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Tuesday night, Bruce and the E Street Band wrote their final chapter at Philadelphia’s Spectrum. Starting off with “The Price You Pay,” a gem off of The River that hadn’t been played live since 1981, Bruce and the ESB set the tone – it would be a night of fun (two extended trips through the pit, including crowd-surfing back to the stage during “Hungry Heart,” and pulling his mom Adele onstage for the Courtney Cox part of “Dancing in the Dark”) and of surprises (a so-infectious-you-must-be-clinically-dead-if-you-aren’t-dancing version of Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher” in the Stump-the-Band slot at the end of the main set; original ESB drummer Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez taking over the kit for “Spirit in the Night”; and a double shot of “Thunder Road” and an un-setlisted “Rosalita” to close the show). Also a surprise: Patti was absent for the last show – Soozie Tyrell pulled double duty, adding rhythm guitar to her usual violin/backup vocals.Mid-show, as planned, they played the Born in the USA album in its entirety – intense, straight-ahead, and with little between-song banter, but that only seemed to reinforce the continued relevance of those 12 tracks. For me, the album, which came out when I was 13, was largely a gateway to Bruce’s earlier work – BitUSA has plenty of its own high spots, but a few songs I’d consider filler. Bruce himself has talked of the complicated relationship he has with BitUSA as an album and as a mid-80s phenomenon – in his book Songs he writes frankly about his ambivalence and dissatisfaction with much of the final product. It was the poppiest music he’d released to that point, yet lyrically it’s pretty grim and downbeat. Only two of the songs (“No Surrender” and “Bobby Jean”) end with something of a happy/hopeful ending (“Dancing in the Dark” is another that at least doesn’t end on a somber note). Largely, the album is about loss – of opportunity, of innocence, of love, of freedom, of control – and the disappointments we find and the cynicism that takes hold as we grow older.
In concert, all in one chunk, Bruce certainly played up the poppiness where it wouldn’t totally gut the songs – still, “Downbound Train” and “I’m On Fire” earned the first mass sitdown/bathroom break of the evening. He has slyly converted “Dancing in the Dark” from the synth-pop studio cut into a guitar-driven, pogoing blast (and yeah, bringing his mom up to dance was irresistibly cute). Together, the album cuts hold up remarkably well as live numbers – the themes of the songs generally fit with the “hard times” narrative that tends to occupy the middle of his setlists on these last two tours, and many of the songs are favorite singalongs anyway. But after the final keyboard stains of “My Hometown” fade, and Bruce takes a moment to acknowledge Garry, Max, Roy, Steve, Clarence and the late Dan Federici as “the men who made Born in the USA,” he takes us right into “Promised Land,” the Darkness song that perhaps most fully expresses an earnest hopefulness. The contrast in tone couldn’t be clearer, even when he audiblizes to insert “The River” before the next setlisted song.
Anyway, nearly three-and-a-half hours of masterful stage- and crowd-play later, I could think of no better way I could have said goodbye. Not just to the Spectrum, a place where I’ve seen dozens of rawk shows, numerous Sixers, Flyers and Big Five games and Duke-Kentucky 1992, and where I took my kids to their first circus and (God help me) the Wiggles. No – I had the distinct feeling I was also saying goodbye to the E Street Band.
Fans have speculated for a while about this, but Clarence Clemons, who will turn 68 in January, truly looks like a man who is taking his victory lap. He had a lot of spotlight moments Tuesday, but C’s body has betrayed him. He’s had both knees replaced and struggles with hip and back problems. Rumor is he needs back surgery and that the recovery will be lengthy. He doesn’t move much during the show – when Bruce brought the surviving BitUSA-era E-Streeters center stage for their mini-set curtain call, Clarence had a hard time getting over from stage right. On the songs that called for C to blow baritone sax, he played without taking the instrument from its stand. Trumpeter Curt Ramm, who played on Bruce’s Seeger Sessions tour, joined the band for several songs, and it had the feel not just of augmentation, but of a subtle passing of the torch. Clarence has gutted it out night after night on this 2-year tour, but given all of the above, you can’t help but think that his performing days are, perhaps imminently, nearing an end. Tellingly, the jokey byplay between C and Bruce, so much a part of the stage show even through the Magic tour, is now limited to Bruce running over to Clarence to share the mike on a handful of verses.
So if this turns out to be the last time I see Bruce Springsteen play with a heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-shaking, booty-quaking, Viagra-taking, love-making, legendary E Street Band that includes The King of the World, The Master of the Motherf**king Universe, The Big Man, Clarence Clemons, then I can say that there was no better way to have ended a run of live ESB performances that I’ve enjoyed dating back to 1988’s Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Show at the old JFK Stadium. This was a top 3 show for me – it made me wish I had been of concert-going age in the late 1970s and early 1980s so I could have compared it with the epic shows on the Darkness and River tours.
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