Dear tramps,
Last night it happened. After 7 years, which means 2.463 days, we were witnesses of magic again. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band carried our souls through a 2h and 53 minutes show again. All I can say is THANK YOU.
If I had to pick one word to describe the night, that one would be “EMOTION”. Once we got into the arena and we saw from the top of the stairs the stage and the crowd starting to fill the floor, we could not help it and tears started falling through our cheeks. We were there. We could hear the blood shiver in our bones. Finally. The life that we had been missing was there, at the tip of our fingerprints.
Sharp at 9.00pm the band appeared on the stage. Roy joined the stage with a massive smile, and I knew we were going to experience something really special. And then, BRUCE. The crowd went crazy. He was looking happy, relaxed and you could see in his eyes that he had been missing us too. He greeted us: “Hola Barcelona, hola Catalunya”, and No Surrender made the crowd explode.
The 27 songs that followed that first one, were indescribable. The setlist was a true statement of what Bruce wanted to tell us. He took our souls and drove them to his early years and early sounds, letting the E Street Band shine displaying a magnificent performance of Kitty’s Back and E Street Shuffle. He also filled our bodies with electric energy with outstanding versions of Prove it all Night and Candy’s Room. Our spirits were lifted with the soulful Nightshift and Mary’s Place.
I feel so privileged to have been able to experience The Rising and Wrecking Ball, two songs that were very important during my childhood and teenage years and that, yesterday, 21 and 11 years after their releases had achieved a whole new dimension, resonating with who we are.
Thunder Road with the whole band was also one of the key moments of the night. Even though the acoustic version we got at the last tour was the perfect end of the shows, vibrating with the whole band and the horns section at the end was enormous. We got into the car with Mary and kept driving to memory lane.
The album “Letter To You” was integrated in a very delicate and relevant way during the show. “Ghosts” worked as an incredible show opener that got all the crowd singing back to the stage that “we are alive”. For the song “Letter to You”, Bruce opened his heart and the audience’s and created a moment of realization and companionship. He opened to us and sang us the song (while it was being simultaneously translated on the big screens to Catalan, our language). The lyrics achieved a whole new level, now that we felt that Bruce was really making us that confession, he was reading us the letter that he sent us. During that song I could feel nothing but admiration for Bruce and the Band. The legend they are making is enormous and I feel really privileged to be able to experience and live them. With “Last Man Standing” Bruce did not fear to come to us as vulnerable, sharing his darkest fears and feelings. Himself standing alone in the stage with his guitar created a unique atmosphere of togetherness. I just hope he felt surrounded, respected, and loved by us during that song.
“Backstreets” was the song I was hoping to catch during that tour, even before he started the US Tour. When Roy introduced the song with those tender piano notes followed by the raw guitar is a moment, I had not been able to experience before that made me feel the luckiest girl on earth. I will be always chasing those Backstreets. Also, the fact that he played that song right after “Last Man Standing” created something really unique. I do not know how to describe it. The two songs merged together and elevated the meaning to a whole new level.
The rest of the night was sublime. Me and my family danced, laughed, shouted, cried, and hugged. The emotions felt during a Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band show are unique and hard to describe. It’s something that connects with us in some level that most of us didn’t know we could.
Yesterday was my partner’s first show and as we left the arena, he made a confession to me that I feel reflects and sums up the feeling: “Tonight I felt I was part of something bigger. Something that goes beyond the borders of the life we know”.
The road is long and seeming without end. However, yesterday we reassert that if we open up our hearts, love won’t forsake us, and the music will take us and carry us home.
Blogging In The Street 