Bruce Springsteen

The Ties That Bind

It's a matter of ties. Ties that can't be broken. "You can't break the ties that bind". That's exactly what "The River" is: the story of how belonging to a bond defines who you are.

It's the same reason why you find yourself there, present and accounted for in the last flares of an early July evening, holding up a blue rectangle over your head (blue like "The River", of course). Waiting for Bruce Springsteen to take the stage. "You can't forsake the ties that bind".

And here he is, Bruce, appearing on the San Siro stage while once again the notes of Morricone flow with the solemnity of an anthem. His gaze lifts toward the stands and for a moment seems to get caught in those thousands of eyes searching for his. "Dreams are alive tonite". That banner stretching the full length of the stadium stands is like an embrace. Behind it lies months of work, a crowdfunding project, the passion of a group of fans. A feat already pulled off in 2013, also at San Siro: "Our love is real" read the banner that time, and it's also the name they chose to be recognized by. The name they decided to belong to.

Bruce reads one letter after another, following the trail of those words made of people (desires, illusions, hopes), pointing at them with a finger. Then he nods slowly, with the awareness of someone who recognizes himself in the same language, in the same heart.

It has always been a visceral dynamic, the one that binds Springsteen to his audience. Baillie Walsh captured it perfectly in his documentary "Springsteen & I", bringing to the screen all the pulsing lives of his fans. It's impossible to set aside the uniqueness of that relationship if you want to understand the almost mystical aura surrounding the story of each of his concerts. "Triumph in Milan", "Rock gladiator", "Love goes on": stripped of the inevitable dose of rhetoric, of all the trappings of cheap emphasis, it's always a matter of ties.

"You sit and wonder just who's gonna stop the rain/ who'll ease the sadness, who's gonna quiet your pain". When you arrive at a Springsteen concert, you carry with you the whole burden of life weighing on your shoulders. Not to set it aside, but to transfigure it into something else: into the renewal of a promise. "It's a long dark highway and a thin white line/ Connecting baby your heart to mine". Beyond the karaoke effect, beyond the stadium sing-alongs, beyond the grimaces and the gags, it's that thin connecting line that everyone is waiting for.

"When the audience becomes the band", tweeted Nils Lofgren to say his "Thank you Milan" the day after the first Italian night of the 2016 "The River Tour". This is nothing more than a gallery of snapshots, a collection of souvenirs retrieved from the memory of a slice of summer, between the lights of San Siro spelling out their declaration of love to the E Street Band and the tide of red hearts rising from the front rows of Circo Massimo. But what matters is the correspondence behind the images, that unbreakable blood pact between audience and band. "The best audience in the world", Springsteen keeps repeating. In the afternoon heat, he gave the Milan crowd the surprise of a memorable acoustic "Growin' Up". Because "we grew up together", as he proclaimed in 2003, sealing the historic return to San Siro after 1985. "It's good to be back home". Once again.

Independence Day

“This is my first song about fathers and sons.” The organ sketches the melody in the air, and the voices immediately pick it up in a chorus that grows ever more assured. When he wrote “Independence Day”, Springsteen had just turned thirty. “It's the kind of song you write when you're still young,” he told the crowd during the tour, “and you start to realize the humanity of your parents, the fact that they too have lives, dreams, hopes in their hearts.” Today it's a parent singing it, and in front of him are fathers and sons (grandchildren too, probably). Both at opposite ends of that kitchen table, where understanding each other seems impossible: “Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now.”

Tonight, though, they're shoulder to shoulder beneath the same stage, united by the same need to overcome the darkness we carry inside, the shadows that seem to devour our better selves. In the front rows at San Siro, a father and daughter held up two matching signs: asking Bruce to bring them up on stage together, her to dance and him to play guitar. The wish won't be granted, at least not this time. But that bond already says it all, explaining better than any sociological analysis how ill-fitting the usual label of “inter-generational” is for the Springsteen audience: it's something deeper, more intimate, that brings whole families out to these shows.

You can see it in the way the ritual of audience participation in “Dancing In The Dark” has turned into a collective celebration (a boy dancing with Soozie Tyrell, a young woman on her hen night, a thirteen-year-old budding drummer receiving Max Weinberg's sticks). Of all the dividing lines we can draw between ourselves and the people beside us, there isn't one that can't be crossed. “Papa now I know the things you wanted/ That you could not say.”

Summertime Blues

The Roman evening air smells of summer, as the first light of sunset colors the outline of the Fori Imperiali. A sea of hands keeping time, Springsteen's smile chasing itself across the giant screens scattered along the Circus Maximus grounds. A breathtaking sight. And the guitar's squared-off riff pops up out of nowhere, with the bittersweet flavor of a sunny day slipping away. “Ain't no cure for the summertime blues.”

It's hard to find room for improvisation in the tours of big rock stars. With Springsteen, though, that rule doesn't apply: there's always some surprise lurking around the corner. Like when, in Milan, he launches into Little Richard's “Lucille”, catching even the band almost off guard. That's what the “sign requests” are for, the placards for requested songs now inevitably waved by the crowd like invocations to the patron saint of rock 'n' roll: sometimes they seem like just a slightly cloying gimmick, sometimes that's exactly where the spark comes from that shakes up the script. Just think of the reworkings of John Lee Hooker's “Boom Boom” and the “Detroit Medley” that Springsteen delivered on the Roman night, or less familiar chapters of the repertoire like “Lucky Town”, “Mary's Place” or “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” (dedicated on this occasion to the “italian social workers” fighting to defend labor rights).

The game of covers, after all, has always been one of the strong points of Springsteen's performances. And when the notes of “Trapped” ring out again in the San Siro stadium, thirty years after the first time, it's impossible to remain unmoved. The crescendo of a romantic ballad, the blaze of lights, the triumphant explosion of the chorus: “Good will conquer evil and the truth will set me free/ And I know someday I will find the key.”

Drive All Night

There are moments when being in the middle of a crowd no longer seems to matter: the intimacy is that of a one-on-one conversation. In Milan and Rome, it happens when the piano notes introduce the slowed-down pace of “Drive All Night”: Springsteen's crooning grows dustier, the guitar phrasing more delicate. Even the clapping (with effort) gives way to silence.

On the American leg of the tour, Springsteen always performed “The River” in full. It's no coincidence that, among all his albums, “The River” has always come closest to capturing the energy the E Street Band unleashes live. But once the tour landed in Europe, the songs from the record were drastically cut back in the setlists, watering down the identity of “The River Tour” somewhat.

At the first San Siro date, Springsteen chose to reverse that trend: fourteen songs out of twenty isn't exactly a full performance of the album, but it comes close (especially considering that the second Milan night featured two more of the missing songs, “Cadillac Ranch” and “The Price You Pay”). The result was a more balanced setlist than ever, in which the interplay between “The River” and the rest of the repertoire translates into a perfect alternation of moods.

Credit goes above all to the less overplayed tracks on the record, from a taut, vibrant “Jackson Cage” to an irrepressible “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)”, via the blistering renditions of “Crush On You” and “I'm a Rocker”. And, of course, “Drive All Night”, unspooling like a lullaby for hearts adrift in the night: “Don't cry now”, Springsteen implores, bathed in the violet embrace of the lights, his voice sinking to a whisper, ready to dissolve into that “dream baby dream” borrowed once again from Suicide.

Backstreets

Springsteen slips off the strap of his trusty Telecaster. He raises it high like a trophy, like an icon. “One soft infested summer me and Terry became friends.” It's the opening line of a novel, not just a song.

On a tour like this, with no new album to promote (and indeed with the whole thing expressly dedicated to a record from the past), the risk of nostalgia is always lurking: the temptation to take the easy road and simply please the old fans. Especially on the songs that have by now become fixtures of every show (from "Born To Run" to "Dancing In The Dark"), Springsteen seems more willing than in the past to indulge the conventions of the ritual: he goes along with the endless call-and-response of the crowd at the end of "Badlands", he repeats the tribute to his fallen bandmates over the notes of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out". He never ventures into arrangements that stray too far from the originals.

And yet, even just his willingness to overhaul the setlist across the two nights at San Siro would be enough to prove that the nostalgia, this time too, isn't an end in itself. "Roulette", "Something In The Night", "Streets Of Fire"... enough to win over even the most jaded fans, even if songs like "Fire" can never quite be the same without the old back-and-forth with Clarence Clemons. Not to mention the Rome prologue, with a "New York City Serenade" backed by the strings of the Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta that will stay etched in the memory of everyone who was there.

Above all, it's Springsteen's conviction, the sense of urgency he manages to communicate with just a look, that redeems even the classics from becoming mere routine. As in "Backstreets", when on the second Milan night he holds the microphone a whisper from his lips, letting his magnetic "We swore forever friends… until the end… I just wanna see you smile" echo half-voiced. Then he raises his arms to the crowd, accompanied only by piano, and the crescendo sweeps away once again everything you thought you already knew, everything you believed you could take for granted.

Shout

"You've just seen the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking, love-making, legendary… E Street Band!". At the heart of every Springsteen show is the ritual of introducing the band. Not that there's any shortage of party moments (from "Sherry Darling" to "Ramrod", by way of the inevitable "Hungry Heart" and "Out In The Street"), but the song devoted to giving the crowd's ovation to each individual member of the group carries something special with it: it's the celebration of a brotherhood, one that still holds even now that "Big Man" Clarence Clemons is gone and the E Street Band's name flashes like a comic-book speech bubble on the big screens.

On the "The River Tour" that honor falls to "Shout", the first hit by the Isley Brothers (the same band behind "Twist And Shout", to keep it all in the family...), which turns into a triumph of call and response, hands raised to the sky and false endings. Over the course of the evening, though, every member of the band gets their own moment of glory: Nils Lofgren sets "Because The Night" alight, spinning on himself during the solo, Roy Bittan carries the heartache of "Point Blank" into Chris Isaak territory, Max Weinberg lets loose on a rousing "My Love Will Not Let You Down", Soozie Tyrell's violin digs out the country soul of "Darlington County". Little Steven seems perhaps the least sharp of the group, increasingly relegated to a slightly caricatured sidekick role, while Patti Scialfa (on the nights in Rome when she decides to clock in alongside the others: the perks of being first lady...) reserves a rather saccharine duet with her husband on "Tougher Than The Rest". But it's Jake Clemons who really shines, having made his debut with the horn section on the "Wrecking Ball" tour, now showing a surprising confidence in holding the stage on his own, stepping into the towering role once held by his uncle.

And Bruce? Compared to a few years ago, his presence on stage feels a little more static, less explosive (where have the endless little dances during "Working On The Highway" or "Cadillac Ranch" gone?). Even less chatty, aside from the obligatory "I love you"s and "Daje Roma"s. The result isn't necessarily a negative one: the space taken away from the showmanship is made up for by the music, which (helped by the absence from the setlists of the weaker material from his recent albums) delivers one of the most complete experiences among the various stadium tours Springsteen has brought to Italy.

Then again, who could complain about a man in his sixties holding a stage for more than three and a half hours every night? And here, inevitably, the skeptic raises an eyebrow with suspicion: "The usual Springsteen die-hards, about as objective as Al Bano's Russian fans...". No point arguing: only those who have never experienced it firsthand can afford the luxury of disbelief.

This Hard Land

Yes, it's true, even Springsteen has grown old. And thank goodness for that, because no one stays the same as they were. Time has passed for everyone, whether you're there for the first time or the millionth. You look back and wonder where the time went. What became of the seeds you scattered in the wind.

For Springsteen, "The River" is his own personal "coming of age record". The turning point in life when it becomes response, construction, sacrifice. It's no coincidence that he chose this very album as the occasion for such a monumental celebratory tour: picking those pages back up today, on the threshold of sixty-seven and with an autobiography due out in September, means looking in the mirror and answering to his thirty-year-old reflection for the road he has traveled, for the dreams broken and fulfilled. For the man he has become.

For the final farewell, every night of his Italian run, Springsteen stays alone on stage. Alone with acoustic guitar and harmonica, as if wanting to make the intimacy even more direct. There's no better setting for moments like these than the San Siro stadium lit up bright: it draws everyone into a single embrace, rather than scattering it across the horizon of Circus Maximus. For the Milan crowd on the second night, Springsteen doesn't offer the usual "Thunder Road" sing-along, but a song to which many have given a special place. A song about seeds that never grew, about hard, dusty ground. The journey of two brothers, the toil and the sweat, the barrenness of a life that seems to give nothing back.

And yet, we all know that those seeds weren't lost. “They’ve just blown around from town to town/ Till they’re back out on these fields/ Where they fall from my hand/ Back into the dirt of this hard land”. We don't know how, but the ground where they fell hasn't stayed the same. Perhaps that's the only reason we're there, to hear that certainty repeated once more by the voice echoing through the stadium stands. To shout it at the top of our lungs together with him: "Stay hard. Stay hungry. Stay alive".

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