Springsteen gives a concert for the ages at Fiserv Forum
Yes, absolutely, the prices for some Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tickets in Milwaukee were appallingly high. Resale seats for the concert, the fastest sell-out in Fiserv Forum’s 41⁄2-year history, were going on Ticketmaster for as much as 5 grand — not including nearly $1,200 in fees.
But experiencing the show itself? Honestly, it was priceless.
I’d wager that Tuesday night’s packed crowd — clearly elated under the bright arena lights for “Dancing in the Dark” — would agree. Together, we watched one of the best performers to ever grace a stage put on what felt like the show of a lifetime.
In a show clocking in at two hours and 52 minutes, Springsteen’s stamina was astonishing, with few pauses and barely any breath-catching banter between 27 career-spanning songs. By night’s end, his bronze chest was heaving and glistening in sweat.
Granted, Springsteen wasn’t as spry as he used to be, a little leap at the end of “Badlands” being the night’s most demanding physical gesture.
And for someone like Springsteen, completely expected.
Using his age, experience
He’s not Mick Jagger, defying the laws of nature skipping and strutting across a stadium stage after undergoing heart surgery. Watching Springsteen Tuesday — through his words, his weathered voice, the heaviness of his walk, the emotion on his face — you could practically feel 73 years of life’s joys and despair. His songs, some of them established classics for decades now, took on even greater depth.
Take “The Promised Land.” On the 1978 recording, Springsteen, then in his late twenties, sang lines like “Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart” with effective anguish. Tuesday night, that pain was more palpable, not through blustery vocals, but in the weariness of Springsteen’s voice as he moved solemnly across the stage, slowly flicking his right arm, like he was trying to shake off an unbearable burden.
Even songs Springsteen wrote as an older man carried more weight in Milwaukee.
During the bridge to 2012 tune “Wrecking Ball,” the cadence of Springsteen’s vocals briefly detached from the E Street Band’s backing melody, making the idea of youth and beauty turning to dust, of hopes and desires scattering to the wind, more isolating, and more tragic.
For the title track to 2020’s “Letter to You,” you could even see a tear welling up in Springsteen’s right eye as he sang with quivering voice about “all my happiness and all my pain,” his eye glistening again later during 1975’s “Backstreets,” before the music receded, save for a pensive piano.
“I’ve got that picture of the two of us,” Springsteen eyes squeezed shut, said to a departed friend, deviating from the lyrics. “Sitting on your porch on your wedding day. I don’t think you were 19. And everything else I’m going to carry right here.” From there, his voice softened, as he gently tapped his chest with the ends of his fingertips.
It was one of the few moments Springsteen spoke during the concert. Another was equally personal and poignant, a moving three-minute monologue that preceded a stirring solo acoustic performance of 2020’s “Last Man Standing.” Akin to the introspective spirit of his “Springsteen on Broadway” stories, Springsteen traced his friendship with George Theiss, from beginning “the greatest adventure of my life” as teenagers in his first rock band, to being by Theiss’ deathbed five decades later.
“That was kind of like you’re standing on the railroad tracks, looking into the white-hot lights of an oncoming train,” Springsteen said in the vast, silent room. “It brings a certain clarity of thought and purpose you may not have previously experienced. … It makes you realize how important living every moment of every day is.”
Having a blast on stage
That, ultimately, was the mission statement of Springsteen’s show. The gravity of the evening’s ruminations on mortality made the celebratory moments all the more ebullient, whether it was Springsteen resurrecting the sweet harmonica melodies of “She’s the One” or spiking “Prove It All Night” with a wicked, ragged guitar solo that made Max Weinberg pop his jaw with each reply on the drums.
By the time 1973’s “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” rolled around — part of a greatest hits-stuffed encore that included “Thunder Road,” “Born to Run” and others — Springsteen was having such a blast, he missed a vocal cue mugging for a teen’s selfie in the pit, and started barking like a dog and making noises like the Three Stooges while Steven Van Zandt pretended to choke him, before ripping open the Boss’ shirt.
An explosive, expanded E Street Band — with five horn players, including Jake Clemons on sax, plus four backing singers (but not Patti Scialfa) — personified the carpe diem spirit, and made a few covers and deep cuts unexpected highlights.
Among them was a killer, 10-minute rendition of 1973 tune “Kitty’s Back,” with Springsteen becoming the world’s most laid-back conductor, ushering in a round of sultry solos around the stage, before combing his hands through his hair and showing off his guitar chops on a battered, mustard-colored electric guitar.
As the music accelerated, and after Springsteen sang directly at a group of people under a spotlight in the very back of the arena, he asked Milwaukee, “Are you loose?” — a reference to his famed Uptown Theater concert in 1975, his first show in town (the one that was interrupted by a bomb scare).
But ultimately, you have to ask the question, will this be his last? Springsteen performed with enough vigor to make you believe he could do this for another 73 years, if he didn’t make it abundantly clear that, someday, the “glory days” will be over.
Yet during the show’s sublime swan song, 2020’s “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” also performed by Springsteen sans E Street, there was a line Springsteen made sing through the intent of his voice: “For death is not the end.”
That lyric, and the entire night, were a reminder that all of us will live on through the lives we touch. Bruce Springsteen’s music will live on through us. And the memories of this exceptional show — one of the best I’ve seen — will live on for generations.