Prove It All Night: Bruce Springsteen takes The River to Philly and it’s as powerful as ever

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band | Photo by Cameron Pollack | cameronpollackphotography.com

I’ve wanted a butterscotch blonde Telecaster since I was six years old.

The Boss has been spinning in the Pollack household for as long as I can remember; the harmonica intro to “Thunder Road,” the wailing of Clarence Clemons’ saxophone interlude in “Jungleland,” dancing around my room to “Glory Days,” all were irrefutable staples of my childhood.

My introduction to Bruce Springsteen came in 2002, in a post-9/11 era that saw the genesis of his greatest album of the 21st century (so far). I grew addicted to The Rising, and opted to look backward, finding gems like Nebraska, Born To Run, and The River waiting for me. When I discovered these records, I hadn’t exactly internalized their poetry; it’s hard for a boy of single digit age to internalize anything, let alone the harsh realities of a hum-drum working life, the limitedness of our existence and the stress that comes with wanting to leave the world a better place than we found it. I had the opportunity to see Bruce live once prior, in 2009 during his final four-show residency at the Spectrum. The opportunity sadly remained just that, as I was the first of my family to fall ill with Swine Flu that fall, and by the evening of the show I was completely incapacitated, leaving my mother to attend without me.

Thus, in a way, covering this show was several kinds of justice: I finally got to see one of my favorite artists in the world perform live, I proved (mostly to myself) that no disease would stop me from seeing one of my favorite artists in the world perform live, and I got good enough at photography that I was able to photograph one of my favorite artists in the world live.

I know there’s a rule about how you’re not supposed to meet your heroes, and I asked myself several times whether that rule would apply to photographing them as well. Either way, I didn’t particularly care; last night was a victory, and no taboo was going to take that from me.

The show broke down remarkably predictably for the most part. The Boss opened up his set with “Meet Me In The City” (an outtake from the original River double album), as he always has done thus far on this tour, and then launched right into a performance of The River, his 1980 double album, seated comfortably at the inflection point of his career, between new Bruce, the stadium rocker, and old Bruce, the poet of the South Jersey masses.

Being 36 years removed from the album didn’t seem to phase any of the original members of the band; the ties that bound them together (I apologize profusely for the pun, boo if you like) also bound them to this album, and they played as if they had just dropped it this year. An immediate standout in the band was tenor saxophonist Jake Clemons, who, tasked with playing the saxophone lines that made his uncle and the E Street Band famous, delivered beautifully on tracks like “Sherry Darling” and “The Ties That Bind,” all the way through til “Jungleland” and “Born To Run” at the end of the evening.

The first half of the double album was certainly the more raucous of the two, with screamers like “Jackson Cage,” “Hungry Heart” – during which The Boss crowd surfed from one side of the Wells Fargo Center to the other – “Out In The Street,” and “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch),” giving Springsteen immense choral assistance as well as an almost absurd amount of fist-pumping.

But as has been noted about this album time and time again, for every temporally displaced frat-rock song comes a sobering reminder about the world in which so many Americans (and so many of Springsteen’s fans) live; songs like “The River” and “Point Blank,” to name a few, drag listeners, some kicking and screaming, back down to earth after innumerable screaming choruses and saxophone solos.
“I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company,
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy.
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air.”

That line is decades old, and still just as salient. The harsh realities of life, economically, romantically, whatever, weigh down on us, dampening the joy we can so often feel, the joy of people who want more than just a routine, who feel like their life means more than just work.

The latter half of the River portion of the set was filled with ample crowdpleasers as well, however, with “Ramrod,” “Cadillac Ranch,” and “I’m a Rocker” providing the crowd with plenty to dance to. My personal favorite of The River was proper love ballad “Drive All Night,” extended to over ten minutes live, discussing the consequences of lost love.

I caught myself, and noted many of the people around me thinking; how much of ourselves do we retain when we lose someone so dear to us? Love, to Bruce, seems not to necessarily be wild or profound, but it’s most certainly real; it’s real, it’s gut-wrenching, it’s violent, it’s maddening, and even after a suffered loss, it’s permanent.

The final song on The River, “Wreck On The Highway,” seems to get lost in the enormity of the record, but its message is nonetheless salient:
“There was blood and glass all over
And there was nobody there but me
As the rain tumbled down hard and cold
I seen a young man lying by the side of the road
He cried Mister, won’t you help me please
An ambulance finally came and took him to Riverside
I watched as they drove him away
And I thought of a girlfriend or a young wife
And a state trooper knocking in the middle of the night
To say your baby died in a wreck on the highway
Sometimes I sit up in the darkness
And I watch my baby as she sleeps
Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight
I just lay there awake in the middle of the night
Thinking ’bout the wreck on the highway”

The lives of the people Springsteen writes about may be humdrum, they may be predestined to be blue-collar, but the ideas everyone in Wells Fargo Center sang about last night apply to everyone: joy and sorrow work in tandem, often tangent to one another. The latter reinforces the former, and vice versa.

This is why The River aged so beautifully compared to the albums of Bruce’s contemporaries; while stylistically music has certainly transitioned, thematically it certainly hasn’t. The Boss had proven by this point, and continued to do so, that a timeless album could certainly be made. The River, in this regard, is exemplary. After the album wrapped up, Bruce and the band essentially responded to an echoing call of “shut up and play the hits!”, playing classics like “Thunder Road,” “Born To Run,”  “Atlantic City,” and “Dancing In The Dark” (in which Philly Elvis made an esteemed guest appearance).

This portion of the 3.5 hour long marathon performance was the only span in which the band showed any sort of lethargy, but I suppose that makes some sort of sense, given the absurd number of times these tunes have been played (in setlist.fm’s lifetime, Born to Run has been played 1398 times). Still, childhood me found great solace in this part of the evening, as getting to hear “Jungleland” (my favorite Springsteen song by a margin) performed live was a nearly spiritual experience. I’ve never been so exhausted after a show. My chainsmoker voice is potent and shows no signs of subsiding, and this is the first time concert photography has ever made me sore.

The most powerful effect this show had on me was mentally, and to an extent, existentially; how, after hearing these lyrics sung at me, was I going to look at my life? What, if anything, would I be willing to settle for? Bruce and 19,000 other people screamed at me “it’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win.” Is that my answer? I could go on for hours about any aspect of this show, but rather than bore you further with my words, I’ll let my photographs do the rest of the talking. I’ll leave you with this; sometimes, it’s okay to see your heroes face-to-face. At the very least, they’ll get you thinking.

Setlist:
Meet Me in the City
The Ties That Bind
Sherry Darling
Jackson Cage
Two Hearts
Independence Day
Hungry Heart
Out in the Street
Crush on You
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
I Wanna Marry You
The River
Point Blank
Cadillac Ranch
I’m a Rocker
Fade Away
Stolen Car
Ramrod
The Price You Pay
Drive All Night
Wreck on the Highway
Atlantic City
Prove It All Night
My Love Will Not Let You Down (Tour premiere)
Wrecking Ball
Human Touch
Jungleland (Tour premiere)
The Rising
Thunder Road

Encore:
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Shout (The Isley Brothers cover)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZsLKPzYBEU&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5l0d5yMiJc&feature=youtu.be