Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Simply someday after phoning into E Road Radio and promising followers a extra different setlist on this leg of the tour, Bruce Springsteen took the stage on the T-Cellular Enviornment in Las Vegas and delivered on that promise. The surprises started when he opened up the present with the 1992 deep reduce “Roll of the Cube,” which he hadn’t performed in seven years. They continued later within the set when he broke out “Hungry Coronary heart” and “Racing within the Road” for the primary time since returning to the highway in 2023.
A section of hardcore Springsteen followers that attend a number of exhibits per tour have been pissed off with the setlist all through the course of final yr because it stayed largely the identical from night time to nighttime, although it did begin to loosen up by the stadium leg on the tail finish. They’d grown accustomed to wildly unpredictable nights all through the 2010s the place Springsteen would pluck indicators from the viewers, and play nearly any tune from his catalog at a second’s discover.
However when he known as up E Road Radio earlier this week, he informed host Jim Rotolo that issues have been going to vary. “We’re approaching it prefer it’s a brand new tour,” Springsteen stated. “There can be some issues from final yr’s tour that can maintain over, a few of my primary themes of mortality and life and people issues, you realize, I’m going to maintain set…I feel I’m gonna transfer across the different components of the set much more, so there’ll be a a lot wider tune choice happening. So we’re it like, you realize, it’s a bit of little bit of the outdated tour, however we’re it like a brand new tour.”
The adjustments started opening night time in Phoenix when he eliminated 2023 tour staples “Kitty’s Again” and “The E Road Shuffle,” and added in “Spirit within the Evening,” “Darkness on the Fringe of City,” “Darlington County,” “Two Hearts,” and “Don’t Play That Tune (You Lied).” However all of these songs had been performed in some unspecified time in the future in 2023.
The Las Vegas set was extra adventurous, partially as a result of it is just the third time in his whole profession he’d performed in Sin Metropolis – following exhibits in 2000 and 2002 – and he needed to honor the event. The encore kicked off with a canopy of the Elvis Presley basic “Viva Las Vegas,” which he hadn’t performed since his final present there again in 2002.
Many exhibits on this primary leg of the 2024 tour have been initially booked final yr, however have been postponed when Springsteen got here down with a peptic ulcer. “One of many large issues was I couldn’t sing,” he informed E Road Radio. “You sing along with your diaphragm. My diaphragm was hurting so badly that after I went to take the time to sing, it was killing me. I actually couldn’t sing in any respect, and that lasted for 2 or three months, together with only a myriad of different painful issues.”
He continued, “Through the course of it, earlier than folks informed me, ‘Oh no. It’s gonna go away and also you’re gonna be okay,’ you’re pondering like, ‘Hey, am I gonna sing once more?” This is without doubt one of the issues I like to do the very best, essentially the most, and proper now I can’t do it. It took some time for the medical doctors to say, ‘Oh no. You’re gonna be okay.’ At first no person was fairly saying that, which made me nervous. On the finish of the day, I discovered some nice medical doctors they usually straightened me out.”
The tour continues March 25 on the Pechanga Enviornment in San Diego, California. “There’s a little cafe in California down San Diego method,” Springsteen stated in a goofy Instagram video alongside the E Road Band, quoting his 1973 basic “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).” “I’m Bruce Springsteen. On March 25, we plan to come back down there and search for that son of a bitch. Write it in your diary. March 25. It’s the day you’re going to lose your thoughts and we’re going to ensure of it.”
