Gothenburg might have welcomed Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band back home last month, but they’ll actually be back in Jersey this week (photo by Natalie Greppi)
Who: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
What: Stadium leg of the River Tour
Where: MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey
When: New tickets on sale August 22 at 12 noon for shows Tuesday, August 23, Thursday, August 25, and Tuesday, August 30, $68-$150, 7:30
Why: After Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s U.S. arena tour celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of The River, during which the 1980 double LP was played in its entirety every night, and a European leg in which the setlists changed, with chunks of the album featured along with an evolving roster of deep cuts (“New York City Serenade,” “Roll of the Dice,” “Reason to Believe,” “Streets of Fire”), classic covers (“Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “You Never Can Tell,” “Summertime Blues,” “Lucille”), and rarities (“None But the Brave,” “Frankie,” “Iceman,” “The Promise”), the group returns to the States for a brief stadium jaunt beginning August 23, 25, and 30 at MetLife Stadium. Yesterday it was announced, “Now that the exact location for the stage on the field is set and production has been finalized, additional tickets have become available.” That usually means pretty good seats, as these kinds of changes don’t impact the faraway locations that are practically in another area code. Bruce and the band are in top form, and Springsteen might be ultra-juiced because his autobiography, Born to Run, and companion CD, Chapter & Verse, are being released on September 27, four days after his sixty-seventh birthday.
“DNA, natural ability, study of craft, development of and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy, naked desire for . . . fame? . . . love? . . . admiration? . . . attention? . . . women? . . . sex? . . . and oh, yeah . . . a buck. Then . . . if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, a furious fire in the hole that just . . . don’t . . . quit . . . burning,” Springsteen writes in the book’s foreword. “These are some of the elements that will come in handy should you come face-to-face with eighty thousand (or eighty) screaming rock ’n’ roll fans who are waiting for you to do your magic trick. Waiting for you to pull something out of your hat, out of thin air, out of this world, something that before the faithful were gathered here today was just a song-fueled rumor. I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable ‘us.’ That is my magic trick. And like all good magic tricks, it begins with a setup. So . . .” Might any of the extreme rarities on the new album, which include tunes from Bruce’s earliest bands, the Castiles and Steel Mill, work their way into the show? We wouldn’t complain if he played the amazing “He’s Guilty” on August 25….