Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Hyde Park, London

Another summer = another Springsteen tour. How good! This time around limited to just a few major UK dates (a Saturday night headline slot at Glastonbury – which the BBC broadcast a glorious near 2-hour chunk from last night) and a Sunday night in Hyde Park, a short 20 minute stroll from home (so close Kim could hear the encore and named every song when I got back!).
This is the first tour whereby the format hasn’t changed dramatically from the previous tours – so while a number of the set-pieces remained the same (“Badlands”, “She’s The One” and “Out In The Street” early in show; “The Promised Land”, “Radio Nowhere”, and “Born To Run” later).
So the best part for me was where things got mixed up, like a show-opening cover of The Clash’s “London Calling” (I just finished the excellent Joe Strummer biography ‘Redemption Song’ and interestingly much of his latter life played out in nearby Ladbroke Grove – literally a stone’s throw away). The new economic-crisis inspired bracket of “Seeds”, “Johnny 99” and “Youngtown” mid-way during the set. There’s also a great wild-card section where Bruce grabs signs requesting from the crowd, which saw him pluck out their great cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped”, and a two-shoot from Born in the USA with “Bobby Jean” and “No Surrender” the latter a fantastic duet with a very emotive Brian Fallon from The Gaslight Anthem (New Jersey natives who played earlier in the day – and had Bruce join them onstage for one of their own songs “59 Sound”).
The encore kicked off with a cover of the gospel-heavy “Hard Times Come Again No More” (a Stephen Foster song from the 1800s) and featured a fantastic “Jungleland” with a note-perfect sax solo from Clarence Clemons (who is looking decidedly worse for wear these days).