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 of 8pm. The first huge ovation came for Little Steven, back on stage after an emergency surgery for appendicitis just a week prior. The opening combination of "No Surrender" and "My Love Will Not Let You Down" gave Stevie opportunities to share the mic with Bruce, emphasizing the "I'm BACK!!!" feel of it, and also giving the crowd more opportunities to sing out song themes, with Bruce even bringing the band down during the latter stages of "My Love Will Not Let You Down" so that the crowd could take over.

Bruce has been focused on this "Land of Hope and Dreams" tour on the situation in the USA, and has structured the setlist around those themes. For the more important public service announcements and songs, translations were provided on the video screens. By shifting the set themes away from the aging / mortality motif that had dominated the 2023-24 tour, and towards current events, Springsteen has crafted perhaps his most coherent and forceful set in more than 40 years. The choir, which to me often seemed superfluous back in 2023, was there for him when he needed them, without fluffy showcases. Same for Anhony Almonte and also for the horns,

Two songs are new to this leg of the tour: "Raimnaker" was written about a prior American political leader, but applies perfectly now and dedicated "for America's Deal Leader," with a trombone solo during the final verse, and then with Bruce adding a searing guitar solo to the ending passage. "Land of 1000 Guitars," while not among my favorites from the "Letter to You" album, was played to great effect, with tens of thousands of patrons lighting up the stands as Bruce sang.

Bruce seemed in a great mood throughout. At one point, he played with a fan's Cookie Monster puppet (who brings a Cookie Monster puppet to a show?). During "Thunder Road," he autographed one young fan's shirt... I mean, who does that? He was singing the song at the time! He also managed to hand out a harmonica to another young fan later in the same song, all while still singing. During "Dancing in the Dark," I spotted at least a dozen grown women perched on their boyfriends' shoulders toward the front of the pit, even though Bruce not longer pulls audience members up to the stage.

In all, the show lasted just about under 3 hours, with Bruce closing with an almost religious version of "Chimes of Freedom." I had the impression that possibly he was leaving a thing or two for the tour's finale on Thursday.