While he was writing The River in early 1979, Bruce Springsteen went through a crisis with no real solution—a paradox that happens to any 30-year-old ready to let go of his ego and start thinking about the world at large. He knew that being a creative person and singing these songs just wasn’t enough. He wanted more to become the stories he was telling, and immerse himself in the history and spirit of this world he was building. “I don’t want to be an observer,” Springsteen said in the HBO documentary The Ties That Bind, which shares the name of the just-released and expanded version of The River. “I want to be an active part of it some way. How do people come together, fall apart…Part of The River was trying to find the courage to put my feet in, jump in with both feet, and experience those things myself.”
Bruce recorded 53 songs in total during The River sessions, 20 of which wound up on the original album, which could be easily divided between “the fast ones” and “the slow ones”. Before the ballads, Springsteen would offer some background about the songs; for the gutting “Independence Day”, he said he wrote it when he became “startled by his parents’ humanity. All you can see is the adult compromise they had to make. All I could see was the world they seemed lock into. All I could feel was the desire to escape that world.”
During these moments, you felt the struggle that Springsteen felt when he wanted to do more than just write about these things. “I wanted this album to be big enough to be like life,” he said during the show, and the moments whereThe River reached that size were its slower ones like “Stolen Car” and “Point Blank,” during which the scope of love felt larger than ever. Springsteen’s focus performing these songs was unwavering, and it was impressive to see the bandleader linger on such mature melancholy.
The E Street Band covered the album’s dynamic range. There was the doo-wop intro to “I Wanna Marry You” with sidekick Steve Van Zandt, who was Springsteen’s trusted foil all night. “Cadillac Ranch” burned fossil fuels with impunity until it drove right off a cliff, belching smoke. “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” brought Eddie Cochran swagger and “Sherry Darling” a touch of the Coasters’ humor. “I’m a Rocker” with its roller-rink organ riff suggested an outtake from the ’60s garage-rock collection “Nuggets,” and “The Price You Pay” evoked the ringing 12-string guitars of the Byrds. The slow-burn soul of “Drive All Night” crashed into the Hank Williams-like plaintiveness of “Wreck on the Highway.”
Springsteen hewed strictly to the sequencing of the original album, though for the purposes of an arena concert the pacing might have been better served if he went into shuffle mode. But Springsteen was keen to revisit the album’s themes, and they have not faded with age. If anything, the issues that obsessed the singer — faith, family, fidelity — loom larger than ever.
Just as Bruce Springsteen paid tribute to his early supporter David Bowie with a cover of “Rebel Rebel” at his River Tour 2016-opening gig in Pittsburgh last week, the E Street rocker also remembered Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey Tuesday night at Chicago’s United Center with a moving, acoustic rendition of “Take It Easy”...
Soundcheck:
Take It Easy
Meet Me In The City
Human Touch
The Ties That Bind
Setlist:
1. Meet Me In The City
2. The Ties That Bind
3. Sherry Darling
4. Jackson Cage
5. Two Hearts (W/ It Takes Two ending)
6. Independence Day
7. Hungry Heart
8. Out in the Street
9. Crush On You
10. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
11. I Wanna Marry You (W/ Here She Comes intro)
12. The River
13. Point Blank
14. Cadillac Ranch
15. I’m A Rocker
16. Fade Away
17. Stolen Car
18. Ramrod
19. The Price You Pay
20. Drive All Night
21. Wreck on the Highway
22. Night
23. No Surrender (False start twice)
24. Cover Me
25. Shes The One
26. Human Touch
27. The Rising
28. Thunder Road
29. Take It Easy
30. Born To Run
31. Dancing in the Dark
32. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
33. Shout
The Fat Angel Sings 