Instead of writing a fresh take on this closing show of the High Hopes Tour, I’m going to reprint my contemporaneous Facebook review from the morning after the show.
Not because I’m lazy, and not because I want to embarrass myself with how ridiculously off-base I was in my prognosis, but because it really does capture the way it felt not just to me, but to many of the people who were there with me. Even people I didn’t know at the time–when we compare notes years later, we all remember being shaken by the way the show ended:
Last night a legend became human. The final show of Bruce Springsteen’s 2014 tour was insanely amazing, until it got soberingly and forebodingly real. Given the legends that surround Bruce Springsteen shows, I’m sure much will be written about what happened last night.
Hopefully, most of it will focus on the blazing performance and ridiculous hardcore fan-friendly setlist: 19 of the 27-song set were different from Night 1; eight songs played for the first and only time this tour, one of which (“Seven Angels” from the 1998 Tracks album) played for the first time ever.
How loose was the show? He spotted a nine-year-old girl in the crowd with a hand-made sign for “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” and he played it. In May. The crowd went nuts, and for a few minutes it was December.
Bruce’s performance was relentlessly intense throughout the entire set, moreso than I’ve ever seen, and that apparently was the problem. This was the closing night of the tour, but it was also the second show in two days (which he almost never does anymore), and the fourth show in six days… and by the end of the main set, he was visibly exhausted.
When he skipped the first wild-card encore number that precedes “Born to Run,” I chalked it up to saving room for some surprises at the end. And a surprise we got: After the first two of the standard three-pack (“Dancing in the Dark,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out,” and “Shout“) that has formed the centerpiece of every encore set this year, Bruce called an audible for “Jungleland.” It was stunning, but he barely made it through.
At the end of the song, “Rosalita” came up on the teleprompter, which would have led back into the set-listed “Shout,” for the traditional closing number and band introductions (followed by an acoustic farewell).
Except he couldn’t do it. Instead, he waved the band up front, turned to the crowd, and said weakly “You’ve just seen the legendary E Street Band.” Not his traditional preacher-like “hard-rocking, earth-shocking, etc.” chant, but just an exhausted acknowledgement. And with that–not even introducing the band members by name for perhaps the first time ever–Bruce waved the band off the stage and managed to get through an acoustic “Dream Baby Dream.”
In the pit, we were stunned. The show was obviously and abruptly truncated, and even the band was shocked to find out that they were done. They actually stayed under the stage during the final acoustic number in case Bruce called them back for one more number. But it didn’t happen.
At 2 hours and 51 minutes, it was the shortest show I’ve seen him do in a long time. But the anti-climactic ending doesn’t change the fact that this was one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen as well.
Still, the legend of the inexhaustible Bruce Springsteen died last night. When he waved his final goodbyes, we all suddenly realized we were looking at a 64-year-old man. I think we all had the same thought: wow, he really is human. How he’s managed to perform like this for so long is beyond my understanding, but it’s clear he won’t be able to do it forever. I don’t think he’ll ever be done performing, but I expect future shows to be a bit more human-sized. I’m really glad I got to see him at his peak.
…and then of course, he went on to do a string of four-hour shows two years later. So what did I know?
It really was an incredible closer for a very underrated tour, from the “Roll of the Dice” / “Leap of Faith” / “Jump” / “Frankie” opening pack to the sentimental “Jungleland” and “Dream Baby Dream” closing encores.
