New for 2024: Video for 2008; review for 2012; new entry for 2023
1951: The E Street Band’s greatest guitarist is born in Chicago. Happy birthday, Nils Lofgren!
1970: A scheduled Steel Mill date at the Clearwater Swim Club in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey is postponed by a day due to bad weather.
1974: Bruce and the E Street Band play two shows on their first of three consecutive nights at Le Garage on Long Beach Island.
1976: Bruce drops by The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania to catch Tone, a band that includes E Street alumni David Sancious and Boom Carter. (Photo credit: Phil Ceccola)
1984: Bruce and the E Street Band rehearse for the upcoming Born in the U.S.A. Tour at Clair Brothers Audio in Lititz, Pennsylvania. That evening, the boys (the entire band except for Danny) drop by The Village in Lancaster and play a 35-minute set. You can listen to that entire set below in amazing quality–but be forewarned: you’ll never hear the E Street Band sound eighties-er than they do here.
Wondering how that show came to happen? Watch the interview below.
1985: Bruce plays in Italy for the very first time, at the San Siro in Milan, home to many legendary Springsteen shows yet to come.
1988: The Tunnel of Love Tour stops at Villa Park in Birmingham, England, for the first of two nights. “One Step Up” makes its final tour appearance at this show.
1992: At Night Two in Milan, “Badlands” makes its tour premiere and for the very first time, the crowd sings the instrumental bridge before the final verse, establishing a worldwide “Badlands” tradition forevermore. (Of course, that starts in Milan!) “Downbound Train,” “Tougher than the Rest” and “Born to Run” make their tour debuts as well, and a soundcheck of “Club Soul City” is surreptitiously recorded.
2003: Nils celebrates his birthday on-stage with the E Street Band in Gothenburg, where the crowd serenades him with a Swedish birthday song at the end of “Mary’s Place.”
2004: Promoting her new album, 23rd Street Lullaby, Patti Scialfa plays a mini-concert on The Early Show, including the title track, “You Can’t Go Back,” and “Rose.”
2008: Bruce and the E Street Band bring the Magic Tour to Hamburg, where they play “Held Up Without a Gun” for the first time in 28 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi3j3Gl74Yw
2011: At the memorial service for the late Clarence Clemons in Palm Beach, Bruce delivers Clarence’s eulogy and performs a sad, acoustic “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” in tribute to the Big Man. Bruce and Jackson Browne close the ceremony with a duet of “You’re a Friend of Mine.”
2012: The Wrecking Ball Tour stops at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, England.
2018: Springsteen on Broadway continues its theatrical run at the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City.
2023: Bruce and the E Street Band open their show in Dusseldorf with the tour premiere of “The Ties That Bind.”
The Patti mini-concert was recorded on June 16, 2004, the day after the release. I was at the Today show event on 6/15, her signing event at Lincoln Center that night and the mini concert the next day. They waited until the next week to air II.