Opening Night: Springsteen on Broadway, June 26, 2021

The most important thing to note about Bruce Springsteen's Opening Night in his return engagement of Springsteen on Broadway, is that there was an opening night of Springsteen on Broadway, of anything on Broadway, of live music, of entertainment. As Bruce noted in his opening remarks, it was good to see people sitting next to each other, no masks, for his show. Over the past 15 months in the spiritual diaspora, it was easy to lapse in to a mode of thinking in which such an evening seemed too far away to grasp.

The vestiges of the pandemic remain, though. Outside the theater, several dozen anti-vaccine activists protested the theater policy that only people vaccinated for COVID-19 would be allowed to enter (and yes, the theater did check, so if you're thinking of going to this show, make sure you have your evidence). Inside the theater, people crowded the souvenir and $20 drink lines, as if to prove a point that they could.

The St. James Theater was not sold out, and secondary market prices were 35% or more below face value. This wasn't especially surprising; among my Springsteen fan friends, there was very little excitement about a new run of a very expensive show they'd already mostly seen. 

Inside the theater, though, the enthusiasm of the audience was undeniable. After Bruce got the audience to sit, he started his first monologue. "If... if..." and then, as a few audience members still needed to shout things out, the first plea to "shut the fuck up." It wouldn't be the last. Later on, when an audience member hooted at the mention of San Francisco, he playfully admonished such hooting, on the basis that their towns probably sucked just as much as Freehold.

The structure of the show remained essentially the same as when I first saw it in November, 2017. We heard about Bruce's mom's green beans, his daddy's bar stool, of the cataclysmic appearance of Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show, and of the time he first smelled blood after vamping through a backyard performance with his rented guitar from Western Auto. Some of the drama was mercifully toned down, thus leaving more space for updates. For example, some self-deprecating wise-cracks about his arrest last November for DWI and reckless driving and his subsequent appearance in zoom court where the most serious charged were dismissed. It also gave him more space to talk about his mother, who is now 10  years in to Alzheimers and no longer speaks or walks but still perks up to the sounds of Glenn Miller. Though Bruce talked about his "magic trick" and "proof of life" as he did in 2017, those seemed secondary to simply continuing (or sometimes repeating) the conversation. When Bruce spoke to the sense of loss upon discovering his childhood tree was gone, and reflected on the loss of his family members, that emotion felt real and raw.

To me, the musical highlight of this show was "Fire," a duet with Patti that replaced "Brilliant Disguise" in the setlist. Bruce took the opening two lines, but after that it was Patti who was lead on the vocals. This helped by offsetting the date rape tone of the lyrics (e.g., "I'm pulling you close, you just say no; You say you don't like it, but I know you're a liar"). Patti was also playful with it, giving the song some sizzle. When Bruce and Patti went in to full duet mode, they went full Everly Brothers on the harmonies. It worked. Patti's other duet was for "Tougher than the Rest," in which Bruce left out the last verse at first but Patti stayed with him the whole way.

There were two other changes to the setlist: "American Skin (41 Shots)" replaced "Long Walk Home," and "I'll See You in My Dreams" replaced "Born to Run." I thought both changes helped improve the flow of the show's second half, though the script didn't completely catch up. "I'll See You in My Dreams" is one of the best tracks on "Letter to You," and it fits perfectly with the spiritual tone of the show. "See you in the next life, Big Man," Bruce said at one point; the incantation of "for death is not the end" to conclude the show brought the theme to a fitting conclusion.