Springsteen & the E Street Band: Milan, June 30, 2025

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...