The Mirror and the Scene

 (Bruce Springsteen, Stadium of Light, Sunderland, UK. June 20th 20012)

OK so yesterday I made love to Bruce Springsteen for 3 hours and 4 minutes. The thing is there were at least several thousand others partaking as well.

Bruce Springsteen may be the last 'great' rock star. I hate to call him a rock star. But in a setting like the Stadium of Light there really isn't any other adjective to describe the type of show he puts on nor quantify the presence of the man there up on stage and his effect on an adoring audience.

Stadium Rock has a bad name in some circles and rightly so but there have been without a doubt some great fucking bands to have played in this setting many of who essentially created the form.


You can roll out the names, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, The Rolling Stones and so on. Of course the bad name comes more from the kind of tripe doled out now on a regular basis to the unwashed unabashed cretinous masses from bands like... well do I have to name names? I'm sure you can all fill in the blanks... I'm sure their fans think they put on a great show. But I think they're all shit. And surely some think the same about Bruce. The difference is they're wrong and I am right.

There are of course bands who can reinvent what Stadium Rock means - as my friend Chris pointed out to me this afternoon - like the Flaming Lips. The Boss however is not about reinvention nor is he tripe for the cretinous masses who as far as I'm concerned don't really like music other than to do the ironing to or to numb their brains inbetween eating, sleeping and shitting.


Bruce means business and he gets right down to it without the histrionics and the light shows and the camp displays or even ironic post-stadium-rock, just raw sincere emotional energy surging through the performances and a great knack for knowing how to connect his audience, even if half of them are stood 100 metres away in the rain. He never overdid it, there wasn't a moment I felt was simperingly wet.

He is one of the last performers of his era to hold an audience of 50,000 in the palm of his hands and scatter their hearts like star dust simply by playing the harmonica intro to The River and then carry them through an emotional journey through the sadness of young love and the lack of opportunities afforded to a certain type of American Working-Class that he has been so expert at paying homage and recreating in his songs.




Highlights of yesterdays show in Sunderland were many and people can consult the setlists and make their own assumptions. Until I can listen to a bootleg or bother to consult the setlist properly myself I think the most important recollection of the gig was really the sustained energy level, the sense that he gives his all when he performs, that he is not a selfish performer, that he wants to unite his audience with the power of music and even at times in some shows he can go into that 'preacherman' thing, tonight where he did it I finally understood why and saw in this context why it was important. It had a transcendent effect on the audience most apparent during the sax solo in Tenth Avenue Freeze Out when the entire audience chanted "Clarence, Clarence, Clarence" repeatedly that I don't think there was a single person without a tear in their eyes.

Bruce can take his fans on a journey something you can share with him and something you share in the moment with all your mates and everyone around you, looking at each other saying, 'he's fucking brilliant isn't he'.. Men and women everywhere I stood want to make sweet love to Bruce Springsteen, not just because they love his music nor for his good looks and surprising agility for a rock 'n' roller of nearly 63 years, nor because the man as a whole is one of the last old-style greats from the the royal bloodline of songwriters from Woody Guthrie through Bob Dylan. He is a master songwriter and a master performer, but essentially you can tell even from 100 metres away that he's lovely fucking bloke too.


SETLIST
Encore

We Are Alive
Thunder Road
Born to Run
Hungry Heart
Seven Nights to Rock
(Moon Mullican cover)
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out