I went to Friday night’s concert by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at the Verizon Center not as an established fan, but as someone who knows very little of the band’s catalog beyond the rock radio staples that have been in constant rotation for decades.
The performance was the latest stop on The River Tour, named after the the 1980 double album opus that established Springsteen as a bona fide rock star. The night marked purposefully the first time yours truly heard the album in its entirety, in hopes of soaking in the Springsteen atmosphere with a truly blank slate.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Springsteen is The Boss for a reason, so of course the concert was amazeballs. He and the band have been in the game for decades, with the exception of saxophonist Jake Clemons, who ably filled the shoes of his late uncle Clarence Clemons, and the result is a tight unit that knows how to entertain.
The concert opened with “Meet Me In The City”, a song off of The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, an anthology released last year to mark The River‘s 35th anniversary. The joyful rocker was a fitting start to the 33-song, three-plus hour journey. Songs like “Hungry Heart”, “The River,” and “Cadillac Ranch” are timeless. The 66-year old icon is still in fine form physically and vocally—he even crowdsurfed through “Hungry Heart.” “Little” Steven Van Zandt is still the ideal foil for Bruce, Max Weinberg is a solid as ever on the drums, and the rest of E Street is a well-oiled machine. While the experience wasn’t life changing, as seeing them perform 30 years ago probably would have been, it was certainly life affirming.
The enthusiasm of the fans and the quality of the music was certainly impressive, but throughout the night I kept wondering why Bruuuuuce never hooked me like he had hooked so many millions. Perhaps it’s a question of context and personal history. Pundits often talk about America’s changing face in a political context, but that is also true in a cultural one. Last night’s crowd proved a great opportunity to play “spot the melanin”, and Springsteen’s music speaks to a specific American experience of which I will never be a part.
The setlist also served as a reminder that artists should tread lightly when it comes to playing albums in their entirety. Deeper, slower cuts like “Fade Away” and “Stolen Car” might perk the ears of super fans and sound great coming out of a pair of headphones, but lose many in a sold-out, 20,000-strong audience. The people around me on Friday illustrated the performer’s conundrum perfectly. The retired lieutenant colonel sitting in front of me would often start chatting me up during the concert’s quiet moments, to the point where the prominent columnist from The New York Times who was sitting next to me, asked us to quiet down (Author’s note: Said columnist’s friends were just as loud and lubricated as we were, if not more so).
The post-“River” part of the program contained a few well-received surprises, like “Darlington County” and “Tougher Than The Rest”. The encore was pitch perfect in terms of giving the crowd what it wanted. As the aforementioned retired Army officer remarked, he and his wife were there to relive their youth, and classics like “Born To Run,” “Dancing In The Dark,” and “Rosalita” certainly would have triggered those memories.
More photos by Erica Bruce from Friday night’s performance are available here.
