It could be the most memorable concert ever at Hersheypark Stadium.
In 2005 we got the Rolling Stones. Two years later, a reunited Police.
Short of U2, or some miracle Beatles reunion, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's show tonight should be among the most unforgettable nights the crumbling old football arena has ever seen.
Tonight's 7:30 show begins the homestretch of a worldwide tour in support of Springsteen's 2007 album "Magic," which debuted last October at number one on Billboard's Top 200 and has sold just over a million copies.
Springsteen shows are something to behold if you haven't had the pleasure.
They start out as house-rocking parties, become feverish — punctuated by moments of high drama and relentless energy — celebrating both the redemptive power of rock and roll and the shared history between band and audience.
They end, for many, feeling like nothing short of a religious experience.
The current tour began, as almost all Springsteen tours have in the last decade, last September in dress rehearsals at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, N.J.
That's the beach town where Bruce began his professional career in the late 1960s and met most of the musicians who would come to join the ranks of the E Street Band.
Since October, Springsteen and the band — who've never played Hersheypark — have made two trips each across Western Europe and North America, over 200 shows in front of a total of 2 million people.
And so far, it has proven to be one of the most memorable E Street road journeys of all, though not without its difficult moments.
E Street Band organist Danny Federici, a Springsteen cohort since he was invited to join an acid-jam rock band called Steel Mill in 1968, made what would be his final performance on March 20 in Indianapolis.
Having battled melanoma for three years, Federici died April 17.
Other luminaries in Bruce's orbit have also been extinguished over the course of the last year: the fortune teller Madam Marie, a fixture on Asbury Park's boardwalk for over 50 years and canonized in Springsteen's 1973 song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy);" Bill Chinnock, who played in groups with virtually every E Streeter; Terry McGovern, Springsteen's personal assistant, bodyguard, and all around aide de camp, who passed during the recording of "Magic."
Perhaps in defiance of those losses, the Boss has been turning in what even his oldest fans are calling some of his most exciting shows ever. And he has his audience to thank.
It was on the European legs that a strange new element began to enter the shows; that of fans helping to determine what Bruce and the band would play.
Changing the setlist for any given night on the fly has been a fact of life with Springsteen since the early 1970s.
But at some point fans started bringing posters with hand-written requests on them, turning each concert into a make-your-own-setlist event; setlist blogging, if you will.
"People have brought signs to shows before and Bruce has on occasion said 'put those signs down,'" says Chris Phillips, editor of "Backstreets" since 1980, the definitive print and now online source of Springsteen and Jersey Shore music.
"But in Europe it kind of evolved organically," he said. "When they moved to stadiums he became more receptive to it."
It's become almost a stump-the-band challenge, as people request obscure oldies, B-sides and album cuts the band hasn't played in years.
"Now it's become a regular part of the show; he'll go out to the audience and collect the signs, then go through them and spring them on the band. It's really mind blowing," says Phillips.
So far, the band hasn't been tripped up. Having played together most of their lives — and almost non-stop since reuniting in 1999 — that would be hard to do.
The big favorites like "Born to Run," "The Rising," "Thunder Road," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," and "Badlands" are there, but are each night surrounded by…well, anybody's guess. Dramatic epics like "Jungleland" and "Incident on 57th Street," as well as oldies like "Twist and Shout," "Little Latin Lupe Lou," or "Quarter to Three."
"So the setlist is useless," guitarist Nils Lofgren told Billboard magazine earlier this summer. "The band, musically, is in the best shape we've ever been, I think," added Lofgren. "It's fun to be part of something…where a band leader can do that much improv and get away with it and have a band that'll deliver and make it work."
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