The unexpected and startling news is that there has been another Bruce Springsteen at Wembley Stadium review

Bruce Springsteen at Wembley Stadium review: hits galore from a master of his craft

At 74 years young, the Boss served up one of the best nights the audience had ever experienced
Bruce Springsteen Performs At Wembley Stadium

“No surrender!” bellowed Bruce Springsteen, as the London rain started to fall, welcoming him to the first of two shows at Wembley Stadium.

But that was no challenge to The Boss – sporting a Gareth Southgate-esque waistcoat and tie – and his tireless E-Street band, who have faced far worse in the past 50 years. And so it went: the clouds drifted off, and they were left with a fanatic cross-generational crowd, all in the palm of their hands.

Springsteen’s appeal in the UK has its contradictions. In the small town America of his songs, firing up your motorbike and driving all night could take you anywhere. From West London, the fastest roads only lead as far as the Irish Sea, in not much time at all. And yet that limitation creates a strange alchemy, making the fantasy of the open road even more exciting.

All rock stars have personas, and Bruce’s might be the best – the blue collar worker who dreams of escaping his deadbeat life, helped by the guitar he’s just learned to make talk. If that caricature ever bore any resemblance to the man behind it, it definitely doesn’t now. Springsteen lives in a 368-acre New Jersey farm, and recently hosted a podcast with ex-President Barack Obama.

But none of that matters, because he’s the ultimate stadium pro, with an added emotional depth that gives him an edge on his rivals. While the Rolling Stones ignore their creaking knees and pretend they’re still teenagers, Bruce acknowledges his age. In the set’s midpoint, a solo version of Last Man Standing, he described the funeral of a friend he started his first band with.

Who else could centre a stadium show around the inevitability of death? No one. And the subject felt even more raw than it did when he started this tour: while the 74-year-old looked spry and roared just as he ever did, he’s struggled with his health lately, cancelling a string of gigs last year. Some fans fear we are nearing a last hurrah.

In these tumultuous times, the staunch Democrat sprinkled a tiny bit of politics into the evening: calling the anthem Long Walk Home a “prayer for my country”. Elsewhere, he channelled his tried and tested evangelical preacher act, asking: “Can you feel the spirit?”. Most of us could.

At over three hours with no support, the set was long (though it’s nothing to Wembley’s biggest star this summer, Taylor Swift). Some might wonder if the band should cut some of the more workmanlike early tracks. But that would ignore their function: the marathon created a struggle, working up a sweat that made the crowd feel they’d earned the classics.

And when the hits did arrive, they were as fresh as ever. Thunder Road, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark, and the live favourite Tenth Avenue Freeze Out sent thousands of the faithful into a delirium – so much so that it didn’t matter that they didn’t do Born in the USA.

7 Comments

  1. Howdy! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a group of volunteers and starting
    a new initiative in a community in the same niche.
    Your blog provided us valuable information to work on. You have done a outstanding
    job!

  2. Just desire to say your article is as surprising. The clearness for your post is simply excellent and that i could assume you’re a professional in this subject.
    Fine with your permission let me to grab your RSS feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post.
    Thanks one million and please continue the enjoyable work.

  3. I do agree with all the concepts you’ve introduced for your post.
    They are very convincing and can certainly work. Nonetheless, the posts are too brief for novices.
    Could you please extend them a little from subsequent
    time? Thanks for the post.

  4. Greetings! This is my first visit to your blog!
    We are a collection of volunteers and starting a new project in a community in the same niche.
    Your blog provided us useful information to work on. You have done a outstanding job!

  5. I have been surfing on-line more than 3 hours nowadays,
    yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
    It is beautiful worth sufficient for me. In my opinion, if all web owners and
    bloggers made good content material as you did, the web
    will probably be much more useful than ever before.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*