All The Bruce That's Fit To Print

LIMERICK, TUESDAY JULY 16

Pink and Bob Dylan have both passed through recently – the effervescent former giving decidedly more bang for buck than the cantankerous latter – but Bruce & The E Street Band’s maiden voyage to Limerick is by far and away the biggest night in the city’s rock ‘n’ roll history.
To help celebrate having a star of Springsteen’s magnitude in their midst, Judge Eugene O’Kelly has very kindly agreed to a 2am bar exemption, which along with the landscaped garden and yoga centre that’s been built for Bruce on the Thomond Park training-pitch is front-page Limerick Leader news.
The atmosphere walking up to the stadium is even more electric than it is on Munster Heineken Cup matchdays – and just as sporting with Mick Galwey, Peadar ‘The Claw’ Clohessy and the two Keiths, Earls and Woods, among those gleefully skipping towards the turnstiles.
I’m still savouring the delights of Limerick Junction when it happens – no offence, but it has to be the most godforsaken non-place in the world – but at 6.20pm Bruce saunters on unannounced for a three-song acoustic pre-show comprising Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.’s ‘Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street’ and ‘For You’ and a first solo outing for his take on Southside Johnny’s ‘Hearts Of Stone’.
Memo to self: next time, mitch off work earlier!
When he returns to the stage an hour and seven minutes later, it’s with the E Street Band in tow and the declaration that “We are here to fill you with the everlasting power of rock ‘n’ roll!”
And so it proves over the course of a set which, like in the RDS last year, is as much spiritual revival meeting as it is conventional rock gig.
‘This Little Light Of Mine’, Pete Seeger’s ‘American Land’, ‘Badlands’, ‘Death To My Hometown’ and ‘Hungry Heart’, during which Bruce downs a proffered pint from the pit in one, all make an early appearance.
“I think I earned my Irish passport!” Mr. S shouts, referring to both his drinking prowess and the giant mock passport bearing a photo of him in his hirsute Darkness On The Edge Of Town days that’s been presented to him by another front-of-stage admirer.
It’s back into Baptist preacher mode for a super soulful ‘Spirit In The Night’, which features the first junior Boss fan singalong of the night.
Bruce’s examination of the sea of signs bearing song suggestions yields a down ‘n’ dirty cover of The Temptations’ ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg’ and an emotionally-charged ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ which he prefaces by saying: “I want to send this one out as a letter back home. For justice for Trayvon Martin.” Let’s hope the message got to Florida.
It’s followed by a deliciously plaintive ‘The Promised Land’, the new album triple-whammy of ‘Wrecking Ball’, ‘We Take Care Of Our Own’ and ‘Jack Of All Trades’ and a version of ‘The River’ notable for 1) The bonkers crowd reaction and 2) The purity of its author’s age-defying falsetto.
Springsteen has taken on this tour to playing one of his classic albums in its entirety, with the nod tonight going to Born To Run, which includes the obligatory – and still moving – ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’ tribute to The Big Man who’d be proud of the storm his nephew Jake blows up during it.
His ‘70s masterpiece dispatched with due pomp and ceremony, Bruce touchingly dedicates ‘My Hometown’ to the Limerick jockey, JT McNamara, paralysed in March by a fall and makes sure there will forever be a seat for him in the Gaelic Grounds VIP box by congratulating the county’s hurlers on last weekend’s Munster Final smiting of Cork.
“We don’t know what the fuck that is, but congratulations!” Bruce wisecracks to rapturous cheers.
The sprint to the finish includes the reclaimed-from-the-Republican-right ‘Born In The USA’, ‘Glory Days’, ‘Bobby Jean’, ‘Drive All Night’, ‘Dancing In The Dark’ and a set-closing ‘Shout’, which is the cue for mass E Street Band ass-wiggling.
“That was the greatest night of my life!” bellows the owner of a seriously impressive beer belly to my right. I imagine he speaks for pretty much all of the 40,000 people jammed into Thomond who’ve witnessed another Brooooosss humdinger.

DUBLIN, SATURDAY JULY 27

Thomond Park is one of the first things talked about when we meet Steve Van Zandt for what’s become our annual pow wow in The Merrion Hotel where the E Street Band have been laying their hats during their Dublin sojourn. The rest of the gang have already departed for Kilkenny – Bruce possibly with a dull throbbing behind the temples after downing a few pints of porter last night in the Long Hall – but Steve is doing a spot of promo for his Underground Garage radio show, which airs every Saturday at 10pm on 103.2 Dublin City FM.
“That’s the hurling stadium… no, the rugby stadium where we talked about hurling,” Steve says. “You’ll have to forgive me but neither of those I’m sure fine sporting pursuits is followed much in New Jersey. Limerick was a wonderful gig both in terms of the crowd and also the weather. We deserved some sunshine after the May and June we had. There was no escape from it; it was fucking raining in Naples. If you can’t find the fucking sun in Naples you’re really fucked!”
Steven, please, language.
“Sorry, but it rained every fucking day we were in Italy!” he rues with a shake of his bandana-d head. “Somebody said after Limerick that the atmosphere around town was ‘like St. Patrick’s Day minus the fighting and urinating in public’, which I thought was a nice compliment.”
Crazy workaholic that he is, Steve has been flying to Oslo on his E-Street Band days-off to complete the post-production of Season Two of Lilyhammer, the hit Netflix series in which he plays a New York Mafioso who witness relocates to Norway.
“Yeah, I managed to film it while we were on tour. Not easy! I wasn’t able to make it to Australia, but Tom Morello very ably deputised for me.”
Was it a case of, “I hope he does well but not too well!”
“Hahaha!” Steve cackles. “No, we’re good friends and do two entirely different things. I felt guilty about missing the gigs – the E Street Band honour code is that you haul your ass on stage whatever – but Tom enjoyed himself and the shows were great.
It’s important to me at this stage that I maintain both careers.”
Bruce found time whilst in Sydney to demo some new material.
“We’ve never had a recording session during a tour in our lives,” he told Rolling Stone afterwards. “We did a couple of things that I wanted to put down. The band – Steven, Nils, all those guys – continues to be a source of inspiration for me. This has been a great, tremendously rewarding period of our time together. This has been the best ten, twelve years we’ve ever had.”
All of which suggests that the next record will be a full-blown E Street Band affair.
“I think we’ve surprised ourselves this year,” Steve reflects. “It’s one of the best tours ever. Artistically it’s been particularly satisfying in that we really did have to reinvent ourselves. I mean, you’re not going to replace Clarence Clemons. Losing Danny (Federici, Bruce keys man who died in 2008) was obviously a setback but losing Clarence up front like that threatened the future of the band. For all of us it was, ‘Now what? Do we continue? Do we call it something else?’ What we decided in the end was to try and summarise everything Bruce has been doing these past 35 years. Hang on, these past 40 years! I’ve just erased Greetings From Asbury Park, The Wild, The Innocent… and Born To Run from history. Jesus Christ, Bruce wouldn’t like that! Anyway, we worked to create a framework within which the folk stuff, the solo stuff and the E Street Band obviously could all be accommodated. It was orchestrated in a way that allows for any musical idea Bruce has to be explored in a moment’s notice.
“So we got ourselves a five-piece horn section, three singers and a percussionist who’s also a singer,” he continues. “The rock ‘n’ roll side of things is still totally credible, but we’ve the freedom and personnel to switch into James Brown soul revue mode if we want! We’ve filtered everything through the E Street Band prism and created something that I have to say feels very fresh and new for all of us.”
He’s the first to acknowledge that no mere mortal can replace his Uncle Clarence, but Jake Clemons has been an excellent fit, hasn’t he?
“The fact that he’s Clarence’s nephew is a nice bit of icing on the cake,” Steve agrees. “At the same time, the two saxes come out of the section, they play the solos, they go back to the section. It’s different and very respectful to The Big Man.”

KILKENNY, SUNDAY JULY 28

I feel woefully underdressed as I pass through the Nowlan Park gates and spy a fully made-up gentleman resplendent in a Kilkenny GAA shirt, stockings, suspenders and 5” spikes. Some wag suggests it’s Henry Shefflin reacting in extremis to yesterday’s sending-off in Thurles but the legs just aren’t toned enough to belong to the Cats’ star man.
Unusually for the E Street Band, the Wrecking Ball Weekender features a supporting cast, with Josh Ritter, Damo Dempsey and Glen Hansard on point duty yesterday and Delorentos, LAPD and Imelda May all comprehensively rising to the occasion today.
“I’ll get you warm and moist for Bruce!” promises the divine Ms. M who looks right at home on the big stage. The moisture isn’t all of Imelda’s making though with the Kilkenny skies opening up halfway through another monster 32-song set,
Highlights for the Boss connoisseur include request sign renditions of ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story’, which someone with far more spare time than me reckons he last played four years ago in Madison Square garden; ‘Man At The Top’, which hadn’t got a run out since 1985 in Washington DC and an especially fab cover of The Searchers’ ‘When You Walk In The Room’, which was a Bruce staple in the ‘70s but, again, hasn’t been played live by the E Street Band since 2009.
‘Dancing In The Dark’ is notable for Springsteen not only having his traditional boogie with an attractive young lady, but also his plucking out of the crowd of a young lad holding a “Can I play guitar with you?” placard.
Following the throwing of some seriously impressive shapes, Bruce presents the twanging tween with one of his acoustics, albeit minus a beloved a capo that he removes first.
Born To Run gets played again in its entirety; Bruce’s keening at the end of ‘The River’ sends shivers up many a Nowlan Park spine and ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ speaks not just for Amadou Diallo and Trayvon Martin, but all the people who’ve been ill served by the US justice system.
Saturday had found Springsteen reminiscing about Slane, and performing the whole of Born In The USA in honour of that legendary June 1985 night when, as he put it, “the whole of Ireland turned out to see us.
“Ireland has kind of adopted us,” he added to mass hootin’ and a hollerin’. “It’s been a very special place for us.”
It had been rumoured all day and, sure enough, Glen Hansard was summoned on stage to help Bruce sing ‘Drive All Night’, a song he’d previously performed live with Eddie Vedder and Jake Clemons. As the obligatory YouTube clip demonstrates (good, steady hand camcorder user!) Glen more than kept his side of the bargain. There’d obviously been some pre-planning with the duo trading verses and sneaking in a few lines of ‘Here Comes The Night’ as a tribute to Van Morrison.
Back to tonight, and Bruce is in reflective mood as he brings the curtain down on the European leg of the Wrecking Ball tour, which has managed to pack 130 shows into the last 18 months.
“We’ve been losing so many people…” he says, voice quivering with emotion, before launching into a parting acoustic version of ‘This Hard Land’. “This tour has really been a wonderful time. The older you get, the more it means… the older you get, the more it means.”
Dating back to the Born In The USA sessions, its “Just one kiss from you, my brother/And we’ll ride until we fall” line is another poignant reminder of absent E Street Band friends.
“We’ll be seeing you, take care of yourselves,” are The Boss’ final words to the “ticket-seeking, hotel-booking, money-juggling, plane-taking, train-riding, queue-forming, back-breaking, burger-eating, rain-enjoying, music-loving, Boss-following legendary E Street Fans!” who won’t be forgetting summer 2013 in a hurry...