Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 opus “The River” has some of his most beloved songs — the title track, the pop hit “Hungry Heart,” the gorgeous “Drive All Night” — and others that the Boss himself had all but discarded.
As a fan tweeted this week, “It’s pretty nuts that Springsteen launches a tour ,where he’s guaranteed to play ‘The Price You Pay’ and ‘Crush On You’ 24 times.”
That will be almost as many times as he’s trotted them in the last 35 years, but when you embark on a full-album tour, as the mighty E Street Band did Saturday night at the sold-out Consol Energy Center, there are no shortcuts. What we got was a living, breathing classic with songs rarely played, especially here in this “Darkness on the Edge of Town” kind of town.
After camping out for several days of rehearsal at Consol, they hit the stage at the stroke of 8pm with a rocker he was crazy to cast aside, The rousing “River” outtake “Meet Me in the City.”
“We’re gonna take you to ‘The River’!” he said, interrupting the song. “I wanna know: Are you ready to be transformed?!”…..You know the answer.
“This was the record where I was trying to find out where I fit in…,” he said of the album, which has only been performed once live (2009, Madison Square Garden). “I wanted to make a record that was big enough that it felt like LIFE, or like an E Street Band show.”
They dropped the needle with the jubilant opener “The Ties That Bind,” a tone-setter for the album’s theme of finding what’s real and planting down roots. From there, “The River” ebbed and flowed from wild rollicking, ’60s-style frat rock to minor key ballads, reflecting the joys and struggles we all go through.
We can at least hope that everyone, at some point in their lives, has as much fun as the rowdies in “Sherry Darling” (the Boss dancing with his wife Patti Scialfa in that one), feels the passion of “Two Hearts,” carries the swagger of the guy in “Out in the Street” or has the kind of meaningful family interaction described in “Independence Day.”
The late-night conversation between father and son, sung on the darkened stage, was a beauty, that quickly gave way to the crowd belting out the opening of “Hungry Heart” and Bruce walking right into the heart of it. He got back to the stage by breaking the long distance crowd-surfing record for a 66-year-old.
“Crush on You,” which he has admitted might have been a better outtake, was still a loud, unruly blast, complete with a pretty funny dance. “I Wanna Marry You,” introduced as a song that’s “not about the real thing,” had an extended boardwalk doo-wop intro with guitarist and best man Steve Van Zandt. The title track, with the haunting harmonica cry, followed as the somber dose of reality, punctuated with a sad falsetto wail.
He took us down even lower into the abyss with “Point Blank,” before flipping the mood again with the rowdy middle of side three, “Cadillac Ranch,” with Soozie Tyrell fiddle solo, and “I’m a Rocker.”
The final run put the Boss at the wheel for the lonely and desperate “Stolen Car” (foreshadowing “Nebraska”) and the reckless “Ramrod,” building to an epic 10-minute “Drive All Night” that was indeed all heart and soul, with two great Jake Clemons sax solos. The end of the road was “Wreck on the Highway” and its sobering tale of tragedy and clarity.
“Thanks a lot. That’s ‘The River,'” he said. For most bands, two hours is a full night, but for the E Street Band, even with his voice getting weathered, the show must go on, and on, and it did with a roof-raising “Badlands.” When the crowd booed the Giants in “Wrecking Ball,” he laughed and said “Steelers?!”
From the Boss’ greatest masterpiece we got “Backstreets“ and “Thunder Road.” They raged through another great outtake, “Because the Night” (Nils Lofgren spinning on the screaming solo), “The Rising” and more.
He could not let the night pass without a tribute to a fallen rock god. Although they traveled different universes, Springsteen and the David Bowie had longtime connections. “He supported our music way back in the beginning, 1973,” he said, leading the band into first encore “Rebel Rebel.”
Opening night of The River Tour 2016. Bruce performs Rebel Rebel as a tribute to David Bowie.
At the three-hour mark, his voice fading but his energy still strong, he kept the engine going into “Bobby Jean,” “Dancing in the Dark” and a lights-up “Born to Run.” “Have you got anything left?” He hollered. “Do you have to get up for church tomorrow?” And with that, he rolled into the wild, celebratory finish of “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” and ”Shout.“
Getting back to his original question: Were we transformed?…………Are we ever not?
This was even sweeter, because we witnessed a master doing one of his best albums, and one of the finest of all time, with the same conviction he had when he first created it. How could that not be transformative?
The Fat Angel Sings 