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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET
BAND
The Emirates Stadium, Highbury, London,
May 31st 2008 |
| We’ve
come to North London’s home of football to
see the Boss. And how fitting it is that the fantastic
new Emirates Stadium, rising into the sky like some
huge intergalactic behemoth, should play host to
such a brilliant and lauded personality. Rarely
has anyone excelled so greatly in his or her chosen
field, rarely has anyone imposed his sense of the
beauty in his art so formidably. Here’s a
man who could fill this imposing stadium to the
rafters every Saturday afternoon of the year. In
fact he does. But sadly Alsatian football genius
Arsene
Wenger (a former Mulhouse United player unless
I’m mistaken, Serge) isn’t at home,
but it’s a lovely late Spring evening so we’re
more than happy to make do with that other Boss,
Bruce
Springsteen, and his reformed E Street
Band, minus of course the very recently deceased
Danny
Federici. |
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| Springsteen’s
two nights at the Emirates are the first concerts
at the Stadium since it opened two years ago (“We’re
gonna test the foundations” he promised the
audience on the evening before). It’s packed.
We’re standing on the ground (well not quite,
as the hallowed turf is protected by robust flooring).
There’s a smaller enclosure in front of us
that’s clearly housing the Springsteen Maniacs
(they’ve got green armbands, we’ve got
orange). Some of them look as though it’s
a rare unaccompanied outing. But they’re going
to get their money’s worth . |
Emirates gig , the setlist
(from official website) |
Many
of them recognise each other from other gigs, other
years, and as the guys just in front of us point
out, they’re sporting an interesting range
of veteran Springsteen merchandise (“Look
dad, there’s a flag from the ’88 tour”).
These aren’t the Maniacs, just the mildly
obsessive. The two boys behind us have just been
to Manchester (an inferior venue called Old Trafford),
were here last night, and will be at Cardiff in
a few days’ time. Then they’re spreading
their wings to continental Europe. With eagle-eyes
for detail they take me through the set lists of
the previous nights and share their expectations
and hopes for tonight (“as long as there isn’t
any of that Pete Seeger crap. That was just shite”).
That was encouraging as I’d left the black
notebook at home, but then I was introduced to a
veritable Max Cady, who had Springsteen set lists
for concerts he’d attended tattooed all over
his body, just like Robert De Niro in the remake
of Cape Fear. Scary stuff indeed. |
| Now
I have to confess that I’m not a big Springsteen
fan - I mean I admire him for what he does, but
in my mind it’s somewhat repetitive in both
subject matter (one disenchanted and under-achieving
blue-collar no-hoper after another can wear you
down a bit, as can all those waitresses who do –
or sometimes don’t – the car rides,
the highways, the dingy suburban streets, the garages,
the whistling trains etc. etc. etc.), and musical
structure. Tonight, as Bruce and the band crash
through 24 songs (four less than last night –
we’ve been short-changed), and play against
a strict curfew, the tunes run into each other,
Springsteen counting them in before the chords of
the previous song have finished, and it becomes
really hard to know when one starts and another
finishes. But that’s not the point –
it’s the show that counts, and it is quite
extraordinary. I don’t know how he makes it
seem so intimate. His moments sitting on the edge
of the stage or perched on a stool singing to the
Maniacs as they gaze in adoration, some gently stroking
his shoes or legs, others just desperate to get
a touch as if it would cure some malignant ailment,
are beamed onto huge screens, sucking even the people
in the furthest seats (I think they’re almost
in Seven Sisters Road) into the closeness of it
all. And when he does this (he spends a lot of the
night down there) there’s no security –
there has to be somewhere but it’s not the
ear-pierced monkeys who stride alongside the Stones
as their mini-stage pushes into the audience). All
his gestures – to the crowd or deliberately
to the cameras are inclusive – you certainly
leave knowing who you’ve spent the night with.
I’m sure he goes through the same routine
every night, but it works, because it’s here,
tonight, now. |
| Of
course there’s a downside to these big screens,
particularly if you’re as close to them as
we are. Thirty years or more of rock and roll ravages
doesn’t look too good on guitarist and sometime
Soprano Little
Stevie Van Zandt for example (‘Little’?
Which bit of little is that?). But it doesn’t
stop him from playing. Saxophonist Clarence
Clemens barely makes it on the screen. And the
petite Nils
Logfren doesn’t look so hot blown up to
ten times his normal size, but his guitar playing
is sensational, including a solo to die for on ‘Because
the Night’. Bruce is just irrepressible, from
opener ‘Out in the street’ to the end
(by which time, I admit we were heading for Arsenal
station to avoid the post-match mayhem). Jeans,
shirt, waist-coat, suspiciously dark hair and enough
energy to play ninety minutes in the Premiership,
he barely stopped. |
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He
takes time out to collect written requests from
the Maniacs – including a nice one for ‘Downbound
Train’, which read ‘No job, no girl,
Downbound Train’, which he gently placed against
his mike-stand before playing the tune. He spoke
for a while about the departed Federici before playing
‘Sandy’, and declared his closely-attuned
sense of social justice and injustice, before ‘The
promised land’, but for the most part it was
high-energy performance of the finest calibre, even
down to his cross-stage knee slide (ouch!). |
|
As we rode the train home, we found that we’d
left the relative safety of the Maniacs and the
obsessives (and the tattooed man) for a rowdy festival
of drinking on the London Underground, marking Mayor
Johnson’s first edict, which outlaws alcohol
on the public transport system. Good-humoured in
intent, it had clearly reached the stage where alcohol
had overtaken good sense, and I almost missed the
cocoon of our new friends and Bruceland, a surrogate
world to lost souls and the rootless. It’s
a nice place to visit but just make sure you buy
a return ticket. - Nick Morgan (concert photographs
by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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