Just to keep you going, a wee review from Backstreets.com of last nights gig!! Personal highlights from us to follow! 3 and a half hours .......this is how to do it indeed
JUNE 18, GLASGOW: ARE WE MISSING ANYBODY?
Surfacing onto the stage of Glasgow's Hampden Park, beneath a warm blue sky illuminating the faces of a passionate audience, Springsteen shouted "Good evening, Glasgow!" And Glasgow, this is the important part... Bruce and the E Street Band played their first Scottish show since 2009 on what was the second anniversary of death of Big Man Clarence Clemons. Visibly passionate from the offset, the Band provided a powerful performance.
Bruce sang with such refreshing strength, almost as though Glasgow was the first show of tour. By the third song he had already thrown away the setlist for sign requests, and with the band rocking "Jole Blon" and the crowd swaying, Clarence’s fun-loving spirit was very much alive.
The show progressed through more requests, a blistering guitar duel between Stevie and Bruce during "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" and more hard rocking staples, before a surprise awaited the captivated audience (and, it seemed, the E Street Band, too). With his back to the crowd, Bruce shouted to the band, and with that, "My City of Ruins" made its return.
The song had been out of the set since Australia. Now, Bruce stood alone again in the deserted area of the stage where once Clarence and Danny played, speaking about the transformation of "My City of Ruins" from the soundtrack of his "adopted hometown" of Asbury Park, to a song which epitomizes what it means to have lost someone ("a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, a friend...") but to have them walk alongside you. Chanting "when the change was made uptown," on stage was a man who missed his best friend dearly, but who could allow that emotion to manifest itself into musical energy. Bruce then asked the question "Are we missing anybody?" again, and again, while the audience worked up their response to deafening proportions.
With the concert powering into the warm summer’s night, Curtis King put the "booty-shaking" into E Street by playing percussion through the bouncing of his "booty" up and down, which Bruce found as entertaining as the audience, shouting, "They always love to surprise me!" As more E Street promises were fulfilled, "sexual organs" were "stimulated" by "I'm on Fire," which had the crowd chanting and women panting. "Tougher Than the Rest," another request, kept the slow-burn going before they busted things wide open.
With people still seated in the stands after "Murder Incorporated" and "Johnny 99," Bruce shouted that he "hadnt done his job" yet; he declared that "within 30 seconds" people’s asses would "send a message to their brain" to get up and dancing. The riff of "Open All Night" transformed the concert into a party, something which the "man with a PhD in saxual healing" would have loved.
The main set closed with "Land of Hope and Dreams," the ultimate song about the journey from this life into the next. Jake came down to the front of the stage and played Clarence’s solo; with tears in many of our eyes we looked on, as something greater than life unfolded on stage before us. When Jake returned to the horn section he raised his sax to the sky, pounded his chest and looked upwards...the Big Man was there.
The encores began with a bang with “Born to Run" and kept the energy up with "Rosalita." "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out," a must on this night if any, was only the mid-point. After that story of the band, "Twist and Shout” had everyone from the stage, to the pit, to the stands way up high dancing and singing. As the song grew ever more climactically towards its conclusion, Bruce looked at Stevie and shouted "Steve! Steve! This crowd... this crowd... this crowd... they make me wanna... SHOUT!" The Isley Brothers' classic followed, Bruce joking that he’s "frick years old" and on the way to "having a heart attack" as the concert ended amid a dancing frenzy.
That was, until Bruce took an acoustic guitar and harmonica, returned to the empty stage and, dripping with sweat and water, played “Thunder Road” to end a near three-hour-and-thirty-minute marathon.