Bruce Springsteen live at Camden Yards review: The Boss never disappoints

About midway through Friday night’s show at Baltimore's Camden Yards, Bruce Springsteen stopped the relentless run of music that he had been providing for an hour and a half to tell one of his only stories of the night. It was about when Bruce was 15 and neighborhood friend George Theiss invited him to join his band, the Castiles. “We lasted three years. For teenagers, that’s pretty good.”  Then, after a brief pause and a sly smile, he went, “But us old men… we’ve lasted fifty f*****g years! And we ain’t done yet!”

The crowd of approximately 40,000 – some of whom were concerned that this may be their last chance to see the 74-year-old – roared the approval. Bruce proceeded to play a lovely tribute to Theiss and his old friends, “Last Man Standing,” from his 2020 album Letter to You.

This was a rescheduled show from 2023 when the rocker was forced to cancel some of the shows on his world tour due to a severe peptic ulcer. But he showed few signs of whatever toll time may be taking on Friday night. I first saw Bruce 46 years ago in Landover, Maryland on his Darkness tour in support of his fourth album. The only real change I noticed was that instead of racing around the stage and climbing atop speakers, he instead walked all over, often into the sea of adoration that awaited him beneath the stage where he ventured to press the flesh of adoring fans.

Bruce Springsteen remains a must-see live show

He also ignored the young woman with a “Courtney Cox, 2.0” sign. Unfortunately for her, the timing was off. Their encounter came early in the evening and Bruce wouldn’t sing “Dancing in the Dark” until the encore.

There was another change from that 1978 show. Back then, the E Street Band was a juggernaut. Today, it is an aircraft carrier. Most of the original lineup remains intact, minus the deceased Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. But now, it has swelled to include a second percussionist, a violin, a full horn section, and a four-member choir. Nineteen players in all who are as tight as any power trio.

Bruce has typically kicked off his shows on this tour with “Seeds,” but he deviated on Friday. The lure of opening his set with the line “Got a wife and kid in Baltimore, Jack – I went out for a ride and I never went back” was too great to pass up. He followed “Hungry Heart” with another track from 1980’s The River, a song he has not played on this tour up ‘til now – “Sherry Darling.”

From there, it was a journey through songs old, middle-aged, and young. “Lonesome Day” showed off the orchestral element of the E Street Band, featuring Soozie Tyrell’s violin and Ozzie Melendez’s trombone. “Promised Land” let Bruce play harmonica and provided the first of many showcases for Jack Clemons, nephew of E Street’s original sax player Clarence Clemons, to wail just like his uncle once did.

“Darlington County” came next – the first time Bruce ventured into the crowd (and passed the Courtney Cox sign.) It would not be the last time he would leave the stage.

A duo of devastating numbers from his most austere album, Nebraska, followed. That album was a total solo effort because he was never able to figure out a way to incorporate the band into such intimate songs. But he has figured it by now, at least on the unrelenting “Reason to Believe.” “Atlantic City” was not quite as successful given the full band treatment, but it was merely a minor dip in an evening of extraordinary highs.

Speaking of which, local boy Nils Lofgren, who grew up about thirty miles from Baltimore in the DC suburbs, cut loose on the following song “Youngstown” with an epic guitar solo. I suspect it is merely a coincidence that Nils stepped out of the shadows on this particular number, seeing as how he first rose to fame as a teenager playing with Neil Young. “Because the Night” would feature another Nils shredfest a bit later and he would contribute a formidable slide accompaniment on “The Rising” late in the show.

Almost every song showed off at least one member of the band. The dueling percussion of original drummer Max Weinberg and Anthony Amonte on “E Street Shuffle” had the crowd dancing. Roy Bittan’s big-time piano solo on “Racing in the Street” seemed to go on forever without ever dragging.

Jack Clemons, like his uncle, was a constant presence, blowing the roof off an open stadium – not an easy thing to pull off – on tracks like “Bobby Jean” and “10th Avenue Freezeout,” which featured video clips of Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici on the giant screens that surrounded the stage. Even the backup singers got their moments, with Curtis King channeling Walter Orange on a lovely cover of the Commodores’ “Nightshift.”

“She’s the One,” one of the seven songs I heard back in the 1978 show that Bruce played on Friday, was a full-scale band workout.

The night was jam-packed with highlight after highlight. There is something special about hearing 40,000 people fill the night air by shouting along to “Because the Night.” Or about the way Bruce’s voice cracks during “Backstreets,” in which he allows for his most fragile vocals, before roaring back to life for the final chorus.

Bruce let the crowd carry the vocals on the final song of his main set, “Thunder Road,” as he again walked through the crowd laying on hands like a preacher at a tent revival. With his hair greying around the temples and dressed in white shirtsleeves, black vest, and tie, it would be easy to mistake him for a rural holy man.

The lights came on full blast on the crowd for the encore, which began with “Born to Run,” and then ran through another half dozen old favorites. Bruce finally stripped off that vest before “Dancing in the Dark,” and teed up the final full-band number with some banter that only a couple of Jersey boys could do.

Talking to his righthand man, guitar player, and musical director, Stevie Van Zandt, he opined that the crowd was beginning to look a little tired, and maybe wanted to go home. The crowd reacted as you’d expect. Then Bruce laid down the challenge – “You think you can outlast the E STREET BAND?” before launching into a raucous “Twist and Shout.”

Bruce shook hands with every band member as they left the stage (wrapping Jack Clemons in a monster bear hug). Then Bruce closed out the show alone with his guitar and harmonica, singing “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” the final track from Letter to You.

It was a little over three hours since the band took the stage. It was 46 years since the first time I saw him. Time had barely dulled his edge. It had just given a whole lot of new songs to sing.

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