http://www.walesonline.co.uk
June 19, 2008
-Photographs by Harry Scott
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN has written songs beginning with every letter of the alphabet except X and Q.
This body of work, stretching from "A Good Man is Hard to Find" to "Zero And Blind Terry" is a colossal achievement which has blended poetry and polemics, heartbreaks and hallelujahs. He ranks alongside Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan as a lyricist, but eclipses each as a performer.
Tens of thousands of people crowded into the Millennium Stadium last Saturday to encounter the man and his music.
At a time when illegal downloading is draining the profits of the recording industry, concerts represent a financial bonanza. Fans will pay the price of five albums to hear the artist perform on one evening.
Springsteen has a veteran’s understanding of the economics of showbusiness, having been thundering along this road since releasing his first album in 1973. But the concert on Saturday was more than a cash-for-music transaction.
It was not so much a night of adoring fans straining to clasp hands with a musical hero (although there was plenty of that in the front rows) as the spectacle of an artist on fire with an insatiable desire to connect with his audience.
It takes a gladiatorial courage to step onto a stage before a audience greater than the population of most towns. But from the first song on, Springsteen glowed with a joy so bright it could be seen, probably, from Pluto.
We have grown used to the persona of the curmudgeonly musician who scarcely acknowledges the existence of the crowd. Dylan prefers to avoid entering some pseudo-conversation with his fans, whom he reasonably argues have come to hear the songs.
But Springsteen’s strength as a writer and a performer is that his work is rooted in time and place. In his canon heartfelt love songs sit beside earnest tales of unemployment, post-9/11 America and spiritual hunger.
For around three hours he lifted such numbers from his back catalogue, becoming more passionate, gleeful and determined as the sky grew dark. The stadium was the workshop of a sonic craftsman, furiously labouring in front of us.
In 2005, when inducting U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he described the vision with which he was born to run. He told the audience: “A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fuelled the expansion of the universe after the big bang.
“You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.
“It’s embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens...”
The late playwright Arthur Miller said he worked for the brief moments of “illumination”. And in Cardiff at the weekend something burned away the darkness in the centre of the town.
June 14 / Cardiff, UK / Millennium Stadium
Setlist:
From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Lonesome Day
The Promised Land
Blinded By the Light
Magic
Atlantic City
The River
Gypsy Biker
Darlington County
Because the Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
Mary's Place
Working on the Highway
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
* * *
Jungleland
Thunder Road
Born to Run
Rosalita
American Land
Note: In the encore Springsteen sent out "Thunder Road" to the late Tim Russert:
"I'd like to do this tonight for a long time friend of the E Street Band who passed away suddenly.
"Tim Russert was an important unreplacable voice in American journalism. I watched him hold our politicians feet to the fire on many Sunday mornings. He was always a strong voice for honesty and accountability in American government .. but beyond that he was a lovely presence, a good father, husband, and good guy. He was a regular at many E Street Band shows and I'm going to miss looking down and seeing that big smiling face in the crowd.
"We send this out all the way back to the states tonight for his son Luke, his wife Maureen, his dad Big Russ, and all the Russert family.
"Tim, God Bless You, We will miss you..."
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