Joel Selvin, San Fransisco Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Bruce Springsteen apparently feels like being Bruce Springsteen again.
With his new No. 1 album, "Magic," reaching back for the sound of his glory days, his first tour in five years with that old gang of his, the E Street Band, feels less like a reconvening than a picking up where they left off.
"This is the Oakland Coliseum," said Springsteen in his first of two sold-out shows Thursday at what is now called Oracle Arena. "Isn't that what they used to call it?"
The first time Springsteen worked the room it was indeed called the Oakland Coliseum Arena and he had just released "The River," the album from his past that his new record most resembles. It is no coincidence that he followed the rousing, anthemic concert opener, "Radio Nowhere," the first track on the new album, with "The Ties That Bind," the song that opened "The River."
"The River" was more than 25 years ago, and the world is a different place. But somehow, some way, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band still stand for the same things, still shine the same beacon, still stay true to the dream. They are older, wiser men - joined now by women, Soozie Tyrell and Patti Scialfa - and they are slowed by time. Saxophonist Clarence Clemons, the Big Man, recovering from double hip replacement, ain't dancing like he once did. The Boss himself couldn't quite put that harsh wailing urgency into "Backstreets," but just the fact that he was playing the song again for the first time in years said everything.
He did nine of the 11 numbers from "Magic" in the 23-song, 130-minute concert, half the length of his epic shows in his younger days, but he looked miraculously untouched by the ravages of time, slim and coiled like a spring as he stalked the large, open stage wearing jeans, boots, vest, his sleeves rolled up, ready for business. He sported a triangular patch of beard beneath his lip and a buccaneer's earring.
The concert contained many delights to savor - the modified Bo Diddley of "She's the One," Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zandt trading guitar solos at the end of "Gypsy Biker," a duet with his wife, Scialfa, on "Town Called Heartbreak," a track from her recent solo album, "Play It As It Lays." Springsteen commended the album to the audience and said it was for sale at the merchandise table, along with "a new line of E Street Band sex toys."
The tracks from "Darkness on the Edge of Town," his 1978 follow-up to the "Born to Run" breakthrough, sounded especially sweet - a pounding "Adam Raised a Cain," the majestic "The Promised Land" and a thunderous "Badlands" that brought the set to a close before the encore.
With "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," he opened the encores with the most unSpringsteen-like song of the evening, riding on a lithe, gentle melody that wouldn't be out of place on an old Beach Boys record. The song made for a dramatic juxtaposition with the subsequent "Thunder Road," immediately followed ("1...2 ...3...4...") by "Born to Run," with the houselights snapped on full at the opening chord.
By that point, the concert had reached the kind of revival meeting furor in which Springsteen has always specialized. A euphoria descended on the crowd, liberally salted with gray hair, and all was right with the world as Springsteen finished his concert with a juiced up "Dancing in the Dark" and a hoedown number, "American Land," a Springsteen original based on a Pete Seeger song sneaked out as a bonus track on the special edition release of his last year's album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions."
Being Springsteen, before playing "Livin' in the Future," perhaps the most Springsteenesque piece from the new album, he made a few remarks about the erosion of civil rights under the current regime, political comments that were received with enthusiastic applause, and he dedicated a song in the encore to Oakland's People's Grocery, a local food justice group. It's never enough just to bring people together for a rock concert for Springsteen; he needs to give them a sense of community, if only for the time they spend together.
And he does. The Springsteen concert is convocation of shared ideals, not just another rock show. With this tour and album, he is not singing arty acoustic erotica or "Up With People"-styled folk songs. He has returned to his own artistic core values and, with the now 10-piece E Street Band, he dusts off that old wedding suit like it was only yesterday.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
SETLIST
"Radio Nowhere"
"The Ties That Bind"
"Lonesome Day"
"Gypsy Biker"
"Magic"
"Reason To Believe"
"Adam Raised a Cain"
"She's the One"
"Livin' in the Future"
"The Promised Land"
"Town Called Heartbreak"
"Backstreets"
"Your Own Worst Enemy"
"Devil's Arcade"
"The Rising"
"Last To Die"
"Long Walk Home"
"Badlands"
ENCORE
"Girls in their Summer Clothes"
"Thunder Road"
"Born to Run"
"Dancing in the Dark"
"American Land"
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