Bruce’s Glory Days are back
Blown away by the Boss’s Belfast opener (and 10-song encore!), Danny McElhinney is in absolutely no doubt that…
Bruce Springsteen Boucher Fields, Belfast Thursday, May 9
The Boss is back and Kilkenny better be ready because Belfast was a blast. In advance of his show in Nowlan Park tonight, Bruce Springsteen took to the stage on Thursday in front of 40,000 people on a balmy evening in the northern capital. He should be well rested after his three-hour performance and hopefully the cold he confessed to having at the end of the first of his four shows on the island will have abated.
The E Street Band, including Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren, augmented by other seasoned players and backing singers numbering 16 in total, took to the
WE’RE HERE TO WAKE YOU UP, SHAKE YOU UP, TAKE YOU TO HIGHER GROUND
stage individually at just after 7.30. Wife and 40-year wingwoman Patti Scialfa isn’t playing on this tour after stomach surgery last year. Her 74-year-old New Jerseyan husband strode out to the roars of the crowd in the Boucher Fields. He looked dapper but purposeful in his white shirt, black waistcoat and grey jeans.
Raising up his battered 1950 Fender Telecaster in his right hand and taking the audience in his left he part-sang, part-shouted ‘Belf-a-a-a-s-t’ and launched into No Surrender.
‘Ha! His Sandy Row and Shankill [Road] fans will be delighted,’ an old friend from Belfast, who I’d bumped into during the earlier tedious queuing process, noted. The two words are long associated with loyalist resistance in the Union Jack-festooned areas.
No Surrender would be one of four tracks he played from the 1984 Born In The USA album released 40 years ago next month. That was the album that transformed Springsteen into a megastar. The following year he would make his Irish debut in front of 100,000 people at Slane Castle. It is still rated as one of the most memorable shows in Irish concert history.
The trees that marked the perimeter of the playing fields lent the space the feel of the wide-open spaces of Slane – minus the Boyne and a castle. We were instead enclosed by an enormous retail park and the M1 with Divis and the Black Mountain glowering down to our west.
Perennial fan-favourite Prove It All Night checked in early after the second song Lonesome Day and before Ghosts. Letter To You and Better Days felt part of an easing-in process. Leaving his guitar aside he made frequent trips to the platform that ran along the inside of the stage barrier to sign T-shirts, pose for snatched selfies and press the flesh. Fans raised hand-written posters ranging from song requests to pleas to take to the stage to perform a duet. One fan asked for a harmonica as, according to the poster he held up, it was his birthday. He looked moderately pleased, rather than overwhelmed, when the Boss plucked one from his waistcoat and handed it to him.
It was only with My City Of Ruins, over a third of the way through the set, that Bruce spoke at length to the three generations of fans assembled.
‘The E Street Band is here tonight to bring the joyous power of rock’n’roll into your life. Are we having fun yet?’ he asked.
‘Good!’ he said. ‘We’re here to wake you up, shake you up and take you to higher ground… We plan on sending you home with your back hurting, your hands hurting, your mind expanded and your sexual organs stimulated.’ He got a big laugh for that one but it was noticeable that people did take the weight off their feet in large numbers as he spoke.
A banging Backstreets, a sublime Because The Night and almost accusatory If I Was The Priest got everyone back on their feet. Wrecking Ball from the 2012 album of that name has become a live show staple and highlight ever since. That was the year before his last Belfast visit.
On that occasion he played to 25,000 in the smaller Balmoral
Showgrounds by the King’s Hall.
Thumping renditions of The Rising, Badlands and Thunder Road took us to a 10-song encore. Land Of Hope And Dreams was like the fall guy before a majestic Born To Run was unleashed. A trio of songs from the Born In The USA album waited in the wings. Bobby Jean, Glory Days and particularly Dancing In The Dark were met with dancing with abandon.
As his band departed and when darkness on the edge of Titanic Town had long descended he told us his mother-in-law was from Belfast and soothed us to the exits with the melancholic I’ll See You In My Dreams.
Night one done, Kilkenny tonight, Pairc Uí Chaoimh on Thursday and Croke Park next Sunday await. Three more glory days and nights are guaranteed.