Orel Family

Over the years, an expectation has occasionally been built in the Bruce fan community that a tour finale will be a spectacle.  There is certainly precedent for that: In 2000, the Reunion Tour ended with a blowout at Madison Square Garden, including rarities and even a world debut. In 2009, the Working on a Dream tour ended in Buffalo with a once-ever performance of the entire Greetings from Asbury Park  album, and also other rarely and never-played songs. So for this final Milano show in the extreme heat, this final rescheduled show from 2024 and the last go-round for this 20-day tour's E Street Band, it could hardly be a surprise that fans arriving at San Siro thought maybe there'd be a bit of that once-in-a-lifetime experience at a building that has produced so many prior memories. This was not that  show. If you saw Monday's show, you pretty much saw this one. This isn't a bad  thing: Bruce was in great spirits, playing with audience members again and egging on t...

Sab Siro isn't like other locations where I've seen Brue Springsteen play. Here, the attitude is, "he's one of ours. " People came from around town, from around Italy, from around Europe, and from the United States as well, to take it in. Walking around Milan Monday afternoon, I spotted Springsteen shirts of all sorts. Then Bruce came on and smashed any expectations. There are a few differences in setup between San Siro and the typical US experience: For one thing, there's an extensive midway outside the stadium with food sellers, mostly selling variations of the same wretched sandwiches as if to prove that yes, you can  get bad food in Italy. Also, smoking -- at least tobacco smoking -- was permitted inside the stadium. The crowd mostly got to their seats early, and by 15 minutes to showtime, a loud singalong to the familiar "Badlands" theme was going through the stadium. The E Street Band took the stage 5 minutes before the scheduled start time o...