“Any deeper blue and you’re playin’ in your grave…”
In the days leading up to my last of four shows on the 2016 River tour, I tried hard to temper my expectations. After reading about the first and second of three shows in New Jersey – shows featuring epic setlists, boundless energy, and record-breaking duration – I realized this Chicago show was sort of sandwiched awkwardly among them. (There were initially only two NJ shows scheduled; the third was added later, turning Chicago into a bit of a detour.) Springsteen’s shows in Chicago haven’t traditionally been historic ones, for whatever reason, though the two-night Wrigley stand in 2012 was fairly spectacular. Surely this show would end up getting treated as a bit of an afterthought, an inconvenience even.
It’s not going to be like the NJ shows, I told people. It’s going to be fairly routine, the kind of show the E Street Band can play in their sleep. No special guests (Tom Morello and Eddie Vedder, both of whom dropped by for the Wrigley shows, were otherwise engaged that weekend) and there’s no way they’ll bring out the string section, that was special for Jersey. Figure on a short show (by Springsteen standards – a marathon for most bands!) of somewhere between 2:55-3:10, and no major rarities, though maybe we’ll get something pretty cool like “Racing in the Street.” I just want “Backstreets,” I kept saying to friends. I hadn’t had “Backstreets” at a show since 2009 and boy, I missed it.
It’ll be a really fun show anyway, I told myself. I’ll be spending time with a bunch of great friends who I would not know if it weren’t for our mutual love of Bruce Springsteen, his band, and his music. And even the most routine Springsteen show is worth a quick 230-mile drive each way. It’ll be fun. But not life-changing, nah.
Even when I finally made it into the arena (our group having missed the pit by just about as much as it’s possible to miss it, and on a night when they gave out over 1600 wristbands for the lottery – the stage was about forty miles away from me) and found out that chairs were in place for a string section, I told myself, “There’s no way we are getting New York City Serenade. That’s a special thing for special shows. We’re going to get, I don’t know, The Rising with strings. Or Lonesome Day. Something kind of cool but not really … magical.”
Then the lights went down, and the band took the stage, and the magic started.
New York City Serenade, indeed. With strings. And it was every bit as mind-blowing as you could want it to be. It’s such a beautiful song, sweeping and cinematic. I was teary and transported. Springsteen pretty much had the absolutely packed United Center crowd in the palm of his hand from that moment on.
After the lushness of Serenade, the show lurched forward at a furious pace: Prove It All Night, My Love Will Not Let You Down (in which Max Weinberg was an absolute BEAST), and The Ties That Bind rocked out with sheer brute force and energy. For me, the momentum wobbled a bit a few songs later when Bruce took signs from the audience for The Promised Land (always a great song, but it felt misplaced at this point) and Mary’s Place; it was threatening to become a bit of a grab-bag show. My favorite Springsteen shows are the ones where the setlist is carefully constructed to tell a story, to make a point, to illuminate something. Shows where the songs talk to one another, where you hear “The Promised Land” differently because after a string of songs about how hard it is to just get by in the world it brings you back to a place of hope and resolve. Individual songs strung together in random order, even if they’re great songs, just aren’t the same kind of show for me.
But then… Racing in the Street.
Racing is one of those songs that’s certainly great as written and recorded, but performed live by the E Street Band it becomes, on a good night, something otherworldly. The instrumental coda is majestic and full of sorrow, elegy, dignity, and ultimately redemption. In Chicago, I wanted it never to end. The band performs wordlessly, seemingly without direction, like dancers who know one another’s bodies so well they can perform a perfect pas de deux with their eyes closed. I wish I’d had the presence of mind, when the song ended, to snap a picture of Bruce’s face on the big screen. He had an almost untranslatable expression of satisfaction, pride, and something else I can’t quite name. It seemed like he couldn’t speak for a couple of moments and I know I sure couldn’t have. Basically, I just want to pack my bags and move into the Racing coda and just live inside of it forever. (Am I looking forward to the download when it’s released? Now that’s a dumb question.)
And after that? Bruce introduces an outtake from Born in the USA – and it’s None But the Brave, a rarely played and vastly underappreciated song. With its soaring sax solo, the song’s sense of wistfulness and memory paired perfectly with Racing. I love the song and was thrilled to get it – all the more so because of its placement.
A bit later in the set was a well-chosen song sequence designed to convey a strong message: Death to My Hometown, Jack of All Trades (with the string section!), The River, American Skin (41 Shots), and Murder Incorporated. It was a powerful statement of hard times and struggle which lead to conflict, anger, and pain – a textbook study of the effects of economic injustice.
American Skin in particular felt timely and incredibly powerful. Mid-song, a mother is instructing her young (presumably African-American) son about how to behave if stopped by the police. At the line “promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight,” Jake Clemons raises his hands to shoulder height and keeps them there – until the song swells and crescendos, at which point he raises his hands fully above his head in “hands up, don’t shoot” mode. And a good percentage of the audience joins him, along with (for a moment, near the end of the song) Springsteen himself. It felt like a powerful statement of solidarity from the primarily-white audience. When the song ended, the band immediately ripped into an absolutely savage “Murder Incorporated” – and nobody living in or familiar with Chicago, currently experiencing a terrifying surge in gun violence, could miss the statement. Major, major goosebumps.
The rest of the show? It was consistently good (although I could have lived without the clearly well-rehearsed small child pulled onstage for “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” and in fact could have lived without that song altogether – but much of the crowd ate it up). Nothing else unusual, but everything was played with tremendous energy and presence. Candy’s Room into She’s the One into Because the Night? So great.
Some nights, I’m struck by one band member’s virtuosity more than the others; in Chicago, I was struck by the band as a whole, by how seamlessly they work together to create a whole that is much more than the sum of its (individually phenomenal) parts. After all these years together, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are still unquestionably legendary, still – somehow! – playing shows that would count as marathons for other bands, still completely captivating packed arenas and stadiums. They’re not just running through the greatest hits. Old songs and new – and this Chicago show covered the full range – are full of life, played with skill and tremendous heart. If you can get to one of the few remaining shows on the River Tour, you really owe it to yourself to do so. I don’t think we’ll ever see another band doing anything like this.
Oh, and that Backstreets I was hoping for? Got it. And it was everything I wanted it to be.
Just before he left the stage some 3 hours and 35 minutes after the first notes of that Chicago Serenade, Bruce Springsteen smiled broadly at the cheering crowd and told us, “The E Street Band loves ya.” We love them back, we do. No question.
Visit Anne’s blog at annehaines.wordpress.com/blog.