Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Goose, Bruce Springsteen, Widespread Panic, and more.
Nugs subscribers can visit their account page to check their eligibility for four months of SiriusXM All Access. Offer details apply. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Bruce Springsteen, Dogs in a Pile, Kitchen Dwellers, and more.
Nugs subscribers can visit their account page to check their eligibility for four months of SiriusXM All Access. Offer details apply. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Atlantic City Bruce Springsteen 3/28/24 San Francisco, CA
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Bruce Springsteen, Billy Strings, Eggy, and more.
Nugs subscribers can visit their account page to check their eligibility for four months of SiriusXM All Access. Offer details apply. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Imagine that years after your favorite television series had ended (be it Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Stath Lets Flats, Twin Peaks or any other), you learned that additional episodes had been shot during the show’s best years and were about to be released in pristine quality. Would it matter that you had already watched dozens of episodes from the same season?
No, you would be thrilled that more of the show you love–a sublime artistic creation for which your fandom had become part of your self identity–was newly available. Let’s say you even had a lower-quality video tape or a pirated download of one of those lost episodes. Would it diminish your interest in an HD version of the lost show, looking even better than the original series ever did?
It’s with that framing we welcome another Darkness tour show to the Live Archive series and complete the Capitol Theatre trifecta with the release of Passaic 9/21/78. It’s the final show of a three-night stand that would be the last small-theatre residency Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band would ever play in the Northeast. Let’s not forget these shows were something of an anomaly at the time, coming after a trio of gigs at the Palladium and the statement-making, three-night stand at iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City, both just a New Jersey Transit ride away.
Bruce was already many times bigger than the Capitol Theatre capacity, but his home state of New Jersey lacked an arena-sized venue until Brendan Byrne opened in 1981. The Passaic shows were a gift to those who lived across the Hudson River and especially fans on the Shore. When Bruce asks during the 9/21 show how many folks in the house are from Asbury Park, the roar is considerable.
The first night of the Passaic run was the legendary September 19 radio broadcast which spiked sales of blank tape in the tri-state area (presumably). That show and the more relaxed second night on September 20, are both essential titles in the Live Archive series. Now, the equally enthralling final concert joins them.
Comparing or ranking masterpieces is a pointless exercise; instead we should be grateful that we can now hear all three Capitol Theatre performances in outstanding, multi-track mix quality. That being said, the three Passaic shows are distinct.
Night three strikes an appealing balance of intensity and looseness, some of which can be attributed to its proximity to Springsteen’s 29th birthday, which would take place in two days’ time. The fans want to celebrate it and Springsteen lets them: he plays to the crowd and the crowd gives it right back in what might be the most interactive Darkness tour performance to be professionally recorded.
Amidst all the hand-wringing about setlist variations in recent times, some trainspotters have pointed out that for all the adoration showered upon it, the Darkness tour largely stuck to its core set and didn’t offer a great number of changes from show to show. That ignores the fact that when there were multi-night stands like Passaic, Bruce not only made surprise additions (usually covers, see below), but in the days leading up he prepped special material for the run. At the Capitol Theatre this included the return of deep cuts like “Meeting Across The River,” “Incident on 57th Street,” “Kitty’s Back,” and even “The Fever.”
Those older songs were clearly a nod to longtime fans from the area, but the key setlist-change feature of the Darkness tour was its rock ‘n’ roll jukebox covers: the exceptionally capable E Street Band regularly performed foundational rock songs like “Rave On,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Summertime Blues.” With rollicking reverence, it’s obvious how much pleasure Springsteen got from taking each golden nugget for a ride.
September 21, 1978 was a hot day in New Jersey and the Capitol Theatre was surely warm and sticky when Springsteen kicked off the evening with Jerry Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential.” This is one of nine performances of the song that year, and marks its first appearance in the Live Archive series.
Later in the first set, we get another Archive series debut cover, Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” featuring great baritone saxophone from Clarence Clemons and a spirited vocal from Springsteen that includes the fitting lyrical rewrite, “deep in the heart of Passaic.”
Preview of “Sweet Little Sixteen” – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Those are but two highlights in a sterling opening set that also includes the work-in-progress “Independence Day” and an interesting “Prove It All Night.” Max Weinberg drops the beat at the 1:07 mark, and in Jon Altschiller’s detailed mix we hear just how important Clemons’ triangle playing is to the rhythm and tone of the song’s enchanting prelude. Mix inspectors will also likely be pleased with the placement of Danny Federici’s fader throughout the show compared to other ’78 releases.
Set one ends with the perfect pairing of “Meeting Across the River” into “Jungleland.” If we needed further confirmation of Springsteen’s commitment to his performance, we get it in two signature, heightened “Jungleland” vocal lines, as he reaches to his upper range to punctuate “dress in the latest rage” and “desperate as the night moves on.”
Given how well it worked the night before, the second set opens with a very early “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” again complete with fake snowfall and Springsteen doing his best Darlene Love imitation at the end. Clemons’ fine percussion playing and some impressive flying cymbal work from Weinberg mark an excellent “Because the Night,” one of five unreleased original songs featured in the 9/21/78 set along with the aforementioned “Independence Day,” “Fire,” “Point Blank” (in a version with great glockenspiel from Federici and piano from Roy Bittan) and “The Fever.” While our familiarity with those songs means we take their inclusion for granted in a 1978 show, if five unreleased originals were to appear in 2024 sets, we’d be soiling ourselves with glee.
The second set features epics, too, including a long “Kitty’s Back,” in which Bittan turns in a solo that’s among his modern-jazziest ever, accented by more cymbal shimmering from Weinberg. Bruce eventually presents the audience with a choice between “The Fever” and “Incident on 57th Street,” but lucky them, he plays both.
“The Fever” brings another memorable vocal moment, when Springsteen goes on an epic, Van Morrisonesque run through “But I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I — I’M GONNA BE ALRIGHT” at 6:15. Brilliant. As nature intended, “Incident” flows directly into “Rosalita,” and after vamping on the Village People’s “Macho Man” following the introduction of The Big Man, this deeply satisfying second set comes to a close.
The encore is a victory lap and maintains the energy of the main set with more vocal gems like Springsteen putting an exclamation point on his first utterance of “Baby we were BORN TO RUH-UH-UH-UN.” He elects to close the three-show homecoming with the night’s fourth cover, perhaps the most beloved encore song yet to be played in Passaic, Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Quarter To Three.” Led by Clemons’ wailing saxophone, the version runs some ten minutes before Springsteen and the band finally wave goodbye.
After they leave the stage, someone (promoter John Scher perhaps?) takes to the microphone to say, “It’s been a wonderful three nights. A great way to help Bruce celebrate his birthday.” True, but the real gift of Passaic is the recordings the Record Plant Mobile Truck made of all three nights.
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Welcome to the inaugural edition of ‘Straight From the Fans’! We love reading about fans’ experiences about both attending and listening to shows – and it’s those transcendent moments of joy and revelation shared that keeps the music discovery going! Each month we’ll curate a list of ten of our favorite fan reviews left in the nugs app, showcasing the best of recent shows and archival releases from the month.
Want to be featured in the future? You’ve got the mic. Share your show-going and listening experiences with us on any live recording in the nugs.net catalog when you subscribe or purchase a download. From any show page in the app or the web player, just hit that “+ Add Review” button and drop your thoughts.
Without further ado…Straight From the Fans: January 2024!
Those of us who like to discuss Bruce Springsteen’s touring history often focus on a show’s narrative arc. Through his setlist choices and order, what story is he telling?
Tours tied to his new studio albums often start as showcases for that particular work and its ideas, but after several months on the road song selections turn wide ranging, at times drifting far from the shore to which they were originally docked.
The Ghost of Tom Joad tour is Springsteen’s purest in terms of holding onto its vision and telling its story night after night. That the tour eventually spanned three calendar years stands as a testament to how satisfying Springsteen found solo work and the songs he was performing.
The tour launched in late 1995 and those early sets offered a heaping helping of tracks from the album. By the time he reached Akron ten months later–a point at which deviation from the norm would be underway on most tours–Springsteen was digging even deeper into this music’s wellspring.
Akron begins with a staggering debut performance that immediately validates the inclusion of the show in the Live Archive series. Springsteen had been invited to appear at a special Woody Guthrie tribute concert in Cleveland on September 29, in preparation for which he performed the folk legend’s “Tom Joad” to open the Akron set.
Preview of “Tom Joad” by Bruce Springsteen in Akron, OH 1996
With command and focus, Springsteen breathes new life into Guthrie’s murder ballad about the plight of the poor heading west in the Dust Bowl era. The song is a darker, spiritual companion to Springsteen’s own “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” and the two share key words and phrases in their final verses. While the film adaption of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was a major reference for Springsteen’s “Joad” lyrics, the inspiration and influence of Guthrie’s “Tom Joad” is there too, and not just in the title track but across the album, and even as far back as Nebraska, where its style and shape inform compositions like “Johnny 99” and “Reason to Believe.”
From that unprecedented start, Springsteen moves purposefully through the weighty Joad tour set, which offers little in the way of fan service but remains unquestionable in its musical artistry. The seventh song, “Nebraska,” starts with a high-vocal musical prelude that drifts into the somber harmonica line, setting the dark scene that’s about to unfold. It’s a stark, intimate reading that ends with Springsteen subtly shifting into a character voice for the harrowing final line: “I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”
The first half of the set includes “It’s the Little Things That Count” and “Red Headed Woman,” which bring welcome levity, before the fitting pairing of “Shut Out the Light” and “Born in the U.S.A.” Springsteen performs the b-side with feeling and fragility, while the A-side rides bluesy guitar slides in a swaggering reading that plays more as a cautionary tale than ever before.
A second high-vocal intro comes ahead of another Nebraska track, “Reason to Believe,” missing its original and thematically contrasting musical lilt, replaced here by a somber tone that’s chilling in spots. No one will misread the meaning of this version.
The main set heads towards conclusion on the back of five stellar performances from Joad starting with “Youngstown” (just 50 miles from Akron), “Sinaloa Cowboys,” “The Line,” the rarely performed “The New Timer” and finally a glimmer of hope from “Across The Border.”
After delivering the set’s central themes completely on his own terms, Springsteen acknowledges the Akron audience’s patience and respect with the rousing return of “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?” The song dates back to his own time as a Greenwich Village troubadour and is a fitting inclusion in an evening of folk music. A sweet “This Hard Land” further rewards fan faith, and the good vibes continue on a quick rip through “No Surrender,” a song about the bonds of friendship and what matters in the face of hardship.
“I appreciate coming out here and having the room to play like this,” Springsteen says sincerely in the encore. However one feels today about the music he was performing circa 1995-97, it meant everything to Springsteen. In early 1995 he was at a crossroads, having effectively finished a solo album in the vein of “Streets of Philadelphia,” only to pivot suddenly and reconvene the E Street Band to record new music and promote Greatest Hits. But that year, Springsteen ultimately rediscovered himself as a solo artist through The Ghost of Tom Joad album and tour.
If we support the idea that he had to make Nebraska before he entered the inevitable superstar spotlight with Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen needed to write, record and perform Tom Joad songs on his own before he could reunite with the E Street Band. This Akron recording is a compelling chronicle of that journey, including one key piece of the original source material.
Addio alla tua cara mamma Adele Springsteen 1925-2024
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2023 was a banner year of touring for many of our artists, with the app boasting nearly 3,000 shows from 2023 available for streaming. Among the myriad of standout moments, we’ve gathered the most-listened-to shows as determined by you, the fans!
From the last bow on Dead & Company’s Final Tour to Goosemas, Metallica’s M72 World Tour kick off and Bruce Springsteen’s New Jersey homecoming, there’s something for all tastes in this list. Dig into each artist’s catalog and discover new favorites with these as a jumping-off point. There’s so much to uncover from the year in live music!
The official and professionally-mixed audio from all these concerts are available to stream in the nugs app. Sign up for a free trial to listen, or for a limited time, save on a year of streaming with our Year End Sale!
2023’s Top Streamed Shows:
(In order of most listens in 2023, including shows from 2023 and New Year’s 2022. Inclusions are capped at one show per artist.)
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Bruce Springsteen, Goose, Greensky Bluegrass with Lindsay Lou and more. Paid nugs subscribers may be eligible for 4-months of SiriusXM All Access (App Only), see your account page to take advantage of this offer. Offer Details apply. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
The third and final leg of the Working On a Dream tour wrapped 25 months of near-continuous touring for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The run started in support of 2007’s Magic, while 2009 was in service of its aforenamed follow-up.
With so many gigs already under their belts and multiple passes through key markets, Springsteen was looking for a way to shake things up. “We were trying to [do] some things that would make these last series of shows special for our fans,” he tells the Philly faithful gathered in what was once simply called The Spectrum — and home to some of the band’s greatest arena shows.
The idea they settled on was to perform his classic albums in full. On this night the selection is Darkness on the Edge of Town, “a record that means a great, great deal to me,” Springsteen says. “I think it summarized a lot of things that were going on in the world that I was in at the time. When it came out…it wasn’t greeted right away with the kind of affection that it’s gained over the years. People didn’t initially know quite what to make of it.”
While he has alluded to it before, Springsteen’s point of view that the album took time to resonate is fascinating to reconsider. In hindsight, it feels like Darkness on the Edge of Town was a seminal album from the start, but its status was earned over time, due in no small part to the songs, “being in our setlist…night after night for [33] years.”
A full performance of Darkness on the Edge of Town is the centerpiece of this fine October 14, 2009 set, part of a four-show stand that would mark Springsteen’s farewell performances at the legendary Spectrum.
As Springsteen notes, Darkness songs have been a persistent force in his setlists for decades, but this in-sequence reading resets our perspective on the material. “Badlands” is returned to a starting role opening the album, and there’s still bite in the old warhorse, aided by an exuberant audience reaction and singalong.
Sonic sharpness continues through a seamless transition to “Adam Raised a Cain.” The guitar tone is spot on, especially the solo, and Springsteen sings with conviction that belies the years that have passed since the song was written. From the angst of “Adam Raised a Cain” is the majestic “Something in the Night,” led by Roy Bittan’s emotional piano part.
Next, “Candy’s Room” combines the prettiness of “Something” and the edge of “Adam” into one of Springsteen’s most dynamic and appealing arrangements. Stevie Van Zandt’s backing vocals provide an extra jolt of urgency. Bittan takes center stage again for “Racing in the Street,” as he carries the unforgettable melody on piano, while Springsteen’s vocal cadence and phrasing have shifted in modern performances to emphasize weariness over wistfulness. The “Factory” whistle blows earnestly in Philly with fine pedal-steel guitar from Nils Lofgren and intriguingly angular fretwork from Van Zandt.
The stunner of the Darkness set is “Streets of Fire,” easily the least-played song from the album since 1978 in only its ninth appearance since the Darkness tour. Springsteen gets up for it, hitting the heightened vocal line “I heard somebody call my name” like you want him to and turning in scorching guitar throughout.
The spark of “Streets of Fire” helps ignite the final two songs of the album sequence. “Prove It All Night,” often played early in live sets, serves as more of a sizzling denouement with all three guitarists contributing meaningfully, including Lofgren’s Theremin-like solo. The title track also serves as the album closer, and the reading here is full-blooded and flawless, as again Springsteen reaches for and reaches his most emotive vocal range on lines like “I lost my faith when I lost my wife,” “I’ll be on the hill ‘cause I can’t stop,” and the song’s final, held “towwwwwwn.” It feels wholly appropriate that the expanded 2009 band line-up stood down to let the core E Streeters and Charlie Giordano perform Darkness On the Edge of Town as authentically as it could be in 2009.
While a child singing “Waitin’ on a Sunday Day” does shatter the spell woven by the full Darkness, the rest of the show that surrounds the album suite has its share of special moments. The first half of the show includes the only airing to date of “What Love Can Do” from Working On a Dream. It’s a shame the song has been slept on by the merits of this excellent performance in which the band is firmly locked into the arrangement and Springsteen and Van Zandt sing with gripping intensity. Fun fact: the song also gives this concert two different biblical references to Cain.
The second part of the show boasts the welcome inclusion of “Human Touch,” which, after ten previous attempts, crosses the line fully into E Street Band territory and declares its citizenship. This lively take offers plenty of guitar, lilting vocals from Patti Scialfa and a superb ending.
“Long Walk Home” follows, and doubles as a good title for this final stretch of the 2009 tour, when Springsteen gave the people what they wanted, full performances of his most beloved works, without it coming off as nostalgia.
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Now up for grabs on the nugs.net subscriber contest’s portal is the Born In The U.S.A. collectors-edition CD box set! The 18-CD factory-pressed set contains six of the finest recordings from the 1984-1985 Born In The U.S.A. Tour, including five shows in East Rutherford, NJ. In addition to the box set, the winner will also get MP3 downloads of every show. One runner up will get all six FLAC downloads.
Don’t miss your chance to own this piece of music history, nugs subscribers can enter to win today! If you’re new to nugs.net, start a free trial now to unlock unlimited streaming of the Live Bruce Springsteen archives, then come back to enter tomorrow. Good luck, this contest ends on November 21st.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Billy & The Kids, Bruce Springsteen, Greensky Bluegrass with Holly Bowling & Sam Bush and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Greensky Bluegrass, Spafford, Eggy, Goose, and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Umphrey’s McGee, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Strings, Spafford, and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Billy Strings, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, moe., Bruce Springsteen, and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring Daniel Donato, Railroad Earth, moe., Bruce Springsteen and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Billy Strings, Twiddle, Bruce Springsteen, Widespread Panic, and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
With the first Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concerts in six years now fewer than 50 days away, a return to where their rebirth began feels fitting. East Rutherford, NJ 7/18/99 was only the band’s second US date on the Reunion tour. It followed a 36-show European leg that saw them playing beloved outtakes (finally released on Tracks), exploring the depths of their own catalog, and rounding into form ahead of an audacious 15-night stand at Continental Airlines Arena to kick off the American run.
The 7/18/99 recording, newly mixed from multitrack masters by Jon Altschiller, bears a strong sense of purpose and urgency for reconnection. How thrilling it must have been to not only hear “I Wanna Be With You” for the first time, but to take Bruce’s title statement literally as he calls in the band members one by one in the song’s intro. We want to be with you.
As commonplace as “Prove It All Night” might feel in hindsight, longtime fans hadn’t heard it played with the E Street Band in 14 years, and surely many others in attendance never had. These early Reunion shows were marked by bang-bang pacing at the top as the first two songs roll right into “Two Hearts.” Nils Lofgren may take the solo in “Prove It,” but Stevie Van Zandt’s return to the band is undeniable in his call-and-response backing vocals, which extend into “Two Hearts.”
“Trapped” was a standout when the band christened this building back in 1981; in 1999, Patti Scialfa’s vocals lift the chorus higher while modern keyboard textures from Roy Bittan and Danny Federici give “Trapped” a subtle recharge. “Darlington County” teases the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” for several bars before the rowdy road trip begins, giving Clarence Clemons his fifth fine showcase of the night already.
Following that crowd-pleaser, three radical rearrangements show the Reunion tour isn’t here just to play the past by rote. The country arrangement of “Factory” shifts the tone of the song entirely, removing the drudgery-implying repetitive thump of percussion to yield something more contemplative about the meaning of “the working life.” Lofgren’s work in particular shines.
Bittan and Federici similarly recast the tone of “The River” with a long introduction behind Bruce’s mournful harmonica. The spare reading, accented by Danny’s accordion and Lofgren’s pedal steel, bears some influence from Bruce’s recordings for and around The Ghost of Tom Joad. Not every fan liked the rearrangement, but there’s no denying its disquieting impact and the bold choice to reinterpret a classic.
The full-band “Youngstown” might be the most successful of the three. With a trio of players on stage, the Reunion tour had a fatter, richer, and more forward guitar sound than the 1984-85 or 1988 tours. “Youngstown” makes the case that the E Street Band can be a full-throttled rock band whenever they like, and “Murder Incorporated” reinforces the point, riding Max Weinberg’s big beat in a sharp, stunning performance.
One has to admire Bruce’s sequencing as “Badlands” arrives to take us over the top and end a nearly flawless first half of the show. The de facto second set begins with the joyous invitation of a zippy “Out in the Street” in another appealing reading that the audience eats up.
After barely addressing the crowd to this point, Bruce takes to the E Street pulpit during “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out,” which features forays into “Red Headed Woman” and Patti’s own “Rumble Doll,” plus a nod to the great Curtis Mayfield with snippets of “It’s All Right” and “Move On Up.” A reverent “Loose End” follows, and again one has to readjust one’s mindset to remember the years when it was unimaginable “Loose End” would ever be released let alone played in concert.
The summer setting brings “Sherry Darling,” led by the Clemons’ horn, and Brendan Byrne ‘81 vibes abound. “Working on the Highway” makes a light-hearted companion before Bruce shifts gears down again with a solemn reading of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” that starts acoustic before the band adds gentle accent colors.
The full sense of return simmering all night is sealed by the first few notes of “Jungleland.” As great as the show has been to this point, the magisterial appearance of the Born to Run epic seals the deal between Bruce, the band, and the fans. Clarence Clemons meets the moment and plays his saxophone solo with complete confidence. They. Are. Back.
The set ends with a lively, guitar-drenched “Light of Day” and more snippets including “I Need a Train,” “I’ve Been Everywhere,” and a delicious snatch of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” (Brucebase, how did you miss that one?). While “Light of Day” only served two tours of duty (1988 and 1999-2000) as an E Street set-closer, it did so with distinction, wrapping the set with momentum.
The encore opens with Springsteen in the confession booth, revealing secrets great, small, and embarrassing with admirable candor in “Freehold.” The song first appeared at Bruce’s solo acoustic show at his old high school in 1996 and its inclusion the first six nights of the 1999 NJ stand seems to suggest that as much as Bruce is back home as a local hero, he’s equal parts humble local man.
“Stand On It” is the final Tracks song in the set and features some dazzling displays from Bittan and Clemons in one of only 21 performances ever. From there, “Hungry Heart,” “Bobby Jean,” “Born to Run,” and “Thunder Road” give the people what they want, each sounding fresh after a long layoff.
On an evening firmly focused on the recommitment of Bruce and the band, “If I Should Fall Behind” delivers the sentiment with spotlight-sharing vocal turns from Nils, Patti, Clarence, and Steve on a song recorded and released while the band was on hiatus.
The night closes with a dedication to the Kennedy family–following the passing of John F. Kennedy Jr. two days prior–as the intro to “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Bruce’s modern day “People Get Ready” (so much so that he shares the writing credit with Curtis Mayfield) captures the American spirit as much as any song in the canon.
The 7/18/99 recording is the earliest Reunion show yet to appear in the Live Archive series, and it shows just how ready they were to begin what we now see as their modern era, one that will enjoy a new chapter come February when Bruce and the band will roar back to life.
If there’s any period in modern Springsteen history that continues to grow in admiration it is the 2007-2008 Magic era.
There was always something appealing in the idea that Bruce and the E Street Band weren’t reuniting after an extended separation (only a few years since Vote For Change) nor called to service by historic events, but simply touring behind an excellent new album. Better still, the Magic tour created the setlist model we’ve had ever since.
The 1999-2000 Reunion tour marked the long-awaited return of the blood brothers and was tied to the release of the vaults-clearing Tracks, which liberated vital studio outtakes we only dreamed would someday be released. Several Tracks songs featured in the Reunion shows, and the exercise of producing the box and preparing for his first ESB tour in 11 years had Bruce looking at his catalog from a fresh vantage point. The result: setlist surprises on a regular basis—you didn’t know what Tracks song or vintage cut might turn up on a given night, putting long-lost classics like “New York City Serenade,” “Blinded By the Light” and “Lost in the Flood” back in play.
In addition to featuring 12 strong new songs from the 2007 album, the Magic tour suggested a similar reflection had taken place, but this time on the performance history of Bruce’s songs, with an eye toward the underplayed. Spurred by fan-sign requests, which took hold in 2007-2008, a trove of unusual cover songs appeared, along with choice rarities, upping the setlist wildcard factor practically every night. This awareness of what came before would continue on the Wrecking Ball tour, as requests persisted and got even more specific (e.g. “Prove It All Night ‘78”) in 2012-2013.
Nashville 8/21/08 exemplifies this “embrace the present and tap the past” approach. The concert immediately prior to the towering St. Louis show on 8/23, a previous Live Archive release, Nashville offers convincing performances of contemporary material, career-spanning classics, and special additions with deep roots in Springsteen’s performance past suggested by the fans. This delightful show also bears the unmistakable feeling of Bruce and the band enjoying being back on the job.
In a rare opening slot, “Out in the Street” sets the stage for a communal night between band and fan. The first half of the Nashville set runs strong with modern material (“Radio Nowhere,” “Lonesome Day,” “Youngstown”) and period heavy-hitters (“No Surrender,” “Murder Incorporated”), but things really open up when Bruce begins collecting request signs after “Spirit in the Night.”
“I’m gonna test the band,” he says with a wry smile. “We played this at the Capitol Theatre in 1978.” Credit him for remembering correctly: “Good Rockin’ Tonight” earned 17 airings in its premiere run on the Darkness tour (including the Capitol in Passaic, 9/20/78) and three more on the River tour before going dormant for 28 years. Did they nail the arrangement? Not exactly (though Roy Bittan’s piano playing is extraordinary). Did they tap Darkness tour spirit? Absolutely.
This ragged-but-right “Good Rockin’ Tonight” is an in-the-moment charmer, no more so than when Bruce shouts, “Go back a verse, Dan,” acknowledging crew member Dan Lee, who runs Bruce’s on-stage Teleprompter and helps make lost songs and other requests a welcome reality.
Darkness tour spirit also infuses a sweet “Growin’ Up,” complete with the “selling the pool table to buy the Kent guitar” story. A surprisingly rare “I’m Goin’ Down” follows. It’s the only song from Born in the U.S.A. performed fewer than 100 times, trailing even “Pink Cadillac” (125 to date). This one of three appearances on the Magic tour is lively and terrific.
If that isn’t rare enough for you, how about “Hungry Heart” b-side “Held Up Without a Gun,” played for only the fourth time ever? Bruces seamlessly slips back into the vocal cadence and tone of the original, and the band hits it like an every-nighter.
There’s no time to catch our breath before another River rarity, outtake “Loose End” (changed from “Loose Ends” as of the release of the Ties That Bind box set) in a sharp reading that again taps vintage vibes in a manner that suggests something beyond muscle memory is afoot in Nashville.
The most striking example of this uncanny ability to recall the past comes before “She’s the One.” The song was a staple of Magic tour sets, but on this night, seemingly out of nowhere—especially since he began the song as he did every 2007-2008 version—Bruce breaks into the classic “Mona” intro from the Darkness tour (and once in 1981) and damn if it doesn’t sound just right. Stevie Van Zandt catches on and brings his own vintage licks to the segment.
A few songs later divine inspiration strikes again, and Bruce calls out chord changes—“B” then “E”—to intriguingly append Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” to the start of “I’m on Fire,” a song that’s all about crossing lines. A brilliant coupling.
The back half of the show is anchored by a trio of recent rockers: “The Rising,” a potent “Last to Die,” and the underrated “Long Walk Home,” the arrangement of which is an exemplar of the modern E Street sound. “Badlands” finishes the main set before an encore that starts on a rousing “Girls in Their Summer Clothes” (it is August, after all).
“Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” follow before the last tour premiere of the night, a cover of The Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law,” played for only the fourth time since 1981 and barely aged a day—as is the theme this evening.
For those of us not old enough to see ’70s and ’80s shows in person, the Magic tour provided a time machine to a taste of what a few of those special song performances were like. May those vibes return in 2023.
While his Born to Run book and Springsteen on Broadway performance served as overt autobiographical projects, Bruce Springsteen’s 1996 homecoming shows in Freehold and Asbury Park were equally if not more confessional.
Sprouting from seeds planted at 1990’s Christic Institute benefit concerts (available in the Live Archive series), Bruce’s return-to-the-Shore shows break the fourth wall and at times seek to provoke the audience by intentionally revealing parts of himself that didn’t necessarily comport with the image of rock’s everyman superstar.
Coming home—not just to New Jersey, but the very towns where his music, band, and lifelong friendships were born—is an act of making peace with one’s past. As Springsteen writes in “When You’re Alone,” performed so poignantly here, “I left and swore I’d never look back,” only to be sent “crawling like a baby back home.”
Bruce has been a storyteller since the early days, spinning yarns about Ducky Slattery and the magical meeting of Scooter and the Big Man. But that became part of the mythmaking.
Back in Asbury Park for the first time in decades, he’s in a different sort of dialogue with the audience—not exactly a two-way street (though he does respond to audience shouts on a few occasions), but consciously revealing his truths and gauging response. Case in point: As he makes unambiguously clear introducing “Red Headed Woman,” Springsteen was (and hopefully remains) America’s foremost advocate for cunnilingus.
For all that’s been said over the years about how he became the musician that he is, the story he tells ahead of “Across the Border,” drawing a parallel between the pop music his mother played on the radio and The Grapes of Wrath might be the most instructive. He eloquently connects the roots of the two key themes of his formative work: the yearning to escape one’s circumstances and the desire for human connection.
Both themes are in full display on Asbury Park 11/26/96, the final night of four Shore shows and the closing night in AP. The November 24 performance was previously released in the Live Archive series, where Bruce was joined by Danny Federici, Patti Scialfa, and Soozie Tyrell. That trio returns for the last show, joined by several figures from those seminal Shore years including Stevie Van Zandt, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez, Richard Blackwell (who played percussion on The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle), and the late, great Big Danny Gallagher, on whose living room floor Bruce wrote “a lot of my early work.”
The show immediately acknowledges those early days as Springsteen is accompanied by Federici on “For You” to open, followed by a solo turn of “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the CIty.” There’s nothing retro about the performances, which sound vibrant and in the moment, with Bruce in fine, strong voice. For “Saint,” his strumming adopts the low acoustic sound from the Joad tour arrangement of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” which propels the song to the rafters. On that point, the same can be said of the entire performance, which practically bursts from the stage to the audience. In contrast, Springsteen’s next solo outing, the 2005 tour in support of Devils & Dust, can be categorized as more of a lean-in experience, brilliant as it was.
“Atlantic City” gets a passionate if traditional reading. Curious that the song wasn’t part of the original Joad setlists, but it became a staple starting with the European shows in the spring of 1996. The brilliant “Straight Time” was part of the Joad tour core, but curiously it has been played only once since, in Copenhagen 2005.
Scialfa and Tyrell first take the stage for “Tougher Than The Rest,” played only in Freehold and Asbury in a rare acoustic arrangement. “Darkness” is assayed at a blistering pace, and the urgency felt in so many of the night’s performances rings true as Bruce sings, “lives on the line where dreams are found and lost.”
There’s a washboard quality in the rhythmic strumming intro to “Johnny 99” as Bruce blasts harmonica to what sounds like the riff of U2’s “Desire.” It’s another pacey rendition, and Bruce’s heighted Joad voice shifts wildly from high to low, hard to soft, demanding the audience engage.
Next, the first of those old friends, as Richard Blackwell takes the stage on congas for a one-off performance of “All That Heaven Will Allow,” dormant since the last night of the Tunnel tour. Bruce brings out Blackwell with a story about randomly running into him in the woods a long way from the Shore—near the Esalen Institute in Big Sur—after driving cross-country in late 1969. Blackwell is then joined by Tyrell on violin for the comforting return of “All That Heaven Will Allow.”
With Federici rejoining on accordion, Tyrell and Springsteen revisit “Wild Billy’s Circus Story,” and again Springsteen’s singing is spirited and invigorating, even contemporizing the Wild & Innocent classic.
The aforementioned cunnilingus advocacy precedes “Red Headed Woman,” though perhaps stumping would be a better word choice. Bruce makes a rare foray into political impressions, doing his take on Senator Bob Dole by way of positing the theory that Dole could have won the 1996 Presidential election if only he’d said, “This is Bob Dole. Bob Dole stands for a strong America; prosperity in every home. Bob Dole stands for cunnilingus.”
“Two Hearts” arrives just in time to turn off the steam, as Patti and Soozie join for this calmer expression of love, teeing up one of the night’s true highlights. “When You’re Alone” was released on Tunnel of Love in 1987, but never appeared in a Tunnel of Love Express Tour set. Springsteen finally debuted the song live at the 1993 tour’s Count Basie Theatre warm-up before its more formal resurrection for these 1996 Shore shows, tour-premiering in Freehold.
Why these shows? Bruce gives “When You’re Alone” no meaningful introduction, but the second-verse lyrics are highly apropos of the occasion. In this stripped-down arrangement, Bruce carries a lot of the original melody in his vocals, enhanced by Patti’s rich harmonies, and the result is special. One of only 12 performances ever, this is the last “When You’re Alone” until 2005.
Former single-mates “Shut Out the Light” and “Born in the U.S.A.” are paired masterfully, with the B-side played first, featuring sympathetic support from Danny, Soozie, and especially Patti on vocals. The 1984 title track always merits reappreciation in its original acoustic form.
The NJ shows deviated significantly from the baseline Joad set, but the end of the 11/24/96 show reverts to form for “Sinaloa Cowboys,” “The Line” and “Across the Border.” As they were night after night, each of the three is brilliantly realized, and the addition of “Racing In the Street” between the final two is both a fascinating and fitting addition. Bruce reads “Racing” not unlike a Joad song (that influence can be felt on some of the 1973 songs as well), and the shifted telling makes for an engrossing rendition.
To the encore, and wonderful moments of Bruce seeing and celebrating the local friends who helped get him there. It starts with Stevie Van Zandt, who joins all prior guests and shares lead vocals with Bruce on his own classic “I Don’t Want to Go Home” in its only tour appearance and a unique acoustic arrangement. “Spirit in the Night” is suddenly an ode to the spirit on this night, with Lopez and Gallagher joining the fray on backing vocals.
A shambolic “Rosalita” ensues, where the spirit of the performance is again what matters most, and a video would do more justice to see the joy on the faces of these reunited Shore brothers (and sisters).
Danny and Bruce handle a joyous “This Hard Land” on their own, but not before reminding the audience that the show is a benefit for the Asbury Park Fire Department and the Women’s Center of Monmouth County. The evening closes with “4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy),” Bruce’s beloved ode to the city, the culture, and the people who brought him to John Hammond’s office and eventually MetLife Stadium.
“I got a chance the other night to just watch my kids running around the theater,” Bruce says in his intro to “Sandy,” “bringing the whole thing sort of full circle.” The same can be said for his own return to Asbury Park in 1996 for one of the most heartwarming shows on the Joad tour.
The Bruce Springsteen Live Archive catalog on nugs.net expands again with the addition of ten more shows from the 2016 River tour. The summer east coast leg included three homecoming dates at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, plus massive outdoor gigs at Nationals Park in Washington D.C., Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA. Bruce and the E Street Band also performed arena shows at United Center in Chicago, Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater in Virginia Beach and Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh.
All of these concerts opened with Springsteen’s 1973 magnum opus “New York City Serenade” augmented by a string section, save for Virginia Beach which began with Bruce at the piano playing “For You.” Tom Morello makes a guest appearance at MetLife on August 25, while Rickie Lee Jones does the same on August 30, the third and final night in E. Rutherford in a set that featured “Kitty’s Back,” “Summertime Blues,” “Pretty Flamingo,” “Living Proof” and “Secret Garden.”
The first show in Philadelphia on September 9 offers its own welcome rarities, chief among them “The Fever,” “Thundercrack” and “Streets of Philadelphia.” The tour’s closing night in Foxboro is 33-song keeper, highlighted by six songs from Bruce’s 1973 debut, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ and all three tracks found on side two of its follow-up, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
Learn more about the previous exclusive Bruce Springsteen audio drops
For audiophiles, we also offer a HiFi tier that allows you to enjoy 24-bit MQA streaming, as well as select Springsteen recordings in immersive 360 Reality Audio. Start your free trial and delve in.
Red Bank is the fifth and final drop of Bruce Springsteen Live Archive catalog recordings on nugs.net, completing the addition of nearly 200 shows circa 1975-2017 to the streaming service.
The 44 show Red Bank drop begins with five from Bruce’s beloved 1988 Tunnel of Love Express Tour with the E Street Band, including the US leg closer at Madison Square Garden on May 23 (which featured a rare cover of Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops”) and Stockholm, July 3, originally broadcast live across the US on Fourth of July weekend 1988.
Next, two of the most extraordinary performances of Springsteen’s career, the November 16-17, 1990 acoustic performances to benefit the Christic Institute, held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Sharing a bill with Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne, Bruce performed his first solo shows in 16 years, debuting six new songs in the process, including the definitive reading of “Real World.” He also rearranged catalog classics to deliver riveting versions of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” on 12-string acoustic and “Tougher Than the Rest” on piano. These are truly essential recordings.
Most of the new songs debuted at the Shrine were later released on the companion albums Human Touch and Lucky Town in 1992. Springsteen assembled a new band for that tour, four shows from which are included in Red Bank: Meadowlands Arena, July 25, 1992; Boston Garden, December 13; Berlin’s Waldbühne, May 13, 1993; and the nearly four-hour, penultimate tour performance back at Meadowlands Arena on June 24 with guest appearances by Little Steven, Joe Ely, Southside Johnny, Max Weinberg, Clarence Clemons, Soozie Tyrell and the Miami Horns.
Five years after the Christic Shows, Springsteen mounted his first solo outing in support of The Ghost of Tom Joad, represented here by five concerts spanning the tour’s earliest days (a December 9 set at the Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA, where he last performed in 1975) through the 1997 European victory lap (Palais des Congrès Acropolis, Nice, France on May 18). Also featured are special homecoming gigs at Bruce’s primary school, St. Rose of Lima in Freehold, NJ, November 8, 1996, and the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park sixteen days later on November 24.
Last but not least, the 28-show European leg of 2016’s River tour rounds out the Red Bank drop. These performances include return visits to two of Springsteen’s favorite continental venues: Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden, June 25 and 27, along with San Siro Stadium in Milan, Italy, July 3 and 5.
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
Learn more about the previous exclusive Bruce Springsteen audio drops
For audiophiles, we also offer a HiFi tier that allows you to enjoy 24-bit MQA streaming, as well as select Springsteen recordings in immersive 360 Reality Audio. Start your free trial and delve in.
In high school, I got the chance to serve as a page in the Washington State Senate, a gig that allowed me to not only miss a week of school fully excused but get paid $150 for doing so. When I cashed that check, I knew exactly what I would do with the money.
A small record store had opened up across the street from Stewart Junior High, and on my first visit I saw an unusual record locked up in a glass case. It was Bruce Springsteen Piece de Resistance, credited as a September 1978 live recording from Passaic, New Jersey. While it was a three-LP box set, $35 still seemed like a lot of money to me at the time — that is, until my Senate-page windfall.
I didn’t know enough about Springsteen collecting to realize Piece de Resistance was sourced from a radio broadcast, but I did recognize it was a bootleg. My dad was a big record collector, and though his rock interests were limited to Bob Dylan and The Beatles, he did own a couple of boots. I told him about the store and the $35 Springsteen triple, to which he replied, “Bootlegs sound crappy.”
Ignoring his advice, I went out the next day and bought Piece de Resistance. I can still remember my trepidation as I dropped the needle on the LP hoping it didn’t sound too crappy.
From that point forward, finding and listening to Springsteen live recordings became a lifelong passion, with the Darkness tour the sentimental sweet spot of my quest. I’ve surely listened to the five 1978 radio broadcasts (thankfully all now available in the Live Archive series) several hundred times; the best soundboards and audience tapes nearly as often. Mediocre recordings, sure, plenty of those as well to catch rare songs. But I never listened to Atlanta, October 1, 1978, the provisional final show of the Darkness tour.
Springsteen’s legendary 1978 trek opened in Buffalo on May 23 and ran for 86 shows through what was to be the final stop, back-to-back concerts at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Though Springsteen would return to the road in exactly one month, at the time, night two at the Fox was meant to be the tour finale. Soon thereafter it was decided Bruce should make “one final push,” as Jon Landau’s letter to Columbia Records put it, “concentrating on those markets where we have created very real excitement, and where, with one more concert coupled with imaginative promotion, we can finish the job.”
Back to Atlanta. The first night on September 30 is the fourth of the aforementioned radio broadcasts, and as many long speculated, the Record Plant Mobile Truck remained on site to preserve the second show on 24-track, 2-inch analog tape.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band took the Fox stage that Sunday night believing it to be their last gig and gave a performance fitting of the occasion. The 10/1/78 set is like a supercut of special inclusions familiar from the Roxy, the Passaic stand, and early tour sets combined with ATL specials to yield a tremendous, peak ‘78 recording new to (almost) all of us.
“This is the last night of our tour, tonight,” Bruce says at the top, “our 86th show. So one more time for the last time.” What could be a more fitting opener than a reverent cover of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time,” with Stevie Van Zandt as Keith Richards on background vocals to Bruce’s Mick Jagger lead. After its premiere in Atlanta, Bruce reprised “The Last Time” for what ultimately proved to be the true final show of the Darkness tour, Richfield, OH, January 1, 1979.
It’s a joyous start to a stonking first set as Bruce sings in his special-show, heightened-vocal range, and the E Streeters score perfect 10s from the judges. A crackling “Badlands”and lusty “Spirit in the Night” serve as the preamble before Springsteen says, “Tonight our story begins in the Darkness on the Edge of Town.” It’s a tremendous take, with every bar from “Tonight I’ll be on that hill” to the end exemplary of Bruce and the band’s commitment.
The vocal showcase continues with “Heartbreak Hotel” and Bruce in full Elvis mode. In this slower arrangement (compared to The Roxy), one can feel emotional resonance when he sings to “all the broken hearts in the crowd,” as he says in his introduction, from “way down at the end of lonely street.” That lyric never jumped out to me before, but it is clearly a place Springsteen knows all too well and a perspective from which some of his greatest work originated.
“Factory,” a lively “Promised Land” (with some fresh details in the bridge and a great closing vocal), and a guttural, 11-minute-plus “Prove It All Night” extend the winning streak before the return of “It’s My Life.”
The Animals’ classic was a staple of 1976-77 setlists, presented as an epic showpiece tied to stories about Bruce’s relationship with his father. Performed on those tours, the song was a defiant statement of independence to come. In its short, seven-show reprise on the Darkness tour, the tone shifts to reflect a protagonist no longer aspiring to but living his pledge. The Atlanta performance is the final one (to date), perhaps because Bruce outgrew it. Fun fact: “It’s My Life” premiered at C.W. Post College on December 12, 1975, meaning the first and last performances of this classic cover are now included in the Live Archive series.
A distinct Roy Bittan piano introduction comes ahead of “Thunder Road,” the musical bed for Bruce to recall meeting a kid backstage the night before who told him he had formed his own band. “It meant a lot to me,” Bruce says earnestly. “It reminded me why I started doing all of this stuff in the first place. See you out on ‘Thunder Road’.” It’s a sweet moment that only adds to the uplifting power of this version.
“This is a song we don’t play much at all,” Bruce proclaims before a warmly received and instantly recognized “Meeting Across the River,” played but five times on the Darkness tour and incredibly, one of only 70 known occasions to date, making it one of the rarest in-concert tracks from the classic canon. It leads, as it should, into an immense “Jungleland.” “The latest rage,” “a real death waltz,” “the poets,” the extended, soaring “hoohhhhhhhs”—he crushes them all.
To open the second set, Bruce reaches back to “For You,” an every-nighter early in the tour not played for the better part of a month before or after this appearance. It’s another captivating cut that peaks with the line, “You laugh and cry in a single sound.” He then lets “Fire” “go a little longer” to lighten the mood before turning serious in a stunning sequence of “Candy’s Room,” “Because the Night,” and “Point Blank.”
“Candy’s” has always been a self-contained masterpiece, so distinct in the catalog and explosive in live performance as it is here. For my money, the 1978 versions of “Because the Night’ are THE versions. The guitar work in the intro and the end, coupled with drama the band infuses into the arrangement behind Bruce’s desperate vocals, was never better. While the guitar amps are cooling, Bittan and Danny Federici take over and set the scene for the noir romance of “Point Blank,” another Atlanta performance that rivals the very best.
It’s time to give the band some, and with that “Kitty’s Back” purrs to life on a night packed with firsts, lasts, and infrequents. This would prove to be the final appearance of “Kitty’s Back” with the E Street Band for nearly a quarter-century. After 13 minutes of back-alley majesty, Bruce says those words we all want to hear: “[Let’s] do some more stuff off of Wild & the Innocent.” He goes on to dedicate “Incident on 57th Street” to his lighting designer Marc Brickman. “He’s like a member of the band. There’s nobody better.” “Incident” would also go unplayed for the rest of the tour and, save for its officially released one-off performance at Nassau Coliseum in 1980, wouldn’t appear again on E Street until 1999.
It speaks volumes that Atlanta 2 features “Meeting Across the River” into “Jungleland” AND “Incident on 57th Street” into “Rosalita.” That Double-Double only happened three times (the others being Palladium 9/17/78 and Capitol Theatre 9/21/78), all in the last 15 days of the original Darkness tour routing, a stretch that merits consideration as one of the best in Springsteen’s on-stage history.
“Rosalita” brings the night to crescendo, and the encore-opening trio of “Born to Run,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out,” and “Detroit Medley” is a flawless blast of joy from seven musicians in top form.
Before “Quarter to Three,” Bruce takes a minute to shout out several members of the crew by name, going out of his way to point out what they do so well and thanking them for their hard work. Bruce’s choice of “Quarter” as the presumptive final track of the tour is fitting. It’s a song he passionately loves; one that he knows will get the audience moving (“If you don’t dance to this, slap yourself in the face, you might be dead”); and a vehicle to allow the band to sing in full voice (they effectively take all the vocals from 2:30-3:20) for this raucous, ten-minute rendition. Crew, audience, and band, all given their due.
Eight years into the Live Archive series and 40 since I bought Piece de Resistance on the State of Washington’s dime, the thrill of hearing a vintage live recording in this quality for the first time hasn’t faded. Atlanta 10/1/78 is the great lost show of the Darkness tour.
A fourth wave of Bruce Springsteen concert recordings arrives on nugs.net this September. Belmar is the latest monthly drop adding Springsteen’s Live Archive catalog to the streaming platform.
Belmar is anchored by five shows from the biggest tour of them all, Born in the U.S.A., including three 1984 arena performances in E. Rutherford, NJ and 1985 stadium gigs at Giants Stadium and the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Together they represent some of the most popular performances of Springsteen’s career, and feature not only songs from the chart-topping album, but powerful band performances of Nebraska material as well, including “Atlantic City,” “Highway Patrolman” and “Open All Night.”
The 1984 New Jersey concerts were part of a ten-night stand at Brendan Byrne Arena, the finale to which was the legendary August 20 performance featuring a surprise cameo from Stevie Van Zandt, who had left the E Street Band at that point to pursue his solo career. He returns to share the microphone with Springsteen on an extraordinarily moving cover of Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away.”
Bruce wouldn’t tour again until 1988, but in 1986 he did make a special appearance at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit Concert where he was joined by Nils Lofgren and Danny Federici. This unique set is also part of the Belmar drop and highlighted by the first ever acoustic performance of “Born in the U.S.A.”
To those six shows Belmar adds the complete North American leg of the 2016 River tour. These 38 concerts featured full-album performances of Springsteen’s 1980 double album The River, plus plenty more in the rest of the set, including choice River outtakes “Meet Me In The City,” “Be True,” “Loose Ends” and “Roulette” The passing of three music icons during the 2016 tour led to an equal number of stirring tribute performances. Opening night in Pittsburgh on January 16 it was “Rebel Rebel” to honor David Bowie. At the next show in Chicago on January 19, an acoustic take of The Eagles’ “Take It Easy” was performed to remember Glenn Frey. In late April, at the final dates in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Bruce and the band gave a triumphant reading of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
Learn more about the previous exclusive Bruce Springsteen audio drops
For audiophiles, we also offer a HiFi tier that allows you to enjoy 24-bit MQA streaming, as well as select Springsteen recordings in immersive 360 Reality Audio. Start your free trial and delve in.
There are few periods in the post-Reunion era as busy as 2005-2009, a five-year stretch that saw the release of four studio albums each with accompanying tours, surely none more fun for Bruce Springsteen himself than 2006’s sojourn in support of The Seeger Sessions.
It’s easy to think of Springsteen’s work with the Sessions Band as an isolated outlier, but listening to Rome 10/10/06, the third release from the tour in the Live Archive series, there’s a case for it as the meaningful bridge between Devils & Dust (released in 2005) and Magic (2007), as well as a precursor to the extended band line-up we saw on Wrecking Ball in 2012.
Of the Seeger Sessions Tour’s three legs, two of them were in Europe — that reflected how this rootsy style of music was embraced more wholeheartedly there than it was in the States, which seemed to respond with a collective, “If it isn’t solo and it isn’t with the E Street Band, then what is it?”
What “it” is, of course, is a survey of American roots music, centered around the folk movement with forays into blues, jazz, and country, as well as an alternate reading of some of Springsteen’s own music through that same lens.
The Rome audience could not be more welcoming to the set-opening “John Henry,” which gets the show off to a rollicking start. It’s clear the crowd is well familiar with the Seeger Sessions album and, better still, recognizes that the type of music, presented by a band of this scale, demands their participation, which only feeds Springsteen all the more. Happy fans, happy band.
Rome eats up stellar renditions of the core Seeger Sessions material, singing along in full voice to “Old Dan Tucker,” chanting their approval of the horn section, clapping in unison after “Erie Canal,” and embracing the call-and-response of “Pay Me My Money Down.” If you ever needed confirmation of the role an audience plays in the concert dynamic, Rome 10/10/06 is the proof.
The fans’ recognition of Springsteen originals is equally impressive, getting “All the Way Home” straight off the opening chords, then singing the chorus well after the band stops playing. The arrangement of “All the Way Home” is relatively faithful to the Devils & Dust studio version though enhanced by the big band, especially Marty Rifkin’s lyrical pedal-steel solo. The song was only played three times on the 2006 tour and hasn’t been played since, making it a vital inclusion here.
Elsewhere one has to marvel at the rearrangements of classic cuts of the canon. “Atlantic City” started life as a high, lonesome folk song on Nebraska, became an electrified pile-driver with the E Street Band, and transforms yet again into a widescreen murder ballad with the Sessions Band. This reading of “Atlantic City” has the fastest tempo of the three arrangements, a storming pace that belies the song’s somber subject matter, which is reflected tonally in the guitar, organ and vocal parts. The contrast is compelling.
Springsteen changes his vocal inflections and cadence in a striking interpretation of “The River,” which adopts gospel and even waltzing Tejano notes. The story remains the same, but the metaphor of the river itself gains stature and turns the song into more of a parable than ever before.
The most E Street moment of the night is “Long Time Comin’,” another D&D track that hews to the original album structure only to be supercharged by the horn section and wonderful organ work from Charlie Giordano. “Long Time Comin’” is SUCH a tremendous band song, it’s bewildering it only made four setlists with the E Street Band post-Sessions, especially gIven the horns-and-singers lineup that debuted in 2006 was essentially recreated for the Wrecking Ball tour.
The last two originals of the night show the incredible range of the 2006 band. “Open All Night” is recast as a swing-jazz jumper in the style of “Pennsylvania 6-5000.” “Ramrod,” led by Girodano’s accordion, finds these immensely talented musicians channeling Los Lobos with verdadero estilo.
To the core Seeger Sessions tracks and E Street redux, Bruce adds a few choice covers, the most notable being one of only ten performances of “Long Black Veil,” written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wikin, and covered by countless country artists including Johnny Cash.
Bruce and the band turn this stark infidelity ballad (a touchstone, lyrically, for Springsteen’s own “Nebraska”) into a sweeping epic that borrows some of its arrangement gravitas from, of all things, Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away,” a song famously covered by Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1984 with Little Steven. On this night, Marc Anthony Thompson trades verses and lines with Springsteen in a striking performance that is a welcome addition to the Live Archive catalog.
A belissimo Roma evening comes to an close with “American Land,” born of the Sessions Band and later fully embraced by the E Street Band on tours ever after. In front of what had to be among the most appreciative audiences of the entire tour, Bruce Springsteen and his Sessions Band show their virtuosity and interpretive prowess, and in the process draft a blueprint for what Springsteen would do on stage just a few years later.
More classic Bruce Springsteen concerts come to nugs.net this August with the arrival of Long Branch, the third of five monthly drops bringing Bruce’s Live Archive catalog to the streaming platform.
Long Branch adds 33 concerts circa 1980 to 2017, starting with six extraordinary nights on the 1980-81 River tour. These include Bruce and the E Street Band’s famed three-show stand at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY, culminating with a 38-song set on New Year’s Eve 12/31/80. From Summer ‘81, there are striking performances at Wembley Arena in London on June 5 and Brendan Byrne Arena in E. Rutherford, NJ on July 9.
The Long Branch drop also showcases five gigs from 2009’s Working On A Dream tour, including three special sets that featured full-album performances of The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (Madison Square Garden 11/7/09), The River (MSG 11/8/09) and Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ (Buffalo 11/22/09). The 2012-13 Wrecking Ball tour is represented by eight concerts, including tour kickoff at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, March 9, 2012; a birthday special at MetLife stadium September 22, 2012 (which didn’t end until the wee hours of September 23, Bruce’s actual birthday); and the Springsteen’s longest concert ever at Olympiastadion in Helsinki, Finland on July 31, 2012, which lasted over four hours. Long Branch wraps with Australia/New Zealand 2017, the E Street Band’s last 14 shows to date ahead of their return to arenas and stadiums in 2023.
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
Learn more about the previous exclusive Bruce Springsteen audio drops
For audiophiles, we also offer a HiFi tier that allows you to enjoy 24-bit MQA streaming, as well as select Springsteen recordings in immersive 360 Reality Audio. Start your free trial and delve in.
As measured by cultural impact and mass popularity, Bruce Springsteen’s 1984-85 World Tour was the apex. Considering its stunning scale, playing multi-night stadium stands, it’s easy to forget that 1984 was a rebirth of sorts, the start of a new era as much as a continuation of what came before it. On the biggest tour of his career, Springsteen was rebuilding the engine while the plane was flying.
Synthesizers like the Yamaha CS-80 had been part of Springsteen’s sonic signature since The River tour, albeit in a subtle manner that was more about background tones and mood. With Born in the U.S.A., synths moved front of the mix (playing lead, so to speak) on the title track and the smash single “Dancing in the Dark.” Fun fact: Did you know a CS-80 tips the scales at over 200 pounds?
When the tour kicked off at the St. Paul Civic Center in June 1984, Springsteen hadn’t performed a proper concert in nearly three years, but he had released two new albums, including Nebraska, his first-ever solo and acoustic effort. How would those songs work on stage with the E Street Band?
There were moves on that Street too, with longtime foil Steven Van Zandt exiting stage left to pursue his own solo career. Nils Lofgren stepped in stage right to take his place, bringing fresh energy and new textures to the band’s already evolving sound, bolstered further by the addition of backing singer Patti Scialfa, restoring E Street’s gender diversity first established by violinist Suki Lahav in late 1974.
The Live Archive series already features the first two shows and the final night of Bruce and the band’s ten-show stand at Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey. With the addition of 8/19/84, the penultimate show of the run, we get perhaps our clearest picture yet of Springsteen flying live without a net when the stakes were highest.
While he doesn’t come in for praise as often as other band members given his position in the sonic landscape, Garry W. Tallent is the anchor of the E Street sound, and he stands out especially loud and proud in Jon Altschiller’s new multitrack mix of August 19. His playing is thicker than ever in “Born in the U.S.A,” especially the bridge before the final breakdown, and Garry and Max carry a powerful “Atlantic City” that’s as good as any captured on tape.
Bruce’s own guitar strumming in the opening verse of “Atlantic City” is crystalline crisp. His vocals here and throughout the night are in peak form, a model of power and total control. Tallent’s bass part in the song’s final verse and chorus is sinewy, moody, and, as always, flawless. There’s also fine work from Danny Federici on organ as Bruce sings, “Put on your stockings, babe, ’cause the night’s getting cold.” Lastly, Lofgren’s background vocals in the final chorus ring true just before Bruce yells, “Draw blood!” They crushed it.
The 8/19/84 Nebraska mini-set offers two other striking turns. “Reason to Believe” is the one track from this show featured on Live/1975-85, but it gains additional meaning heard here in context immediately after “Atlantic City” in a different mix that again spotlights Garry Tallent’s superb bass arrangement.
Then there’s “My Father’s House,” in only its second performance ever and one of but five on the entire tour. Bruce introduces the song with a short anecdote about sneaking through the woods at dusk, “and then I had to get home and get by my old man…Sometimes that was scarier.”
In what might be the vocal highlight of the entire show, Bruce sings “My Father’s House” with vivid frankness, backed by the sympathetic support of Tallent on bass, Lofgren on mandolin, Weinberg on brushes, and Bittan on synth. When Springsteen’s rich voice rises with the line, “It stands like a beacon, calling me in the night” you’ll feel the chills. The solo acoustic “My Father’s House” from the Christic benefit show performed in 1990 and released in the Live Archive series is excellent, but this rare band arrangement is stunning.
The rest of the first set remains true to form for the period, with a nice stretch of BIUSA songs coming out of the Nebraska trio and classics like “Badlands” and “Thunder Road” leading into the break. It’s worth noting that 8/19/84 offers notable readings of “Darkness On the Edge of Town” in the first set and “Prove It All Night” in the second. Both benefit from Springsteen’s stirring vocals and guitar work, and, in Van Zandt’s absence, Lofgren steps up. You can feel him meshing with Bruce, resulting in refreshed performances of two Darkness stalwarts.
The second set is as good as the first, and momentum is building. After the playful trio of “Hungry Heart,” “Dancing in the Dark” and “Cadillac Ranch” coming out of intermission, Bruce taps the Miami Horns for the first time since 1977 on “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” in a preview of their appearance on closing night 24 hours hence. The horns add much joy and vigor to the song, and while he was already having a good night, Clarence Clemons seems to take it up a notch, too.
A tender, solo “No Surrender” is next, then the aforementioned “Prove It All Night” and a stellar, crowd-pleasing version of “Fire.” The crowd certainly knows this one, singing along in full voice, and as good as the Big Man’s saxophone playing is, boy does his baritone voice sound sweet. He and Bruce milk “Fire” for all its worth. “Growin’ Up” keeps the sweetness and local landmarks flowing, complete with Jim the Dancing Bear (who wasn’t done for the night) and massive cheers for “Route 9” and “Toms River” in a tall tale about the early days of Bruce and Clarence on the shore.
Riding in on the emotional nostalgia of “Growin’ Up,”, “Bobby Jean” has heart to burn — and it resonates in a way it hasn’t consistently in recent times, as a standalone song in the encore. Bruce sings it as if Little Stevie were listening (maybe he was in the crowd that night, ahead of his appearance the next evening) and the Big Man lands the solo masterfully.
The set turns back to Darkness again for a pacey “Racing in the Street,” the coda for which is always a showcase for Bittan and Federici, with Bruce adding subtle guitar texture to their interplay. A long, loose “Rosalita” closes the set with extended and particularly funny band intros (e.g. “You may have read [Bittan’s] study of the lost tribes of Hoboken”), and this new model E Street Band is soaring — and most importantly, having fun doing it.
The encore moves from “Jungleland” (with Lofgren stepping up to fill one of Van Zandt’s best-known solos) to “Born to Run” (Federici’s glockenspiel rings out thrillingly) before the Miami Horns return to punctuate “Detroit Medley” and “Twist and Shout – Do You Love Me?” to cap the evening.
Nine nights into a homecoming stand for the ages, 8/19/84 captures Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band sounding different than ever before but every bit as good, their confidence rightly rising on the strength of outstanding performances by the individual players coalescing at the start of a new era.
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
by Erik Flannigan, Bruce Springsteen Archivist
Live Springsteen streaming on nugs.net expands with Asbury Park, the second of five monthly drops bringing Bruce’s Live Archive catalog to the platform.
Asbury Park offers an additional 33 shows circa 1978 to 2014, including nine from the legendary Darkness On the Edge of Town tour in 1978. These include new multitrack mixes of the tour’s five beloved radio broadcasts from which spawned several of the most famous Springsteen bootleg of all time: July 7 at The Roxy in West Hollywood; August 9 at The Agora in Cleveland; September 19 at The Capitol Theatre in Passaic; September 30 at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta; and December 15 at Bill Graham’s Winterland in San Francisco.
The Asbury Park drop also features Springsteen’s emotional appearance with the Seeger Sessions Band at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30, 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, plus their inspired set at London’s Wembley Arena on November 11 of the same year. All five shows released to date from the Magic tour are here, notably the late Danny Federici’s last proper show (Boston, November 19, 2007) and appearance (Indianapolis, March 20, 2008) with the E Street Band, plus the rarities-laden penultimate performance from St. Louis, August 23, 2008. Asbury Park wraps with 16 shows from the US leg of 2014’s High Hopes tour, a stretch of concerts that saw fans making and the band delivering on dozens of inspired cover- and rare-song requests.
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
For audiophiles, we also offer a HiFi tier that allows you to enjoy 24-bit MQA streaming, as well as select Springsteen recordings in immersive 360 Reality Audio. Start your free trial and delve in.
The Wrecking Ball tour was big on multiple levels, from the length of the shows (eventually reaching four hours, breaking Bruce’s all-time record), to the number of band members on stage (hitting 17 on occasion), to the scale of the venues—especially in Europe, where the 2012 tour hit stadiums across the continent… save for one special stand in Paris.
For reasons that have never been explained, when Springsteen brought the Wrecking Ball caravan to France to open the second half of the Euro leg, he downsized from stadiums back to arena-scale for just one pair of shows that fell on the fourth and fifth of July. Those back-to-back performances, which featured an impressive 44 different songs between them, have long been lauded as some of the best of the tour. In that spirit of bigness and in celebration of the ten-year anniversary of the gigs, it seemed only fitting to add both Paris 2012 shows to the Live Archive series.
The Paris concerts combined offer over seven hours of music and a bounty of special moments and performances. Here are several worth noting.
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at Palais Omnisports De Paris-Bercy, July 4, 2012
The charms of the expanded 2012 band bear fruit in a delightful, unhurried version of “The E Street Shuffle” performed as a sign request. The song was played more in 2012 than any other year since 1975, when it thrived in a completely different arrangement. The Wrecking Ball tour edition takes advantage of the horn section, Everett Bradley’s percussion, and the E Street Choir on background vocals for a fully realized rendition that follows the original album structure of prelude, main song, and a storming, extended coda. In Paris, the crowd keeps singing the melody after the whole thing ends, indicative of just how into the show they are, and it compels Bruce to start the “E Street Shuffle” back up again for a second coda.
Springsteen keeps the Asbury Park setting, linking “Shuffle” to “Sandy” in his transition: “And then, down from town, about five blocks in on the boardwalk… if you listen hard, you could hear…” He sings the accordion-led, Fourth of July special in a low voice at times, adding a bit of age and wisdom to the tale, which on this night includes the sometimes-omitted third verse about the “waitress who lost her desire for me.” The background singers bring lushness to the final chorus as the sun sets on the boardwalk via Paris.
When Bruce opened his Fourth of July playlist for this show, he clicked them all—which means “Darlington County.” Stevie Van Zandt veers the song towards the edge of the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” before Bruce sings his first line about that memorable drive he and Wayne took from New York City all those years ago. The Paris take is long, with an extended horn and sax section at the end.
With Patti back on stage for the first time on the Euro tour, “Easy Money” returns to the set in one of only 18 performances ever. Bruce’s untamed falsetto vocals start things out, and one has to credit the Paris crowd for their consistently high level of participation as they sing along strongly here. Patti’s vocal contributions are a key element to “Easy Money,” which is why the song wasn’t performed without her.
In the most special nod to the occasion, Bruce moves to the piano for a rare solo-piano performance of “Independence Day.” Bruce released a video of this version in 2012 on his official YouTube channel, and it is great to have the audio available through the Live Archive series. Having played the instrument every night of the Devils & Dust tour, Springsteen’s piano playing is more confident than ever. Listen to the fine solo he takes in lieu of Clarence’s memorable sax before the third verse. Like so many older songs performed in this era, the bit of age in Springsteen’s voice only adds gravitas.
No Fourth of July performance would be complete without “Born in the U.S.A.” in its still-awe-inspiring, full-band arrangement. Bruce has no trouble finding his 1984 vocal range “forty years down the road” in a crackling rendition that puts the electric guitars on a level playing field with the synthesizers. Max Weinberg is also up to the task: while the horns add heft to the outro, Max smashes his legendary fills as hard as ever.
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at Palais Omnisports De Paris-Bercy, July 5, 2012
If anyone needed a sign that the second show in Paris would be materially different from the first, look no further than the top of the set when Bruce and the band reel off six songs in a row not featured the previous night. Deviating from his own written setlist, the band starts what sounds for all the world like “We Take Care of Our Own” only to shift gears into a bright “The Ties That Bind,” led by Roy Bittan’s piano and rich with the voices of the background singers in the chorus and bridge. Jake Clemons takes a sharp solo, too. The stellar reading of “Ties” is followed in bang-bang succession by breathtaking runs of “No Surrender,” “Two Hearts,” “Downbound Train,” “Candy’s Room,” and lastly a scintillating “Something in the Night.” Fans in attendance said the July 5 show was truly something special, and you can hear that imprinted in Jon Altschiler’s full-bodied mix. The six-song start of the second Paris set is as good as it gets in the post-Reunion era.
“Something In The Night,” Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Live in Paris, 7/5/2012
In all, Paris night two boasts 15 changes from the previous show, including three certified epics starting with “Incident on 57th Street.” As vocal as they have been all night, the Paris audience treats the Wild & Innocent masterpiece with fitting reverence. Bruce tells Nils to take the initial guitar lead, which rises above Charlie Giordano’s swirling organ.
“Working on the Highway” and “I’m Goin’ Down” add a dose of levity and self-deprecation to the evening. The horn section and background singers give “Working on the Highway” a big jolt of energy, while the audience does the same for “I’m Goin’ Down,” yielding reinvigorated versions of both songs.
After a solo “Independence Day” on July 4, Bruce sits at the piano bench night two and delivers “For You.” This one is triumphant, reaching the heady heights of the song’s solo outings in 1975 (such as the extraordinary take on the Live Archive release of Greenvale, NY 12/12/75). Like “Indy” the night before, Springsteen plays the piano brilliantly, and he commits to every line of the lyrics to staggering effect. He also hits the last note resoundingly when he sings “When it was my turn to be the God.” As the kids say, “Chills.”
From “For You” straight into evening’s epic denouement, “Racing in the Street”—another time-defying performance. It can be difficult to describe in the written word what it feels like when a performer is in the moment, not simply performing their music, but embodying it, living the words and melodies anew. But you can hear it. That goes for every member of the band, too—special credit to Bittan and Bradley, first among equals in this performance of “Racing.”
The sequence of “For You” to “Racing in the Street,” and the top of the July 5 show as well, all capture Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing in the moment. For years, they did so more consistently than any other band in concert. On this fantastic recording of Paris 2012, so many years down the road, they undeniably do so again.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
by Erik Flannigan, Bruce Springsteen Archivist
Live Springsteen streaming on nugs.net kicks off with Freehold, the first of five monthly drops. Freehold presents 35 shows circa 1975 to 2014, starting at the legendary Roxy in West Hollywood on the Born To Run tour. Bruce’s October 18, 1975 appearance at the club with the E Street Band featured a rare cover of Carole King’s “Goin’ Back” in the encore.
From later that same year we get the legendary December 12 gig at CW Post College on Long Island, at which Springsteen’s beloved version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” was recorded. From 1977, a rare pair of shows in Albany and Rochester that extend the BTR tour, but showcase newly written songs like “Something in the Night,” “Rendezvous” and “The Promise.” Freehold includes all six shows released to date from the 1999-2000 Reunion tour with the E Street Band, from September 25, 1999 in Philadelphia (and the first “Incident on 57th Street” performed in 19 years) to July 1, 2000, the final show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
The Rising tour is represented by the June 16, 2003 show in Helsinki, while 2005’s Devils & Dust tour contributes five concerts, each with a rarities-packed setlist. The start of the 2014 High Hopes tour completes the Freehold drop, offering 14 shows performed in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, a run that included unexpected cover songs like AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and Lorde’s “Royals.”
Note: These concerts are only available to U.S. and Canada subscribers, and can be streamed now with a free trial to nugs.net.
Erik Flannigan is a music archivist, producer, author and manager. He has been writing about Bruce Springsteen’s live performances and recordings for more than 30 years.
For audiophiles, we also offer a HiFi tier that allows you to enjoy 24-bit MQA streaming, as well as select Springsteen recordings in immersive 360 Reality Audio. Start your free trial and delve in.
It Takes One To Dream, But It Takes Two To Make A Dream Come True
by Erik Flannigan
When the River tour kicked off in early October 1980, Bruce Springsteen had been off the road nearly two years, save for the No Nukes concerts. He hit arenas that fall with 20 new songs from The River in hand; not surprisingly, Springsteen setlists grew in length to accommodate the bounty of fresh material. By late December, River shows were approaching three and a half hours, in part because the underlying structure of the set established on the Darkness tour remained fundamentally unchanged, albeit in a supersized edition.
After peaking with Bruce’s longest concert to that point on New Years Eve 1980, the River tour resumed in early 1981 and began to streamline. The number of songs from the double album included in the set also scaled back. By the time Springsteen hit Europe in April, opening night in Hamburg featured 24 songs, down from the 12/31/80 zenith of a whopping 38.
As the European tour proceeded, the tone of the shows began to sharpen, influenced by the perspective Bruce was gaining as he experienced life and culture outside of the United States firsthand. The books Bruce was reading—including Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Alfred Wertheimer’s Elvis ’56: In the Beginning (An Intimate, Eyewitness Photo-Journal)—also shaped his creative outlook.
As he had done first with the inclusion of “This Land Is Your Land” at Nassau Coliseum in December, Springsteen was questioning American idealism and beliefs in front of fans in Europe who did not necessarily share the same values or background. Moreover, for all intents and purposes, European audiences had never seen him perform before and had no history but the present. The result was the most earnest Bruce Springsteen to ever take the stage.
The tonal shift in Europe ‘81 also manifests through the inclusion of new material. First came “Follow That Dream” in Paris; “Run Through the Jungle” in Rotterdam, “Johnny Bye-Bye” in Manchester; and finally “Trapped’ in London.
Three of those four remarkable songs are included on London 6/4/81, the fifth show of the six-night Wembley stand which features five tracks not performed on the previously released Archive title from 6/5/81. Multitrack recordings of the last three London shows are the only surviving professional documents to capture the distinctive, eye-opening spirit of Europe ‘81.
The show gets off to a banging start with the trio of “Prove It All Night,” “The Ties That Bind,” and “Out in the Street,” presented in a crisp, new Jon Altschiller mix that puts the listener in an appropriately intimate position for this deeply personal performance.
An extraordinary duo follows. Introduced simply as “a song that was originally done by Elvis Presley,” “Follow That Dream” is performed in a lump-in-your-throat re-arrangement that is equal parts Presley’s original, Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” and Bruce’s own mediation on faith. The E Street Band’s accompaniment is magnificently understated, with Roy Bittan’s piano and synthesizer poignantly accenting Springsteen’s haunted vocals. If one song sums up the sound of Europe ‘81, “Follow That Dream” is it.
From Elvis’ own song to a reflective tribute, “Johnny Bye-Bye” is performed with eleagic backing by the E Street Band supporting Bruce’s plaintive, heartfelt vocals. Before he plays it, Springsteen talks about the aforementioned book Elvis ‘56 and says the following about the artist captured in the book’s images, though he might just as easily have been saying it about himself: “When you look at him, when he was that young, he always seemed so sure of himself. He looked like he had some secret that he wasn’t telling nobody.”
The guitar sound is SO clear before the start of “Jackson Cage” you might think there was a secret guitar amp hidden in your room. Played as a request, this might be the best live version of “Jackson Cage” you’ve ever heard, and it is the first from the River tour to appear in the Live Archive series. Vocals from Bruce and Stevie Van Zandt lay it all on the line, and the song’s ending is particularly tasty.
The performance of “Trapped” is only the fourth ever, as Bruce’s reworking of the Jimmy Cliff original debuted the first night at Wembley. These early versions are nonetheless fully realized and ride an evocative synthesizer line as the song builds to its climatic choruses and a saxophone crescendo from Clarence Clemons. An August 1981 Rolling Stone article called it “a scintillating new song…reworked in the searing mode of Darkness on the Edge of Town.” The audience reception to “Trapped” is immense.
The first set continues, with “Two Hearts,” “The Promised Land” and “The River” marked by the kind of heightened lead vocals that are the hallmark of great shows. As “The River” ends, the spotlight turns to Roy Bittan for his chills-inducing “Once Upon a Time in the West” introduction to “Badlands,” which explodes out of the gate and never lets up. Marvel at the interaction between Bruce and Stevie starting with “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king.” If you need to be reminded of the power of “Badlands,” your faith will be rewarded.
A warmly received “Thunder Road” closes this peerless opening set. If you weren’t fortunate enough to see a show in the intermission era, imagine how that Wembley Arena audience felt when Bruce says, “We’re gonna take a short break and come back to rock you all…night…long.”
Set two opens with an especially delightful “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch),” again showcasing Van Zandt’s backing-vocal prowess. The feel-good onslaught extends to “Cadillac Ranch,” “Sherry Darling,” and “Hungry Heart.” On the last of these, the Wembley faithful acquit themselves impressively singing the first verse, perhaps drafting on experience from songs sung at football grounds.
“Fire” and a barnstorming “Because the Night” are exemplary versions that rank among the best of this era. The same can be said for the two classics that follow, neither of which appeared on the previous Wembley release.
“Racing in the Street” taps that aforementioned earnestness as Springsteen sings with simple, unaffected beauty in a reading defined by Bittan’s expressive and powerful playing. I have always presumed his work on “Racing” is what led Mark Knopfler to tap him to play on Dire Straits’ masterpiece Making Movies. The “Racing” outro here is sublime.
“Backstreets” on the River tour boasts a striking, minute-long instrumental introduction before the familiar piano refrain begins and we swell to Bruce’s memorable first line. You’ll hear Danny Federici’s organ appealingly high in the mix throughout the track, balancing Bittan’s continued virtuosity. “Ramrod” arrives to buoy our spirits, and “Rosalita” brings the house down, conquered and bloody happy about it.
The encore may look tidy and traditional, but like the rest of 6/4/81 it is delivered par excellence. We love it when Bruce’s vocals rise at the end of “Born to Run” on “Oh, oh, OH, OH, OH-OH-OH.” In the last song of the night, “Detroit Medley,” Springsteen tells the audience he’s out of gas, much to The Big Man’s dismay. In the end, and to no one’s surprise, Bruce goes the extra kilometer for what ultimately turns out to be a 15:25 tour de force that includes a quick detour to Memphis for “Shake” and “Sweet Soul Music.”
“Spotlight on me,” Springsteen shouts at the end of “Sweet Soul Music,” taking his place among the list of legends the song namechecks. After the masterful performance he and the band delivered at Wembley on the fourth day of June, 1981, he absolutely belongs on it.
The Tunnel of Love tour again? That’s surely a sentiment some are expressing with this month’s release of New York 5/16/88, the outstanding opening night performance from the final, five-show stand on the US leg of the 1988 tour.
On the surface the POV is understandable, as most shows on the Tunnel of Love Express Tour shared the same narrative arc and core songs. However beautifully realized it was, the argument goes, how distinctive is one Tunnel show from another?
It’s curious that 1988 comes in for such carping when one of Bruce’s most-beloved tours, in support of Darkness on the Edge of Town ten years earlier, followed a similar formula, largely sticking to a consistent group of songs for the core set, augmented by select cover versions and rarities that made a particular show extra special.
Both tours showcased a trove of material not found on Springsteen’s studio albums. In 1988, that included originals “Be True,” “Seeds,” “Part Man, Part Monkey,” “Light of Day,” and “I’m a Coward,” the latter a (nearly) complete rewrite of Geno Washington’s “Geno Is a Coward.” Bruce played those five songs across the US tour. But as the Express rolled on, cover songs—most entirely new to Springsteen setlists—began to appear, seemingly out of nowhere. But behind the scenes, their origin was part of the 1988 journey all along.
While the ’88 main set stayed consistent over the tour’s first two months, Bruce and the band operated as a virtual jukebox during their afternoon soundchecks,, test-driving dozens of cover songs. Eventually, some graduated from these private rehearsals to the main set.
These pre-show performances were explorations of the music Bruce and the band—and importantly, the horn section—grew up on or newly admired. Long soundchecks, like those that took place in Atlanta, Tacoma, and New York, were practically mini-concerts played for their own enjoyment.
On opening night at Madison Square Garden, cover songs born in soundchecks ultimately tip the show from good to great. Now released in brilliant, multi-track audio with one very special bonus track, in the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel, MSG Night One “goes to 11.”
John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” is the first cover of the night, newly added to the set two shows prior in Minneapolis. Gritty guitar and horns combine to give “Boom Boom” swagger, and its inclusion feels topical given the subject matter (“take you in my arms, I’m in love with you”). Bruce tosses in a long, bonus “make loooove” to eliminate any ambiguity.
Preview of “Boom Boom” – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at MSG in 1998
Between “Boom Boom” and the first set’s other cover, Edwin Starr’s depressingly still-appropriate “War ” we are treated to a number of terrific performances. “Adam Raised a Cain,” reborn in 1988, offers a weighty lead vocal, including a fresh exchange with Nils towards the end. Bruce’s guitar work at the top of “Adam” and later in the solo are fiery, and the horns raise the drama to arena level. “Two Faces” is thoughtfully rendered and thematically resonant, as is “Cover Me”: Bruce dips into lyrics from the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” declaring “I need a little shelter now,” “It’s just a kiss away,” and his own revealing improvisation, “I can’t see no sunshine.” Not surprisingly given the circumstances we get an especially earnest “Brilliant Disguise,” too.
The cracking first set ends with another epic “Born in the U.S.A.,” played at a seemingly pacier tempo and loaded with emotive guitar soloing, synthesizer pitch-wheel bending, and a nifty bit of Max Weinberg cymbal pinging between channels as Bruce’s voice rises to sing, “I’ve got a picture of him in her arms.”
The second set keeps pace with the first, and while there are no surprises per se (those are still to come), the band is playing at their 1988 peak. For highlights, first among equals is “Walk Like a Man,” making its second full-band appearance in the Archive series and sounding more vivid and widescreen than the version captured in Detroit in March. The arrangement features what might be the best work by the Horns of Love of the entire tour. While everyone in the band is playing brilliantly, Garry Tallent’s bass gives the song a lush bed on which the other instrumentation flourishes. It’s a stunner.
The encores on the 1988 tour were consistently strong, and the addition of “Have Love, Will Travel” by The Sonics delightfully balances the Memphis soul of “Raise Your Hand” and “Sweet Soul Music” with Northwest garage rock. “Have Love” is another song that graduated from the encore to the main set, and for the night’s most special moment, Bruce played that hand again.
“I’m gonna do a song now that’s a favorite song of mine,” he says. “I don’t sing it as good as the guy that originally sang it, but I like it a lot, and this is my night in the big room. I just love this song.”
What follows is a majestic, reverent, and perfectly arranged rendition of Roy Oribson’s “Crying.” Optimized for his vocal range, the performance features Springsteen singing with stunning control. What Orbison brings the song in soaring, operatic notes, Bruce makes up for with power and conviction. What a treat to add it to the master song list of the Live Archive series.
It’s no surprise that Bruce was feeling triumphant at the end of the night, and his band commemorates the moment in the most Big Apple way possible, playing an instrumental “New York, New York” for his walk-off music.
“New York, New York” was the last song of the 5/16/88 show, but it isn’t the final track on this release. We’re gifted a glimpse into those legendary soundtracks with the inclusion of “In Dreams,” recorded pre-show.
Bruce’s Orbison bonafides were well established even before participating in the television tribute special A Black and White Night, shot in September 1987. He had explored The Big O’s music in soundchecks for weeks leading up to New York City. The only E Street Band performances of “Crying” appeared during this MSG run, but “In Dreams” never even made it to the show.
The Archive has been fortunate to feature two other songs from 1988 soundchecks, “For You Love” from 5/23 and “Reason to Believe” from 3/28. But “In Dreams,” perhaps the most mystical song in the Orbison canon, feels most like we’ve snuck into the venue early and heard something only intended for the musicians on stage. What a treat. When “In Dreams” finishes, Bruce offers a self-review of their performance that I won’t spoil, but you’re sure to smile as I did.
The first night at Madison Square Garden in 1988 is an outstanding Tunnel of Love performance and, better still, a previously unheard and worthy homage to one of the biggest musical influences in Springsteen’s career.
nugs.net is thrilled to announce exciting new additions to its catalog of live concert recordings.
Over the past two decades, pioneer live music streaming platform nugs.nethas evolved into the leading source for official live concert recordings from the largest touring artists in the world. With an ever-expanding digital archive of more than 25,000 concerts and hundreds of on-demand videos of full shows from marquee acts like Metallica, Pearl Jam, The Rolling Stones, Dead & Company, and Phish, nugs.net provides music fans VIP access to their favorite concerts anytime, anywhere. Throughout April, nugs.net is adding an iconic, genre-spanning collection of new artists and live concert recordings to their massive, unrivaled streaming library, including an epic selection of new and archival shows from Jack White, DARKSIDE, Pixies and more.
Jack White’s Supply Chain Issues Tour Concert Audio
On the heels of releasing his eagerly awaited new album, FEAR OF THE DAWN, Jack White kicked off his Supply Chain Issues Tour last week with two sold-out shows at Detroit’s Masonic Temple Theatre. The tour, which features White’s first headline shows in four years, will make 50+ stops across North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom through late August. In partnership with nugs.net, White will offer official soundboard audio from every stop on the tour, available to stream exclusively via nugs.net here: nugs.net/jackwhite. Of the new partnership, Third Man Records co-founder Ben Blackwell shares, “While we’ve been recording all Jack White live shows for years, only now did it finally feel right to release all of them quickly after the performance. And with nugs.net as our partner…we couldn’t be happier with the results.”
Six Epic Sets from Psychedelic Duo DARKSIDE
Beginning today, music fans around the globe can enjoy full-length concerts from DARKSIDE, the psychedelic collaboration between electronic producer Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington, who have partnered with nugs.net to bring two visually driven, atmospheric performances, as well as official soundboard audio from five epic concerts to the platform’s extensive streaming catalog for the first time. Watch DARKSIDE’s intimate sunset show overlooking the Manhattan skyline, Psychic Live set at Stereolux in Nantes, and more streaming exclusively on nugs.net here: nugs.net/DARKSIDE.
26 Pixies Archive Concert Recordings
Alt-rock icons Pixies also join nugs.net this month. 26 full-length concerts from the archives, including recordings from 1991 and the band’s 2004 reunion tour, will be available to stream on April 21 at nugs.net/thepixies. All shows feature the band’s original lineup: frontman Black Francis, guitarist Joey Santiago, bassist Kim Deal, and drummer David Lovering. Highlights include Pixies’ first show in 11 years at the intimate Fine Line in Minneapolis, a performance on the mainstage at Coachella, and a 2004 sold-out, four-night run at Brixton Academy in London.
Immersive 360 Reality Audio
Throughout the month, nugs.net will continue to bring the live concert experience to music lovers worldwide. Stream iconic performances and classic albums by David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Janis Joplin in immersive 360 Reality Audio, which brings the electricity of live music and the energy of a crowd to you like never before. Experience exclusive live recordings from the Bruce Springsteen Archives, like The Roxy ’75, as if you were in the room with the E Street Band on the Born to Run Tour. Listen to the classic Jefferson Airplane Volunteers album the way it sounded in the studio, and hear David Gilmour play “Wish You Were Here” with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra like you’re in the crowd of 50,000 fans. For more information and to start listening visit: try.nugs.net/360.
nugs.net is excited to stream selected shows and albums in immersive 360 Reality Audio, which brings the electricity of live music and the energy of a crowd to you like never before. Using spatial audio technology, 360 Reality Audio captures vocals, instruments, and the sounds of a live audience and brings them to you in spherical sound.
Stream iconic performances and classic albums by David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Janis Joplin on the nugs.net app. Experience exclusive live recordings from the Bruce Springsteen Archives, like The Roxy ’75, as if you were in the room with the E Street Band on the Born to Run Tour. Listen to the classic Jefferson Airplane Volunteers album the way it sounded in the studio, and hear David Gilmour play “Wish You Were Here” with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra like you’re in the crowd of 50,000 fans.
Each recording is also streaming in stereo for our Premium subscribers, and select concert videos have been newly mixed with 360 Reality Audio sound for the first time ever and are now streaming on demand.
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Though Springsteen’s 1992-93 World Tour ran a full calendar year, his first outing sans E Street Band carried the sense of a perpetual work in progress for good reason.
Bruce had not one but two albums’ worth of material to integrate from Human Touch and Lucky Town; a challenging balance to strike between familiar and new material; and a bigger, rootsy-er band attempting to hold its own in the shadow of E Street, but from which he could summon the magical vocal power of a gospel choir. As my friend Aaron would say, a tricky biscuit.
The previous Archive release from this tour, Boston 12/13/92, featured 16 songs from the new companion albums. Five months later in Berlin, the main set shifted significantly, as nine songs from Human Touch and Lucky Town are joined by 14 “classics” (six culled from Born in the U.S.A.), five covers, plus a four-song acoustic appetizer to open the show, a unique design feature of the European gigs.
What the result lacks in narrative cohesion it makes up for in distinct, compelling moments as Bruce—alone, and with his new (save for Roy Bittan) companions—walks an alternate musical path through it all. Berlin 5/14/93 serves as an exemplar of the unique period that was Europe ’93.
As the lone keyboard player on the 1992-93 tour, Bittan does a lot of heavy lifting. A greater-than-usual reliance on synthesizers, primarily via Roy’s Yamaha DX7 (the first widely adopted digital synth), is akin to Max Weinberg’s drum triggers on the back half of the Born in the U.S.A. tour.
Both belong to a specific place and time in the sonic landscape, because they are so prominent in the live mix of their respective eras, they can feel obtrusive by today’s standards. If you find yourself bumping on Roy’s DX7, recalibrate your modern ears—this is the sound of 1992-93.
Berlin opens with something we can all agree on: a wonderful, four-song acoustic set that commences with the Christic Institute arrangements of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Adam Raised a Cain.” How thrilling it must have been to see these solo performances in their striking new renditions, and Bruce was just getting started.
The world premiere of “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” follows, with Bruce joined by the backup singers who emphasize the church-pew side of the “country-gospel song” first popularized by the Louvin Brothers. The stately hymn only appeared in the set six times, five in Europe in 1993, making this a rare and welcome addition to the Live Archive series.
If those three tunes to start weren’t enough, how about the shorts-soiling inclusion of unreleased-at-the-time BIUSA outtake “This Hard Land”? When met with a knowing cheer, Bruce responds, “Yeah, you bought the bootlegs. You shouldn’t have done it.” The song was still two years away from its official release on Greatest Hits In 1995, so for hardcore fans, “This Hard Land” in the show was a holy grail.
As noted above, Springsteen taps his classic catalog further in Berlin than he did in 1992, with some tracks translating off E Street more successfully than others. The choir vocals of the backup singers bring a soulful sweetness to songs like “Hungry Heart” and “Working on the Highway.” The 1992-93 band always nails “Badlands” and does here, too.
A spare take of “The River,” which the audience greets with an enormous cheer, is the vocal highlight. Bruce sings it fresh, poignant, and true above Bittan’s gorgeous piano. The peak comes with the trio of “Downbound Train,” “Because the Night,” and “Brilliant Disguise.” The last of these offers unexpectedly intriguing guitar from Shane Fontayne, while Bruce himself tears off a steamy solo in “Because the Night,” which also gains gravitas from the vocalists.
But there’s no mistaking the rise in Bruce’s enthusiasm when he moves from songs like “Atlantic City” and “My Hometown” to Human Touch/Lucky Town material like “Man’s Job” and “Leap of Faith.” Vocal inflection and energy signal his commitment, and, to a song, the recent additions have strong outings in Berlin, with fine performances of “Better Days,” “Lucky Town,” “Human Touch,” and the elegiac, underrated encore high point, “My Beautiful Reward.”
The one place where old and new combine to stirring effect is the denouement coupling of “Souls of the Departed” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” framed by several Jimi Hendrix-inspired bars of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” With Roy Bittan triggering news soundbites of troubles, domestic and foreign, these parallel stories of the human toll taken by such conflicts form one seamless, biting statement that lands harder than anything else in the show.
Bruce’s choice of covers also confers deep resonance on the Berlin performance. The aforementioned “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” is a God-fearing, serious tune and sits right at the intersection of the church and the Opry. “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “Rockin’ All Over the World” are familiar fare, yet always welcome, especially with big gospel voices adding layers of soul. Those voices come up even bigger on Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross,” presented in straightforward and powerful fashion. It was one of the consistent highlights of these 1993 concerts.
Speaking of resurrections, after four sterling performances on 1988’s Tunnel of Love Express Tour, Springsteen brought “Across the Borderline” back into four 1993 setlists, the last of which was Berlin. The song is most closely associated with Ry Cooder, who wrote it with John Hiatt and Jim Dickson. Like Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl,” “Across the Borderline” is a leading candidate for the most Springsteen-esque song Bruce has covered but didn’t write. The Berlin version is blessed with the heartfelt vocals of Gia Ciambotti, Carol Dennis, Cleopatra Kennedy, Bobby King, and Angel Rogers, who bring majesty to a predominantly synthesizer- and guitar-led arrangement.
Such 1993 highpoints surely inspired Springsteen to combine the best of both worlds in 2012 as the Wrecking Ball tour brought E Street Band and E Street Choir together. In fact, “Many Rivers to Cross” featured in the last warm-up gig in Austin before the start of the proper Wrecking Ball tour.
Work-in-progress or not, the 1993 European tour, as captured on a May night in Berlin, remains a fascinating exploration of Bruce’s wide, musical aperture, especially when seen as the antecedent for some of what was to come.
The start-to-finish performance of an album in concert, despite having so much in common with the music format so many of us were weaned on, is a far different animal than a listening session with the LP or CD itself.
Great concerts thrive on internal mechanics, intentional peaks and valleys that, when done well, take the audience on a journey. Bruce Springsteen famously crafts that journey through setlist choices, dialing in the dynamics that make his concerts so electrifying, while also creating a narrative arc—more pronounced on some tours than others, but always present in some form—from the opening song to the encore closer.
Playing an album like Born to Run from start to finish inside a concert runs the risk of disrupting that journey. For many Springsteen aficionados, some of his most famous songs, “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” in particular, have become more associated with their historic places in the set than their slots in the album sequence.
Perhaps that’s precisely what makes hearing Born to Run performed front to back in Cleveland so interesting. Relieved of now-familiar in-concert roles and restored to their original context, the songs of Born to Run shift tone. Their storytelling qualities rise as their anthemic, crowd-pleasing function is stripped. It would go too far to say it’s like hearing the music anew, but a chance for reappreciation? Absolutely.
Though recordings from 2014 have been available, Cleveland 11/10/09 brings the album performance of Born to Run to the Live Archive series for the first time—in the context of the Working on a Dream tour, when he began this particular trick. Springsteen opens the show in a familiar fashion for this part of the 2009 tour, with the defiant statement of “Wrecking Ball,” followed by an edgy “Prove It All Night.” The latter is marked by two fine guitar solos, lively Max Weinberg drum fills, and an emphatic vocal turn from Stevie Van Zandt that buoys Springsteen’s own performance.
That dynamic duo slides into “Hungry Heart,” and the Cleveland boys (and girls) are well prepared to sing verse one with gusto. That word also suits “Working on a Dream,” which Bruce and the band play with full conviction. (Does anyone else think of the Beach Boys’ earworm “Kokomo” when they hear “Working on a Dream”?) Jon Altschiller unpacks each player in the mix, letting otherwise background parts like Clarence Clemons’ rich baritone sax shine through.
Then the eight-song show-within-a-show arrives. ”[We wanted to do] “something special…for the fans towards this last stretch [of the tour],” says Bruce, “so we’ve been playing some of our albums.” He goes on to explain that after failing to break through commercially with his first two LPs, and sensing he had but one more swing at the plate in 1975, “this was the album where we started a lifelong conversation with most of you.”
WIth that, “Thunder Road” and our story begins. It’s been theorized that Born to Run was originally meant to depict a single day from bright morning to the dark of night, and elements of that come through in this setting. “Thunder Road” in Cleveland is on the sprightly side, feeling more like a beginning than a culmination as it is so often in concert.
High spirits and comradery ensue via “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out,” which remains a celebration of the band itself. Curt Ramm was a returning special guest for this portion of the tour (presaging the full horn section to come in 2012), and his trumpet adds extra juice to the song’s indelible horn hook. “Night” arrives, and we’re moving quickly through side one, with The Big Man leading the way in a fine rendition. Kudos to Charlie Giordano, too, who wraps sinewy organ and chiming glockenspiel around the band’s wall of sound.
The aforementioned shift from peak to valley hits with “Backstreets.” Van Zandt teases out lovely licks in the intro, and a sublime version follows. It may not be realistic for Bruce, at 60 years old, to tap the emotions of his mid-20s self, but his vocals in Cleveland carry gravitas. The mid-song interlude that was once filled by “Sad Eyes” finds Bruce improvising vocally and reprising lines like “you’re an angel on my chest” to beautiful, meditative effect.
Release comes with “Born to Run,” which delivers hope and elation, however fleeting, to the narrative. Hearing the song come an otherwise odd ninth in the show doesn’t feel as disorienting as it would outside of the album context. As much of an anthem as “Born to Run” has become, standing on its own, it holds a vital place among these eight songs.
For whatever reason, “She’s the One” feels ever so slightly lost, but focus is restored with the pairing of “Meeting Across the River” and “Jungleland.” The album’s least-played track, “Meeting” never established a place in Springsteen’s live shows, having been played only 70 or so times. Curt Ramm’s majestic trumpet is the focal point of the gorgeous performance. Listen for Bruce’s voice crack emotionally as he sings, “It’ll look like you’re carrying a friend.”
It’s a pleasure to hear “Meeting Across the River” playing its role as the narrative companion to “Jungleland,” and the album-closer takes the handoff and soars. Every member of E Street is locked in, none more so than The Big Man. He takes his famous solo with aplomb and steals this movie’s epic final scene. Curtain.
What follows after Born to Run, to the end of the night, is more WOAD tour excellence, highlighted by the welcome inclusions of the delightfully reworked “Red Headed Woman,” a trumpet-tinged “Pink Cadillac” (why isn’t this song performed more often?), and the coup de grâce, “Back in Your Arms.”
In the song’s rare live appearances, “Back in Your Arms” typically opens with Springsteen asking the audience who among them who has blown it, throwing away love they should have cherished. There’s little doubt he’s speaking from personal experience. In Cleveland, his preamble ends with a spoken-sung line that builds to eventually implore, “Please please please let me have one more chance to show the love I feel in my heart for you.” “Back in Your Arms” has been played only 23 times, so each performance of the song is a special treat, but this one just might be first among equals.
With love on his mind, lost or otherwise, Bruce adds “Can’t Help Falling in Love” to the Cleveland encore, then “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” and “Rosalita,” both featuring Ramm on trumpet, to end the journey as he always does: on just the right note. A great album and a great show, all wrapped up in one great night.
The year 1995 is a peculiar one in Springsteen history. It began in early January with word of Bruce reconvening the E Street Band in the studio for what we quickly learned were new recordings released the following month on Greatest Hits. February also featured a semi-impromptu full-band performance at Tramps in New York City tied to the filming of the music video for “Murder Incorporated.” Things were heating up on E Street.
In April, Bruce and the band shot a more formal performance at Sony Studios, playing the new Greatest Hits songs and more. Then in September, they turned up in Cleveland for the opening of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, backing Chuck Berry and throwing an excellent “Darkness on the Edge of Town” in for good measure. It seemed for all the world that after seven long years, Bruce was reuniting with the E Street Band.
Which made the phone call I received in early October from a friend in the retail record business all the more unexpected. Our beloved Mr. Z told me that he was read-in on the new Springsteen album. “Full-band rock record followed by a world tour?” I asked with misguided certainty. Not even close. Z proceeded to tell me that Bruce’s new work was a solo album and largely acoustic.
“It’s called The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Come again? “Tom Joad, as in the guy from The Grapes of Wrath.” Huh? “And Bruce is playing solo again at the Bridge School concert at the end of the month.”
Three weeks later, I heard Springsteen debut two songs from his new album, “Sinaloa Cowboys” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” at Neil Young’s annual benefit concert in the Bay Area. Fast-forward to late November, and I’m sitting in my seat for opening night of the Joad tour at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, where Buce took the stage with nary an E Streeter in sight.
The way many of us initially experienced the Joad tour was as much about what it wasn’t (an E Street reunion) as what it was. But listening to Upper Darby 12/9/95, the tenth show of the tour and just two weeks removed from opening night at the Wiltern, it is abundantly clear that despite appearances to the contrary, Springsteen had long envisioned how his first solo tour was going to feel and what it was going to sound like.
The antecedent to the Joad tour was Springsteen’s solo appearance at a pair of Christic Institute benefit concerts in November 1990. It was there that Bruce initially broke with his everyman, fans-first persona, memorably telling the audience, “If you’re moved to clap along, please don’t,” and later, more tellingly, answering a call from crowd of “We love you, Bruce!” with the curt retort, “But you don’t really know me.” Ouch.
The Joad tour took the Christic’s conscious myth-shattering and intentional provocation and ran with it. Springsteen showed us confessional and confrontational sides we had never witnessed before, speaking with newfound candor about relationships, depression, and in Upper Darby, even taking (or not taking) LSD. As for confrontation, a stark “Shut up” in response to shouted requests at the Tower Theater speaks volumes.
On many levels, Joad was a sequel to Nebraska, though despite being kindred works, only “Mansion on the Hill” from the latter is represented in the 12/9/95 set. The distinct difference between the two albums is Springsteen’s evolved relationship to his own songwriting.
Introducing the song “Nebraska” at the Christic in 1990, Bruce said, “I don’t even know exactly why I wrote it [in 1982]. I didn’t think anything about whatever its political implications were until I read about it in the newspapers. But something I was feeling moved me to write all these songs at that time, where people lose their connection to their friends and their families, and their jobs and their countries, and their lives don’t make sense to them [any] more, and all the rules go out the window.”
The shift with Joad is that in 1995, unlike 1982, Bruce was fully aware of the political implications of the songs he was writing. In fact, quite the opposite of that Christic quote, several Joad narratives came directly from newspapers and books he was reading at the time. Such hyperconsciousness made his Joad writing distinct from Nebraska, more journalistic than impressionistic. Performing the songs solo (which he never did with Nebraska material until the Christic shows), Springsteen knew that for the Joad songs to connect with his audience, they had to pay attention to the details.
As such, the new troubadour scaled down to theaters and demanded quiet from his adoring fans who could previously do no wrong in the adulation department. It was jarring but also thrilling to feel so much attention being paid to narrative presentation. On top of that, Springsteen’s guitar, harmonica playing, and vocals were masterful.
Over the 18 months it ran, the Joad tour evolved modestly in terms of setlist changes, hewing close to the vision Springsteen set from the start. But in early shows like Upper Darby, that vision is wholly undiluted. The 12/9/95 set features all 12 songs from Joad — a bold step given its relative unfamiliarity, having been released less than four weeks prior. Catalog cuts like “Adam Raised a Cain” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” were dramatically and brilliantly reinterpreted, and with the exception of the tour debut of “Blinded By the Light,” bones were not thrown.
Listening back 27 years later, Bruce’s focused performance is at times mesmerizing and never less than compelling. “Murder Incorporated” grows more harrowing in this stripped-down arrangement, and Joad story-songs like “Sinaloa Cowboys,” “Galveston Bay,” “Youngstown,” and little-played “The New Timer” benefit immensely from the considered context Springsteen offers as he introduces each one. We hadn’t heard Bruce speak this much between songs since the early days, if ever, narrating his own work in a way that presages Springsteen on Broadway.
So different was the Joad tour, that early on it must have occurred to somebody at the label or management that a dose of fan reorientation might be in order. A partial recording of the Upper Darby concerts was quickly mixed and broadcast via radio syndication just a few days later as part of the short-lived Columbia Records Radio Hour. Those ten songs were also serviced to additional radio stations on promotional tapes, actions seemingly aimed at reaching even more of Bruce’s audience with a preview of what they were walking into in theaters across the country.
The Live Archive release of Upper Darby presents the complete 12/9/95 performance for the first time, including the series debuts of “The New Timer” and “My Best Was Never Good Enough,” and the first Joad tour version of “Spare Parts.”
When Bob Dylan found Jesus and toured in support of Gotta Serve Somebody in 1979, he devoted his entire set to spiritual songs without a single prior work. While the Joad tour didn’t go quite that far, as radical departures go, both Dylan and Springsteen confronted their audiences with bold new works and relentless performances like the one captured brilliantly in the Upper Darby recording.
Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN, March 20, 2008
Bruce Springsteen called Danny Federici “one of the pillars of [the] sound” of the E Street Band. Clarence Clemons’ spotlighted saxophone solos in “Born to Run” and “Badlands” may be more iconic, but take away Danny’s glockenspiel on the high end, organ on the low, and both songs lose precious layers of their musical magic.
Great players have a signature sound, and Federici’s organ, glockenspiel, and accordion parts carried his mark. I remember listening to Tunnel of Love for the first time in 1987, fully aware it was a Bruce solo recording with minimal involvement from the E Street Band. But when “Two Faces” came on, there was no doubt who was playing the organ solo.
The start of the Magic tour in 2007 marked 32 years of the core E Street Band line-up of Bittan, Clemons, Federici, Tallent, Van Zandt, and Weinberg, then augmented by Patti Scialfa, Nils Lofgren and Soozie Tyrell. As the first US leg wound to a close in November, it was announced that Danny would take a temporary leave of absence to receive treatment for melanoma. Charlie Giordano from the Sessions Band capably filled in, starting with the European leg that ended the year.
When the next US leg started back up in the spring of 2008, the chances of a full recovery by Federici had diminished. But when the tour rolled into Indianapolis, Danny summoned the energy to play with his bandmates one last time. A month later, he passed away in a New York City hospital room, at only 58 years of age.
Indianapolis 3/20/08 is both a celebration of and a goodbye to Phantom Dan Federici. He performs on eight songs in the show, and the emotion is palpable each moment he is on stage.
The set gets off to a roaring start with a ripping version of “Night” into “Radio Nowhere.” Later, a sharp “Prove It All Night” carries through to “Gypsy Biker,” for my money the most fully realized song from Magic on the concert stage. Both Soozie Tyrell and Stevie Van Zandt contribute sublime backing vocals, and the drama of lyrics and music coalesce like a long-lost River outtake, heightened by the crescendo of guitar solos that end the song.
The tour debut of “Rendezvous” is an appreciated addition, sounding spry and fresh, and Soozie has another lovely vocal turn on a terrific “Because the Night.” The show has hit its stride, and “She’s the One” is the next to impress. The Born to Run classic has had its share of meaningful resurrections, notably on the Tunnel of Love Express tour in 1988 and here as a Magic tour staple in a pacey, faithful arrangement.
After an always-entertaining “Livin’ in the Future,” we go back to the past. Bruce welcomes Danny to the stage, who resumes his position, stage right, in a graceful handoff from Giordano. An optimistic “The Promised Land” comes first, then Bruce yells, “turn him up!” as Danny weaves the swampy “Spirit in the Night” organ prelude on his own. Perhaps it’s just hindsight, but the gravity of the occasion feels present in the band’s somewhat measured reading of “Spirit.” And who could blame them?
“We can’t let him get away without playing this one,” Springsteen announces ahead of “Sandy.” “We’ll start, just Danny and me.” Sweet accordion swirls around guitar, and the Shore scene comes to life. The deeper meaning of the night comes fully to the fore when Springsteen sings, “For I may never see you again.” A graceful performance of bittersweet beauty.
https://youtu.be/MdjpFDTCqvc
Federici exits (“He’ll be back!”) and the set returns to focused form through the ominous “Devil’s Arcade,” “The Rising,” “Last to Die” (another River outtake that never was), and a cathartic “Long Walk Home,” before closing with a rousing “Badlands.”
Phantom Dan rejoins for a five-song encore that opens with “Backstreets” dedicated to Danny. Like the aforementioned “Born to Run” and “Badlands,” Federici’s organ part is central to the tonal pathos of the song, which Springsteen sings with tender conviction in a truly compelling reading.
“Kitty’s Back” saunters in from the alley to display the virtuosity of the E Street Band and the depth of its roots back to the early ‘70s. Danny gets a fitting turn in the solo spotlight, but the performance isn’t solely about him—it is a celebration of the extraordinary band he was a crucial part of. As retro as “Kitty’s Back” is, it sure sounds vital in 2008, in what is one of the best performances of the song in the post-Reunion era.
Glockenspiel rings clear as a bell in a passionate “Born to Run,” ended neatly by Van Zandt’s, five-note descending coda before Bruce rolls exuberantly into “Dancing in the Dark.” For the final song of the night, “American Land,” all three E Street keyboard players share the stage, with Roy and Charlie accordion-dueling up front, and Phantom Dan holding it down from his keyboard perch, his traditional station for so many years.
Sadly, E Street would go on to lose another great, with the Big Man passing just a few years later in 2011. Which only makes the Indianapolis reunion of Danny Federici and his blood brothers all the more meaningful.
There was a time when we pondered whether Springsteen would ever undertake a solo tour.
The release of Nebraska in 1982 spurred the initial idea, as fans understandably wondered if Bruce would perform the album live. Next came the Bridge School concert in 1986 (available in the Live Archive series), his first full acoustic set post 1973, some of it solo, the rest backed by only Nils Lofgren and Danny Federici. That special gig triggered another round of talk about solo shows, in part because things had gotten so big following the stadium concerts in 1985. Wouldn’t it be interesting to boil the whole thing back down to its essence?
The two Christic Institute performances in 1990 (also available in the Live Archive series) proved the power of Springsteen alone on stage, and eventually they also proved to be the precursors to his first solo tour later that decade. Springsteen’s one-man world tour in support of The Ghost of Tom Joad stretched from late 1995 to the spring of 1997. The Joad shows saw Bruce in troubadour mode, performing exclusively on acoustic guitar and harmonica with occasional off-stage keyboard support from longtime tech Kevin Buell. The stripped-down tour hit venues the size of which Springsteen hadn’t played since the 1970s. Some, like the Tower Theater outside Philadelphia, were the very same buildings.
Appealing as those antecedents were, the 2005 Devils & Dust tour is Springsteen’s most fully realized solo expression. He expanded his instrumentation, adding new colors via pump organ, electric and acoustic pianos, and, on occasion, autoharp, dobro, banjo, and ukulele. He expanded his setlists, too, working up thrilling new arrangements of deep cuts from the catalog, some played only a time or two. Intimate performances aren’t effective simply due to venue size. They require a performer to take risks and play in the moment, which Bruce did night after night in 2005.
This Tower Theater concert is from the opening weeks of the D&D tour. Bruce’s personal history with the venue — going all the way back to 1974 — portended something special, and the payoff came early. “My Beautiful Reward,” performed on pump organ, closed most shows in 1992 and ’93; here it is reborn as a reflective opener, and Springsteen’s vocals flow warmly right out of the gate, sliding across notes with confidence. A sweet harmonica coda formally commences the evening.
D&D tour setlists progress in a chapter-like form, often tied to the instrument Springsteen is playing. Bruce moves through tour staples “Reason to Believe” and “Devils & Dust,” then sharp readings of “Youngstown,” “Empty Sky,” and “Black Cowboys” (featuring Alan Fitzgerald on backstage keyboards at the end). Those three had limited runs in 2005, but nothing like the next selection, as Bruce moves to piano for a true WTF moment on a tour filled with surprises.
“In honor of the fabulous Tower Theater I’m gonna do something here,” Bruce says. “This is a song I cut for Darkness on the Edge of Town, but it didn’t make the record, and I’ve never played it. So I’m gonna give it a shot.”
The crowd reacts with enthusiasm, only to be reminded not to get ahead of themselves: “[It’s] probably one of the stinkers we left off. I wouldn’t get over-excited.” Funny. When the first chords play, it sounds like fewer than a dozen people recognize “Iceman,” recorded in 1977 and released on Tracks in 1998.
The intriguing tune is representative of a cluster of early material cut for Darkness including the still-unreleased and kindred “Preacher’s Daughter,” which was recorded around the same time and first surfaced publicly as a snippet in some 1978 performances of “She’s the One.” “Iceman” also shares a key line with “Badlands”: “I want to go out tonight, I want to find out what I got.” Given our familiarity with those words from “Badlands,” it is fascinating to hear Springsteen give them entirely different diction here.
“Iceman” may not approach the lost-masterpiece levels of “The Promise” or “Drop on Down and Cover Me,” but his committed vocal performance (faintly reminiscent of his 1972 demos) and excellent piano playing bring out the best in the somber song. Also intriguing is the shift Bruce makes at 2:41, appending “Iceman” with an unexpected piano coda.
That new piece also turned out to serve as a bridge, allowing Springsteen to go from “Iceman” without warning into “Incident on 57th Street.” It’s an impressive rendition, with strong, dialed-in vocals and fine piano. If you bet the “Iceman”/”Incident” exacta at Joad Downs, your ponies came in, friend.
Upper Darby’s next chapter is on guitar. First up, “Part Man, Part Monkey,” preceded by Springsteen’s timely intro about local governments rethinking “the whole evolution thing.” How quaint that mild questioning of scientific fact seems today. A trio from Devils & Dust follows: “Maria’s Bed,” “Silver Palomino,” and Bruce’s sodomy & sin soliloquy, “Reno.”
Springsteen shifts to electric piano for a moment of musical beauty with “Wreck on the Highway.” The underplayed River closer draws quiet power from the steady, sober telling of the tale. But where Roy Bittan’s piano on the album and full-band versions is widescreen, the electric piano comes across more intimately, as the instrument’s tones ring with sweetness and darkness. It’s a disquieting, captivating performance.
Preview of “Wreck on the Highway” – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Another unlikely transition, as “Wreck” drops into “Real World,” played as it should be on solo piano. Again Springsteen’s full-bodied vocals and stirring work on the keys combine to create one of the best renditions of “Real World” post-Christic. It’s also, notably, the first to be released in the Live Archive series from the Devils & Dust tour.
He’s on a roll now, fueling excellent interpretations of a refreshed “The Rising,” a convincing “Further On (Up the Road),” and four from Devils & Dust to finish the set. The quartet includes “The Hitter,” which ends with Bruce’s lovely falsetto, and “Matamoros Banks,” which Bruce calls the sequel to Joad’s “Across the Border,” reminding us of the deep connective tissue between the two albums and supporting shows.
The encore opens with an enchanting, Mariachified take on “Ramrod” for the first time on the tour. Quirky but fun. Next, the eternally optimistic “Land of Home and Dreams,” and finally the mesmeric pairing of “The Promised Land” and “Dream Baby Dream,” one of the true highlights of the 2005 tour.
The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils & Dust both feature Springsteen inhabiting characters. His troubadour persona on the Joad tour afforded a bit of distance from the audience, a stance only punctured at times by tour-debuted originals like “Sell It and They Will Come”” and “I’m Turning Into Elvis,” which felt more personal in nature. The Devils & Dust songs are still character studies, but on the 2005 tour, Springsteen invited the audience on an intimate journey, revealing parts of himself in those new songs and even more through the thrilling exploration of his vast catalog.
It has been some time since the Live Archive series revisited Bruce Springsteen’s 1992-93 World Tour in support of Human Touch and Lucky Town. This chapter in his live performance history can be tricky to contextualize, in part because it’s a rare full-band tour that does not list E Street as its home address. As such, there’s no point comparing “Born to Run” played by the 1992-93 band to an E Street Band performance from any year, because there is simply no comparison. That’s okay. It was never their mission.
The selection of Boston 12/13/92 is driven by a setlist that features 16 songs from Human Touch and Lucky Town, many of which never graduated to the Reunion era. Bruce assembled his new, expanded band with that recent music in mind, not “Darkness on the Edge of Town” (though, to be fair, they play the latter rather well). The one constant from E Street to the new crew was Roy Bittan, with whom Springsteen co-wrote “Roll of the Dice” and “Real World” for Human Touch.
I’ve always viewed the 1992-93 band as an attempt to mix roots-rock with gospel-influenced soul music and reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s 1986 True Confessions tour, which saw him backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers augmented by the Queens of Rhythm backing singers. In fact, it was the late Debbie Gold, a mutual friend of both Dylan and Springsteen, who encouraged the former to work with Petty and helped the latter assemble his 1992-93 touring musicians.
If anything, Bruce was tipping that mix toward soul. The catch was that much of his new music featured heavy synthesizers and keyboards. Synthesizers and classic soul can mix marvelously (see Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love”), but it requires very particular attributes. There are many words one could use to describe the extraordinary talent of Roy Bittan as a keyboard player, but funky is not one of them.
Boston 12/13/92 effectively captures the strengths and stretches fundamental to the 1992-93 tour. Listening anew proves refreshing, as several HT/LT songs and other arrangements are distinct from the many E Street Band performances that followed. As fluent as many of us were in the sound of that tour at the time, hearing it now is an entertaining time tunnel to a unique period.
Jon Altschiller’s multitrack mix puts Bittan first chair on the bandshell, and you’ll hear the Professor loud and proud as the show starts winningly with “Better Days,” “Local Hero,” and “Lucky Town.” The aforementioned “Darkness” follows, with Roy hard right channel, guitarist Shayne Fontayne hard left. It isn’t a classic version, but a compelling one just the same, with intriguing vocal rephrasing from Springsteen, a frequent event this night. The song ends not with Bruce’s voice but a gorgeous vocal run from Angel Rogers.
“The Big Muddy” gets an infrequent airing here. It’s a kind of swampy, narrative cousin to “Atlantic City” that rides a big Bruce vocal and sinewy synth work from Bittan. “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” taps television news audio a la U2’s Zoo TV tour, but the attempt to graft the social issues of a post-Rodney-King-verdict America on to a humorous ditty about modern media remains a difficult sell.
Things get back on track with an excellent version of “Trapped” that showcases the powerhouse voices Bruce assembled as his choir. I love the way he biblically tweaks, “good conquers evil, the truth sets you free.” “Badlands” is highly credible, too, filled with small arrangement changes that pulled me into a song that has been played the same way by the E Street Band forever.
The emotional heart of Lucky Town is the life-affirming “Living Proof,” written by Sprinsteen after the birth of his first son. Boston gets an excellent performance, vocal nuances reinforcing that Springsteen is in the moment. The same can be said for “If I Shall Fall Behind.” I prefer this arrangement to the Reunion edition, with lush harmonica and dark synthesizer tones along with a robust Bruce vocal. Listen for how the harp and keyboards play off each other at the end.
Bruce makes the title literal in “Leap of Faith.” We can clearly hear when he enters the crowd, with a funny “Whoa, oh!” soon followed by a surely deserved “Yikes!” The backing singers are at their church-choir best, lending the song gospel gravitas. Bobby King moves front and center for “Man’s Job.” Beneath those period synths a classic soul song is fighting to be heard, one that could have been the uptempo A-side to a “Back In Your Arms” B-side in a parallel universe where Bruce cut singles for Stax.
“Roll of the Dice,” carried by Roy’s memorable piano melody, is the signature sound of Human Touch and in its live incarnation brings out the best of this band. It also provides another showcase for the talented Mr. King—when Bruce says, “Take me to heaven, Bobby,” the singer responds by holding a long, sweet vocal note.
From the sublime to the, er, stretches. “Gloria’s Eyes” is a slight and underpowered set opener, there’s no getting around it. The fact that Springsteen never played the song again after this tour, solo or band, seems to validate that characterization. “Cover Me” gets the second set properly ignited. While it is a synth-soaked arrangement, Bruce does some excellent and distinctive guitar soloing. “Brilliant Disguise,” featuring special guest Patti Scialfa, sounds just like it should, in a pure and emotive reading.
Next comes the vexing case of “Soul Driver,” a fine song in search of the right arrangement. “Soul Driver” debuted at the Christic Institute shows in November 1990 in a memorable, vocal-led acoustic reading. The studio incarnation on Human Touch is an odd, lilting number with a massive snare sound. In Boston, a keyboard sound from somewhere in the marimba/kalimba neighborhood starts the song, then a wailing guitar joins, but no drums or rhythm part to speak of. The result is superior to the album version and paced more like the Christic, but “Soul Driver” remains an unrealized if tantalizing prospect.
The pairing of “Souls of the Departed” into “Born in the U.S.A.,” however, is fully realized. Where “57 Channels” struggled, “Souls” blossoms, news audio setting the stage for the show’s most powerful performance as Springsteen’s lyrics and a hard-hitting arrangement tap into the American darkness of 1992. It was a masterstroke to connect “Souls” to “Born in the U.S.A.” with Jimi Hendrix-inspired strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The second set rounds the bend into another arrangement challenge, “Real World,” and the outcome is even more confounding. Again, the stunning solo piano debut performance of “Real World” at the Christic shows in 1990 is the lens through which all other versions are viewed. As on the studio version, synthesizer carries too much of the load in Boston, losing the majesty the piano reading has in spades.
But the instinct that this song could be a showstopper—an uplifting, full-band anthem—is understandable. In the end, Bruce and the band give “Real World” everything they’ve got, and through sheer willpower and commitment, the song does transcend the arrangement and dated synth sound in an otherwise overlong performance. Ah, what could have been.
The set ends with the good fun of “Light of Day,” and everyone on stage gets the chance to shine. Zack Alford feels especially at home on this one, clobbering his drum kit to drive the “Light of Day” train to the station.
The encore opens with a sharp “Human Touch,” again featuring Miss Patti Scialfa, and manager Jon Landau straps on an axe for “Glory Days,” earning a funny introduction by Springsteen in the process (“The master of managerial disaster”). The 1992-93 arrangement of “Thunder Road” has aged nicely, with Bruce on acoustic guitar and Bittan offering sweeping organ accompaniment. Bittan’s keyboards also fare well on “My Beautiful Reward,” a lovely coda to the show and to the entire Human Touch/Lucky Town body of work. But maybe there’s time for just one more.
It was only 37 degrees at showtime (“I came thousands of miles through some real shitty weather just to get here,” Bruce points out out during “Light of Day”), but it did make the bonus gift of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” that much more fitting.
It’s been 28 years since Springsteen toured with the “other band,” but their soulful mission lingers; the Boston 12/13/92 set is unique to the Live Archive thus far for being centered around the songs he packed especially for their journey. While the 1992-93 experiment wasn’t always successful, Springsteen’s attempt to explore a different sound offers refreshment to ears so accustomed to hearing a beloved but familiar style of performance. It is worthy of a deep relisten.
Every Springsteen tour starts with a vision and an underlying narrative. What story is our favorite artist telling through his setlist and presentation? Over time, setlists typically evolve and tours explore new themes, keeping things fresh but sometimes departing significantly from the initial concept.
Springsteen’s solo-acoustic tour for The Ghost of Tom Joad was unwavering in conserving its original vision. Beyond special nights in Freehold and Asbury Park, from the earliest shows in late 1995 through final gigs in the spring of 1997, the core songs from the album served as the spine of the show, while Bruce’s performances stayed steely and steady. Nice, France, a stop from the tail-end of the Joad tour and the first Archive release from 1997, presents an opportunity to reassess this compelling commitment from the little-heard fifth leg.
I had the good fortune to see a couple of the early shows on the Joad tour, at the Wiltern in Los Angeles on November 26 and 27, 1995. With the exception of the final encore (and album closer) “My Best Was Never Good Enough,” Bruce performed the same songs from Joad at the LA shows as he would in Nice, more than 120 performances later. “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Murder Incorporated,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” and “This Hard Land” are also intact. Adding “Brothers Under the Bridge,” which debuted the second night at the Wiltern, 13 songs remained in the set, anchoring the tale and tone of this special solo outing.
Which isn’t to say those songs are played exactly as they were in the fall of 1995. The Nice performance is unmistakably honed after a year and a half on the road without a band. Case in point: Springsteen’s guitar playing feels less muscular but more masterly. Because the arrangements largely remain faithful, the differences are subtle, but a song like “Murder Incorporated” has evolved from stark noir to more of a beautifully sung cautionary tale, with Bruce’s guitar weaving an unsettling rhythmic bed that lulls us into submission.
“Straight Time,” “Highway 29,” and the title track play truer to form, but there’s extra weariness in the tone of the protagonists that makes their stories resonate all the more. Heard through a post-Western Stars filter, “Highway 29” feels like a progenitor to that recent mastework, especially its title track. Truest of all is the four-pack that served as the lyrical denouement for show. Nice gets sublime readings of “Sinaloa Cowboys,” “The Line,” “Balboa Park,” and “Across The Border,” and the verb is accurate for these near novellas.
On Broadway, Springsteen set up familiar songs with stories and vice versa, but this storytelling sequence is more like an author reading to an unfamiliar audience. As such, Bruce’s performances of the material place a premium on the vivid details that make the narrative spark to life. For a performer who has earned the position of having his audiences eat out of the palm of his hand, brokering this type of connection with more demanding material must have been a fascinating challenge. Admiration for how he pulls it off night after night is well earned.
Other Joad tour stalwarts are also in top form in Nice. The 12-string reinvention of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” debuted at the Christic shows in 1990, still sends shivers up the spine. “Brothers Under the Bridge” is perhaps the most underappreciated entry among Springsteen’s Vietnam Veterans material. The song was still unreleased when Bruce performed it on the Joad tour (it eventually came out on Tracks in 1998). The final line, “One minute you’re right there, and something slips,” remains one of the most haunting in the canon.
Nice would also see the final tour performance of “It’s the Little Things That Count.” Bruce revisited the song a couple of times at the Somerville, MA solo shows in 2003, but it has been unheard ever since. The song was written for Joad and later considered for Devils & Dust, but it remains officially unreleased in studio form. Gotta love the transition from “Little Things” to “Red Headed Woman”: “Speaking of tongues…”
Of course Joad tour setlists were not totally rigid. Nice finds Springsteen in something of a nostalgic mood, pulling the kindred “Growin’ Up” and “Saint in the City” into the set, connecting the Joad era to Springsteen’s last turn as a solo artist in 1972. He also takes “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” out for an entertaining spin in its tour debut. “Working on the Highway” is good fun, too, exposing the Born in the U.S.A. song’s Nebraska roots — listen for Bruce hitting a particularly impressive high note at the end of “cruel cruel worrrrrld.”
The final reinvention of the night comes with “The Promised Land.” As evidenced by his use of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” to close shows on his next solo tour in 2005, Springsteen is attracted to mesmeric arrangements. The transformation of “The Promised Land” could be the most radical of all his reinterpretations and merits reappreciation for sheer performance beauty and vocal control. We’re transfixed until that final percussive thwack breaks the trance of a spellbinding evening and a tour that stayed true to itself from the first show to the last.
