalong that even Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the diminutive figure of Tom Cruise to the side of the stage were happy to lose their dignity too.
In a set that stretched beyond his average runtime, the feeling was not only that you were watching a great show but a rare sense of wholesome inspiration that you don’t often get at concerts, as many younger fans muttered, ‘Christ, I hope I’m still as sharp as that at his age’, and then looked questionably at their two-pint pitchers. The Boss has certainly put any health worries behind him.
