He played it so often over his last five years of touring that it’s surprising to remember that prior to the Wrecking Ball Tour, Bruce had barely covered it at all.
And yet despite the fact that everyone knows The Isley Brothers’ 1959 “Shout,” and even though Bruce often quoted the song in concert as far back as 1974, Bruce never once played the song in full until Steve and Maureen Van Zandt’s wedding on New Years Eve 1982–and then not again for another three decades.
And that’s strange, because if ever there was a classic R&B song tailor-made for an E Street encore, it would have to be the Grammy Hall of Fame-enshrined, #118 on the Rolling Stone Greatest Songs of All Time list “Shout.”
With a call-and-response chorus, frequent tempo and volume change-ups, falsetto screams and preach-it pleas, “Shout” brings out the inner ham in whoever performs it, and (when he wants to be) there’s no one hammier on stage than Bruce Springsteen.
When it finally happened, it was almost by accident. After a hot show at Penn State University on the Wrecking Ball Tour, Bruce felt like the crowd needed just one more song before he sent them off into the night. Recalling a sign for it that he’d seen earlier in the show (but probably and correctly felt was better placed in the encore than the main set), he audibled “Shout,” conferred with the band and launched into it.
That performance was captured on video, and it’s a joy to watch. You can tell that the band hadn’t rehearsed it–their performance is all over the place and Bruce skips lines, verses and skips forward and backward throughout the song.
But who cares when the band and the audience are having this much fun?
Despite that terrifically fun encore, it appeared that “Shout” was destined to be a one-off. That is, until Bruce played it again the following summer. And again. And again. And again, until by the end of the Wrecking Ball Tour, it appeared that Bruce had a new official show closer.
When the High Hopes Tour picked up where the Wrecking Ball Tour left off, “Shout” was still a rock-solid reliable encore, as its been ever since.
Bruce has played the song so many times over the last decade, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to choose a single representative or “best” performance. In typical Springsteen fashion, the song continued to grow in length and shtick with each passing tour. By mid-way through the River Tour (the 2016 version), Bruce had even revived his old “carry me out on the stretcher” routine to draw the song out even longer.
But as far as videos go, this one from New York City early in the River Tour is one of my favorites. Although the editing isn’t always spot-on, it does a great job of capturing the feeling of spontaneity that Bruce brings every night–even though he plays the song every night.
Bruce may have been a late convert to including “Shout” in his set, but he’s sure made up for lost time–as of this writing, he’s performed it 126 times since 2013.
I’d bet on that number getting a lot higher.
Shout
First performed: December 31, 1982 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: February 25, 2017 (Auckland, New Zealand)
