Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Capital One Arena, Washington DC, March 27, 2023
Elvis. Dylan. Other than those two no one has had as much written about him in the history of American rock music as Bruce Springsteen. So there’s not a lot of that I’m likely to add to the burgeoning volumes of Springsteen discourse based on my last-minute attendance at his show on Wednesday in Washington.
I am a weird duck — a long time, but not totally engaged, Springsteen fan. I’ve actually owned almost every record that Springsteen has ever recorded, either physically or digitally. And I’ve seen Springsteen before, but only once, which is like never having seen him at all, according to the dedicated fans. The one time I saw Springsteen was in 1992 in support of the now totally disparaged
Human Touch and
Lucky Town albums, so I can say that when I see Springsteen I’m not a novice, but I’m by no means one of the diehards.
For the first E Street Band tour in many years, I wasn’t even really planning to see the arena show in DC. I thought I might want to see Springsteen at Nationals Park, later in the summer. But on Wednesday, quite suddenly I found myself with a long-delayed IRS refund and the goal to reacquaint myself with his catalogue. Without a ticket, I ran out to the metro, got on the Ticketmaster app, and plunked down $150 plus service fees for a resold seat that as it turned out was at the very top of the basketball arena. I could literally touch the roof from my chair. (Not that I used the chair much.)
I almost deliberately didn’t check the set lists nor did I check the reviews for the current tour before I got there. I know Springsteen‘s work plenty well, and I’ve also listened to the more recent records of varying quality. Most recently, of course, is the soul music covers album
Only the Strong Survive, and before that was the valedictory
Letter to You record, his reunion with the E Street Band and his farewell to some of his departed early bandmates. Both of these records would end up getting a showcase during the show at Capital One Arena, but as I snaked my way through the crowd (ironically, on E Street in Washington DC) the first thing I heard when I got into the arena was the familiar “No Surrender” from
Born in the USA, a theme song for the band’s resilience, and for the ties that have bonded Springsteen and his fans over the many decades.
There’s a lot of online criticism of the current Springsteen tour, of which I was well aware. First off, the prices. Springsteen has a populist image, so the stratospheric price tags for the quality seats rightfully alienated his fans. But at the same time, there was other, more substantive critique. Much of it has to do with the mediocrity of the soul covers album (which I have legally downloaded, but to which I don’t expect to listen regularly) and the sense that Springsteen at his age and renown has become something more of a rote performer and less of the source of continued inspiration that he once was.
Even from the nosebleed seats, the power of the E Street Band cannot be denied. Max Weinberg on percussion showed surprising strength and versatility, and Springsteen‘s two foils on electric guitar, Little Steven Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren, both provided ample fireworks throughout the set. I actually have felt for many years that keyboards underpin the most memorable melodies of Springsteen’s songs, and Roy Bittan was great on the piano. But for all the attention paid to the classic members of the E Street Band, circa 2023, a Springsteen tour is very much a corporate act. In addition to Weinberg, there’s an excellent additional percussionist on the timbales and other drums. There are additional keyboards in addition to Bittan. And while Jake Clemons gets a lot of the visibility is the nephew of the beloved Clarence Clemons, there’s an entire E Street horn section. That doesn’t even get into the backing vocalists, backing guitarists, and other supporting players.
From my perch, up at the very top of the arena, I watched down as the crowd reacted to the
Born in the USA numbers, but in the second song, and in much of the early bow of the set, Springsteen focused on the most recent record, the valedictory
Letter to You. “Ghosts” is a modern E Street powerhouse, a fully fledged and well formed song, reflecting on the presence of his lost bandmates. But the title track “Letter to You” is a lesser number, and so is some of the other recent material. From the top, one could watch Springsteen manage the stage almost like a ringmaster at a circus, calling out soloists, exhorting his bandmates, and interacting with the crowd, but in a way that seemed to me a bit perfunctory. In an extended medley of “Candy’s Room” and “Kitty’s Back,” two early E Street classics from the 1970s, Springsteen played the role of a bandleader at the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, calling out solos from the horn section, the keyboards, guitar, and, of course, making time for a featured solo from Jake Clemons. Jake occupies a special place in the East Street mythology, and his rapport with Springsteen is a clear throwback to the band’s 1970s and 80s live heyday. But I felt (and Caryn Rose expressed more forcefully, in her review of the Detroit show) that the “Candy’s/Kitty’s” medley was also a bit baggy and meandering and mostly served to allow Springsteen to catch his own breath and manage the band’s energy level for a three-hour set.
Following the long medley, Springsteen broke out the horn section and his backing vocals for the one soul music cover of the evening, the Commodores’ “Nightshift.” Thematically, it fit — “Nightshift” (the final major Motown hit song, from 1985!) is a tribute to the departed Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, who had died the prior year. So it made sense, slotting it into a set that also included tributes to former E Streeters and to the leader of Bruce’s first band, the Castilles. It also allowed Springsteen to use his gravelly croon more effectively on a softer number, although he didn’t skimp on the use of backing and harmony vocalists to round out the singing.
I was very impressed with Lofgren and Little Steven and their solos, and in their commitment to a bit of craziness that the E Street Band mostly has forsaken. Lofgren duckwalked, kicked his legs in the air, and generally caroused in a way befitting a member of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse, which he also is. And Little Stevie of course is an actor, a thespian with flair and panache, able to mug for the camera and effectively play Springsteen‘s comic tough-guy foil upon the stage. Springsteen mostly played rhythm guitar but on his soloing reminded the listeners that he can still shred, getting into some screeching solos and even a bit of Youngian (Jungian?) feedback.
There is some degree of a challenge about the overall structure of the setlist. The
best single piece of writing I read about the current tour is by Caryn Rose. She describes the narrative arc of the show as basically a train wreck. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is awkward to include all these valedictories to dead bandmates, in the middle and entry points of what then becomes a show dedicated to the healing and revivifying power of rock ‘n’ roll. (Of course, Springsteen is a guy who sang in one of his biggest, most crowd-friendly hit songs, “Time slips away, and leaves you with nothing mister.” And that was a feel-good anthem!) So it may be that the line between mourning the dead and celebrating the joy of living is a thin one in the Springsteen mythology.
Throughout the show, I made a quick skim of the setlist from his recent shows in Greensboro, North Carolina, and elsewhere. There has been very little variability in the set over the tour. One thing that I was thrilled about in DC was the appearance of his cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped,” a song which I’ve always felt is a highlight of an E Street setlist. I’ve never heard it performed live, so that was an exciting moment. I was also delighted by how well the transformation of Nebraska’s “Johnny 99” succeeded as a full band rock showcase. It’s certainly not a hit song, but it’s a powerful story song with familiar Springsteen themes of desperation, violence, and retribution. On the record it’s a haunted, ghostly wisp of a song, threatening to explode but never quite doing so. In the concert it had real swagger and venom.
The break between main set and encore, nominal as it may be, marked the transition to a greatest hits segment. And because it’s Springsteen, it’s not always the chart hits, but his songs beloved by the fans over the course of five decades of live performance — “Rosalita,” “Tenth Avenue Freezeout,” etc. alongside radio staples like “Born to Run” and “Glory Days.” I was deeply moved by “Because the Night,” the arena banger he gave to Patti Smith, although I still think her lyrics for the song are better than his.
The band interaction with Springsteen, and Springsteen’s interaction with the audience, was where I had a bit of unexpected distance. I don't mean just literal distance, although I was many hundreds of feet horizontally and vertically away from the stage. I mean emotional distance. The attraction of Springsteen is the deep emotional connection that he maintains with his audience. (I think Taylor Swift is not a bad comparison.) But much of the stage patter and interaction with the bandmates and audience seemed overly rehearsed, even a bit canned. Other than shouting out DC and Washington periodically Springsteen never really seem to acknowledge that he was in the nation’s capital. And in a show focused on the losses he himself has experienced in the past few years, he didn't even touch on the losses that our nation has experienced. Nothing about recovering from the pandemic, nothing about the joy of being able to tour again after so many years, nothing even remotely alluding to the trauma of the Trump years or the fear of their return, etc. It was actually a strangely solipsistic depiction of grief by Springsteen, and some of the valedictory tributes between songs may have been cribbed verbatim from his Springsteen on Broadway stage show.
The band got looser in the encore, and Springsteen and the lead players cavorted along the catwalk around the general admission audiences, the ones who paid thousands of dollars to get up close and personal with the E Street Band. “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” and the dance party that ensued with “Rosalita” had some of the E Street spirit that has turned casual fans into full-fledged devotees over the past four or five decades. It’s simply impossible, if you’re a red-blooded American white male of a certain generation, not to respond in some visceral way to the exhortative power of “Badlands”’ refrain of inclusion and shared vision, “For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside / that it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” That’s the life-affirming spirit of rock and roll of which Springsteen may be the last unironic adherent. Of course with the bombast and raise-the-roof good cheer there was plenty of shtick too — you cannot expect to see a Springsteen show without some carnival barker patter and corny gags among the band members, most of which are likely to induce more of a knowing groan than actual laughter.
On any tour by a megastar — a Springsteen, Beyoncé, Taylor, etc. — part of the experience isn’t just the narrative about the show, but the meta-narrative about the storytelling about the show. Hearing about how the Taylor Swift
Eras tour is being described and promoted, it sounds like a mix of legendary hits, deep cuts from the richness of her back catalogue, and a spotlight on more recent material, which is … well, like a routine Springsteen tour? So the
Washington Post had middle-aged Joe Heim post a somewhat
unabashed hagiography about the life-affirming power of the E Street Band, to which a wise-ass (but not wrong) Facebook commentator responded, “Old East Coast White Guys love them some Bruce.” The
USA Today review of the same show was equally unalloyed in its enthusiasm. The
Washingtonian took a contrarian approach, putting a completely
clueless Gen Z non-fan in the $1000+ general admission section and letting her complain that the show was really loud, but respond with grudging enthusiasm to Bruce’s boomer-chic aesthetic and still-hot dad bod.
I don’t think either piece was right, although they both had aspects of truth in them. I thought the show was good, and I'm happy I was there. (My friend who’d seen the Greensboro show two days before said the crowd was better there.) I will probably plunk down the money to see the August show at Nationals Park, where I hope the outdoor setting is a good fit for the band’s celebratory vibe — although I recognize the acoustics won't be as good. But in this day and age, any chance to experience a full-fledged, high-octane, unabashed demonstration of the power of rock and roll is worth seeking out. The odds are we won’t have these kinds of opportunities forever.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2023 11:22AM by zwirnm.
