Springsteen in Hartford

Notes on opening night of Bruce Springsteen's MAGIC TOUR with the E Street Band Hartford Civic Center, Connecticut October 2, 2007

(Listen today, Thursday 10/4, for the WBUR story, podcast archived this afternoon.)

LEAD: Bruce Springsteen, a spry 58 years young, proved once again that rock'n'roll is not just for kids Tuesday night in launching his latest world tour at the Hartford Civic Center. His new album is called MAGIC, and there was plenty of that as a crowd of 10,000 roared BROOOOCE and sang along with every song, including some released just a few hours earlier.

For his first tour with the E Street Band since 2003's The Rising, Springsteen led his longtime crew of nine backup musicians through a set that mixed topical commentary with his older hits ("Promised Land" and "Born to Run") for a set that argued for his catalog's continuing relevance in the digital downloading era.

KEY THEMES:

Rock'n'roll is not just for and about teenagers anymore... Springsteen digs into his older material as though there's still a lot left to discover there, and he makes youghtful rebellion like "Badlands" and "She's the One" mean completely different things when sung by a greying married father of three...

Springsteen's bond with his audience is matched only by his bond with his muse: he keeps working on his songwriting so his material is both relevant and sturdier than his earlier, more earnest pieces. A lot of the songs on this new album are rousingly melancholic, he described this era as an "Orwellian moment" in political history, and yet he still turns in a show that is achingly jubiliant. "Last to Die" is built around John Kerry's famous anti-war congressional sound-bite that got inverted by the Swift Boat ads. Another song from MAGIC, "Long Walk Home," talks about the flag down at the courthouse that declares "some things are set in stone..." and yet the song is clearly about disillusionment with America's neo-imperialist adventures... how does Springsteen pull off such bitterness without turning sour? By skirting sentimentality, nostalgia and cant, and grinning down self-seriousness at every turn.

Among the varied ways rock stars have answered the challenge of getting older with the style without turning into self-parodies, Springsteen's is among the more persuasive. He's still got the most energy in the room, pushes his hard rock songs without thinning them out, and has a hard time leaving the stage -- he pushes on, encore after encore, after everybody else is drenched with excitement. Compared to the Rolling Stones (in denial about aging) or Dylan (mordantly embracing death), Springsteen comes across as perfectly comfortable approaching his seventh decade of life and rocking just as hard as you please. He's not embarrassed in the slightest by some of his goofier lyrics and dresses up familiar songs in new arrangements to startling effect...

It's not a comeback because he's always been so productive, but this tour presents Springsteen at his finest, with musicians who inhabit the songs with ambition and intimacy, and a legacy that keeps on rewarding repeated listenings.

Ho-hum, another knockout grand-slam expectation-bursting night from Bruce Springsteen....

COMPLETE SET LIST: Radio Nowhere/The Ties That Bind/Lonesome Day/Gypsy Biker/Magic/Reason to Believe/Night/She's the One/Livin' in the Future/The Promised Land/Town Called Heartbreak/Darkness on the Edge of Town/Darlington County/Devil's Arcade/The Rising/Last to Die/Long Walk Home/Badlands

Encores: Girls in Their Summer Clothes/Thundercrack/Born to Run/Waitin' on a Sunny Day/American Land (via Backstreets)