Bruce Springsteen battles mortality in three-hour Edinburgh show

There’s invariably a moment during Bruce Springsteen’s gargantuan shows when our hero falls to his knees, sweat dripping from the brow of his bowed head, apparently exhausted by the Herculean effort of it all. His backing musicians in the E Street Band cease their thunderous rama-lama-ding-dong and fall uncharacteristically quiet. But then a switch is flicked. Springsteen rises to his feet and lets loose a brawny roar. Never count him out.

This ritual is linked to the archetypal American themes of challenge and renewal that run through his music like better versions of presidential campaign slogans. His lengthy gigs — just over four hours is the US record, set in 2016 — are endurance tests. I mean that in the sense of epic battles and valiant protagonists who are up against it, not glancing at your watch and plotting a trip to the bar. Like Sylvester Stallone’s boxer in Rocky, Springsteen has to receive a pummelling before emerging victorious. For the blue-collar bard of New Jersey, successful concerts are hard-earned.

His current tour with the E Street Band is their first since 2017. There was a wobble before it began with controversy in the US over high ticket prices, which seemed directed at top earners, not hard earners. The first UK date, at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium, took place under a glorious blue sky, as though wrenched from the Scottish climate by Springsteen’s unquenchable optimism. Yet there was also, initially at least, the faint but drizzly suspicion that this might be a trip to the ring too far for the old stager.

He opened with a series of sleeves-rolled rumblers, all “One, two, three, four!” barked countdowns and walloped drums. “Now I’m ready to grow young again,” he hollered in the first of them, “No Surrender” from his 1984 blockbuster Born in the USA. The next track was “Ghosts”, from his most recent album with the E Street Band, 2020’s Letter to You. The similarity in musical style made the passage of time between these records seem illusory. But Springsteen is 73 now, and the E Street Band are mostly septuagenarians too. A new type of effort has entered their brand of strenuous musicianship.

The three-hour show unfolded beneath the proscenium arch, without catwalks or thrust stages. A horn section and back-up vocalists joined Springsteen and his E Street compadres. The singer grimaced at the microphone, mouth downturned, neck tendons straining like cables. But the physical exertions of old were absent. Pensionable knees weren’t tested by being toppled on to, nor were sweat glands put through the wringer. He played lots of guitar solos instead, careening affairs that squealed through songs like getaway cars. Sax parts also featured prominently from Jake Clemons, nephew of original sideman Clarence Clemons.

Springsteen’s voice seemed to blow a gasket on a hoarsely delivered “Kitty’s Back”, a rambunctious deep cut from 1973’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. But, with showman’s legerdemain, this intimation of fading powers became incorporated into the staging itself. For “Mary’s Place”, the singer adopted a stage whisper, shushing all present, before reactivating his roar amid congregationalist shouts from the audience of “Turn it up!”. Then, at the exact halfway point of the set, came an updated version of the endurance-test routine.

It began with his first remarks to the 60,000 in the stadium, reminiscing about his first band The Castiles and their now deceased leader. “Last Man Standing” followed, a muscular E Street lament in which Springsteen sang movingly about being the sole living member of that long-ago teenage outfit. Hard on its heels came “Backstreets” from his great breakthrough album, 1975’s Born to Run, which seemed to flood out from the stage like the source of an ever-flowing river. Once again, the switch was flicked.

The second half of the set was a triumphal procession. “Because the Night” triggered a mass singalong, while other highlights came from less vaunted parts of Springsteen’s discography. “Wrecking Ball”, a fiddle-accompanied stomper about hard times, went to toe-to-toe with classics such as “Born in the USA”. The E Street Band exited after “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out”, a barroom roustabout that was accompanied by screened images of fallen bandmates Clemons, who died in 2011, and keyboardist Danny Federici, who died in 2008.

Springsteen delivered the final song alone with an acoustic guitar and mouth organ. “I’ll See You in My Dreams” underlined the theme of mortality that ran through the show, the ultimate endurance test. “Death is not the end,” he cried. That might be questionable in the cold light of day, but under a clear night sky with chants of “Bruuuce!” ringing out, there could be no doubt about the victor.

★★★★☆

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