Bruce Springsteen Live in Liverpool Review
The Boss has been in majestic form this week in the city that inspired him all those years ago.
Bruce Springsteen Live in Liverpool Review
The Boss has been in majestic form this week in the city that inspired him all those years ago.
In an increasingly troubled world Bruce Springsteen is a hero to so many, for so many reasons, on so many levels.
For his sense of social justice and for his championing of those without a voice. As underlined by the raft of causes The Boss has supported over the decades.
Whether it was boosting Amnesty International with a host of other stars back in the late 1980s, his part in We Are The World, America’s version of Band Aid in 1985, while also taking on the causes of AIDS, immigration, hunger and poverty, his support of Vietnam vets, speaking out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his part as an Obama cheerleader - you name it, Springsteen has been on the right side of history every single time, powered by a tender compassion inculcated by his Irish-Italian, impeccable blue-collar New Jersey roots.
So, it would have been easy at the age of 75, when most of his peers in the music industry have perished through excess - or ceased to be relevant through flaccid self-regard - for the New Jersey veteran to have become a tribute act of his own back catalogue, touring for the sake of touring as part of a global money-making exercise, a tired facsimile of his glory days.
But no, not Bruce.
Not when he still has so much to say.
The Liverpool crowd show their appreciation of Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street band at Anfield on Wednesday, June 4. CREDIT:
A relentlessly implacable opponent of the abhorrent Donald Trump and his incoherently vile policies, Springsteen is positioning his current Land of Hopes and Dreams tour to voice his disapproval.
To witness The Boss haranguing Trump for a raft of issues - for starters, the 47th US President’s attack on free speech, neglecting vulnerable children, and undermining workers - was as captivating as it was vital.
His three-minute Liverpool monologue taking down Trump was utterly majestic, and much-needed. Not to mention brave.
Addressing the rapt Anfield crowd, Springsteen stated: "There's some very weird, strange, and dangerous s*** going on out there right now. In America they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.
"In America the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now. In my country they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.
"They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.
"They are defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands. They are removing residents off American streets and without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centres and prisons. This is all happening now."
Springsteen, being Springsteen, had to inject a semblance of positivity amid the darkness, attempting to reassure the crowd we will "survive" Trump’s presidency.
Before lacing his spirited soliloquy with a spot of much-needed optimism, adding: "Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said: 'in this world there isn't as much humanity as one would like, but there's enough.’” Cue roars from those assembled at Anfield.
The Boss’ eloquent criticisms of his President should also be viewed as courageous, certainly when you note the Democrats have waved the white flag and have ceased to be a credible opponent, while the majority of Republicans have cravenly fallen in line with the cretinous orange-hued simpleton.
It shouldn’t fall to musicians to make political stands, but Springsteen did. How many others in his industry are currently doing so?
Yes, but doesn't his decades of success inure him from the wrath of Trump’s vindictive hatefulness, critics might say. Yes, which is kind of the point.
Springsteen has a platform, and uses it, to his eternal credit. All the while utterly repudiating Trump’s - and was far back as Ronald Reagan’s - clumsy attempts to corral Born in the USA into more stringent nationalistic tones.
Yet, never being so cynical as to completely abandon hopes of the American Dream, the one that all citizens of that great, if unsettling country are fed. That self-improvement and striving for didactic salvation can lead to self-actuating paradise.
As he sang in his ever-powerful rendition of The Promised Land, from his seminal 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town - one that had all true disciples of the music, if not the ironic, double-edged meaning, roaring along at a packed Anfield on a wet Wednesday evening on Merseyside this week - “I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man, and I believe in the promised land.’
Visions of a promised land invoked by one of his - and Bob Dylan’s - early heroes Woody Guthrie, as well as Pete Seeger, promoting a benign version of the American Dream. One where even-handed opportunities, via an adherence to self-improvement through honest work, can be rewarding. Amid a set of shared values which includes a genuine sense of community, kindness and care for others, as well concern for the weakest in our society.
Not Trump’s version.
One where you pull the ladder of hope away from the feeble, attack those you don’t understand, promote ignorance, hate and fear, feuding with anyone who comes into your orbit, all the while bickering with vacuous billionaires and being so self-centred as to be a grotesque parody that satirists simply can’t replicate due to the scandalous hideousness of the real thing.
So, how could it be anything other than throat-catchingly wonderful to listen to Springsteen’s powerfully eloquent evisceration of Trump and his cronies. Especially following a pre-concert afternoon session with good people in a nearby pub, old pals and new putting the world to rights.
I will long remember the words of the 75-year-old artist declaring to the crowd, to us, and to the world well beyond his microphone: "The America I love and have sung to you about for so long, a beacon of hope for 25 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.
“Tonight, we ask all of you who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring…” as the strains of his haunting My City of Ruins rang out.
The song originally a paean to the city of New York, and the unquenchable American spirit in the aftermath of 9/11, taken from his 2002 record The Rising, as powerful now, as it has ever been.
As an aside, it was instructive to note that after Springsteen and his tender empathy had been a receptacle, and an outlet, for plenty of post-9/11 grief among his home constituency of New Jersey, that he released the joyous live album Springsteen in Dublin.
A raucous reminder that it’s also ok to have fun.
The Boss. Live in Liverpool. CREDIT:
And so it was at Anfield on Wednesday.
Because to be at a Bruce Springsteen is also to experience a joyously exuberant romp, a much-needed indulgence of merriment, a life-affirming explosion of fun.
Or as The Boss says: A "heart-stopping, pants-dropping, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking…" in his never-faded introduction of The E-Street band, past and present, including the nephew of the much-loved and much-missed Clarence Clemons, Jake.
To witness Bruce and the E-Street band in action - and I’ve seen them from Belfast and Dublin to the Emirates, yet nowhere near the numbers of some of his incredible superfans - is to feel part of a welcoming club. Where bonhomie is the currency amid mesmerising storytelling. And good old rock and roll.
The Boss’s Anfield setlist was as potent as ever.
As much as some raucous crowd-pleasers such as Hungry Heart, and The River, (from The River album) Badlands (Darkness on the Edge of Town) Tenth Avenue Freeze Out (Born to Run album) Dancing in the Dark, and Bobby Jean (Born in the USA), got the crowd singing along via a dark, albeit relentlessly compelling trip through the underbelly of American life, the fact is such tales are allied with hope.
A hope that Springsteen will simply not let Trump kill.
So when the old favourites such as Born in the USA, No Surrender - as well as perhaps works that some may have not been familiar with, such as My Love Will Not Let You Down - taken from his 1998 box set Tracks (disc 3 track 2 if you’re asking) or Better Days (from Lucky Town) or Youngstown (his potent comment on industrial decay taken from his 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad) rang out, it indicated The Boss was making it as much about timelessly pointed social commentary, where seemingly hopeless situations can offer understanding and redemption. As well as of course, simply being rollickingly good music.
Which is the thing about Springsteen’s shows. You can simply enjoy them for the theatre, the spectacle, and the music.
To see Bruce sing my favourite musical line of all time, “The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive..” during what must have been near his millionth rendition of Born To Run, which, when packed with such energy, still always feels like his first attempt, is to experience pure poetry.
And when this wonderful American - an antidote to the fear and dread that emerges from his land on a daily basis - paid tribute to the band that inspired him all those year ago, The Beatles (on strangely, his first ever concert in Liverpool) by playing Twist and Shout, well, it was to be engulfed in deep, deep joy.
For The Boss - our majestic Boss - simply wouldn’t have it any other way.
Bossing It. Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street Band live in Liverpool. Wednesday, June 4. CREDIT:
Thank you Layth - great review. You appear to have been standing very close to me! Great that you share my two passions - Arsenal and Springsteen.