Tonight, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band opened their Land of Hope & Dreams Tour. Bruce launched this run of shows with three statements about the situation in the United States, with comments preceding his songs Land of Hope and Dreams, House of a Thousand Guitars and My City of Ruins.
"Follow That Dream" and "Johnny Bye Bye"; covers of "Trapped," "This Land Is Your Land," "Jolé Blon" and "Who'll Stop The Rain"; and an encore duet by Bruce and Stevie on Van Zandt's apropos "I Don't Want To Go Home."
The summer '81 leg of The River tour found Bruce and The E Street Band in a flow state. The setlist for Brendan Byrne on July 6, 1981 weaved tracks from the album and core canon with new additions...
On this day 40 years ago, “Glory Days” brought the curtain down — a fitting farewell to the tour, the album and the peak of The E Street Band's classic era.
“The River” reframed as a song of acceptance and reconciliation, a hard-hitting cover of Edwin Starr’s “War” and a solemn acoustic “This Land Is Your Land.”
The Born in the U.S.A. tour ended at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with a grand finale, underscoring the musical and thematic range of Bruce's work in the 1980s...
Studio sessions couldn’t match the feel of the cassette versions. “This is it,” Bruce finally declared, delivering "Nebraska" exactly as he’d taped it: haunting, spare and enduring — released on this day in 1982.
Bruce's idea was to record demos for the next E Street Band album. But at home in New Jersey, singing into a 4-track cassette machine, he captured something far more complete — stark, vivid songs that didn’t call for anything beyond his voice and instrumentation.
Studio sessions couldn’t match the feel of the cassette versions. “This is it,” Bruce finally declared, delivering "Nebraska" exactly as he’d taped it: haunting, spare and enduring — released on this day in 1982.
