By Mike Derrico
As Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have settled into the third phase of their 2023 tour, one of the more amusing and entertaining, albeit annoying byproducts of the shows has been the new phenomenon of the disappointed hardcore fan…the repeat concert-goers who follow the tour from state to state or around the world in search of things Bruce Springsteen has already given them many times over…and taking it personally that they’re not getting their way.
A major part of the mythos and allure of the live Springsteen/E Street Band experience was that you never knew what was going to happen, and there was indeed a sense all around you that yes…anything can happen. Now, 50 years in, we have to ask ourselves…What exactly was the “anything” that could happen? Was Bruce going to jump into the audience? Was Bruce going to crowd surf? Was Bruce going to climb the rafters? Was an unexpected guest going to show up? Was it going to be Southside Johnny? Bob Dylan? Gary U.S. Bonds? Eddie Vedder? Tom Morello? Was Bruce finally going to bring back some un-played rarity? Was Bruce going to go over the four-hour mark? All of these things were always a possibility, and some of them, such as the stage-diving were permanent fixtures in the show. Without the speculation of what was going to happen on any given night, the absolute certainties going into a show was that there was going to be that overwhelmingly powerful force of unity within the crowd, along with the unmatched connective unison between Bruce and his audience. It was going to be part rock and roll show, part comedy, part circus, part social activism, part self-empowerment and part spiritual awakening, followed by a transcendent summation for an encore to wrap up what was at bare minimum on most nights, a three-hour marathon. That was a given. That was by default. That was the base experience. That was what you got without the surprises attached. And most nights, despite what legend has told us, were without the surprises, still leaving Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band untouched as the greatest show in the history of rock and roll. Now we find ourselves in 2023 where that’s suddenly not enough for many Springsteen fans who seem to have developed a selective but aggressive form of amnesia in the post-Covid years.
A brief refresher for those who don’t know by now. For all of the hate directed at Bruce Springsteen, usually from the mouth breathers who detest him simply because of his politics, or the ones who don’t like him just for being Bruce Springsteen, most of the vitriol this year has come from his own fans, who despite having just seen the greatest show on earth still feel cheated because of the so-called static setlist Bruce and the band are using this time around. The longtime fans have obviously forgotten the first three decades of Bruce’s career when request signs in the audience were treated as a nuisance that got ignored most of the time. Longtime fans have also forgotten that Bruce has always had a structured setlist…especially from 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town tour onward. Darkness, perhaps in retrospect an overly-romanticized era is often remembered as the band’s live peak, while the shows are portrayed as some sort of “anything goes” blowout of spontaneity…when in fact, the setlist followed a very particular sequence in promotion of the Darkness album, with only minor changes from night to night. As the River tour got into full swing, he had more or less developed an A-set and a B-set for cities where he played more than one night. The majority of both the Darkness and River tours were exactly the same in terms of the songs that were played, at least until he got into Europe in 1981. If those tours had any spontaneity at all, it was usually saved for the encores.
The Born in the USA tour offered only slightly more night-to-night changes to the setlist, but again, this was mostly due to Bruce’s ever-growing popularity and the fact that he was playing multiple nights in one place, mainly shuffling the Nebraska songs around if anything…but often changing at least five songs each night regardless during those multi-night runs. Or sometimes, he simply changed the sequencing on some nights, though they were the same songs in just a different order.
But does anyone remember the Tunnel of Love Express? The current 2023 tour only has slightly less spontaneity than the shows Bruce played in 1988, which followed the same set nightly with only “Be True” and “Boom Boom” alternating the number two slot. Any other unexpected additions usually occurred in the encores. Obviously, the rare exceptions always exist with every single tour, but I’m sure you catch my drift here.
Let’s skip the Nineties and fast-forward to the reunion tour when the majority of the show was a structured set, and we started referring to the different song each night as the “audible.” Remember? That was the slot that followed the unmovable five or six-song block that began every night with “Youngstown” and ended with the 16-minute “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” Remember how everyone looked forward to that one audible slot? Remember how most nights it was something like “Working on the Highway?” Yeah, I know…most have forgotten about that or just conveniently block it out. Although granted, the reunion tour did seem to follow an A/B rotation for songs in the “River”/ “Point Blank” and “Factory”/ ”Mansion on the Hill” slots, as well as the opening song slot on many nights.
The Rising setlists? They didn’t really get that adventurous until the final few legs of the tour. Bruce’s initial vision for the Rising tour was far too important to waste on requests and random surprises. And hence my first point in all of this. Bruce Springsteen, for the most part, has always followed a structured set, at least during the first leg or two of each tour. It is usually not until the show has already moved through several continents, maybe after a year when he starts getting adventurous, and only after every major city has already seen the initial presentation and vision for each new tour.
It wasn’t until the later legs of the Magic tour in 2008 when the request sign era began, and that’s simply because Bruce decided to randomly start honoring some of these signs. And literally overnight, the signs immediately became a nightly competition where a sea of hundreds of requests became a distraction to the overall show, though for many by 2009, it became the reason for the show. For the first time ever, Springsteen shows became spontaneous from top to bottom. It was a glorious era that eventually evolved into Bruce and the band playing their classic albums in their entirety, and all of the songs that got neglected for decades were finally played at one time or another. Almost everyone got their “I can die happy” moment somewhere during those years, leading to my second point, which is that Springsteen fans became the most spoiled fans in the entire world of music fandom. Springsteen has always given his fans exactly what we needed. But during this particular 9-year stretch from 2008-2017, he gave us exactly what we wanted. And now, some fans feel entitled, demonstrating ungracefully that there are no fans on the planet more spoiled than Springsteen fans.
The third and final point here should be the most obvious one to the fans who can’t seem to understand that this is personal for Bruce…just as it’s always been personal in the way he’s shared the parts of his life that have informed his songs as well as his concerts. But he is about to turn 74, and now it’s no longer about dying dreams or trying to work through a tumultuous relationship with his father with lengthy monologues that served as intros to some of his most powerful concert moments. He’s no longer trying to navigate the sense of unrest and emptiness he felt as an unmarried artist in the Eighties. He’s no longer reintroducing himself as a parent of small children as he did in the Nineties…someone who was attempting to bring adulthood into rock and roll. He’s no longer establishing a new dedication to serving his audience through the re-commitment of the E Street Band, as he did on the reunion tour. And here we are 23 years later, where we can say with pride, passion and absolute authority, that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band has more than delivered on that promise. Could any of us have ever imagined in 1999 that the reunion tour would end up being the halfway point? And so, while Springsteen shows have always been about the moment, they’ve also served the artist personally as he told his story and tried to make peace with his past. Now pushing his mid-seventies, it is just him and those earliest manifestations of the human psyche that go deep into childhood, pre-E Street Band, all the way back to George Theiss and his first band The Castiles. There is no sense in rehashing how imperative and essential the “Last Man Standing” into “Backstreets” sequence is to the overall theme of the current show. It is the most powerful “Backstreets” you’ve heard on tour since 1978. You know, I know it. And in sharing that raw devastating moment in “Backstreets,” it radiates and translates back to us where we invariably find ourselves reflecting on our own losses. There is rarely a dry eye in the venue. The E Street Band itself has defied death in the face of the immeasurable losses of Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. And though some of these intensely personal recitations are to Theiss, they are also for Clarence and Danny…though “Last Man Standing” brings Bruce directly back to the egg because he knows it’s the very beginning of the artistic journey that has ultimately led up to all of us being in the same room together in 2023. As the artist continues in the final act to revisit his past and honor the names of significant people in his life who he has perhaps not acknowledged to us very much throughout his career and fame, Theiss’s passing has certainly brought Bruce Springsteen full circle to a place where he now stands in conversation with them, and asks us to stand there with him. These personal contemplations and monologues are tiny microcosms of our Big Picture as fans…that conversation over the years and over the tours that we’ve been having with him, and he’s been having with us. But in taking the time to stop and consider that this two-song sequence is an integral part of the summative Bruce is taking us through, many need to realize that the entire show works the same exact way.
There is nothing concrete that suggests this is a farewell tour, though there are reminders all night long of how fragile and limited our remaining time is. There is always the “what if.” In past tours, Bruce’s last words to the audience were always, “We’ll be seein’ ya.” That was always a sure sign that he had no intention of stopping, and that even as he got up there in age, it wasn’t yet a factor. We hadn’t yet reached that critical point, and we always had the next tour to look forward to. But now we’ve inevitably reached that point, and Bruce is no longer leaving the stage with “We’ll be seein’ ya,” and has instead replaced it with “The E Street Band loves you” while he walks off the stage alone. In light of all the deaths of first and second generation rock icons in recent years, and all of the speculation over final tours that have been going on simultaneously for the past half decade, there is only one certainty…and that’s that no matter where the finish line is for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, we are awfully close to it. And with that, Springsteen, who has been telling a story all along, has seen fit to round out that story with a three hour summation. Period. That story…his story…our story, all intertwine collectively and individually throughout the show, while the moments offered within the music are reflections on the entire journey. We take from those reflections exactly what we need and we leave the rest. Most fans have graciously accepted this, while some remain selfishly outspoken as if Bruce has somehow personally wronged them with his insistence on vision over surprises.
In reviews of the three-night Meadowlands run, one writer who will remain nameless suggests that New Jersey “deserves better” in response to Bruce’s home state getting the same show as the rest of the world. In this case…especially in this case, (and I say this as a lifelong fan and New Jerseyan) Bruce is making it clear… New Jersey fans will not get much special treatment aside from the obvious handful of usual suspect classics that Jersey always gets in addition, but they are no more deserving than the fans in Atlanta, Barcelona or Hamburg, as every fan that has ever supported the band over the years has contributed and shared in its story…and every fan, black, white, left or right deserves the same message through the same effort and energy exerted on a nightly basis. So, when said writer turns out concert reviews displaying no real consideration or even an understanding of the Big Picture aside from his own sense of entitlement, it becomes painfully apparent just how many Springsteen fans are completely missing the point, and it begs the much wider question…Have they ever really understood Bruce Springsteen? Have they been missing the point all along?
For the fans still complaining…You can call the continuation of the structured setlist stubborn if you like, but if you’re one of the fans who have done an about-face because you feel “ripped off,”…or if you’re still knowingly buying tickets and following Bruce around the world chasing moments you’ve already lived through, then you might want to consider the following question. Why would Bruce, knowing full well that his band is capable of playing any random song at any given moment…knowing full well what people are saying…knowing full well that most have already seen the show…still stand up there and sing the same songs in our faces with absolute confidence and conviction? Why? Because he knows that years from now, after the story has ended, this current show will make a lot more sense to you when you look back on it.
Most fans have connected to this tour in personal ways, and most fans, the majority of them, appreciate it exactly for what it is. But to those crying about Bruce’s stubbornness…consider it tough love as he reinforces the message every single night…reinforcing it…reinforcing it…and reinforcing it…over and over and over again. And one day it may hit you, what this tour was about and what it was intended to mean. Unfortunately, you may realize it after the entire Big Picture has dissolved and you’d give anything just to have Bruce around again. This is one where the Boss is still ahead of those who can’t appreciate the true gift of this 2023 show, because he knows at this late stage of the game that it’s not that important anymore to give you what you want…though he knows it’s absolutely vital to once again give you what you need while he still can…and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Night after night after night after night.
Mike Derrico is a music and pop culture historian, host of the six-season Rock Under Fire podcast, and author of the books Autumn and Everything After: The Murder of John Lennon, Evolution of Bruce Springsteen and the Birth of the Reagan Era (2020) and The Locker Notes, a novel (2021). His work has also appeared in NJArts.net and Pleasekillme.com. His forthcoming third book…AND THE CATHEDRAL FELL TO THE GROUND: The Lonesome Death of Rock & Roll will be released in November 2023.
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