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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND
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| Hyde
Park, London
June 28th 2009
I
know, Serge that like me, you abhor excess. The
gross and grotesque over- consumption that seems
to signal, even in times of recession, twenty-first
century society. A “we want more”
world, when quantity so often seems to be preferred
over quality, where responsibility is abrogated
in favour of thoughtless over-indulgence, with
the consequences of obesity, ill-health and mental
weakness. |
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| And
of course it’s always someone else’s
fault ; accountability kept firmly at arm’s
length by the perpetrators as they feed with frenzy
at the trough of intemperance. But just once in
a while, the architect of this gluttonous greed
is so clearly apparent that culpability cannot be
denied. Those heartless villains whose only thought
is to fuel this culture of surfeit. Which is where
Bruce
Springsteen comes in. Who in their
right mind needs a three hour concert? In case you
don’t know, Bruce has come hot foot to Hyde
Park Calling in London from Glastonbury, where
his barnstorming Saturday night headline (only about
two and a half hours) blew a hole in the curfew,
earning the disapproval of the local authorities
and a fine for the organisers. |
| Don’t
get me wrong. This is a brilliant showboating performance,
from the moment that the Boss and his indefatigable
E Street Band take to the stage and break into the
opening chords of ‘London’s calling’
(they opened Glastonbury with Joe Strummer’s
‘Coma girl’). If that wasn’t enough
to win the hearts of the crowd (many of whom were
showing predictable signs of a surfeit of beer by
this time) it was followed by several quick jaunts
from the stage to the crowd. Requests were collected
and several played, and at one point, Springsteen
stretched his arm as far as he could to hold his
microphone to the lips of a young child held aloft
by his father, who promptly sang a word-perfect
chorus for the Boss. And of course, despite his
brash braggadocio (displayed at its worst by an
ill-judged tub-thumping appeal to the ‘power
of love’) , he also displayed vulnerability,
falling prone on the steps on one of his return
journeys to the stage: “I’m sixty, man,
get me a fucking elevator”. Quite where Mr
Springsteen gets his energy from I don’t know,
but the remarkable thing is that it was matched
to every last degree by his band. Of course, long-time
collaborators ‘Little’ Steven
Van Zandt and Nils
Logfren are to the fore; Logfren’s guitar
playing, which is often overlooked, was particularly
good. But the outstanding performance of the night,
after the Boss himself, probably came from drummer
Max Weinberg.
He hardly stopped playing for the whole set, drumming
out of one song and, as Springsteen changed guitar
with a “One two three four”, drummed
into the next. |
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| So
there’s not much wrong with the performance,
it’s just too long. It’s like having
those extra two or three drinks that you don’t
need, or another bowl of chips or an extra portion
of chocolate dessert. You know you don’t need
it, you know you don’t want it, and as you
do have more you lose the sense of appreciation
and enjoyment of what went before. |
| Certainly
with Bruce one of the problems is, not least because
of the way the songs run into each other, that after
a while you can easily get the sense that the songs
all sound pretty much the same, and lose the impact
they might have had. I’m sure the Bruce-addicted
gourmands probably relished every one of the one
hundred and eighty minutes. But we weren’t
alone amongst the gourmets who chose to leave before
the Boss crashed into his encore of Rosalita, Hard
Times, Jungleland, American Land, Glory Days and
Dancing In The Dark. It’s just too much, Bruce.
It’s not responsible. - Nick Morgan (photographs
by Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
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Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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