New for 2024: Audio for 1972; review for 1981; video for 1988; new entry for 2023
1972: The Bruce Springsteen Band plays their seventh show this month at The Back Door in Richmond. This show features the only known circulating performance of “Down to the Riverside.”
1974: Sick with the flu, Bruce somehow manages to perform at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, but he is forced to sit for the entire performance. Even though he’s sick, a photo from this evening will become the cover of Tracks 24 years later. (photo credits: Phil Ceccola)
1977: Bruce and the E Street Band play a gig at Purdue University. (photo credit: Scott Sovereen)
1981: The River Tour makes a stop at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. Meanwhile, Bruce loses the Best Rock Vocal Performance (Male) Grammy Award to Billy Joel’s Glass Houses. (Bruce was nominated for “Detroit Medley.”)
1986: Grammy-nominated “Born in the U.S.A.” loses the Record of the Year award to “We Are the World” (which at least features Bruce’s vocals).
1988: The Tunnel of Love Express Tour kicks off in Worcester, Massachusetts. Most Tunnel of Love songs receive their first concert airings, and old standards are played with new arrangements. Unheard outtakes and covers round out a tightly thematic set list and a very different Springsteen show than most fans have ever heard. The Miami Horns join the E Street Band for this tour, temporarily renamed The Horns of Love.
Listen in on the soundcheck…
..while the media covers the anticipation for and reaction to tonight’s tour opener:
1996: Bruce plays a solo acoustic show in Rotterdam.
1998: Nominated for the Best Male Rock Vocal Performance Grammy for “Thunder Road,” Bruce loses to Bob Dylan’s “Cold Irons Bound.”
2000: Four New York City police officers are acquitted of all charges in the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from West Africa who was shot at 41 times by the police even though he was unarmed. Bruce will shortly write a song about it and perform it to much controversy in New York at the end of the Reunion Tour.
2005: Bruce wins the Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for “Code of Silence.”
2008: Bruce and the E Street Band rehearse for the next leg of the Magic Tour at Convention Hall in Asbury Park.
2012: Bruce makes a surprise appearance at an Asbury Park benefit concert in memory of his personal trainer Tony Strollo, who died earlier that month; at the show he plays guitar while Tony’s brother Michael sings “Could Die Young Tonight…”
…and then he plays a cover-heavy set with Boccigalupe and the Badboys:
2016: The River Tour (2016 Edition) moves on to the First Niagara Center in Buffalo, where “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” makes its tour debut.
2017: The Summer 2017 Tour ends in Auckland with a solo performance of “Thunder Road.” It will be six years before the band plays together in concert again.
2023: The E Street Choir is short-handed tonight, with both Lisa Lowell and Curtis King down for the count with COVID-19. Still, Bruce and the band deliver a great show at the Moda Center in Portland, tour premiering “I’m on Fire.”
