Springsteen has ‘the jones to play again’
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which hasn’t been on the road since the River Tour ended February 2017, will be coming to an arena near us in February 2023. How close that will be we don’t know, as those dates have yet to be announced.
But on Tuesday, The Boss did announce a European stadium tour that will begin April 28, 2023, in Barcelona, Spain.
The European dates will be sandwiched between the winter U.S. arena tour and then a second North American tour in August 2023.
Springsteen, who turns 73 in September, called in to his SiriusXM channel E Street Radio Monday to speak with host Jim Rotolo about his first time on stage with the band since 2017 (aside from their Saturday Night Live performance).
“It’s kind of mind boggling to be honest with you,” he said. “And, uh, I mean, it doesn’t feel that long, but, um, you know, we stayed busy over that time, but still it’s, I’m really, I’ve got the Jones to play live very badly at this point. So, I’m deeply looking forward to getting out there in front of our fans.
“I’m just aching to play, you know,” he continued, “and to actually not just play, but to travel and see our fans in all our different cities and feel that life again and see their faces again. And, we got an old school, you know, tour planned where we’ll be out there for quite a while and give everybody a chance to see us if they’d like to, gonna rehearse in January, start, as you said, in the state’s arenas in February, the beginning of February there run that through, March, April, I guess, and then in May head over to Europe and run that through the beginning of August and then come back to the states, play a few summer shows outside. We’re eventually gonna get to Australia and New Zealand and back around again. So it’s, it’s an old school E Street Band lengthy tour that we’re gonna be involved in. And everybody’s very excited about it.”
Asked whether he’s thought of set list and adding new songs, he said, “No, I, uh, I think about, I already, I already wrote out a set list, so, uh, just, just to have something to do and an idea of like, ‘oh, we could start from here and see where it’s gonna go.’ You know, you don’t know til you get out there and test them in front of the audience. And then because of the way we are, we, we, after
a short period of time, we start switching it up anyway, just to keep it interesting for us. And because we have so, such a big body of work at this time. So, it’ll have a significant amount of some recent material. And then of course we’ll be playing a lot of the music that the fans have become familiar with and love to hear. It should be a balance of good things. The show should feel contemporary and it should also make you feel at home at the same time. So that’s our goal.”
On whether he’ll play songs from the solo record “Western Stars,” he said, “I don’t know, we may, you know, I, I like to keep it a rock show basically. You know, it’s like, I always feel like once you’re out in an arena or in a stadium, you know, people have come to see a rock and roll show. That’s, you know, if I was going to do a, the interesting thing to do with Western Stars would be do what to do what I did with the film. Where take a theater or something and play it from start to bottom, you know? But you never know something may squeak in there, you know, from that record, it’s not impossible. I gotta, that one. I’m gonna have to wait and see.”
Springsteen’s last Pittsburgh show was Sept. 11, 2016, at PPG Paints Arena, where he played a 32-song marathon.
In October 2017, he launched his “Springsteen on Broadway” the Walter Kerr Theatre, which ran through June 2018.
During the pandemic, he did some DJ stints on the Sirius channel and in October 2020, he released “Letter to You,” his 20th album and first with the E Street Band since 2014’s “High Hopes.”
He returned to Broadway, to the St. James Theatre, in June 2021 through Sept. 4, 2021.