★★★★ To watch Springsteen, still lean and mean at 73, in full flight is to see rock music ascend to its most communal point 🖋️ shaun_curran
He often works the front of the crowd like it’s a club show, shaking hands and singing directly into the eyes of the first row – at the end of a huge-sounding “The Promised Land”, from 1978, he hands his harmonica to a young girl on the front row – but then also sings “Letter To You”, the title track from his 2020 album, while pointing directly out to the crowd as if they are one. It’s no little skill to make a stadium of 40,000 people feel so close.
There’s no let-up in an opening hour that whistles by. From “No Surrender” – a soaring statement opener that races along with the E Street band in their full recognisable bar room-meets-stadium band style – Springsteen says nothing except to count the band in . In fact, Springsteen doesn’t talk too much at all, though a story about outliving the members of the very first band he joined in 1965 gives 2020’s “Last Man Standing” a touching pathos.
The setlist is more static than days gone by when Springsteen would drop songs almost at will – perhaps a result of Springsteen’s stint on Broadway – but he still has the capacity to surprise: 1980’s “The River” gets its first airing of the tour, a haunting amendment as dusk falls. There is a sprint finish in the encore. A whirlwind of chest-beating, open-hearted anthems are still played with all-or-nothing passion, despite the fact Springsteen has performed them thousands of times: if he’s sick of them, it really doesn’t show.
Yet he closes with a solo acoustic “I’ll See You in My Dreams”, a new song about departed friends and fallen comrades. Given we don’t know if we’ll see Springsteen in this guise again – even after tonight’s energetic display, he can’t go on forever – it could be interpreted as a pointed long goodbye. Either way, as the masses leave happy, it’s hard to imagine anybody asking for a refund.
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