At Madison Square Garden, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band began their New York leg of Land of Hope and Dreams Tour with rare intensity. A concert which recalls, through pieces and speeches, the power of a catalog inseparable from the political struggle of its author.
“Clampdown” and the return of Tom Morello
At Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Bruce Springsteen surrendered a climactic verse to guest singer Tom Morello during their cover of “Clampdown.” “Let fury have the hour”shouted Morello, while the E Street Band covered The Clash with a credibility that we would never have imagined at the time when London Calling And The River dominated the charts. “Anger can be powerful”.
As on every date of his Land of Hope and Dreams TourSpringsteen returned to harmony on the following verse: “Do you know that you can use it? »
A regenerated E Street Band
When Springsteen reunited the E Street Band in 1999 for their first tour in more than a decade, Morello was playing Woodstock '99 and the first-ever Coachella with Rage Against the Machine, and had never before sung a note in public. At that time, Springsteen had not yet returned to recording with the band, making him particularly determined to avoid nostalgia. He therefore avoided some of his most beloved pieces, adding unreleased tracks from his very recent box set Tracks at concerts, and made a quasi-metal arrangement of his 1995 song “Youngstown” a centerpiece. He also wrote a new song, “Land of Hope and Dreams”, which conveys a utopian vision of possibilities for his group and his nation.
In 27 years, the E Street Band lost two key members, Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, but continued to move forward. Springsteen wrote and recorded with them an entire new 21st century catalog, the best pieces of which stand up in concert to the classics of the 1970s and 1980s. The remaining 20th century members on tour — Steve Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Garry Tallent, Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan — are all in their seventies, and play with intact ferocity in concerts lasting nearly three hours. The E Street Band is malleable enough that Morello's once-stunning wicky-wicky hits on “The Ghost of Tom Joad” now seem out of place, a simple counterpoint to Lofgren's equally sublime flights of fancy on “Youngstown” and “Because the Night.” The group keeps its leader's wildest promises, by building a world where “the music never stops”as Springsteen sings on “House of a Thousand Guitars.”
The nation, it? Ups and downs.
“Streets of Minneapolis”, the only new release from the tour
Unlike most Springsteen tours since The Risingit has only one unreleased track: “Streets of Minneapolis”, an immediate protest anthem which immortalizes Renée Good and Alex Pretti, as well as the “federal thugs” who shot them, prompting mostly boomer crowds to chant “ICE out now” in the country's arenas. Even without a new album, this tour is more current than any other classic rock show that we could cite (with the exception of Bob Dylan still in the present). The memory of the deliberate instrumentalization of “Born in the USA”, notably by Ronald Reagan himself, remained vivid for Springsteen: he therefore built a setlist and speeches of implacable clarity in their indictment against Donald Trump and his administration.
A catalog that prophesied Trump
If his catalog lends itself naturally to this use, it is only because Springsteen has for so long tackled issues that too many politicians and artists have ignored. “Death to My Hometown,” “Youngstown,” “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and even “Murder Incorporated” (with a surprise burst of solos from Steve Van Zandt on MSG) depict the pre-Trump forces that led to the current situation. Their words offer the vision of a deindustrialized nation, emptied from within, devoid of safety nets, therefore inevitably vulnerable to populist demagoguery – the real unemployed steel worker who inspired “Youngstown” also confided to the New York Times having voted for Trump.
“American Skin (41 Shots)”, written years before Black Lives Matter, attacks racism and its entanglement with police violence and abuse. It is also the occasion for one of the most lyrical, emotional and free of any fretting solos in Morello's career, which opens with an exchange of trilled phrases with saxophonist Jake Clemons – who seems more assured than ever in his role. (As in that 1970s aside when David Sancious and Ernest “Boom” Carter were in the band, today's E Street Band is truly multiracial, with almost as many black musicians as white on stage.)
A political speech of disarming clarity
The speeches of the tour, delivered almost identically each evening, should not be neglected at a time when the Democratic Party seems headless, its most senior officials apparently overwhelmed by the ever-lengthening list of Trumpian excesses. Springsteen's message is so simple and clear that it is astonishing that current politicians seem incapable of espousing it. He refuses to let the horrors inflicted on Minnesota be forgotten. He recalls DOGE's pointless evisceration of USAID, and the countless deaths that followed abroad: “It’s no longer on the front page of the newspapers”he told the Garden, as at every step so far, “but it’s happening now.” People are dying. » As the tour progressed, he added to the list of horrors: the Supreme Court's attack on the Voting Rights Act and the persecution of James Comey with shellfish. Overall, it revives an idea so often invoked during Trump's first term that it had become a joke to mock progressives: this is not normal.
“Thank you for a lifetime”
Springsteen is so uplifted this time that the elegiac coloring of his previous tour, and its reminders of mortality, have faded. Beyond the always-jubilant defiance of death in “Wrecking Ball”, he only allowed himself one moment of this order at MSG, evoking his very first New York concert, as a teenager, at Cafe Wha. “What I’m saying is: thank you for a lifetime”he said, triggering a long and particularly emotional ovation.
The concert opened with lighting lingering on an empty slot behind a microphone stand, which Springsteen eventually slipped into for his opening speech. In the moments leading up to his arrival, it was hard not to think about that void — and to dread the day when Bruce Springsteen would no longer be there to fill it.
