Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band at Wembley

“You think you can outlast the E Street Band?!”, Bruce Springsteen asks incredulously, some three hours and five minutes into the first of two massive shows at Wembley Stadium. “We’ve been doing this for 50 fuckin’ years!”, he bellows. Indeed, 2025 will mark the 50th anniversary of Born To Run and the birth of the version of the E Street Band with which most people are most familiar (they are of course missing the legendary Clarence Clemons and organist/accordion player Danny Federici but Jake Clemons and Charlie Giordano are now firmly established in the line-up and fine musicians in their own right).

This mammoth tour, which began early in 2023, has seen Bruce Springsteen a little less flexible in the way he manages his shows, with fewer requests taken from the audience and fewer changes to the set list from night to night. The initial run of the tour featured a curated set from across the band’s career but finding its themes of loss, mortality and resilience best expressed in some selections from 2020’s Letter To You album. For someone interested in improvisation and jazz, the shows had an interest not so much through improvisation in the music itself, but through the sense of throw-caution-to-the-wind spontaneity and the feeling that anything could happen. This spirit largely left the buildings in 2023.

The set has thankfully expanded and become a little less rigid since then, although some of Springsteen’s hardcore fanbase, some of whom spend a great deal of time and money travelling from show to show, may still feel aggrieved at the lack of fan favourite deep cuts to reward their efforts.

The final third of the set, aimed more at the wider audience, has remained resolutely fixed throughout. Nevertheless, any Springsteen show is likely to be an overwhelming experience, and the physicality, commitment and integrity he puts into every show is still very much in evidence.

What is interesting now is how he pairs newer songs and older songs to show ideas developing across his career, and also how he interacts with the most ardent fans in the front row (during Thursday’s show, a sign read ‘my boyfriend will propose if he gets your harmonica’ – the request was inevitably honoured). The centre of the set is occupied by a short speech detailing the beginning of The Castiles, Springsteen’s teenage first band, in 1965, and a rumination on loss and grief following the recent passing of George Theiss, leaving Springsteen the last remaining member of that group. It is followed by a solo rendition of Last Man Standing during which you could hear a pin drop in a stadium. This isn’t just there to give the hardest working band in show business a short break – it heightens the powerful combination of vulnerability and survival instinct in the song. It is always followed by the band returning to play Backstreets, one of Springsteen’s very greatest songs, and one hitherto relatively rarely performed in Europe. It’s an ambiguous song too – is it about friendship or romantic love? Is Terry female or male? Was Terry always a cipher character for George Theiss? The combination of a song about the experience of being older with one about the rush of heightened emotions in youth is masterful, however you might decide to read any subtext.

Given this theme, the shows have so far tended to be focused on Springsteen’s own life (albeit in a way that might resonate with the everyday experience of many in his audience too), without much space for his character studies, social commentary or explicitly political songs. In the context of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the US election campaign, this seems to have changed.

Thursday’s set has a core of songs, none written more recently than 2008, that Springsteen uses to speak to the current moment. Two are full band arrangements of songs from the stark Nebraska album (the story behind which is about to become a film starring Jeremy Allen White, who watched Saturday’s show from the side of the stage), one is an electrified take on a song from The Ghost of Tom Joad album, Nebraska’s mid-90s counterpart. Reason To Believe is turned into a gnarly, distorted blues that, despite having a passing resemblance to Spirit In The Sky, has a turbulent power that even a bit of audience participation can’t quash. Youngstown stares squarely at the effects of post-industrial neglect and economic injustice, and is played both nights with a raging force that belies Springsteen’s age. It is also the perfect vehicle for some daring improvisation from the great guitarist Nils Lofgren. The last of this run of songs is Long Walk Home from the Magic album – a lament for small-town decline that finds the sweet spot where Liberal and small-c conservative values intersect, written in challenge to the Bush administration, but also a perfect metaphor for what might need rigorous defending in November. It is introduced as ‘a prayer for my country’ and is again played both nights. In a new arrangement featuring both the horn section and the backing vocalists, it now has a distinctive new edge.

The set now tends to have a feeling of a carefully curated grab bag of memories of previous tours. The pairing of Hungry Heart and Spirit In The Night in Thursday’s show, during which the crowd can get fully involved, harks back to the set lists of the Wrecking Ball tour in 2012, opening both shows with Lonesome Day looks back to The Rising tour of 2003, the version of Reason To Believe and Long Walk Home are drawn from the Magic tour of 2007-8. While Thursday’s set still includes the more recent cornerstone songs of Letter To You and Ghosts (the latter also reflecting on George Theiss but in a more vibrant and weirdly uplifting way), by Saturday’s show, Springsteen has almost entirely forgotten about the newer material, instead opting for Candy’s Room and a scorching Adam Raised A Cain (replete with bonus additional guitar solo) from Darkness On The Edge of Town, and two songs he always relies on to energise the crowd (Death To My Hometown and Darlington County).

In both shows, Springsteen continues to command the stage with an authoritative presence, leading the band with exaggerated gestures and walking down amongst the crowd at key moments. But this show is also a celebration of the E Street Band, from its oldest members to its newest.

Drummer Max Weinberg (whose extraordinary physical endurance is in many ways as impressive as Springsteen’s) and new percussionist Anthony Almonte have a sparring duel during the unusually groovy E Street Shuffle. Jake Clemons is repeatedly celebrated for his channelling the spirit and strength of his uncle (and embraced by Bruce at the end of both shows) Nils Lofgren is at last given more than one song (the now hoary Because The Night and the aforementioned Youngstown) to demonstrate his dexterity and broad musical language. Steve Van Zandt is inevitably regularly cued to share the vocal mic with Springsteen in a hammed up camaraderie that still proves irresistible. The backing vocalists step into the spotlight for a cover of The Commodores’ 80s soft soul gem Night Shift (not in fact completely incongruous – the song celebrates fallen soul heroes Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson in keeping with the show’s theme, and the song featured on Springsteen’s most recent album of soul covers, an album he is otherwise perhaps wisely ignoring on this tour).

Even without any album outtakes or material from the fan feted Tracks box set, the show takes a remarkably long time to get to the point where it might reach those in the audience simply attending through curiosity. The final stretch of the show and the encore string the big songs together (The Rising, Badlands, Thunder Road, Born In The USA, Born To Run, Bobby Jean, Dancing In The Dark and a James Brown-inspired Tenth Avenue Freeze Out in which the expanded E Street Band is introduced in full). The encore is, as always, performed with the house lights up, initially disorientating, but a masterful way of bringing a 90,000 strong community together, whether you are a travelling fan or a one time only attendee.

Saturday’s show has a weekend party sense of fun, and also benefits from the presence of Springsteen’s wife Patti Scialfa, otherwise largely taking a leave of absence on this tour. She joins for a version of Tougher Than The Rest every bit as affecting as the one performed at Wembley in 2016.

Thursday’s show, more serious and sombre, may have the edge by virtue of some stunning performances of some of his very best songs. Land of Hope and Dreams always seems to elevate a show to an even higher level, while the devastating Racing In The Street carried through the air with its beautiful, lingering coda featuring Roy Bittan’s exquisite piano playing.

After the usual goofy run through of Twist and Shout, both shows end as every show but one on this tour has, with a solo acoustic performance of I’ll See You In My Dreams, a poignant opportunity for reflection, to remember absent friends, and an acceptance that in spite of Springsteen’s age-defying three hour plus shows, this inevitably must come to an end sooner rather than later. Not quite yet though. On Saturday he adds “we’re not quitting either!” To the speech preceding Last Man Standing, and ends the show with the words the superstitious among us long to hear: “We’ll be seein’ ya”.