Ulcer battle put career in doubt, Boss tells SiriusXM
Bruce Springsteen’s bout with peptic ulcer disease made him doubt if he would ever sing again, said the Boss March 21 on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio with Jim Rotolo.
“I had the stomach problem and one of the big problems was I couldn’t sing,” Springsteen, 74, said. “You sing with your diaphragm. You know, my diaphragm was hurting so badly that when I went to make the effort to sing it was killing me. So I literally couldn’t sing at all. That lasted for two or three months.”
The band’s September concerts after the Sept. 3 show at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford were postponed. On Sept. 27, shows for the rest of the year were also postponed.
“During the course of it before people told me ‘Oh, it’s going to go away’ and ‘You’re going to be OK.’ ” Springsteen said. “You’re thinking like, ‘Hey, am I going to sing again?’ This is one of one of the things I love to do the best, the most, and right now I can’t do it. I found some great doctors and they straightened me out, and I can’t do anything but thank them.”
Things were straightened but not before they came to a head at the Foxborough, Massachusetts, and East Rutherford shows in late August and early September. “The last four shows, I was playing really ill,” Springsteen said. “So that was Foxborough, which was a great show, and the three Meadowlands shows, which were all, really — the band playing at its best and in front of a great New Jersey audience and a great Boston audience. But I was really not well.
“I had a little medication in me that got me up there and kept me up there for the rest of the night. You know, once you’re onstage, you’re letting it go, no matter what. You’re playing as hard as you can and they ended up being great shows. But I knew, when I came off after the last Meadowlands show, that’s the last one while I’m sick.”
The Springsteen and E Street Band tour last year was marked by several postponements. Two shows at Citizens Bank Ballpark last August were postponed due to the Boss “having been taken ill,” according to Springsteen’s social media handles. Three other 2023 shows — March 9 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio; March 12 at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut; and March 14 at the MVP Arena in Albany, New York — were also postponed due to an undisclosed illness.
All the shows have been rescheduled. The 2023 tour was also marked by the illness of band members due to COVID. Steven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Jake Clemons, Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell all missed shows.
“When we first started that tour, every night somebody else was out. So I go into soundcheck and I have to find out who’s missing and then I have to rearrange the stage or all of the arrangements of the songs to cover for that person,” Springsteen said. “Eddie Manion stepped up and covered for Jake Clemens on the saxophone. I brought Anthony Almonte to the front when Steve (Van
Zandt) couldn’t make it. Nils (Lofgren) couldn’t make it another night. Susie (Tyrell) missed another night, Lisa (Lowell) — I mean it was just one after another.
“The only thing, we were blessed was Max (Weinberg) didn’t fall. Garry (Tallent) didn’t fall. Your rhythm section. And our two keyboardists were there. So as long as we had those people we could do a show.”
Springsteen is viewing the 2024 tour as a new tour and not an extension of the 2023 tour. That means more flexibility with the setlists, he said.
“I think we’re approaching it like it’s a new tour,” Springsteen said. “There will be some things from last year’s tour that will hold over some of my basic themes of mortality and life and those things I’m going to keep in the set, but I think I’m going to move around the other parts a lot more. So there’ll be a much wider song selection going on.”
The tour recently added a Sept. 15 date at the Sea Hear Now music festival on the beach in Asbury Park.
“I slept on that sand that I’ll be playing on,” Springsteen said. “I have slept on that sand. I have surfed just north of that beach, so, yeah, it’s going to be bringing it all back home.”
Springsteen and the E Street Band relaunched the tour March 19 at the Footprint Center in Phoenix. Up next is the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Friday, March 22.
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Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers entertainment and features for the USA Today Network New Jersey. Contact him at @chrisfhjordan; cjordan@app.com