Bruce Springsteen live review: A rock and roll icon delivers again
It’s a warm Thursday night. The mid-western sun beats down on my face as I clock off of my shift at the factory. I sling a beaten-up leather jacket into the front seat of my truck and turn on the radio. Bruce Springsteen‘s heartland hit, ‘Born in the U.S.A’ blares as I set out on the open road. I’m inexplicably wearing blue jeans.
Except none of that is true. I’m at Hyde Park’s British Summertime, I have never worked in a factory, and not even that partial to denim. But watching Bruce Springsteen play his set at BST, one of two gigs he’ll play this week, I sing along to ‘Born in the U.S.A’ with such conviction I briefly worry about turning up to the factory hungover tomorrow.
Springsteen has spent a career capturing the feel of blue-collar America in his songs, which the 65,000-strong crowd revels in for the entire three-hour set. Over the course of those hours, it occurs to me I’ve never seen so many people in bandanas before, which I guess we can thank Steve Van Zandt for.
The set kicks off with ‘No Surrender’, whipping into ‘Ghosts’, ‘Prove It All Night’ and ‘Letter To You’. Springsteen plays like a man possessed but somehow maintains a sense of calm. The setlist is admittedly massive, but there’s never any sign of an uphill struggle as he and the E Street Band cover a huge amount of material, peppering the set with some newer songs and some covers (the Commodore’s ‘Nightshift’ and Patti Smith Group’s ‘Because The Night’).
The Boss also found the time to crack jokes about his last BST set in 2012, which was cut short after he and Paul McCartney ran over the curfew.
After barrelling through ‘Born in the U.S.A’ and ‘Born To Run,’ Springsteen turns to Van Zandt and tells him: “It’s time to go home. I’m telling you, they’re going to pull the fucking plug again!” to which Van Zandt replies with a diplomatic: “Fuck ‘em” – before launching into an encore of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’.
There were tender moments too, and Springsteen reflected on joining his first band alongside George Theiss, who hired the teenage guitarist into The Castiles – in what Springsteen called the “greatest adventure of his life”.
There were lots of tears as he mentioned sitting by Theiss’ bedside as he battled cancer, and he shared that in those moments, it hit him that Theiss passing away would leave him the last living member of that small band. Effortlessly poetic as always, Springsteen said: “Death is like you’re standing on the railroad tracks with an oncoming train bearing down upon you, but it brings a certain clarity of thought and a purpose and a meaning”.
Adding: “Death’s final and lasting gift to all of us is an expanded vision of this life, of how important it is to seize the day whenever you can.”
‘Last Man Standing’ was a heartfelt dedication to his late bandmate, telling the audience: “Be good to yourself and the ones that you love, and to this world that we live in.” The crowd were behind him at every moment, enthralled by the sheer quality of his voice and the energy he bought to the Great Oak stage. Rumours have swirled that this could be his last tour, and if that’s the case – I think everyone who watched the mammoth 29-song performance will cherish seeing the master at work live forever.
