Bruce Springsteen at Wembley review: ★★★★
How on earth is he 74? Bruce Springsteen looks and acts 30 years younger, though anecdotes about the sixties and lamenting late saxophonist Clarence Clemons who died of cancer in 2011 gave away his secret: “As you get older death brings a certain clarity,” he said in one of few breaks from the back-to-back bangers last night.
Rather than chat, his focus is on crafting endless walls of euphoric sound. His three-and-a-half hour set never not thoroughly gripping. Springsteen veers between the hits and tracks you’ve never heard of, and from softer rock to jazz and blues, his E Street Band – some of whom have been with The Boss since the 1970s – each getting moments to perform extended solos on keys, baritone sax, vocals and more.
Springsteen‘s belt is still strong and his delivery is emotional; he often closes his eyes for 30 seconds at a time to take in the sound of the band. He’ll turn to them with his back to the audience to gee them up. Wearing a tie tucked into his shirt, he looks every bit the naughty school boy, his strut and confidence giving a similarly cocksure energy. It could make anyone feel young, but plenty didn’t need his time machine: The Boss was high-fiving teenagers on shoulders at the front of the crowd who demonstrated the diversity in age that was threaded through every tier of Wembley. His contemporaneity clearly shines still for the Gen Z crowd.
Coming on to So Young and in Love, the first time he’s played the track since 2013, he belted through a 22-song first act including Because the Night, The River, Badlands, Hungry Heart and Last Man Standing before a barnstorming half-hour encore giving Born to Run, Twist and Shout, Born in the U.S.A and finishing solo, with just his guitar for See You in my Dreams, evacuating the stage of his dozens of musicians for a moment alone.
It all works: Springsteen is big and small, intimate and Herculean. After the seismic hits, it’s quite something to essentially end on a lullaby. May there be plenty more to come.
Bruce Springsteen plays one more night at Wembley on the 27 July. Adam was a guest of Club Wembley‘s Gold Package