“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.
In the end, it may have been just an ordinary night for Bruce and his gang, but one of the best shows most of us had ever seen.
