It just doesn't get any better than this.
Bruce Springsteen
strikes a classic pose at Hersheypark
Stadium Tuesday
night.
The Big Man and the Boss, Clarence
Clemons and
Springsteen, play off each other.
It's late Tuesday night and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band finish their set, a loud, raucous two hours of out and out rock and roll. The crowd is shouting "BRUUUUCE!" and everyone in the very full Hersheypark Stadium knows the night is far from over.
And then Springsteen's harmonica begins pouring out the opening notes of "Thunder Road."
If you know the song — one of Springsteen's best — you know just how powerful those notes are, where they will take you.
It's enough to give you goose bumps on a cool, just-about-perfect August night.
Springsteen's got a truck load of songs like that, songs that are so ingrained in our lives and so powerful that hearing them played live by the Boss and the mighty E Street Band is like going to a revival meeting.
And Pastor Bruce played a bunch of them Tuesday night in his first ever concert at Hersheypark Stadium.
Fists pumped in the air, the crowd sang along like their life depended on it, at the same time knowing when to let the Boss take over.
But how can you review a Springsteen concert?
The man gives his heart and soul over to his audience entirely, his band cranks the songs out with sturdy, dramatic passion, and the audience drinks it in and shoots it all back to them. It's about the best dynamic there is in all of rock and roll.
Does it really matter that the sound was muddy during a lot of the three-hour show?
(By the way, the Clair Brothers don't do Springsteen's sound any more. Maybe he needs to get them back.)
Or that Springsteen spent too much time glad-handing the crowd in the front row, which was fantastic for them but left the rest of us wondering where he was?
Or that he never made even one reference to Hershey bars?
So what.
The hale and hearty Springsteen, who is 59 and has been in the business since the early 1970s, put on a great show. I'm not sure the man is capable of doing anything else.
He kicked things off with the old Eddie Cochran hit, "Summertime Blues," and then quickly moved onto "Radio Nowhere," from his latest album, "Magic."
But it was "Out in the Street" from "The River" album that really pumped up the crowd.
Springsteen would dip back into his very first album, "Greetings From Asbury Park," for a fun and saucy "Spirit in the Night" and move onto one of his classics, "The Promised Land," which got the crowd going again.
It's become a tradition in this long tour, which began in 2007, to take requests from the many signs that are held up in the audience.
Noting the sea of signs before him, Springsteen joked, "We've created a monster!"
After scanning the crowd, he asked his lead guitarist, Little Stevie Van Zandt, to pick a song and encouraged him to select something obscure.
Van Zandt complied, with John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom."
Enough of the covers. The next 10 songs were all Springsteen, from "Darlington County," to a downright swampy "Reason to Believe," and a powerful "Prove It All Night."
It was good to hear "Because the Night," a hit for Patti Smith, who co-wrote it with Springsteen, and I loved Nils Lofgren's dizzying guitar solo.
Springsteen got serious before singing "Living in the Future," warning the crowd that the civil rights we hold so dearly are slipping away.
"This is a song about sleeping through those changes, which are attacking our very souls," he said
It was strange though, to see Springsteen shaking hands and smiling his way through the song.
Like all great legends, Springsteen is tied to his early stuff because the audience demands it. After another obscure but fun cover, "Part Man Part Monkey," and a few newer songs like "The Rising" and "Last to Die," you could feel the crowd's energy surge with the opening notes of "Badlands."
The E Street Band was indeed mighty all night, with solid turns by Clarence Clemons on sax and deep vocals; Roy Bittan's sparkling piano; Max Weinberg's sturdy drums; Garry Tallent's steady bass; the intense guitar work of Lofgren and Van Zandt; the sizzling organ work of Charles Giordano, who's replaced the late Danny Federici, and the under-used Soozie Tyrell on violin.
The Mrs., Patti Scialfa, was not there.
Springsteen did eight — count em, eight! — encores and the crowd would have been happy to hear eight more.
In addition to a terrific "Thunder Road," he tore into a powerful and beautifully melodramatic "Jungleland," the jaunty cover "Seven Nights to Rock," a joyous "Born to Run," an amazing "Rosalita" (of course, "Rosalita" is always amazing), and a sharp and fun "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out."
"American Land," an infectious Springsteen original that sounds like an old Irish drinking song, was great fun and Tyrell got a chance to shine.
The best cover of the night, Them's "Gloria," brought the show to a raucous close. Joe Grushecky, who appeared at Long's Park last Sunday, joined the band on stage and helped heat it all up to a fevered pitch.
Springsteen thanked the crowd several time for coming to the show. I'll state the obvious: Thank you, BRUUUUCE!
Staff writer Jane Holahan can be reached at jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016.
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