…and then came Night Two.
My expectations going in were fairly low: the previous night’s show, while perfectly serviceable, was a pretty standard show. Any hope that I had of Bruce continuing the run of amazing, unpredicatable shows that characterized the European leg of the tour had been firmly reset.
The weather was more foreboding that night as well–thunderstorms were in the forecast, and it was humid from the start. I was still pretty tired from the cross-country red-eye and the long show the night before, and I seriously considered sitting in the stands for this one. But my cousin and her husband were going to be in the pit, and I hadn’t seen them in a long time. So I decided to push through it and stick with my pit ticket. That proved to be a very smart decision.
When Bruce walked on stage with just Roy–the rest of the band nowhere in sight–it was clear something unusual was about to happen.
Bruce casually greeted the audience, “Good evening, good evening on this lovely night! We had a lot of fun last night. This place is like playing a big picnic or something… that’s a good thing.”
And then it began: “Roy and I are going to start with something., we used to start like this back in the seventies, and we haven’t done it in the States in a long time.”
Bruce pulled out a harmonica, and opened with an absolutely gorgeous rendition of “Thunder Road,” accompanied only by Roy on piano. By the time Bruce finished conducting the crowd through the coda, I knew we were in for a very different Night Two.
“Good evening,” he said, “let’s bring up the band!” As the band took their positions, Bruce declared, “Let’s start with the hits! Let’s start with the summertime hits right now.”
Oh, yeah–a very different night indeed:
The opening songs tend to set the tone for the night, and kicking things off with an acoustic “Thunder Road” into “Hungry Heart” signaled that Bruce was serious about treating this show like “a big picnic.”
At the end of “Hungry Heart,” Bruce looked pretty satisfied. He turned to the band and signaled “Keep going! Alright we’re going to keep that summertime theme going…” Bruce then called his first audible of the night–his first of three in a row–and launched into “Sherry Darling.”
Any hint of tiredness left in me was gone by this point, replaced by adrenaline. The crowd was alive tonight, and Bruce knew he had us all in the zone. So Bruce kept it going, audibling “Summertime Blues.”
By the end of the song, Bruce looked looser than I’d ever seen him. He shouted, “Alright… we’re flying by the seat of our pants now!” and called for “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” one of my absolute favorite tracks from Magic and one that I hadn’t heard live since that tour. The band was clearly bemused by this point–five songs in, and we were so far from the setlist that no one had any idea what was coming next. The band looked unprepared for this one, and there was some conferencing on stage about it.
“You guys remember the bridge? We don’t need everybody to remember, we just need most of the band to remember.” Bruce the perfectionist was nowhere to be found tonight–this Bruce was only here for fun.
Bruce voice was in fine form, and “Girls” proved to be one of many highlights for the night.
It was time to return to the setlist now, for the traditional opener three-pack of “We Take Care of Our Own,” “Wrecking Ball” and “Death to My Hometown,” but Bruce only got through the first of those before he audibled again (his fourth in the first seven songs), bringing up Steve for a crowd-pleasing “Two Hearts.”
He did make it back for the rest of the opening pack, though, launching from “Death to My Hometown” into “My City of Ruins,” with a very different story tonight that showed that Bruce was feeling the venue in a way he hadn’t earlier.
And then Bruce collected signs. It hit me at that moment: he’d completely skipped that the night before. He’d honored a few requests at the tail end of the main set, but otherwise the show was pretty well scripted. Tonight, we’d already had four Bruce-induced wildcards, and he was now signaling a lot more: “The rest of the night? It’s gonna feel like we’re playing at a picnic!”
First up: “This one has never been played by the E Street Band! At least not that I remember… I don’t think it ever has.” (It had, but not for a very long time.) “Ladies and gentlemen, we want you to knock–right now–on wood!”
This was our first old-school tour premiere of the night, and it probably was my favorite moment of the night. The horn-fueled E Street Band absolutely owned the Eddie Floyd classic, and Bruce was having the of his life, or at least of ours.
A remarkable run of vintage Springsteen originals followed “for our old, old, old, old, old fans out there!”
“Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” led to “Thundercrack,” which had Bruce in a nostalgic mood, recounting all the bands they’d opened for where “Thundercrack” was their “first showstopper.”
And then came another highlight of the night: my first full-band “Frankie” (I’d heard it only acoustically before), with an absolutely gorgeous new introductory guitar solo by Bruce, and a mid-song story. Bruce reminisced about the fireflies he used to watch as he wrote the song, and as he spoke, the crowd broke out their cel phones, and the park became filled with fireflies… “Light ’em up! That’s good…” Even if you skipped the other videos, watch this one.
And then… my heart skipped a beat, because I recognized the piano notes that signaled the next song. I knew them by heart but never expected to hear them live:
It was the return of the 1978 tour arrangement of “Prove It All Night,” so high on my chase list I never even bothered to wish for it. My mind was now blowing song after song, so I was almost grateful when Bruce returned the show to earth for a (still audibled) “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and a fun “Working on the Highway” with a hotdog and beer break for Bruce.
The always welcome “Shackled and Drawn” and “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” followed, and I thought maybe the show would finish up in standard territory.
Nope.
Bruce called for yet another audible (I’d completely lost track by now)–this time, for “Backstreets.” It was raining now, a cool summer rain. After the instrumental bridge, Bruce paused and held the crowd’s attention. For a moment, it seemed (as it always did) that Bruce might finally return to his classic “Sad Eyes” interlude, but instead he threw a curveball: a mid-song “Dream Baby Dream” detour. I would never have expected it, but it worked perfectly.
From there, “Badlands” and “Land of Hope and Dreams” finished out the main set, leaving us to wonder what surprises the encores could possibly bring.
The rain had continued since “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” so it wasn’t really a surprise when Bruce opened the encores with an almost traditional-when-it-rains cover of “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” What was special is how it segued from there into “Rocky Ground.”
“Born to Run” followed–we certainly knew that was coming–followed by an appropriately old-school “Detroit Medley.”
And then, after “Dancing in the Dark” came one last sign request–and oh, what a great one: we were back in the seventies again, with the tour premiere of “Quarter to Three,” another first for me. The cherry on top: Bruce reprised his “I’m just a prisoner….. of rock and roll” declaration at the end of the song, another moment I’d never thought I’d get to witness live.
We could have been done by that point as far as I was concerned, but Bruce wasn’t. We still had “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and a show-closing “American Land” (complete with guest-appearance by Ken Casey of Dropkick Murphys) in store.
I was soaked, I was exhausted, I was jubilant–but that’s the way you’re supposed to feel after a Bruce Springsteen concert.
I’d never experienced anything quite like that show. St. Louis ’08 may have matched it in surprises and topped it in terms of the bands form and intensity, but I’d never seen a show this loose.
All told, there were 18 songs in this show that were different from the first night, and to give you a sense of how much we deviated from the setlist, here are the songs that Bruce was supposed to have played but didn’t: “Night,” “Jack of All Trades,” “Jackson Cage,” “She’s the One,” “Apollo Medley,” “Racing in the Street,” “The Rising” (that one was a shocking omission), “Bobby Jean,” Dirty Water,” and “Twist and Shout.” Plus, there were only 26 songs on the setlist, and Bruce played 30.
I’m glad I did both Fenway shows–even a standard Bruce set is worth catching. But 8/15/12 was the show that cemented it for me: never pass up the last show in a multi-night stand.
Time to relive it once again.
