Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Trieste / Stadio Nereo Rocco / Italy
Concert date: June 11, 2012
Attendance: 30,500
Ticket price: €55.00 (floor) / €50.00 (stands)
Bruce Springsteen is a man who, with his charismatic personality, outgrew the status of rock star decades into his career. He’s more than that. He’s one of the greatest artists of our time, and for plenty of people around the world he’s a messiah, a role model whose footsteps everyone should follow. Thanks to his modesty and likable nature, Springsteen became the idol of the working class, so much so that many Americans genuinely believe that whenever he’s off tour, he’s washing steel horses at a car wash or sweeping soot-clogged chimneys in dusty New Jersey. Those are just fairy tales, of course. Springsteen made it, he grabs life with both hands, and no wonder he picked up the nickname »The Boss«. One of rock’s biggest icons has been filling the biggest stadiums across his native America and Europe for years, and he swings by our corner of the world often too, so in mid-June a new chance to meet a music legend face to face came up just a stone’s throw from the Slovenian border. RockLine obviously couldn’t miss it!
If most of the stadium shows just across the Slovenian border in recent years were hosted by Udine and its Stadio Friuli, this time all roads led to Trieste and the Nereo Rocco stadium. Yes, that’s the concrete bowl where Sebastjan Cimerotić scored the only goal of that legendary 2002 friendly, handing Slovenia a win over football powerhouse Italy. But let’s leave the most important unimportant thing in the world alone. We headed to the seaside city for a fresh dose of the ever-fiery Boss! Reports from Milan and Florence, where Springsteen played before arriving in Trieste, promised a three-hour-plus odyssey of a one-of-a-kind rock’n’roll journey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiN_njwM3fU
The Trieste show had been sold out for days, so when the Rockline crew arrived at the stadium, we were greeted by a breathtaking sight of well-packed stands and floor. Given that the back of the floor stayed mostly empty despite the sold-out notice, the organizers probably had strict safety limits that kept them from selling tickets up to actual capacity.
At a quarter past nine in the evening, to the sound of a canned intro, the E Street Band crew filed onto the stage, with Springsteen crawling out last and opening the show with one of the tour’s nicest surprises, Badlands (»Darkness On The Edge Of Town«, 1978). Springsteen had more than a dozen musicians behind him: on top of the standard backing players there was a small choir of backing vocalists, who kept offering Springsteen a safe haven with their vocal maneuvering and enriched an already tight sound even more. Early on, the almighty Bruce greeted the local and Croatian fans, while he sadly forgot the Slovenian ones entirely.
The Boss is on the road in support of the fresh album »Wrecking Ball«, his seventeenth studio record, which came out in March this year and continues the consistently fruitful autumn of his career. In the first stretch of the show Springsteen served up a trio of new tunes, and the crowd showed off its singing on the single We Take Care Of Our Own, proving that in the rock community it belongs to the narrow circle of its idol’s most loyal followers.
Bruce Springsteen took up his standard stage stance of exceptional charge right from the start, one that, with no lisping, fake cosmetics or other eccentric add-ons, leads the crowd with ease and turns its kinetic power to his advantage. He’s a minimalist. For a show this size, the modest stage production put all the attention on the Boss’s shoulders, and once again, riding on exceptional charm and, ultimately, emotionally charged performances of the songs, he carried the crowd off into the world of his one-of-a-kind rock’n’roll heritage. The marathon version of Spirit In The Night was spiced up with a vocally enriched performance, and then, to the crowd’s delight, Springsteen granted a musical wish from one of the signs for the first time that night and played the classic Downbound Train. The pace was outstanding. Songs followed one after another without a break, and watching the show you had to wonder whether Bruce Springsteen is really 62 already. Bursting with energy, he commanded his troops the whole time and fed them wide smiles, full of lust for life. He entertained the crowd with good-hearted antics: he collected signs with song requests, during Waitin’ on a Sunny Day he invited a little kid up on stage to sing with him, and near the end of the show he caught a pretty young woman and danced a few bars with her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4tIZrncUkQ
The pile of instrumentalists on stage breathed new life into the songs, giving them a richer look than the originals. The intense compositions tore down the bridges between rock, soul, jazz and a pinch of country, which Bruce especially likes to toss into his recognizable sonic stew in recent years. The E Street Band proved to be a rock-solid, well-oiled collective, which you’d expect from a lineup of its caliber. Violin, piano and a rich horn section kept passing the baton to each other and occasionally harmonized in duels to blend the overall sound into a hearty rock’n’roll fusion. Because The Night, which Bruce wrote for Patti Smith ages ago, took care of the night’s uniqueness, and the ticking time bomb of its chorus was soon calmed down by the confessional The River, with Roy Bittan’s magical strolls across the piano keys.
In the closing stretch, with the clock racing toward a solid three hours of playing, it was time for Springsteen’s biggest hits. With no regard for exhaustion, the sweat-soaked Boss sank his teeth into Born In The U.S.A. and, together with guest and good friend Elliott Murphy, tackled the wonderful Born To Run. When the marathon get-together, lasting almost three and a half hours, was finally wrapped up with Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, the Boss and crew got a well-earned ovation from the wrung-out stadium.
What can you say after a spectacle like this? Going to a Bruce Springsteen show should be an obligation for every music lover, because your list of things seen simply can’t be complete without it. Unlike the vast majority of stadium acts, the »big boss« adapts his repertoire to his mood of the moment, which makes every one of his shows a one-off. The legend of the New Jersey artist who conquered the world with a guitar is even more real after the show in Trieste! A touch of genuine musical magic, which most of the music crowd can only dream about, finally reached me too and convinced me that the talk about Springsteen’s incredibly memorable shows isn’t just made up. Far from it.
Setlist
1. Badlands
2. No Surrender
3. We Take Care Of Our Own
4. Wrecking Ball
5. Death to My Hometown
6. My City of Ruins
7. Spirit in the Night
8. Downbound Train
9. Jack of All Trades
10. Youngstown
11. Murder Incorporated
12. Johnny 99
13. Working on the Highway
14. Shackled and Drawn
15. Waitin’ on a Sunny Day
16. Apollo Medley
17. The River
18. Because the Night
19. The Rising
20. We Are Alive
21. Thunder Road
22. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
—encore—
23. Born in the U.S.A.
24. Born to Run
25. Bobby Jean
26. Hungry Heart
27. Seven Nights to Rock
28. Dancing in the Dark
29. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
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