Bruce Springsteen has talked of life and mortality as themes of the world tour that he and the E Street Band kicked off a year ago, and in the setlist Thursday, April 4 for the first of two shows at the Kia Forum there were plenty of of songs that reflected those feelings.
But at the end of the night, after 32 songs over three hours and 20 minutes, it’s the living that shined brightest through his time on stage, and the joy — of Springsteen, his band, and fans alike — that lingered after the final notes faded.
It’s been eight years since Springsteen last played Southern California. His long run on Broadway took a few years. The pandemic claimed a few more. And then, when he was scheduled to stop here in December, peptic ulcer disease forced the postponement of the Forum shows, and left Springsteen worried whether he’d ever sing again.
Any doubts about his vim and vigor vanished quickly in a show that ran a half hour longer than most on this tour, which saw Springsteen at 74 as impossibly energized as ever.
“Boom Boom” opened the show with a bang, the bluesy John Lee Hooker cover getting Springsteen and the 17 members of his band revved up for the night to come. Two songs later, the opening notes of “Prove It All Night” got a roar from the crowd for the fan favorite off “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” and from that point, the songs flowed one after another, separated only by Springsteen counting off the tempo before each new number.
The E Street Band remains one of the great bands in rock history, with guitarist Steven Van Zandt, bassist Gerry Tallent, pianist Roy Bittan, and drummer Max Weinberg going back 50 years or so with the Boss. Guitarist Nils Lofgren and singer-guitarist Patti Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife, are the new kids with only 40 years in the band.
Their tight, intuitive playing sets the base for Springsteen to go where he likes. Slow it down for “Trapped.” No problem. Pick up the pace on “Two Hearts”? Van Zandt joins Springsteen on a shared microphone, singing harmonies, their faces inches apart, as they have for half a century.
After “The Promised Land,” the second of three “Darkness” tracks in the show, Springsteen announced Scialfa was in the house, and brought her out to sing a pair of songs with him. “Tougher Than the Rest,” a slow-burning romance, saw them harmonizing closely as Springsteen shifted from a low solo on his blonde Telecaster to harmonica for the finish. “Fire” was playful, fun, and a little bit sexy, Springsteen and Scialfa clearly having a blast with the number.
Each night on tour Springsteen plucks a sign from the audience to play an unexpected request. On Thursday, that arrived on the stage in the form of a white bedsheet spray-painted with black letters so hard to read Springsteen made a joke about it. The song, “Jole Blon,” was gorgeous, a Cajun-inflected traditional number that featured Soozie Tyrell on fiddle and Charles Giordano on accordian.
While “Born To Run” provided the most songs in the show with five — we’ll be getting to those soon, be patient! — the oldest songs often prompted the biggest responses from the crowd. “Spirit in the Night,” from Springsteen’s 1973 debut, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” was the first show-stopper of the night, its jazzy R&B giving Springsteen and the band, including saxophonist Jake Clemons, a chance to stretch and vamp a little.
“My City of Ruins,” from “The Rising,” shifted from the ecstasy of “Spirit” to a slower gospel soul, with Springsteen testifying most directly on thoughts of mortality.
“I know there’s a lot of us out there that are missing somebody special,” he said during a mid-song break to address the crowd. “Now I don’t know where we go when all of this is over. I just know what remains. And the only thing we can guarantee tonight is that if you’re here, and we’re here, then those that we are missing are here with us tonight.”
Two songs later, he finished the somber midpart of the show with a mostly solo acoustic guitar performance of “Last Man Standing,” a song inspired by the death of the last member of his first teenage band. “Death brings a certain clarity of mind,” Springsteen said by way of introduction. “And grieving is the price we pay for love.”
At that point, barely halfway through the show, things shifted toward the light and the living. “Backstreets,” one of three songs from “Born in the USA,” still has a melancholy feel, but its protagonist lives with his memories of young love and the places they used to travel, with Bittan’s piano part the secret sauce to its beauty.
“Because The Night,” which Springsteen gave to Patti Smith to record in the late ’70s, was reclaimed as a hard rocker that wrapped up with glorious guitar solo from Lofgren. “She’s The One” walloped its Bo Diddley beat in a primal rock ‘n’ roll rhythm.
The main set climaxed with “Badlands,” a Springsteen classic from the ’70s about a restless young man with dreams bigger than his life, and “Thunder Road,” one of his greatest numbers, which opened with the crowd singing loudly on the slow first verse before Springsteen and the band launched it to a huge finish.
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At this point we’ve reached the encore, which Springsteen fans know means another 50 minutes of music, with one hit dropped after another.
After “Land of Hope and Dreams” opened it up, “Born To Run,” symphonic rock ‘n’roll hymn, exploded from the stage, the arena lights up now for fans to sing along. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” another early favorite, remains a joyful song of desire, and a chance for Springsteen and the band to take flight into extended versions. Here it wrapped up with Springsteen, Van Zandt, Lofgren, Tyrell and Clemons dancing and goofing at the end of a short ramp into the pit.
“Dancing In The Dark” is one of the sweetest simple pop songs that Springsteen’s ever written. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” saw him circle the pit, singing from a ramp at its edge to the fans in the floor seats. And “Twist and Shout” was a rock and roll party.
The 17 musicians walked off the stage then, with Springsteen giving them a pat on the back or handshake, telling them “good job” as if they were punching out at the end of a shift at the factory. He is the Boss, and he’s a good boss, too.
Then, one last encore, solo on stage with his acoustic guitar, singing “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” Or maybe on Sunday night, when he returns to the Kia Forum, as full of life as ever he was.
