by Ags » Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:00 am
AUGUST 15 / FENWAY PARK / BOSTON, MA
A grand slam home run. Night one at Fenway was just batting practice compared to this stratospheric performance, and while such comparisons aren't always worth making, the difference here from one night
to the next was stark enough to demand it. Part of the shift was the audience — weirdly distracted, chatty, and "loose" on the 14th, but invested on the 15th, that respectful but dedicated Boston crowd we've come to expect over the years. After night one's cautious warm-up, Bruce clearly put a lot of thought into how he wanted night two to feel: for this show we were old friends with a long history together, having a summer celebration under open skies, complete with fireflies. To make it happen, Springsteen was a man on a mission: a mission to surprise, to connect, to bring the European leg energy back home, to galvanize the crowd and create the kind of summertime house party worthy of this storied venue.
You could feel it from the very start, as Bruce framed the scene for us: "We had a lot of fun last night... This place is like a picnic or something." Rather than following the band out, he had come out by himself to greet us, pantomiming a pitcher's windup to the strains of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and laughing with the crowd right off. The Professor was soon at the ready, too, and the pair started the show together: "Roy and I are gonna do something we used to do back in the '70s," he said, launching into the '75 piano arrangement of "Thunder Road." It was, as Bruce has called the song, an invitation. It was also a statement of intent for the show, indicating that we'd be digging deep, the wind blowing back our hair, calling up ghosts. And it immediately built up some goodwill capital, so that when they broke out the sing-along "Hungry Heart" in the second slot, even most jaded die-hards were still firmly on board.
"Let's bring out the band! Let's start with the hits — let's start with the summertime hits!" If "Hungry Heart" had anyone nervous that he meant his Top 40 hits, it soon became clear that what he had in mind was the pop-song sound of summer he hears in his head. As Jake wailed away it did sound like summer, even more so as they went into "Sherry Darling." Some back and forth with Steven — "Steve, this car just ain't big enough for her and me!" "I hear you, baby, I hear you!" — evoked that impromptu version they bashed out in the studio together in the Promise doc. At this point, on a balmy night with none of the predicted rain, things just felt perfect. As did Ed Manion's sax solo.
But the Boss Theme Time Hour hits kept coming: Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" had the horns raising a fuss and a holler, and then Bruce challenged the band yet again: "'Girls in Their Summer Clothes'! You guys remember that one? We're flying by the seat of our pants! We don't need everyone in the band to remember, we just need most of the band to remember... This is for all those fine, fine Boston girls." The sublime studio track from Magic has rarely worked well live — but after its Gothenburg tour debut and this performance, the band has a better handle on it with horns and backup singers in the mix. Hazy memories? No problem.
After that opening five-pack it was time for a little reguar show structure — but only a little: "We Take Care of Our Own" went into "Two Hearts" before "Wrecking Ball," and there was that sort of expect-the-unexpected thing all night. On "My City of Ruins" Bruce had a new story to tell, not only honoring Johnny Pesky again but also really soaking in his surroundings, and making us do the same. Springsteen has long been a fan of the older, historic venues, ones with miles on them, from Convention Hall in Asbury Park to the Sports Arena in L.A., and he was making a point of being present and aware. "What makes this place so beautiful is all the ghosts that haunt Fenway. When you're little, ghosts are something to be afraid of. But as you get older..." he said, looking around, going on to expound on a little remembrance of things past. "A night like tonight... a baseball park on a night on a night like tonight," Bruce marvelled, talking about the smell of hot dogs and beer wafting up to the stage as well as "the respite and grace that baseball and music can bring into our lives."
By the time he hollered, "Are you ready for a summer house party tonight?" we'd heard enough to know that this wasn't just a rote exhortation, that Bruce was going to work his ass off to create exactly that. He immediately began a major sign collection, grabbing plenty of rarities and goofing around along the way ("I'm disappointed in the cheapness of some of these signs, I gotta tell ya!"), and hammered home his intent: "The rest of the night's gonna be like we're playing at a picnic!"
First up — "the weirdest one first" — a sign for "Knock on Wood." Bruce didn't seem to remember that they'd played the song once before (notably, with Eddie Floyd himself in Nashville on April 29, 1976, the very night Bruce tried hopped the Graceland fence): "This has never been performed by the E Street Band... at least not that I remember!" "Boys, I hope you schooled yourself," he turned around to say, "Any self-respecting horn section ought to be able to pull this off." Which of course they'd go on to do. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to knock, right now, on wood!"
A horn-laden "Does This Bus Stop on 82nd Street" was "one for our old, old fans," and then we went "further back" for the second tour performance of "Thundercrack": "Back in the day, we opened up for a lot of unusual bands — Anne Murray, Black Oak Arkansas, Brownsville Station, Eagles, Chicago... Nobody knew who you were, so you had to have something that would catch somebody's ear right away. This was our first showstopper." Nils and Bruce faced off on that sweet instrumental stretch, the crowd digging all the changes as they must have back in '73.
And the jawdroppers continued: "We've got another unusual one. We've played this once on this tour, but it's one people ask for a lot." It was "Frankie." On paper, so many obscurities in a row might look like a recipe for... if not disaster, then at least wandering attentions, strange pacing, or bathroom breaks. But between the power of the band's performances and Bruce's mindful intensity, the crowd stayed hooked. He kept us enraptured — midway through "Frankie," he began speaking about writing the song at night on his front porch in 1978, bringing us back to summertime once again as he recalled the fireflies in the field. "Any fireflies out there? Light 'em up! Light 'em up!" Points of light appeared all over the ballpark as fans raised their cellphone torches. "Looks good!" A soaring guitar solo followed, the whole song performance just majestic.
And then the '78-style extended "Prove It All Night." By this point, it all almost feels ridiculous (can jaws drop further? can smiles get wider?) (and this point is as good as any to perhaps state the obvious and say that this was one of the very best shows I've ever seen, so what may sound like hyperbole, in my heart, isn't one bit. And so you'll forgive me for going on and on.) Just as stirring as Bruce's solo on the "Prove It" intro was Steve ripping it up on his guitar at the end. A killer, inense "Darkness on the Edge of Town" kept channeling that energy.
After mentioning the smell of hot dogs and beer a couple more times, at the beginning of "Working on the Highway" — a lighthearted break at just the right time, and a slight return to some setlist normalcy to ground the show — Bruce got his wish. He downed a hotdog and, his right hand strumming the acoustic intro the whole time, pounded a beer.
For "Waitin' on a Sunny Day," even the heavens were conspiring to make it a magical night. "It's raining," sang Bruce, just as the first drops came down. The rain kept up the rest of the night, and/but as most readers of this site must know, it's rare that such a thing ever actually dampens a show. "Maybe we'll get CCR" is a more common thought than "Should we leave?" and if you might have been tempted, "Backstreets" came out next to root you to your spot. The '78 "Sad Eyes" interlude is a fleeting moment fans have chased over the years, hoping for it but figuring it would never really happen again, the same way the '78 "Prove It" had long seemed out of reach. Well, it didn't happen here, either... but something arguably cooler did. As Bruce brought the band down and began to repeat "until the end," soon we were thinking about 1978 but we were also thinking about 2005, too, as he began to sing lyrics from Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream," that swirling, hypnotic staple of the Devils & Dust tour. "Dream, baby, dream," Bruce intoned over and over, "I just want to see you smile." And finally, to bring it all back around, "Dry your eyes, baby... I just want to see you smile."
In the encore, sure enough a solo "Who'll Stop the Rain" to start, which through some acoustic alchemy transitioned seamlessly into "Rocky Ground." Piling on to "Summertime Blues" and "Knock on Wood," two more classic covers in the encore futher marked this night as a standout, much like St. Louis 2008: "Detroit Medley" and, by sign request, "Quarter to Three." And if we didn't think Bruce could tap any more classic moments, he shouted out loud: "I'm just a prisoner of rock 'n' roll!"
As wet as the rest of us, he came out to the GA platform for another tribute to the Big Man on "Tenth Avenue." Curfew was more than blown by this point, but: "Boston!! That rain feels good! You're not gonna let a little rain bother you, are you? We've got one more for you!" It was one last Beantown special, and not a "Dirty Water" reprise from the night before or "Diddy Wah" or a dancing Peter Wolf, but the Celtic "American Land" — a potential anticlimax anywhere else besides Dublin, but perfectly fitting here with Dropkick Murphys' Ken Casey guesting to belt out the lead vocals with Bruce.
No cure for the summertime blues? Yeah, well, this little picnic at the park proved otherwise.
- Christopher Phillips reporting - photograph by A.M. Saddler
Last edited by
Ags on Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.