bruce springsteen reunion tour

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The Six-Year Wait for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band Reunion

It’s hardly surprising that Bruce Springsteen didn’t intend to endure such a long break from the E Street Band . If he had his way, they’d have returned to the road two years ago, but because of the pandemic, it’s taken until 2023 for the way to be cleared.

”I’m going to consider myself lucky if I lose just a year of touring life,” Springsteen lamented to Rolling Stone in 2020. “Once you hit 70, there’s a finite amount of tours and a finite amount of years that you have. And so you lose one or two, that’s not so great. Particularly because I feel the band is capable of playing at the very, very, very top, or better than, of its game right now. And I feel as vital as I’ve ever felt in my life. … It’s not being able to do something that is a fundamental life force, something I’ve lived for since I was 16 years old.”

On Wednesday night, Springsteen and the E Street Band will deliver a full-length show for the first time in nearly six years. As they resume touring duties , they’ll want to quickly recapture the power and energy they last manifested on Feb. 25, 2017, in Auckland, New Zealand. That night they hammered home a 26-song set, closing a tour that had, on occasion, seen them delivering performances of up to four hours.

Below is a recap of how Springsteen dealt with his downtime - in a characteristically prolific manner - after he and the band closed their The River world tour on its 89th stop, after grossing $306.5 million over 13 months.

Watch Clips of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Aukland, 2017

'Springsteen on Broadway' (2017)

Following the success of his 2016 memoir Born to Run , Springsteen adapted elements to create a biographical show featuring songs, anecdotes and reflections from his life. With assistance from his wife, Patti Scialfa, he sculpted a full performance based on an intimate show he had staged at the White House during the last month of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2016.

“I wanted to do some shows that were as personal and as intimate as possible,” he explained in a statement . “I chose Broadway for this project because it has the beautiful old theaters which seemed like the right setting for what I have in mind. My show is just me, the guitar, the piano and the words and music. Some of the show is spoken, some of it is sung. It loosely follows the arc of my life and my work. All of it together is in pursuit of my constant goal to provide an entertaining evening and to communicate something of value.”

Springsteen on Broadway opened for previews at the 960-capacity Walter Kerr Theatre (the smallest venue he’d publicly played in 40 years, he estimated) on Oct. 3, 2017, with its official opening on Oct. 12. Originally set to close on Nov. 26, it was extended several times as a result of its success, eventually ending on Dec. 15, 2018. By that time he had grossed over $113 million from 236 performances and won a Special Tony Award for the show. The day before the last show, he released the Springsteen on Broadway live album , which reached No. 11 in the U.S. and enjoyed Top 10 success in many other countries. Netflix also broadcast a TV version of the show.

Listen to 'Land of Hope and Dreams' From 'Springsteen on Broadway'

Watch Netflix’s 'Springsteen on Broadway' Trailer

'Western Stars' (2019)

Springsteen’s 19th album, Western Stars , arrived on June 14, 2019. He said he discovered a desire to “return to my solo recordings featuring character-driven songs and sweeping cinematic orchestral arrangements,” and did so on 13 tracks in which he tried to evoke a “range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope.”

He later confirmed rumors that the songs were started several years earlier, telling Classic Rock , “I started it in 2012. You know, I'd put it away for a couple of years and go back to it. And then I had like 40 songs and I edited them all down and I had to find a record that I’d been making.” ... I was working on a meditation about men and women and love and the difficulty of love, and how do you move from being an individual actor into a life that's filled with people and family and friends and some communal experience? Everybody has to walk that journey.”

In September he followed the LP with a feature-length documentary movie , including live performances of all the album’s tracks from a barn he owned. He said of his directorial debut, “I knew I wasn’t going to tour on it and bring an orchestra. So I said, ‘Well, if I’m not going to perform it, maybe we could perform it once and film it – that way people get a chance to see what it's like to play it.’”

At first, he explained, the movie was going to be a simple live concert recording: “And one night in front of the television I was sitting there and I just kind of started to scribble my thoughts down for each song. And it was all right there. So I ended up with the script that is the voiceover. And then once we sort of had the voiceover, we needed something for it to voiceover … [so] we shot a little film during the photo session for the record and we just started to play with that, and it started to feel good over the voiceover. And then I started to score the voiceover, and that got us into this whole other section of the film. Which is really what turned it into a movie, you know, rather than just a concert film.”

Western Stars reached No. 2 on the chart and spawned the singles “Hello Sunshine,” “There Goes My Miracle,” “Tucson Train” and “Western Stars.”

Watch Bruce Springsteen's 'Western Stars' Video

'Letter to You' (2020)

Springsteen finally reunited with the E Street Band for Letter to You , their first collaboration since 2014’s High Hopes . It arrived on Oct. 23, 2020, amid pandemic restrictions that made touring impossible.

He discussed his plans the previous year, saying an album’s worth of E Street Band material was ready to go. “It’s like I’ve spent about seven years without writing anything for the band ... couldn’t write anything for the band,” he admitted . “And I said, ‘Well, of course … you’ll never be able to do that again!’ And it’s a trick every time you do it, you know? But it’s a trick that, because of that fact that you can’t explain, cannot be self-consciously duplicated. It has to come to you in inspiration.”

He later added , “I love the emotional nature of Letter to You . And I love the sound of the E Street Band playing completely live in the studio, in a way we’ve never done before, and with no overdubs. We made the album in only five days, and it turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had.”

Like Western Stars , Letter to You was accompanied by a concert movie – released the same day – which recounted the creation of the record. “All the songs from the album came out … in perhaps less than 10 days," Springsteen said. “I just wandered around the house in different rooms, and I wrote a song each day. I wrote a song in the bedroom. I wrote a song in our bar. I wrote a song in the living room.”

On Dec. 12 that year, Springsteen and the E Street Band performed “Ghosts” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams” on Saturday Night Live , marking the first time they’d performed together since closing the River Tour in 2017. They performed without bassist Garry Tallent and guitarist and violinist Soozie Tyrell, who didn't take part because of COVID concerns. It was the first time co-founder Tallent had ever missed a show.

Watch Bruce Springsteen’s 'Letter to You' Video

Watch Bruce Springsteen’s 'Letter to You' Movie Trailer

Presidential Podcast (2021)

On Feb. 22, 2021, the first in a podcast series hosted by Springsteen and President Obama arrived under the title Renegades: Born in the USA . Inspired by the friendship they fostered during Obama’s administration, and encouraged by the success of his wife Michelle’s podcast, the pair explored their attitudes to politics, family, the nature of masculinity and more over eight episodes, which ranged in length from 38 to 53 minutes.

Obama - who’d given Springsteen the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 - said of the project (which also spawned a book ), “Over the years, what we’ve found is that we’ve got a shared sensibility. About work, about family and about America. In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys trying to understand this country that’s given us both so much. Trying to chronicle the stories of its people. Looking for a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America.”

The same year, Springsteen returned to Broadway for another run of his biographical shows. Once again, the level of interest meant he delivered more performances than the 31 originally announced; the show ran from June 7 and Sept. 4. He also appeared on John Mellencamp ’s album Strictly a One-Eyed Jack , on the single “Wasted Days,”  which was released on Sept. 29.

Watch the Trailer for Springsteen and Barack Obama's 'Renegades' Book

Watch Bruce Springsteen Guest With John Mellencamp on 'Wasted Days'

'Only the Strong Survive' (2022)

Springsteen’s 21st album,  Only the Strong Survive , was announced on Sept. 29, 2022, and released on Nov. 11. It included 15 cover versions of soul and R&B classics, such as the singles “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” “Nightshift,” “Don’t Play That Song” and “Turn Back the Hands of Time,” with guest appearances by the E Street Band horn section.

He said he intended to make a different project when work started in his studio before he decided to pursue another path. “I spent my working life with my voice at the service of my songs – confined by my arrangements, by my melodies, by my compositions, by my constructions,” Springsteen  said . “My voice always came second, third or fourth to the expression of those elements. But this time, I decided to do something I had never done before: make some music that is centered around singing, around challenging my voice.”

He added, “Now, in my own memoir, I give my voice a little short shrift by saying I didn't think I had much of one. But once I started on this project, after listening to some of the things we cut, I thought, 'My voice is badass! I'm 73 years old, I'm kicking ass. I'm a good old man!'" The 15-track LP reached No. 15 in the U.S. and fared even better in many other countries. He appeared three nights in a row on The Tonight Show to promote the release and returned for a Thanksgiving special a week later.

Watch Springsteen's 'Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)' Video

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Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band Announce 2023 U.S. Tour Dates

The outing is slated to kick off in Florida in February.

By Gil Kaufman

Gil Kaufman

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band announced the dates for their 2023 U.S. tour on Tuesday (July 12). The 31-show swing is slated to kick off on Feb. 1 in Tampa, Florida and is currently slated to keep the hard-charging group on the road through a homecoming gig in Newark, New Jersey on April 14.

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Along the way the veteran rockers will hit Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, New York, Cleveland and Baltimore. The shows will be The Boss’ first North American dates with his long-running band since Sept 2016.

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Springsteen announced the dates for his 2023 European tour in May, explaining on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio that after nearly five years off the road it was time for him to get the band back together. “It’s kind of mind boggling to be honest with you… IT doesn’t feel that long, but,  you know, we stayed busy over that time, but still it’s, I’m really, I’ve got the Jones to play live very badly at this point,” Springsteen said of getting back at it with the band for the first time since they recorded 2020’s  Letter to You  album. “So, I’m deeply looking forward to getting out there in front of our fans.”

The group is gearing up to hit the road for the first time since the conclusion of their 14-month global River Tour, which kicked off in 2016. According to a release announcing the new dates, since the 2023 European dates were announced in May more than 1.2 million tickets have already been sold. After the end of the European run — scheduled for April-July 2023 — the band will begin a second as-yet-unannounced string of North American shows in August; tour dates in the UK are also slated for next year, with the details to be announced soon.

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Tickets for the 2023 U.S. arena shows will go on sale over the next two weeks, with the first ones available beginning July 20 at 10 a.m. local time; click here for more information.

Check out the E Street Band’s 2023 North American tour dates below.

Feb. 1 — Tampa FL @ Amalie Arena

Feb. 3 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena

Feb. 5 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center

Feb. 7  — Hollywood, FL @ Hard Rock Live

Feb. 10 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center

Feb. 14 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center

Feb. 16 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center

Feb. 18 — Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center

Feb. 21 — Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center

Feb. 25 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center

Feb. 27 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena

March 2 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena

March 5 — St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center

March 7 — Milwaukee, WI @ Fisery Forum

March 9 — Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena

March 12 — Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun

March 14 — Albany, NY @ MVP Arena

March 16 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center

March 18 — State College, PA @ Bryce Jordan Center

March 20 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden

March 23 — Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Center

March 25 — Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum

March 27 — Washington, D.C. @ Capitol One Arena

March 29 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena

April 1 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden

April 3 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center

April 5 — Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse

April 7 — Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Arena

April 9 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena

April 11 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena

April 14 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reveal 2023 North American Tour Dates

By Michele Amabile Angermiller

Michele Amabile Angermiller

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s long-awaited North American tour is set to launch Feb. 1, 2023, in Tampa, Florida, the band announced today. The two-and-a-half-month tour will unfold with 31 shows in the U.S., continuing through a home-state finale on April 14 in Newark, New Jersey, before the group heads to Europe for already announced overseas dates that will continue into July.

The outing is the band’s first since wrapping the 14-month worldwide “River Tour” in Australia in 2017 and Springsteen’s first tour in the U.S. since 2016. See the complete itinerary, below.

All of the dates announced are one-night arena stands, with the exception of two nights booked for the UBS Arena in Belmont Park, NY as the penultimate stop on the U.S. tour April 9 and 11. The New York/New Jersey area is well-represented with further dates at Madison Square Garden April 1 and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center April 3, leading up to the final night April 14 at New Jersey’s Prudential Center.

Tickets for the U.S. shows go on sale later this month, with on-sale dates ranging from July 20 to July 29.

The 2023 European dates already surpassed one million tickets sold on the initial routing, with shows added across the continent in anticipation of the band’s return to the road next year. Popular demand has seen Springsteen and the E Street Band add second stadium dates in Barcelona (April 28 and 30), Paris (May 13 and 15), Amsterdam (May 25 and 27) and Oslo (June 30 and July 2), while third shows have been scheduled for Dublin (May 5, 7, 9) and Gothenburg (June 24, 26, 28). With the milestone in ticket sales, a new tour stop has also been added in Hockenheim, Germany for July 21. Shows in the U.K. and Belgium will be announced at a later date.

The last live appearance by the band was an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in December 2020 in support of the album, “Letter to You.”

Said Springsteen: “After six years, I’m looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year. And I’m looking forward to once again sharing the stage with the legendary E Street Band. See you out there, next year — and beyond.”

In May, Springsteen phoned in to SiriusXM’s E Street Radio to talk about what fans can expect.

“It doesn’t feel that long” since the band last toured, he told host Jim Rotolo. “We’ve stayed busy over that time but still I have got the jones to play live very badly at this point, so I am deeply looking forward to getting out there in front of our fans.”

Rehearsals will start in January, and that full-fledged tour will stretch out to Australia and New Zealand following the August U.S. stadium dates and come “back around again,” he teased.

“It’s been a while and I am just aching to play — not just play but to travel and see our fans in all our different cities and feel that life again, see their faces again,” he said. “We’ve got an old-school tour planned where we will be out there for quite a while and give everybody a chance to see us if they would like to. We are going to rehearse in January — I already wrote out set lists, just to have something to do,” he added, noting that the setlist “will have a significant amount of recent material, and then we will play a lot of the music that the fans have become familiar with and love to hear. Should be a balance — feel contemporary and at home at the same time.”

In 2021, Springsteen, 72, released the group’s “The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts” film, collaborated with President Barack Obama on the book “Renegades: Born in the USA” and reprised his “Springsteen on Broadway” show to help reopen New York City’s theaters last summer. Just this spring and summer, he made three live appearances: two at MetLife Stadium on two separate occasions in New Jersey with Paul McCartney (June 16) and Coldplay (June 5) , and with McCartney again at the Glastonbury Festival in London.

The newly announced U.S. dates:

The on-sale times listed above are all for participants in Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program, preceding a general on-sale by five hours, with the exceptions of the shows with asterisks, where tickets will go on sale to all buyers at once.

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Bruce Springsteen Announces 2023 U.S. Tour With E Street Band

By Andrew Magnotta @AndrewMagnotta

July 12, 2022

Bruce Springsteen has announced his highly-anticipated 2023 U.S. tour with the E Street Band .

The announcement comes about two months after The Boss announced his 2023 European reunion with his band . The tours will be the band's first live concerts in years.

The U.S. tour will kick off before the European leg of the trek. The first of the 31 dates is February 1 in Tampa, Florida. The tour wraps April 14th in Newark, New Jersey.

Check out all the tour dates below. Go here for tickets and more information .

Tickets for some of the dates will go up for sale on July 20. Fans can register through Ticketmaster's Verified Fan program from now through July 17 to be eligible for the first round of on-sale.

"After six years, I'm looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year," Springsteen said in a statement. "And I'm looking forward to once again sharing the stage with the legendary E Street Band. See you out there, next year — and beyond!"

Springsteen and the E Street Band last toured in 2017. In September of that year, the Boss launched his Tony Award-winning successful  Springsteen on Broadway  show.

While the one-man show has been Springsteen's focus for much of the last several years, he did reunite the E Street Band in the fall of 2020 for the  Letter to You  album. The band performed on Saturday Night Live in support of the record.

2023 US Tour Dates Announced! For complete on-sale details and information on how to register for @ticketmaster Verified Fan, visit https://t.co/YahXTKffvV . pic.twitter.com/CgUpOUftho — Bruce Springsteen (@springsteen) July 12, 2022

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 2023 U.S. Tour

Feb. 1 - Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena

Feb. 3 - Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena

Feb. 5 - Orlando, FL @ Amway Center

Feb. 7 - Hollywood, FL @ Hard Rock Live

Feb. 10 - Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center

Feb. 14 - Houston, TX @ Toyota Center

Feb. 16 - Austin, TX @ Moody Center

Feb. 18 - Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center

Feb. 21 - Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center

Feb. 25 - Portland, OR @ Moda Center

Feb. 27 - Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena

March 2 - Denver, CO @ Ball Arena

March 5 - St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center

March 7 - Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum

March 9 - Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena

March 12 - Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun

March 14 - Albany, NY @ MVP Arena

March 16 - Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center

March 18 - State College, PA @ Bryce Jordan Center

March 20 - Boston, MA @ TD Garden

March 23 - Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Center

March 25 - Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum

March 27 - Washington D.C. @ Capital One Arena

March 29 - Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena

April 1 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden

April 3 - Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center

April 5 - Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse

April 7 - Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Arena

April 9 - Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena

April 11 - Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena

April 14 - Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center

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The Reunion Tour

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The tour was the first set of regular concerts given by Springsteen and the E Street Band in eleven years, since the 1988 Tunnel of Love Express and Human Rights Now! Tours, and followed two lengthy tours by Springsteen without the Band in the intervening years.

The tour was not intended to promote any Springsteen records; the release of the box set  Tracks  six months earlier had been oriented towards the holiday shopping market, and no longer held any chart action by the time of the tour. The release of the cut-down, single disc  18 Tracks  did coincide with the start of the tour but received little publicity or sales.

• 1 Itinerary
• 2 Broadcast and recordings
• 3 Personnel
• 5 Postponed Dates

Itinerary [ ]

Tour preparations began in March 1999 with a series of rehearsals at Asbury Park, New Jersey's Convention Hall. Several dozen of the Springsteen faithful, eager with anticipation at what the long-awaited reunion might bring, stood outside the Hall on the cold and windy boardwalk and beach, hearing what they could from inside the walls and reporting their findings on several Springsteen Internet forums. It was during one of these sessions that fans first heard runthroughs of "The Train Song", which would become the tour's closing epic "Land of Hope and Dreams". This practice of listening in on rehearsals would continue for all of Springsteen's subsequent tours. Springsteen then held two public rehearsal concerts in Convention Hall, a practice that would also continue for tours to come.

Springsteen opted to start the Reunion Tour in Europe, perhaps to get the show in top shape before coming home to greater attention. The first leg of the tour formally began on April 9, 1999 with the first of two nights in Barcelona's Palau Sant Jordi. Barcelona was in the process of becoming one of the strongest centers of Springsteen popularity, and additionally there were hundreds of travelling fans in attendance. The Europe leg would run through the end of June, finishing in Oslo, and encompass 37 shows in all, featuring a mixture of arenas and stadiums and often playing two nights in a location.

Two weeks later the second leg commenced back in the United States, and took place solely in arenas. It began with 15 consecutive shows in New Jersey's Continental Airlines Arena. More multi-night stands followed, as the tour concentrated on Springsteen hot spots such as Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. After 52 shows, the leg finished in Minneapolis in the end of November.

A three-month winter break ensued. The third leg started up in late February 2000 with a show at Penn State University. This leg focused on mostly single-night stands in areas that hadn't been reached on the previous leg, including a couple of dates in Canada, and again took place in arenas. Totalling 44 shows, it concluded in June with 10 consecutive dates in New York City's Madison Square Garden, ending on July 1, 2000.

In all, the tour played 133 shows in 62 cities over a span of 15 months.

Broadcast and recordings [ ]

The final two shows at Madison Square Garden became the source for  Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City , which aired as an HBO television special on April 7, 2001, and subsequently was released in longer form as a DVD and then a CD. However none of these forms presented a complete show, nor songs in their original concert order.

Several shows were released as part of the Bruce Springsteen Archives:

• Madison Square Garden, New York 07/01/2000 , released October 6, 2017
• Chicago September 30, 1999 , released September 7, 2018
• Los Angeles October 23, 1999 , released October 11, 2019
• First Union Center, Philadelphia September 25, 1999 , released July 3, 2020
• Madison Square Garden, New York 06/27/2000, released March 12, 2021
• Arrowhead Pond, Anaheim 05/22/2000, released January 7, 2022.

Personnel [ ]

• Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, electric guitar (most lead guitar parts), acoustic guitar, harmonica, rare piano
• Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer
• Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals
• Danny Federici – organ, electronic glockenspiel, accordion
• Nils Lofgren – electric guitar (some lead guitar parts), acoustic guitar, pedal steel guitar, background vocals
• Patti Scialfa – acoustic guitar, background vocals, some featured duet vocals
• Garry Tallent – bass guitar, upright bass
• Steven Van Zandt – electric guitar (occasional lead guitar parts), mandolin, background vocals
• Max Weinberg – drums

Postponed Dates [ ]

• 1 Born In The U.S.A. Tour
• 2 Cindy Mizelle
• 3 The E Street Horns

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Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge tour could be his best tour ever

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There is big news every day on the excitement and accolades of Bruce’s current tour. So many cities, so many countries and fighting sickness and fatigue but still performing at a level that Bruce’s fans expect and delight in every night.

Bruce has been touring for over 50 years. He has had meteoric success with his connection to his fans and has bent the range and genre of his music to country, folk and other genres that were at first not so familiar to his hard-core rock and roll audience. They adapted; it was Bruce.

When he said what would eventually be a temporary goodbye to the E-Street Band and cut the Tunnel of Love album and its twin Lucky Town, his fans listened and enjoyed it.

This May will be the 46th anniversary of the start of the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour. Music critics say that tour may be his best of all the tours that he has performed.

Bruce started the Born to Run tour a little before the full impact that album had on his fans and those new to the Springsteen experience.

By the end of the Born to Run tour he let that tour and album settle into the music pattern of “what the future of rock and roll held in store.” A quote that Rolling Stone magazine used after his tour.

Bruce took a little time off and then cut the Darkness on the Edge of Town album which when released did not have the oh wow factor that Born in the Run did.

Afterall, how do you follow that classic top fifty album in rock 'n' roll history, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

Based on a mediocre response, Bruce put together a 118-city tour, all of them here in the U.S. The tour kicked off in Buffalo at Shea’s Performing Arts Center on May 24, 1978.

Bruce slowly and methodically added song after song to the set list creating a 25 or more-song set list. With each concert lasting over two hours and each performance with energy, passion and song not seen in modern day rock 'n' roll, I am including the Rolling Stones into that mix.

I saw the show on November 29, 1978, at the St. Paul Civic Center in St. Paul Minnesota. I was attending the University of Minnesota at the time. It was an amazing show, and I remember it very well. I had great tickets and backstage passes through Jersey connections.

Bruce did an extended version of Rosalita, his powerful Born to Run and hearing his “new” Prove it All Night, Badlands and the Promised Land was impressive. Bruce was young, strong in a powerful voice and an energy found only in very few.

I was exhausted after leaving that show.

He had fun on stage and made sure that his audience got the best performance that their money could buy. They certainly did.

I’ve been to shows on most every major tour including the Born in The USA tour, which was great, The River Tour, The Reunion Tour, the Wrecking Ball Tour, just to name a few, the Darkness on the Edge of Town will always be a very special experience.

Bruce Springsteen knows how to throw a party!

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Gallery Credit: Mike Brant

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 weekend host Big Joe Henry. Any opinions expressed are Big Joe’s own.

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band reunited in Asbury Park 20 years ago

Scroll down to see bruce springsteen and the e street band play "prove it all night" on march 18, 1999..

ASBURY PARK - Twenty years ago, in this small, struggling city by the sea, there was still an unmistakable buzz in the air.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had kicked off their long-awaited Reunion Tour with two sold-out shows at Convention Hall on the boardwalk; the shows marked Springsteen's first performances at the legendary venue, and his first concert with the E Streeters in more than a decade. 

Bruce and his bandmates started rehearsing at the hall on March 4; on March 15, The Boss was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at a ceremony in New York.

The next day, tickets went on sale for two rehearsal shows March 18 and 19 that were billed as "one-hour" performances. The tickets, priced at $20 each, sold out in 80 minutes.

The day before the first rehearsal show, I was standing by the Ocean Avenue ramp that leads into Convention Hall. Fans had gathered there regularly during the rehearsals, hoping to get autographs from the band members.

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When Clarence "Big Man" Clemons stopped by to sign some autographs, I asked him the question that was on many fans' minds: was it true that the rehearsal shows would only be an hour long?

"When have you known Bruce to only play an hour?" Clemons said with a laugh. So, just like that, we knew the the shows would be full-blown concerts; in the end they were about 2½ hours each.

The anticipation was tremendous on the first night, March 18. Concert promoter Tony Pallagrosi, who produced Springsteen's rehearsal shows with his partner in Concerts East, Jerry Bakal, said the shows were "a big moment for us."

"It was a big moment for Concerts East, but it was also a big moment for Asbury Park," Pallagrosi said. "Nothing was going on in Asbury Park at the time. The music scene was basically dead in the water."

Asbury Park in 1999 was a struggling city whose famous boardwalk was almost completely deserted, even on hot, sultry summer afternoons. The Stone Pony had shut down in 1998 (it would not reopen until Memorial Day weekend in the year 2000). The Fast Lane wasn't open either.

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On summer days, the beach in neighboring Ocean Grove was crowded and full of people. Cross into Asbury, though, and you'd find a sparsely populated beach and a nearly empty boardwalk.

The partially completed C-8 building was still standing at Fourth Avenue and Kingsley Street, a monument to the city's first, failed redevelopment attempt. One of the few businesses open in the beachfront area was Howard Johnson's, located right across from the Paramount Theatre.

Asbury Park's struggles were part of the reason that Bruce's rehearsal shows seemed so important.

The other reason, of course, is that the Reunion Tour marked the E Street Band's first tour together since the Amnesty International/Human Rights Now! tour, which ended late in 1988; Springsteen had called band members in 1989, to tell them that he would not be using them in the foreseeable future. 

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There followed the "other band" tour in 1992 and 1993, and of course, the acoustic "The Ghost of Tom Joad," which in 1996 saw Springsteen play three shows at Asbury Park's Paramount Theatre.

Now Bruce was back, and with the entire band, including Little Steven Van Zandt, Springsteen's blood brother, who had left the band before 1984's Born in the U.S.A. tour.

So, when the lights went down in Convention Hall on March 18, the excitement was palpable. What would the band sound like? Which songs would they play? 

Then the lights came on and standing on stage in a concert venue that most resembled a high school gym were Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. They kicked into "Prove It All Night" right off the bat, as the crowd went crazy.

Watch Prove It All Night from March 18, 1999 in the video below.

My friend Stan Goldstein remembers that show well.

"From the opening notes of the first song "Prove it All Night" you could see the smiles and joy on Bruce and the band's faces and that joy carried right over to the audience," Goldstein said. "Just like the song he debuted at these shows, "Land of Hope and Dreams" we were all back on the this train."

Land of Hope and Dreams was a brand-new song, destined to close almost every show on the Reunion Tour.

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Before playing it that first night, Springsteen said, "Thank you….well, we got one more thing, we´re gonna leave you with something new ´cause it´s a night of rebirth (chuckles) and uh, this is called ´Land of Hope and Dreams´ and just tell everybody that we´ll be seeing 'em and uh … we love you and this summer there´s a big train coming down the track."

The band played 23 songs that night, without an intermission. At one point it seemed Bruce had planned to take a break, but instead, he decided to continue straight through; after that first performance, it was clear that there wouldn't be an intermission on the Reunion Tour.

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"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," a song about the birth of the E Street Band, became the tune Springsteen used all tour to introduce his famous bandmates. 

Back at it on night 2, Springsteen surprised the audience (including me) by playing "The Promise" solo on the piano. It marked the first time Bruce had performed the dark song about shattered dreams since July 1978.

"This is a song a lot of people requested," Springsteen said before playing "The Promise," according to Kelly-Jane Cotter's review of the show in The Asbury Park Press. "This is for you diehard fans out there."

The second night was even longer than the first, with 25 songs played, starting with "The Promised Land," and ending, once again, with "Land of Hope and Dreams." 

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The second show left us all wanting more, and we'd certainly get it: that summer Springsteen and the band returned for a record-breaking 15-show run at the Meadowlands Arena. The following year, he'd wrap up the Reunion Tour with 10 shows at Madison Square Garden.

The shows were benefits for local charities, including an Asbury Park afterschool program, the city's West Side Community Center, an early intervention program for Monmouth and Ocean counties, which offered help to disabled children and their parents, and Save Tillie, a group dedicated to saving the city's Palace Amusements building.

(Tillie was cut from the building and taken to storage in 2004, shortly before the dilapidated Palace was knocked down.)

"After not touring with the E Street Band for more than 10 years, it was just perfect to see Bruce reunited with the band in Asbury Park," Goldstein remembered. "It was magical seeing them all back onstage in such a small setting at Convention Hal. lt was the start of another chapter, not only in Bruce's history, but it began another chapter for many of his fans."

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And it was also the start of a 10-year run in which Springsteen would repeatedly play both rehearsal shows and holiday shows in Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre, and bring both the Today Show and Good Morning America to Asbury Park.

From historical concerts to presidents' visits, the Asbury Park Press is dedicating to remembering the history of the Jersey Shore. Please consider a subscription to help us continue bringing you more stories about the Shore's rich history.

My friend Billy Smith perhaps said it best, describing the magic of those two concerts in 1999.

"After all this time, they haven't missed a beat," Smith told me for an Press story on the shows that ran 10 days later. Like many in attendance, Smith singled out drummer "Mighty Max" Weinberg for special praise.

"Max especially has gotten even more amazing," he said.

"The impression that I got was that it's going to be a great summer," my friend Jeremy Neuer predicted n the Press article. 

He was certainly right about that.

Here are the setlists for the two rehearsal shows, from our friends at Brucebase:

March 18, 1999

Prove it all Night / Two Hearts / Darkness on the Edge of Town / My Love Will Not Let You Down / Factory / The River / Youngstown / Badlands / Out in the Street / Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out / Tougher Than the Rest / Spirit in the Night / The Ghost of Tom Joad / The Promised Land / She's the One / Backstreets / Light of Day / Born to Run / Bobby Jean / Streets of Philadelphia / Thunder Road / If I Should Fall Behind / Land of Hope and Dreams

March 19, 1999

The Promised  Land / Two Hearts / Darkness on the Edge of Town / Darlington County / Mansion on the Hill / The River / Youngstown / Murder Incorporated / Badlands / Out in the Street / Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out / The Promise / My Love Will Not Let You Down / For You / The Ghost of Tom Joad / Give the Girl a Kiss / She's the One / Backstreets / Light of Day / Streets of Philadelphia / Bobby Jean / Born to Run / Thunder Road / If I Should Fall Behind / Land of Hope and Dreams

Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050, @jeanmikle, [email protected]

• Consequence

Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band Reunite for World Tour

Bruce is getting the band back together after six years

Bruce Springsteen is getting the band back together.

Next year, Springsteen and the E Street Band will head out on the road for their first tour in six years. The long-anticipated jaunt kicks off with an as-yet-unannounced US arena tour in the spring, followed by a run of UK and European stadium shows taking place over the summer. The itinerary includes visits to Spain, Ireland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Austria, with additional dates in the UK and Belgium to be announced shortly. A second North American leg will follow in the fall.

You can find more information on how to purchase tickets here .

Update – June 8th: Springsteen has announced additional dates in Barcelona (4/30); Dublin (5/9); Paris (5/15); Amsterdam (5/27); Gothenburg (6/28); Oslo (7/2); and Hockenheim (7/21).

Update – July 12th: Springsteen has announced a US tour taking place between February and April 2023.

Update – July 14th: Springsteen has announced a series of UK shows .

“After six years, I’m looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year,” Springsteen said in a statement announcing the tour. “And I’m looking forward to once again sharing the stage with the legendary E Street Band. See you out there, next year — and beyond.”

In October 2020, Springsteen reconvened the E Street Band for the release Letter to You . To date, the band’s lone live performance in support of the album came on Saturday Night Live in December 2020.

Bruce Springsteen 2023 Tour Dates: 04/28 – Barcelona, ES @ Estadi Olímpic ( Tix ) 04/30 – Barcelona, ES @ Estadi Olímpic ( Tix ) 05/05 – Dublin, IE @ RDS Arena ( Tix ) 05/07 – Dublin, IE @ RDS Arena ( Tix ) 05/09 – Dublin, IE @ RDS Arena ( Tix ) 05/13 – Paris, FR @ La Défense Arena ( Tix ) 05/15 – Paris, FR @ La Défense Arena ( Tix ) 05/18 – Ferrara, IT @ Parco Urbano G. Bassani ( Tix ) 05/21 – Rome, IT @ Circo Massimo ( Tix ) 05/25 – Amsterdam, NL @ Johan Cruijff ArenA ( Tix ) 05/27 – Amsterdam, NL @ Johan Cruijff ArenA ( Tix ) 06/11 – Landgraaf, NL @ Megaland ( Tix ) 06/13 – Zurich, CH @ Stadion Letzigrund ( Tix ) 06/21 – Düsseldorf, DE @ Merkur Spiel Arena ( Tix ) 06/24 –  Gothenburg, SE @ Ullevi ( Tix ) 06/26 – Gothenburg, SE @ Ullevi ( Tix ) 06/28 – Gothenburg, SE @ Ullevi ( Tix ) 06/30 – Oslo, NO @ Voldsløkka ( Tix ) 07/02 – Oslo, NO @ Voldsløkka ( Tix ) 07/11 – Copenhagen, DK @ Parken ( Tix ) 07/13 – Copenhagen, DK @ Parken ( Tix ) 07/15 – Hamburg, DE @ Volksparkstadion ( Tix ) 07/18 – Vienna, AT @ Ernst Happel Stadion ( Tix ) 07/21 – Hockenheim, DE @ Hockenheimring 07/23 – Munich, DE @ Olympiastadion ( Tix ) 07/25 – Monza, IT @ Prato della Gerascia, Autodromo di Monza ( Tix )

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The Rising / Devils & Dust / Live in New York City / Live in Dublin / 18 Tracks

1 of 5 The Rising Dots Columbia Dots 2020

By Sam Sodomsky

February 24, 2020

At the end of the ’90s, as he entered his fourth decade as a recording artist, Bruce Springsteen was thinking about resurrections. The first order of business was returning to New Jersey with his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa, and their three children, after a few years in Los Angeles. He also reunited the E Street Band, the loyal crew he’d disassembled following his commercial peak in the ’80s, which had left him feeling, as he put it, “Bruced out.” His best work as a solo artist in the ’90s (“The Ghost of Tom Joad,” “Streets of Philadelphia”) found inspiration in understated outsider stories that he delivered like eulogies, miles away from the arena catharsis that audiences had come to expect from him.

With his most famous band reunited, Springsteen began writing for the masses again. The first new song he premiered during 1999’s reunion tour was “Land of Hope and Dreams.” To a steady, relaxed drumbeat, his bandmates reintroduced themselves—a glorious saxophone solo from Clarence Clemons, a sweeping mandolin refrain by Steve Van Zandt—while Springsteen conducted a spiritual roll call to kickstart this new era. “You’ll need a good companion,” he sang, “For this part of the ride.” Less optimistic but equally pivotal was “American Skin (41 Shots),” a ballad written for Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old who was brutally killed by New York City police officers. In its lyrics, Springsteen juggled feelings of hopelessness, fear, and complicity; in live performances, he requested silence so that you could hear every word.

Although he later attempted both in the studio, the definitive versions of these songs appear on 2001’s Live in New York City , recorded during the final nights of the E Street Band’s reunion tour. (Compiled from various shows, it is a triumphant but inessential collection: for the full experience, hit the bootlegs .) That album is among five new installments in Springsteen’s ongoing vinyl reissue series. This time around, he’s highlighting a series of recent albums that have become nearly impossible to find on vinyl, with one of them (2007’s Live in Dublin ) making its first appearance on the format. Compared to the first run of reissues, which highlighted his iconic run from his 1973 debut Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. through 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. , and a second that collected his mid-career wilderness period , these reissues serve a more functional role. For record collectors and completists, it might be your first opportunity to own any of them. For the uninitiated, there’s plenty of gold to discover.

Without a new album to promote, Springsteen prefaced the 1999 reunion tour by releasing Tracks , a fascinating box set that unloaded a quarter-century of studio outtakes and offered an alternate route through his history as a songwriter. A few months after its release came 18 Tracks , the abridged collection included in this set that acts as a sort of anti-greatest hits. In the streaming era, I’d recommend spending time with the complete edition, where you can hear the full range of his experiments and skip around based on what period of his career interests you most. Epics like “Thundercrack” and “Frankie” are among its classics, and both are excluded from this set, I imagine, for purposes of brevity. Still, 18 Tracks provides a solid-enough representation of his strengths, and this edition marks a good opportunity to revisit his lost gems (at least until Tracks gets a vinyl reissue).

Similar to Tracks , the music on Springsteen’s 2005 solo album Devils & Dust was salvaged from abandoned studio recordings. After 1995’s stripped-down The Ghost of Tom Joad and its resulting tour—his first time performing live without a band—Springsteen felt inspired to continue in this acoustic, folk setting. The hushed songs of Devils & Dust tell stories of men and women that range from biblical (“Jesus Was an Only Son”) to pornographic (“Reno,” which almost single-handedly earned this album his first Parental Advisory sticker) and personal (“Long Time Comin’,” one of the best songs of this era). Springsteen initially shelved the project in favor of the E Street reunion tour, but he returned to it a few years later after writing a mournful protest song about the Iraq War. Bringing to mind the darker songs he had left behind, it became this album’s title track and introduces one of the most challenging and detailed albums in Springsteen’s catalog, one more akin to moodier sets like Nebraska and Tunnel of Love than his more electric work through the rest of the 2000s.

He followed Devils & Dust with another left-turn, recording centuries-old folk songs with a group of musicians he dubbed the Sessions Band. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions , from 2006, was a pleasant surprise, and its resulting tour was even better. Their opening night in New Orleans is often remembered as their peak, delivered as a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but revisiting Live in Dublin has proven it to be an equally thrilling document. For starters, it is one of Springsteen’s most pristine-sounding live albums, capturing his energy as a frontman but also showcasing the dynamic among his band—their banjos and fiddles, horns and strings, all arranged in joyful chaos. The material itself is equally wide-ranging. An almost unrecognizable rendition of “Atlantic City” opens the set, and the traditional folk music (“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live,” “O Mary Don’t You Weep”) rings just as true as his own deep cuts. Time has been good to this era of Springsteen’s career, and Live in Dublin captures its peak.

Part of the reason why We Shall Overcome felt like such a breakthrough upon release in 2006 was its loose, live-sounding production. A common complaint about Springsteen’s records in the 21st century has been their sound, and while they all fare better on vinyl, the issue was beginning to show its head here. In his 2016 memoir, Springsteen discusses his attempts to self-produce the E Street Band’s comeback album after their reunion tour. (“WE WERE DULL,” he laments of the sessions, in all-caps.) And so he hired Brendan O’Brien, a producer who worked with grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. His signature trick for Springsteen involved compressing the music and backing him with low drones: cellos, hurdy-gurdy, layers of tinny, distorted electric guitar. The goal might have been to summon the epic swell of his live shows, but it often muddied the sound of his band. Still, when the material sang, the production was easy to forgive.

Such was the case on 2002’s The Rising , a pivotal record often generalized as Springsteen’s response to 9/11. Stories have since circulated about him making phone calls to survivors shortly after the attacks to help find a sense of community, to understand the quieter stories behind the big, looming one. Many of these songs serve similar purposes for him as a writer, as he fills the album’s 70-plus minute runtime with choruses that sound like prayers and love songs that double as long goodbyes. It spanned material that directly referenced the tragedy (“The Rising,” “Empty Sky”) and others that dated back to the ’90s (“Nothing Man,” “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day”). Near The Rising ’s completion, O’Brien suggested Springsteen cut down the tracklist to help clarify the message. No, he responded, the sprawl is the point.

An early song he wrote for the album is its closing track, “My City of Ruins.” While this era of Springsteen’s career collects several of his most heartbreaking songs— Devils & Dust ’s “Matamoras Bank,” The Rising ’s “Paradise”—this one feels especially personal. He began writing it at the end of 2000 about the economic decline in his hometown of Asbury Park. The setting that provided the magic and electricity in so much of his early work now appeared in bleak fragments, with Springsteen’s own history folded into its faded scenery. To a soulful melody, he acts as a tour guide before bringing it back home: “There’s tears on the pillow, darling, where we slept/You took my heart when you left.” Just before the final chorus, he asks, “Tell me how do I begin again?” In the same place where he started, finding his footing in the community that both inspired and boxed him in, he was posing a new challenge to himself, coming to terms with those things that die and don’t come back. But for now, he felt inspired and alive. So he got back to work.

Buy: The Rising - Rough Trade / Devils & Dust - Rough Trade / Live in New York City - Rough Trade / Live in Dublin - Rough Trade / 18 Tracks - Rough Trade

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Note: only considered 132 of 133 setlists (ignored empty and strikingly short setlists)

• Backstreets Play Video
• Prove It All Night Play Video
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• Darkness on the Edge of Town Play Video
• Darlington County Play Video
• The Promised Land Play Video
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• The River Play Video
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• Murder Incorporated Play Video
• Badlands Play Video
• Out in the Street Play Video
• Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out Play Video
• Working on the Highway Play Video
• The Ghost of Tom Joad Play Video
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Bruce Springsteen Remains The Gold Standard Of Live Music

Just a little over a year ago, when Taylor Swift launched her Eras Tour in Phoenix, Arizona , a very familiar analog was thrown around for obvious reasons. The sheer physical magnitude of her performance, stretching beyond three hours of seamless entertaining, evoked a name that’s become synonymous with marathon sets and crowd-pleasing live mythology. That name, of course, is Bruce Springsteen .

Sure, the comparison is relatively flimsy and speaks mostly to the career-spanning endurance of the performances. Swift’s concerts are a bit more set-in-stone, with her nightly acoustic set providing moments to dig deep into her catalog and surprise. Swift is more focused on choreography and spectacle. Swift lets the songs become the star of the show, with each performance space becoming a safe haven for unabashed superfandom .

On Sunday night at the second of his two sold-out nights at Los Angeles’ Forum, Springsteen underscored why his name has become interchangeable with “impressive, physically demanding live performances.” The New Jersey legend is 74 years old and is still stretching his appearances well beyond the three-hour mark on a nightly basis. And while some of his classic-rock brethren play similarly epic sets, none do so with Springsteen’s force, often letting backing vocalists and bloated bands carry the songs to their familiar heights. That’s less a knock on the performing abilities of folks past the typical retirement age and more a comment on how Springsteen’s vigor defies reason.

And though some might point to Springsteen’s complete backing choir and sprawling E-Street players as evidence to the contrary, the majesty of a Springsteen show is in the interplay between the two. The E-Street Band is never tasked with masking the shortcomings of its central figure. No, they simply take his power and strap a rocket to the back of it. During the main set’s closing of “Thunder Road,” a song that’s as perfect as any ever written, the band largely slowed down and let Bruce take the song as his own leisure. But once he’d reached its iconic crescendo, the horn section made their way to the front of the stage, with first Jake Clemmons leading the charge, only to be accompanied by his four other brassed compatriots, blasting the closing notes through the venue’s roof.

And moments like this were commonplace. It’s hard to imagine “Glory Days” live without Little Steven’s playful exchanges with The Boss, or a night without Max Weinberg providing a “shot” from his snare or Nils Lofgren spinning circles like a madman while dropping a guitar solo. The “couple” songs that Springsteen’s wife Patti Scialfa sings with her husband — including a version of “Tougher Than The Rest” where their mouths are as close as they can be without touching — were about as sexy as two Boomers are legally allowed to be. And a guest appearance from Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello for a pair of appropriate tunes, “American Skin (41 Shots)” and “The Ghost Of Tom Joad,” found the hard-rocking guitarist showcasing all his axe-wielding tricks to the audience’s delight.

This all serves to highlight the elements of a Bruce Springsteen concert that are beyond compare. For all the things that a massive pop concert can provide, rarely is it impressive because of musicianship. And where some might use confetti cannons or fireworks to give the crowd a visceral jolt, Bruce Springsteen is a living reminder that there are other ways to achieve similar results, and they only require a guitar or a drum set or a saxophone. Or, in the case of Bruce himself, the personal introspection and clarity he provides when using the space between songs to illuminate his own story and reflect on his personal journey.

The “Bruce Springsteen tells a story while introducing a song” archetype has been a meme since before memes were a thing. But still, when The Boss uses the intro of a tune to reflect on grief, on love, on friendship, or on his beloved rock and roll, thousands of people still shut up and listen. It’s a superpower to be so innately poetic without resorting explicitly to poetry and provides balance to the emotional catharsis of shouting his anthems back to him. So while Springsteen might not have backing dancers or lasers or excessive visuals, he still remains the gold standard for live music. It’s the kind of set that makes sense regardless of fandom, where the value is inherent. It might not be what the future of live music on the biggest scale looks like, but career artists would benefit from looking at how far passion and craftsmanship can take you.

Check out an exclusive gallery of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Forum in Los Angeles below.

At a Clark concert 50 years ago, Bruce Springsteen heralded things to come

Before he was chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected and selling out stadiums, Bruce Springsteen was another aspiring, up-and-coming artist on the club and college circuit.

And it was 50 years ago this year — on Oct. 6, 1974, to be precise — when Clark University students became some of the first ones in Worcester to catch “The Fever.”

On April 12, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will be playing at Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Connecticut. This will be Springsteen’s first show in New England since he postponed the remainder of his current tour back in September as he recovered from peptic ulcer disease.

Last year, Springsteen played three shows in the Bay State — March 20 at the TD Garden in Boston, and Aug. 24 and 26 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. On Aug. 26, his last New England show before the scheduled April 12 show, Springsteen suffered a self-diagnosed panic attack when E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt revealed he was from the Bay State and not New Jersey.

I call that a bargain

On Page 9 of the Oct. 3, 1974, edition of the Clark University’s student newspaper, The Scarlet , ran an unassuming quarter-page advertisement that had more white space than type for two different concerts.

The unassuming, easy-to-miss ad plainly read Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee and Willie Dixon were playing Oct. 4  

Further down the page and supplying the same amount of little or no urgency, the ad read Bruce Springsteen was playing just two days later on Oct. 6.

Even in smaller type, the ad sheepishly read, almost as an apology, “Tickets: $2, Oct. 4; $3, Oct. 6; $4, for both. Talk about a bargain for three blues legends, but I don’t know about the other guy.

For you see in 1974, most Clark students who heard the name Springsteen would say, “Who?” while anyone off-campus who got wind of the Bruce show at Clark probably would have shrugged, “Who cares?” or “I’ll save my money.”

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Springsteen’s Clark show was a year before “The Boss” was on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week on Oct. 27, 1975, and roughly 10 months before his breakthrough third album “Born to Run,” which was released on Aug. 25, 1975.

On Sept. 19, 1974, pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg played their first show in the E Street Band. By the time the two played at Clark, Bittan and Weinberg had only been rocking out with Springsteen for two-and-a-half weeks. Not at Clark was Steven Van Zandt, who wouldn't become a full-fledged E Street Band member until July 1975.

The night things changed

Springsteen is a legend now, but 50 years ago he was just another struggling rocker who was playing at area clubs, college halls and small concert arenas, and who was building a slow but steady reputation in the Tri-State area and beyond for his unorthodox tight band and legendary marathon concerts.

In 1974, Springsteen was nobody as far as people of Worcester were concerned. Unless you were from or had a cousin from the Garden State, chances are you never heard of the guy or any of his music. You certainly weren’t hearing Springsteen on Worcester radio. If you did, it was Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s cover of Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light.” And he wasn’t being played on turntables in college dorms.

But that was about to change on the night of Oct. 6, 1974, at Clark’s Atwood Hall in Worcester, the same New England city where Springsteen would go on to sell out multiple nights on his “Born in the U.S.A.” tour and play his tour opener for his “Tunnel of Love” tour, all in the ‘80s at the Worcester Centrum , now the DCU Center.

To date, Springsteen has play eight sold-out shows at Worcester’s downtown arena.

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'Controlled energy'

So what did Springsteen and his E Street Band (noncredited in The Scarlet ad) deliver that night 50 years ago at Clark?

“Controlled energy,” according to college scribe Ruth Rachel Polsky, who reviewed the show and left behind one of the few documents of Springsteen’s first-ever concert in Worcester.

“Onstage, silhouetted dramatically by green light, the slight man (Springsteen) became a magician, deftly manipulating his band, his body and us, his audience,” Polsky wrote in The Scarlet published four days the show.

Despite only being a junior at the time, Polsky was astute, especially with her Springsteen-magician analogy.

Nightly during the 267-date, sold-out run of “Springsteen on Broadway” at the Walter Kerr and St. James theatres in New York City, the Boss says it all starts with a big “magic trick,” a sleight of hand that has given Springsteen "a furious fire" that’s need to come face to face with 80,000 screaming rock ‘n’ roll fans.

“I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable 'us,'" Springsteen said. “That is my magic trick. And like all good magic tricks, it begins with a setup.”

A life-changing event

When Clark seniors Dennis M. Dimitri and Sue Kurz (later Sue Kurz Eleftherakis) went to the Springsteen concert at Atwood Hall together as friends, they were unaware of the life-altering event that was about to unfold inside.

“I was not a Springsteen fan going into the show,” Dimitri said. “The reason I made a point of going is my cousin was attending Seton Hall in New Jersey at the time. And he always used to say to me that there’s this guy who plays there in the student union named Bruce Springsteen. He’s great.  If you ever get a chance to see him you should go. And that’s what prompted me to get the tickets and go. I’d never listened to one of his albums prior to that.”

Dimitri, a Worcester-native — now a retired professor and former vice chair of Family Medicine & Community Health UMass Chan Medical School — and Kurz, originally from White Plains, New York, were sitting in the front row of the balcony in Atwood Hall.

“I just had two tickets and Sue was a friend of mine,” Dimitri said.  “And I asked her to come with me, and I told her the story about having heard about him and we should probably go.“

“I was a big music fan but not a Springsteen fan,” Kurz said. “I never heard of Springsteen before. But I was a rock ‘n’ roll music lover and the show was inexpensive and on campus.”

And there were also other fellow Clarkies and Clarkie friends that they knew in the audience.

“Ironically, also in the crowd, was the woman who later became my wife. She was on the floor with her girlfriends, just a few rows back from the stage,” Dimitri said. “We got married several years after we got out of college.”

'He just took the crowd'

Touring behind his sophomore album, “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle,” Springsteen opened with “Incident on 57th Street” accompanied only by pianist Roy Bittan.

“For the opening of the show, Springsteen came out with an acoustic (guitar) and played a slow ballad,” Dimitri said. “I didn’t know it at the time but, later, recognized that it was 'Incident on 57th Street,' which we all nicknamed 'Spanish Johnny' because of that opening line, ‘Spanish Johnny drove in from the underworld last night.’”

“When Springsteen got on the stage, I only focused on him,” Kurz added. “And he just took the crowd. He just controlled the audience. He was just amazing. And I think I was so surprised how good he was. And I never forgot it. He was just so wonderful.”

Then everything changed when “Scooter” and the “Big Man” and the rest of the E Street Band came out and bust Atwood Hall in half.

“When he jerked his hips to the left and to the right, a double-barreled drumroll and flashes of purple and red light occurred simultaneously, radiating to us in a wave of total sensuality,” Polsky continued in her review. “When his voice dropped to a husky, caressing whisper, we held out collective breath and rose with him to the crescendo on Clarence Clemons’ ethereal sax.”

'He knew how to work a crowd'

Springsteen played “Spirit in the Night,” an extended version of “Kitty’s Back” and a “crashing, ecstatic “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” the latter which the crowd was dancing in the aisles, according to The Scarlet.

“The other thing I remember about that concert that I can’t recall ever experiencing before that and not much since is the ability of this band to take you up to this incredible high, and then slow it down and then bring it up even higher again,” Dimitri said. “It was just a manipulation of emotions of the audience that I don’t know if I’ve experienced that with other bands.”

“Bruce was feeding off the energy, and he really knew how to work a crowd,” Erlander said. “He really knew how to get them going. He was a real performer, which he still is.”

Clark senior Leon Erlanger wasn’t a Springsteen fan going into the show at Atwood Hall. And he wasn’t much of Springsteen fan going out.

“I’m a mild Springsteen fan. I’m not like a big Springsteen fan,” Erlanger said. “A friend of mine had seen him in Boston and told me he was fantastic and I have to see him. But not many people knew who he was.”

What Erlanger found extraordinary was how Springsteen instantaneously made the crowd go bonkers.

“Springsteen showed up, and he started singing and I would say, within two seconds, these people who didn’t know him, pretty much the whole audience, went crazy,” Erlanger said. “I’d never seen anything like it. Honestly. I was just looking around and thinking, what the hell was going on around here? And it was like the Beatles or something.”

'They went nuts over him'

Erlanger said he noticed that the women, especially, in the audience were going particularly nuts over Springsteen.

“All these women that I thought were nonchalant about men but I guess it was just they were nonchalant about me, they were all talking about how sexy Springsteen was. And I mean they were getting like really excited. I was just really blown away about the whole thing,” Erlanger said. “They went nuts over him. I’ve never seen anything like it …And it was instant, just instant. Everybody went crazy and was going crazy through the whole concert.”

Appearance-wise, Dimitri and Kurz remember Springsteen being a skinny, scrawny little guy in a muscle shirt and blue jeans sporting a beard and wearing sunglasses who became larger than life onstage, feeding on the excitement of the crowd’s collective energy.

In other words, Springsteen, 25, was already a powerhouse.

“I’m not quite sure what this guy is all about,” Dimitri said. “He’s from New Jersey, and he looks a little bit like a greaser, to tell you that truth. And his songs had a lot of car references in them.”

“Springsteen looked so small to me, but, I think it was because he was so young but also, he was standing next to Clarence Clemons, who I really didn’t notice because I was focusing on Bruce,” Kurz said. “He was very scruffy-looking but the way he controlled our hearts and heads and just got us going. I couldn’t look away. It was just great.

Kurtz, who has seen Springsteen five times in her life, said “Rosalita” was her favorite song that night at Atwood Hall.

“A lot of that bands at that time were a bunch of hippies,” Erlanger said. “And Springsteen didn’t look like that. He looked more like a biker, pre-hippie era.”

Sounds of change

Springsteen was a different sound from what people were used to in the early ‘70s, Erlanger added.

“At that time, a lot of bands were unscripted and they would play a song and have a jam in the middle, stuff like that, and it was very loose,” Erlanger said. “But Springsteen’s act was very scripted, building into these crescendos. And I don’t think people were used to that. I found it kind of contrived, that was my feeling about it. But everybody else seemed to be eating it up.”

Erlanger said while he kind of liked Springsteen, he didn’t go crazy over him as did so many concertgoers.

“I was thinking his lyrics were like he was trying to be like Bob Dylan but not quite succeeded, ‘Blinded by the Light’ and scared of the night, things like that,” Erlanger continued.  “He was OK but he was not great.”

In addition to The Boss, The Big Man, Mighty Max and The Professor, Polsky also gave high marks to organist Danny Federici and bassist Garry Tallent in her review.

“Through sheer professionalism combined with humor, emotion, and charisma, Bruce Springsteen gave Clark a show that won’t soon be forgotten — a synthesis of rock and jazz that communicates on the level of pure soul,” the Scarlet review said.

Dimitri agrees.

“You could see the music moving back and forth among the various players, whether it was Bruce with his guitar, Clarence with his sax, Roy with the keyboards, Max with the drums,” Dimitri said. “It just moved around so much back and forth among them and building to crescendos that just blew you away.”

A legendary sax player

Like Polsky, Dimitri had high marks for the shared chemistry between Clemons and Springsteen.

“I have not seen a lot of rock bands that had a saxophone player in them. And Clarence Clemons would come in on those saxophone solos and just blow the lid off of the place,” Dimitri said. “Clearly, Bruce and Clarence stuck out, man. Those were two imposing figures on the stage that drew you right in. It was hard to take your eyes off them. It was a stark contrast, absolutely, but they fit together like hand and glove. And they played off each other back and forth,”

At Clark, Springsteen played the yet-to-be-released tracks “She’s the One” and “Jungleland” (both off “Born to Run”) for the first time for a Worcester crowd at Clark University.

“One of the other songs that really struck me and I didn’t really know what it was at the time was 'Jungleland,’” Dimitri said, “When '“'Born to Run'”' came out the next year, I immediately recognized the song when I played it. Oh! That’s definitely one of the songs I heard him play.”

'What did we just see?'

At the end of Springsteen’s performance at Clark, a totally stunned and blown-away Dimitri and Kurz turned to each other and said in unison, “Oh, my God! What did we just see?”

“I say this all the time. Of all the bands that I have ever seen, I think the E Street Band is the tightest band,” Dimitri said. “I never seen anything quite like it. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s like they’re all connected all the time. Now, with the hindsight of 50 years, I realize that’s because of the workmanship of Bruce Springsteen bringing those guys together. They are just incredible.”

On Nov, 18, 1975, Springsteen played the Hammersmith Odeon in London. Kurz, who has seen the concert film made from the ’75 London show, says the Clark University show was a lot like that, just with fewer funny hats.

“Springsteen at Clark University was the best show I’ve ever seen,” Kurz said. “And I’ve seen the Rolling Stones in the third row at Shea Stadium. I’ve seen a lot of great shows. But I still have to go back to that because it has stuck with me all these years.”

'I was sort of baffled'

Clark University was the first and only time Erlanger saw Springsteen. Erlanger, who’s originally from New York, cites Bob Marley as the best show he ever saw. He also rates Bob Dylan high on his personal list. Erlanger said he saw Dylan in Sweden when he had a cold and he sounded better than he normally sounds.

“I thought Springsteen’s band sounded good, but they didn’t sound as good as everybody else seemed to think,” Erlanger said. “I was just sort of baffled by it. I thought they were good. I liked them. I didn’t understand what the mania was about.” 

The next day, Dimitri and Kurz went to Carl Seder's Music Mart in downtown Worcester. One of them bought “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” while the other bought “The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.” Neither of them had enough money to buy both of them so they bought one each.

“It was probably, I don’t know, $3.99 at the time,” Dimitri said.  “I don’t remember which one of us took which one but eventually, I know for sure I went back at some point later and bought the other one that I didn’t have so I had them both and played the heck out of both of those.”

More than a moment

At the time of this writing, general admission, standing-room-only, verified resale tickets for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s twice-postponed April 12 concert at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., were going for $2,380 each on Ticketmaster.

To date, Dimitri has seen Springsteen nine times, five times in the ‘70s and three times with his first wife, who died 10 years ago.

Dimitri married his second wife six months ago. His current wife has never seen Bruce Springsteen but all of that is going to change when they see Springsteen on April 15 at the MVP Arena in Albany, New York, which will also be Dimitri’s 10th time seeing The Boss.

Bruce Springsteen comes to the rescue for 11-year-old at his concert

• Published: Apr. 05, 2024, 5:30 a.m.

Bruce Springsteen performs at MetLife Stadium on August 30, 2023 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Photo by Manny Carabel/Getty Images

• Brian Linder | [email protected]

Bruce Springsteen is back on the road touring after a peptic ulcer late last year had him worried that he might never sing again.

It’s music to his fans’ ears. Also, “The Boss” is still pretty, danged awesome.

Don’t believe it?

Well, a clip from a recent concert is creating a social media stir because the 74-year-old came to the rescue of an 11-year-old in attendance. No, there wasn’t a life-or-death situation here, but it turns out the kid skipped school to make it to the show.

And when you skip school, you need an excuse.

That’s what the 11-year-old explained with a big sign, asking Springsteen to sign her excuse.

It resulted in the memory of a lifetime because Springsteen saw the sign and went to work. A clip from the concert shows him taking the note from the girl, kneeling down, and writing a long message on her excuse. He also held up the sign, and blew a kiss to her all while smiling.

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“No words!!!!!” Karen Pitcher Scovell wrote while sharing a recording of the interaction to Facebook. “To be in such close proximity to greatness was more than I had ever expected. Bruce knelt down directly in front of me to sing a school excuse for the little girl behind me…”

You can see her post here.

Apparently, it’s not the first time “The Boss” has come through for kids skipping school to see his show. You can read more about that here.

The 74-year-old Springsteen, who had to postpone his tour last September due to the ulcer, admitted in a recent interview that he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to sing again.

“Once I started singing, you know, you can rehearse singing, but your voice isn’t the same in rehearsal,” he said according to Deadline. “You don’t have the edge of adrenaline that really pushes it into a better place and the thing when I had the stomach problem, one of the big problems was I couldn’t sing.

“You sing with your diaphragm,” he continued. “My diaphragm was hurting so badly that when I went to make the effort to sing, it was killing me, you know? So, I literally couldn’t sing at all, you know, and that lasted for two or three months, along with just a myriad of other painful problems.”

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Springsteen said people kept telling him he would return, but he said the ulcer was so painful that, at times, he did not believe that.

“You know, you’re thinking like, ‘Hey, am I gonna sing again?’” he said. “And you know, this is one of the things I love to do the best, the most, and right now I can’t do it.”

He said doctors kept telling him that would change.

“At the end of the day, I found some great doctors, and they straightened me out,” he said. “And I can’t do anything but thank them all.”

“The Boss” is slated to play in Pittsburgh on Aug. 15 and Aug. 18, and in Philadelphia on Aug 21 and Aug. 23. He also has a date in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 7 and in Baltimore on Sept. 13.

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Bruce Springsteen, 74, Shows Off New Haircut in Shirtless Photo (He Goes to Jennifer Aniston's Stylist!)

Turns out, The Boss was born to thirst trap

Bruce Springsteen 's new haircut has us on fire.

The Boss paid a visit to his longtime stylist Chris McMillan (who also happens to be Jennifer Aniston's pro and one of the top stylists in Hollywood), while out on the California leg of his 2024 world tour. (Springsteen and the E Street Band just finished stops in San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles' Inglewood neighborhood.)

McMillan shared photos of the their reunion on Instagram , including one of Springsteen, 74, shirtless with his fresh haircut on full display. The silver fox stayed true to his rock star pompadour, cleaning up the edges just a bit and keep length at the top.

"Fresh cut for the boss!  @springsteen ," captioned the Instagram gallery, which also included photos of Springsteen performing on stage.

Springsteen's wife Patti Scialfa and daughter Jessica are also loyal clients of McMillan.

During the pandemic, Scialfa took on the role of her husband's hair stylist.

"Gave my man his first quarantine cut," she wrote alongside an Instagram photo in the spring of 2020, in which she proudly holds up some scissors next to her, once again, shirtless husband.

She also revealed that McMillan talked her through the cut at the time.

"Hey Chris McMillan working on being a badass with the scissors.... thanks for sending the instructions and the clippers!!!" she wrote, adding that she also was styling her own hair. "Also I had just finished dyeing my hair!! We have the beauty truck in action at Stone Hill Farm!!!!! ✂️✂️✂️✂️."

Springsteen and Aniston are just two of McMillan's A-list clients. He just chopped Gigi Hadid's new bob and gave Denise Richards curtain bangs .

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Related: Bruce Springsteen Is Back! Rocker Resumes Tour After Postponing Dates Due to Peptic Ulcer Disease

In March, Springsteen resumed his world tour with the E Street Band after postponing several of his 2023 dates due to  peptic ulcer disease .

Ahead of his 29-song set, the 20-time Grammy winner addressed the illness before starting his final track, "I'll See You in My Dreams."

"Phoenix, first I want to apologize if there was any discomfort because we had to move the show last time. . . . I hope we didn’t inconvenience you too much," he told the crowd.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People .

Jeremy Allen White Close to Playing Bruce Springsteen in ‘Nebraska’-Era Biopic

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

A Bruce Springsteen movie centered around the making of his classic 1982 album, Nebraska , is officially in the works, with The Bear ’s Jeremy Allen White reportedly “in talks” to star.

Deliver Me From Nowhere will be based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book of the same name, and both Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau will be involved in the making of the film. As for White, 20th Century Studios and Disney essentially confirmed the rumors reported in the Hollywood trades last week that he was being eyed to play Springsteen, but the casting is not yet 100 percent official. 

“I once read that Nebraska is an album that moves you to the marrow of your bones. I couldn’t agree more,” Cooper said in a statement. “Bruce Springsteen, and Nebraska , in particular, have had a profound impact on me and my work. Through themes of despair, disillusionment, and the struggles of everyday Americans, Bruce has formed an unparalleled legacy, painting an unflinching portrait of the human condition. Yet, amidst the darkness, a sense of resilience and a sense of hope shines through, reflecting an indomitable spirit. That’s the Bruce I’ve come to know and love and will honor with this film.”

Praising Zanes’ book and his depiction of “this chapter in Bruce’s life,” Cooper added: “This film has the potential to be a transformative cinematic experience, offering audiences a window into the soul of Bruce Springsteen and the universal truths that bind us all together.”

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In a 2023 interview with CBS Sunday Morning , Springsteen said, in the wake of The River , he “hit some sort of personal wall that I didn’t even know was there.” He continued: “It was my first real major depression where I realized, ‘Oh, I gotta do something about it.’” 

Springsteen went on to call Nebraska a “happy accident,” saying: “I had planned to just write some good songs, take it to the band, go in the studio and record it. But every time I tried to improve on the tape that I made in that little room, it was the old story of ‘If this gets any better, it’s gonna get worse.’”

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