Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
After 14 months of traveling
around the world with the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen concluded his tour
in support of his last studio album with the E Street Band. “The Rising” world
tour concluded with 3 sold out shows in
Sure, this may seem to be way
overkill even for die-hard rock and roll fans but I figure that if some of my
peers can attend as much baseball, hockey or football games in the same period
of time than who’s to say? So I will take this opportunity to review, in
chronological order, what for me were the highlights and low points of these 9
concerts.
August 7, 2002 Continental Arena
As mentioned above, this was the
official opening of The Rising tour. The album had been released early
in the summer and was initially supported with a flood of Bruce interviews in
the press and on TV, including interviews on the Today show and Charley Rose.
Due to the serious nature of 9/11 imagery that permeates
the album, I recall the grim game face that Bruce displayed throughout almost
the entire 2 and a half hour performance in front of his hometown crowd. The
show included 10 of the new albums 14 songs and each of these songs resonated
deeply with the “close to the edge” emotions of the audience. Be reminded that
the first anniversary of 9/11 had not yet passed and the ruins of the
The lightest moment of this heavy
evening was the clear delight that Bruce had on his face as the entire audience
sang the full chorus to “Waitin’ On a Sunny Day”,
one of the few truly up tempo songs on the album. The album was barely a month
old but clearly everybody in this audience was familiar enough with the
material to bring the first of few smiles to the bands collective face.
I was lucky enough to see my
second Rising show as a fluky result of being on vacation in LA this particular
week. My dear friend Marianne lives in LA and not only had tickets but had an
extra that allowed me to attend with her and 2 of her friends.
Several noteworthy items occurred
that night, one that was immediately noteworthy and the other became noteworthy
as a result of recent political events in
On this evening, Bruce introduced
sax player Clarence Clemons as the “governor of
The other noteworthy occurrence
for me was how, at the end of the show, I had watched the crew breakdown the
stage in preparation for leaving that night for the next days show in
Finally, this show also included
absolutely blistering versions of 2 newer songs. “Worlds Apart” is one of Denise’s
favorites from the new album. Also a favorite of
July 15, 2003 Giants Stadium,
When the summer 2003 stadium shows
were announced in March of this year, the initial announcement was for 7 shows
during the month of July at Giants Stadium. Most of the big stadiums in the
So it was with a lot of
excitement that Ralph & me headed over the
Besides the excitement of being
opening night, I would say the highlight of the show was the opening number.
Bruce had the guts to walk out in front of 55,000 fans alone with an acoustic
slide guitar to play a hard to recognize version of “Born In
The
Nonetheless, the remainder of the
show was more than satisfying and we did manage to weasel our way to at least
being on the side of the stage, albeit still well up in the nosebleed section.
July 21, 2003 Giants Stadium New
OK, so this show was attended by
the band of brothers, Ralph, Eddie & Nick Carulli
with me as the honorary 4th bro’. As usual, my nerves were shot
because I always want to arrive hours early while the brothers all want to
arrive at the last possible minute. Guess who usually wins (hint, I’m badly
outnumbered here). We did walk into the stadium after the start of the show but
since the opening number was “The Rising”, I
took it all in stride. It helped a lot that these tickets were all on the
ground floor; I’d say that we were about 50 yards from the stage, over on the
left side.
There were several highlights to
this show, starting I would say with a great version of “Trapped” (oooh- yeah-eee-yeah-ah). Continuing in the spirit of older songs being
highlights, a great full band version of “For You” put most of the long time
fans deep into nostalgia land.
Than “it” came, during the song
called “Mary’s Place”. The “it” being torrential
downpours, which continued for the rest of the night. For those not
familiar with the lyrics of “Mary’s Place”, there is a refrain during
this great party song that repeats the phrase “Let it rain” and man did it
ever! Bruce really stepped up and so did the band because rather than back off
they just kept right on ripping like there was no tomorrow, because that’s how
it rained the rest of the night!
Back to back highlights in the
first encore were due to the introduction of original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez, who played with the full band on “Spirit In The Night” (all night!). When Max Weinberg rejoined,
the band pulled out a relic from the “Tracks” compilation called “Where The Bands Are”. This number set the tone for what wound
up being a theme for the remainder of the stadium tour, that being performances
of rarely or never before played live in concert songs. More on this point to follow in future show
recollections coming up.
Finally, the show wrapped up with
“Rosalita”, “Hungry Heart” and “Dancing In The Dark”. If not the best of all of the 2002-03 shows I
saw, than this was definitely in the top 3, what a great night!
July 24, 2003 Giants Stadium New
This performance started with Downbound Train, from 1984’s Born In The USA album and this was also the last night of the
July NJ shows. As such, everybody in the stadium seemed duly pumped up, despite
an ongoing threat of more downpours.
Long time fans like myself were now being rewarded for attending multiple shows
by Bruce, as he dusted off more and more relics as the tour started to wind
down. Tonight’s highlight was a one-two punch from the Born To Run album. For the first time in nearly 30 years I
saw the band perform Meeting Across the River, which is a personal
favorite since the story is about a guy named Eddie (can you lend me a few
bucks?) I nearly stained myself when this song segued into what is my number 1
Bruce song of all time, the classic Backstreets. You could have put a
form in me for the rest of the tour by the time this song was over but no, not
really.
Tonight also included a killer
version of Kitty’s Back, back from the long ago year of 1973! As far as
I’m concerned, this performance demonstrated that Bruce continues to be one of
the most under-rated guitarists in rock and roll. The leads he played during
the whirling dervish served up by the Viagra-taking, earth-quaking,
butt-shaking, legendary ESB were truly a sight & sound to behold. And to
think that the recent Rolling Stone magazine poll didn’t include Bruce in the
top 100 rock guitarists of all time, UNBELIEVABLE!
The rain did hold off until the
very end of the concert but as was the case in all of the NJ shows I attended,
Luke, Bobby and myself hung out in the parking lot until about 1:00 am before heading
back Across The River. Here’s a callout to Laura & Noel who were seated to
our right around section 120 or so. A good ending to the first leg of the NJ
stand!
August 30, 2003 Giants Stadium New
One of the things that was clearly demonstrated on this stadium tour was the
apparent and extended appeal of Bruce & the ESB. It is probably also due to
the aging process but I was impressed by how many families had attended the
July concerts. I had seen kids as young as 2 or 3 years old with their parents
and the only real negative I see about this is the volume on these still
developing eardrums.
So it was bearing this appeal in
mind when I had come to the determination that this show was the best
opportunity to introduce 10 year old Julia to live rock & roll. Who better
to baptize, revitalize, mesmerize and hypnotize my kids with rock & roll
than the Boss (you all know the answer, NOBODY!)?
An unexpected opening with a Born
In The USA era “b” side single, a country tinged song called Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart was only
recognized by us hard core fans. In fact, the entire evening was leaning
acoustically as Bruce introduced Emmy Lou Harris to the audience in support of
a true relic known as Across The Border.
Another country-ish song played tonight was This
Hard Land (very Wood Guthrie’ish, this one is)
which led into an old number that I’m pretty sure Steve Van Zandt used to play
with Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes called Raise Your Hands
(and we sure did!).
The last acoustic nod was a
lovely song from Tracks called Pretty Flamingo. Also during tonights show was the first song I’ve seen Bruce do from
the early 90’s albums called Human Touch and
In all, Julia probably would have
liked a few more songs from the Rising but even for the cool cucumber that she
is, I could tell that she really enjoyed this concert. There really is no
feeling like being in NJ when Bruce turns up the house lights and blows the
state away with Born To Run!
August 31, 2003 Giants Stadium New
As show number 7 for me on this
tour and 2nd in two days approached, even I started to wonder when I
would become Bruced-out. But after performing 2 tour
premieres within the first 5 songs, the answer for this night was not yet. The
opening number was the rarely performed Cynthia and the title cut of
Also played the night before was
one of Bruce’s biggest hits, Because The Night
which is best known thanks to the FM radio hit version recorded in the late
‘70’s by Patti Smith. I hadn’t seen the
band do this number since the BITUSA tour dates and this is definitely one of
the most powerful stadium rock songs. ALL of the audience would scream out the
BTN chorus, so it had to heard all the way over to the
old Max’s
I was one of the very few in the
55,000 plus audience that recognized the first piano chords to Lost In The
Flood and stood for the entire 8 minute plus opus to Chevy Stock Super 8’s,
dressed in drag for homicide….
No special guests for the
What a night, what a home stand,
nobody wanted to leave not even the clearly exhausted boss and his band!
Happily, the announcements were already confirmed for 3 more shows in
October 1, 2003 Shea Stadium
Well, at least Bruce waited till
the end of the tour to stoke the still sensitive nerves of NY’ers
by performing the most politically charged and controversial show since
releasing The Rising in the summer of 2002. The night was already historic
based upon the baseball venue most musically famous by virtue of the Beatles
legendary performances there around 1965 or so.
Bruce opened the NY shows with
odd voice-overs of George W Bush repeating the phrases “world peace” and
“weapons of mass destruction” before ripping into a great version of Souls Of The Departed. While the audience was expecting
something special for sure, this opening was the musical equivalent of having a
tub of Gatorade dumped on your head in the middle of January. Besides the song
choice being kind of obscure, this opening put everybody on their heels and set
an unfortunately down tone that was never overcome.
Some of the down mood may have been due to a mid week
performance on a cold October night, in addition to much of the audience having
already attended more than a few NJ shows. The Jersey performances were nothing
short of exhilarating night after night but for whatever reason, Bruce was
pushing the peace, love and
Nevertheless, a great one-two
punch was noted with back to back performances of Tunnel of Love which
segued into Brilliant Disguise. A hootenanny version of Johnny 99 was
pretty unexpected as was a burning version of The Fuse (pun well
intended). Continuing with the button pushing, Bruce chose tonight to
re-introduce the racially charged anthem American Skin (41 Shots) which
was met with mostly stunned silence and a fair amount of boos (not to be
confused with Bruuce) from the NY audience.
I think the song does share both
sides of the tragic Amadou Diallo
story (an unarmed black man was shot 41 times in a known drug peddling housing
project by white NY policemen). However,
not everybody hears the yin (“you can get killed just for living in your
American Skin”) balanced by the yang (“is that a gun, is it a knife, is it a
wallet, this is your life”) so I can’t blame the NY cops who either turned
their backs or just walked right out of the show during this number.
In another example of yin-yang,
Into the Fire, which eloquently describes the heroics of police, and
firefighters who climbed the smoky stairs of the
October 4, 2003 Shea Stadium
In the 3 days that followed the
NY opening night, I spent a lot of time on the internet websites dedicated to
discussions about Bruce. The scuttlebutt was much along the lines of what I
have just described but also in these discussion threads were the hopes of fans
that the politics would be dropped in favor of the more jubilant experiences of
summer 2003. The 2nd nights performance was
apparently much less controversial and being on a Friday night the crowd also
was apparently in a better frame of mind, too.
But this was not just a Saturday
night gig but closing night of the most successful Bruce Springsteen world
tour, ever. All signs indicated that this would be a night to remember and
indeed it was. The set list reached a total of 30 songs; the average show
before tonight was about 24 songs over the past year. Not only that but fully
10 of the songs performed tonight I had not seen him perform at any of the
previous 02/03 concerts. This is my justification for seeing so many shows, the
thrill of seeing a one-time only song performance by Bruce is my equivalent of
a sports fan seeing a one-hit shut out at the World Series or a Tiger Woods
hole in one at the Masters.
So let me start with the “without
a doubt” concert (if not concert tour) highlight. At the start of the second
encore of the night, Bruce had started talking about an artist who helped Bruce
define himself musically and well as emotionally. I thought that he was either
referring to Woodie Guthrie or was about to introduce
John Fogerty of Creedence
Clearwater Revival. I think everybody
was stunned when Bruce started choking up as he finally introduced MR BOB
DYLAN!
This intro was at the point of
the concert where Bruce normally sits at a piano by himself to make his Public
Service announcements and also the point in the concert where I normally sit
down for the first time in a couple of hours. Boy, was
I glad that I sold my 2 Friday night Loge seats and upgraded my Saturday night
ticket from the mezzanine to the floor because I was only about 200 feet from
the stage when the Boss’ hero took center stage for an 8 minute version of Highway
61! I shot to my feet and onto my chair because I could not believe this to
be taking place.
AWESOME!
This was after already seeing for
the first time on this tour the show opening with Code Of Silence, a
very rarely performed song. Also highlighted this night were Roulette (they’re
playing with my life), I Wish I Were Blind
(when I see you with your man, what great lead guitar Bruce played on this
great song).
2 more rarely played numbers
performed this night were Another Thin Line and Back In Your Arms, boy the hard core were well compensated
tonight! The first encore opened with Light Of Day (Bruce wrote this for
the Michael J Fox / Joan Jett movie of the ’80’s) which was followed bang, bang, bang by Bobby Jean, Born To Run and Seven
Nights To Rock!
After the incredible Dylan treat,
Bruce rolled out more of his old friends onto the stage including Willie Nile,
Garland Jefferies (he did a remake of 96 Tears in the 80’s), manager Jon Landau
(who inspired / demanded Bruce to write one of his biggest hits from BITUSA, Dancing
In The Dark) and Gary US Bonds for what wound up being an 8 song encore
finale.
The last number was a choker,
from the greatest hits collection of the mid-90’s the tour ended with Blood
Brothers. I call this one a choker because just about all of the band
members were in tears for this last song, on the last night of what God forbid
could conceivably be the last Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band concert
ever.
As I said, God forbid! Thanks for
a great tour Bruce, and special thanks to all of those friends and family who
attended or supported this tour, including but not limited to:
Eddie Carulli,
Nick Carulli, Marianne Brooks (and her NJ / LA
friends Virginia & Dave), Meg DiSiervo, Charlie DiSiervo, Luke DiSiervo, Gitte and her husband Ray (the Swede in Black), Bob Palmeiri, Laura Puccio (&
Noel, too), Denise Hughes, Jim Colqhoun Vini (Mad Dog) Lopez, Emmy Lou Harris, Dave Marah, the NJ
& NYPD, Willie Nile, Garland Jefferies, Gary US Bonds, Bob Dylan, several
overpaid (but necessary) ticket brokers and to my rock and roll right hand man,
Ralph Carulli.
As always love to Julia,
Meet me tonight in