He achieves this by making the local universal. They know the plays, they know the moves and, of course, they know the songs, but he renders them anew in each performance. The audience is a key player in the ritual-filled drama that unfolds each night. The audience sang, clapped and generally embraced the night.Īnd Springsteen responded in kind. He and his trusty comrades in the E Street Band will play to 1.6 million people during the 31-concert European leg, but I can’t imagine any other city will deliver greater fevered fidelity to their hero nor such unbridled acclaim. But there was an atmosphere of such heady anticipation among the lucky 18,500 souls crammed into the venue – the first of three sold-out shows in Dublin – that the air tingled with possibility. Unlike the opening shows of his European tour in Barcelona last week, there were no celebrity backing singers, nor former US presidents watching from the wings. The contemplative tone of songs such as Last Man Standing, Letter to You and the moving I’ll See You In My Dreams, which closed the show, contrasted with the lively reworking of songs from the past 50 years of his career, notably material drawn from early albums such as The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born in the USA, which formed the spine of the set.Įver-impressive: Bruce Springsteen at the RDS on Friday evening. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band RDS Main Arena, Dublin ★★★★☆īruce Springsteen and his ever-impressive E Street Band, including brass and backing vocals, returned to Dublin’s RDS Main Arena on Friday night for a three-hour show filled with energy, humour and invention but also tinged with a sense of poignancy as he recalled the friends he has lost along the way.

Springsteen born to run