Barcelona (Spain) (EFE).- The “boss” Bruce Springsteen has met expectations and six years after his last appointment in Spain, now 73 years old, he has once again conquered an audience that, due to his dedication and endurance During the almost three hours of the concert in Barcelona, he seemed very aware that he was living a historic night.
Two minutes before 9:00 p.m., with a punctuality almost unbecoming of rock legends, the members of the E Street Band have begun to parade across the stage of an Olympic Stadium packed to the brim with 55,000 people. .
The leader of the band was the last to appear, dressed in a black shirt with rolled up sleeves, jeans, wristbands and a guitar on his shoulder and, after his already classic greeting to the public of “hello Barcelona, hello Catalonia”, the chords of “No surrender”, the theme with which he has been opening the recitals in previous appointments in the US.
After the mythical song from the album “Born in the USA”, other classics from the jukebox of hits have followed, which are being the concerts of this latest resurrection tour after the pandemic.
“Ghosts”, “Prove It All Night”, “Out in the street”, “Candy’s room”, “Kitty’s back” o “Brilliant disguise” han continuado la noche.
Also “Letter To You”, which he did not usually play with the band and whose lyrics have been superimposed in Catalan on giant screens, a resource that he has also used in the acoustic and intimate interpretation of “Last man standing”.
Among the most acclaimed of a night in which some fans have missed “The River” and “Streets of Philadelphia”, “She’s the one”, “Wrecking Ball”, “The Rising” and “Badlands”, also, of course, of “Born in the USA”, “Dancing in the Dark” and “Born to run”, which came in the encores.
There was no shortage of “Backstreets” and “Because the night”, the latter being better known in the voice of another tireless queen, Patti Smith.
Deserved applause has been received by the boss’s band, with veterans such as his wife Patti Scialfa, among others, who has shown to be in good shape, and a new member, Jake, who replaces his uncle on saxophone, the late Clarence Clemons, and with whom Springsteen has great musical chemistry on stage.
Barack Obama con Michelle y Steven Spielberg con Kate Capshaw.
During the last few days, the concert in Barcelona has been gaining expectation, largely due to the singer’s luxury guests, former US president Barack Obama, accompanied by his wife Michelle, as well as film director Steven Spielberg and his woman, actress Kate Capshaw.
Michelle Obama has even dared in the encores to join the choirs and play the tambourine in “Glory Days” along with Capshaw and before the gaze of an enraptured Barack Obama who has barely been seen due to security measures.
Springsteen repeats a concert this Sunday at the Olympic stadium before heading to Ireland, his next stop on a tour of Europe that he has started in his beloved city of Barcelona.
“Barcelona, us estimem” (Barcelona, we love you), has started in one of the few breaks between songs by the musician who on several occasions has approached the public and has given a harmonica to a girl in the front row whom he has briefly taken the stage.
The Catalan capital was the first Spanish city that Springsteen visited in a distant but never forgotten concert at the Palau de los Deportes in 1981, he also performed at the Monumental in 1992, in an Olympic year, and it was where he opened his world tour to reunite with the E Street Band in 1999, at the Palau Sant Jordi.
He would return in 2008 and 2016 with the “Magic” and “The River Tour” tours, as many T-shirts among tonight’s audience remembered, made up mostly of veteran fans who weren’t exactly making their debut seeing their idol.
In Spain, the tickets for this 2023 tour cost between 65 and 300 euros, amounts far removed from the up to 5,000 that they cost in the US due to the new “dynamic pricing” policy of distributors such as Ticketmaster and LiveNation, which has caused criticism from fans of the “boss”, especially popular among the working class of the American industrial belt.
“This is an old fashioned ‘tour’”
Controversies aside, as Springsteen himself said at the beginning of the tour, “this is an old-fashioned ‘tour'”, with many dates on the calendar so that all fans can get closer, many songs in the repertoire and, above all, everything, a lot of rock and roll and little paraphernalia.
And so it has been. A monumental concert with the entire veteran band and a living legend still in physical, musical and vocal form.
Sprignsteen has already received the medal of cultural merit from US President Joe Biden, but the withdrawal of the American musical reference for the working class is still a long way off.
The “boss” still has many stadiums to fill, if he feels like it.