Review: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at Hope Estate Winery (22 February 2014)

One last chance for me to witness the tour de force that is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and it came in the middle of the Hunter Valley, at Hope Estate Winery, which has seemingly become the go-to performance venue for big-name acts over the years. When I got up there, I could see why. It’s a beautiful spot, with a nice sloping lawn and room for many thousands, and on a pretty warm and clear summer night, there was a clear sense of anticipation.

Something exciting was going to happen. And so it did, as soon as the E Street Band appeared. We know them all like friends now, and we wave to them when they take the stage: Max, Nils, Soozie, Garry, the Professor, Jake, Tommy and Stevie, who is without doubt a fan favourite, and a welcome addition after being MIA filming his TV show Lillehammer during the 2013 Wrecking Ball Tour.

Then came the star of the show, Bruce, who looked pretty relaxed for a Saturday night, and apparently ready to rumble, opting to take the stage without the usual waistcoat and tie. Instead, it’s a rock ‘n’ roll black t-shirt, guitar in hand, and doubtless impressed by the incredible surrounding of Hope Estate – I certainly was – and the sea of nearly eighteen thousand people (which honestly looked and sounded like a lot more than that) waiting for his arrival, and now cheering it.

Three shows in, I’d heard just about everything I wanted, with the twin notable exceptions of ‘Pay Me My Money Down’ and ‘American Land’, and Saturday night’s set list proved to be something of a greatest hits affair. At least, my interpretation of what a Springsteen greatest hits might be – wildly different, I’m sure, to the guy next to me at the gig. It was great to hear ‘Murder Incorporated’ and ‘The River’, two awesome songs that I’d never heard live before. ‘Shacked and Drawn’ is always great, but perhaps my favourite part of the main set was the double-shot from the Born in the USA album, ‘Working on the Highway’ and ‘Darlington County’.

That’s not to say that I didn’t yell out enthusiastically throughout ‘No Surrender’, which is probably my favourite Springsteen song (or at least equal with ‘Jungleland’ and the song that is apparently The Boss’s homage to Steve Van Zandt, ‘Bobby Jean’, both of which appeared early, as did a searing version of ‘Badlands’. It’s my favourite song from the Darkness on the Edge of Town album and a great live track.

For a while there, it was like a week ago in Melbourne, when Born in the USA was played in full. Perhaps a chance at the rarely-seen title track? I wasn’t going to bet against it, but the anti-American anthem didn’t get a run. That’s okay with me; as popular as th song is, there’s much better stuff in Springsteen’s catalogue. And I was still holding out for ‘American Land’ or ‘Pay Me My Money Down’.

Whilst Springsteen didn’t get around the crowd as much as he did at Allphones Arena on Wednesday night, he proved to still be a man of the people, visiting the crowd a few times throughout the nearly-three hour set. He borrowed someone’s cowboy hat – and dubbed it his “Magic Hat” – during ‘Working on the Highway’/’Darlington County’ – and uncorked one of the many hundreds of bottles of Hope Estate wine mid-song, and proceeded to give those in the vicinity an alcoholic bath they won’t soon forget. 

I won’t soon forget watching Bruce stick his face right in the camera, nor his hilarious anecdote about his elderly mother, her iPhone and the FaceTime conversations that they have every morning. For a guy who was pretty talkative, at least by his own standards, in the two previous shows, he barely said a word Saturday night until the encore. On this night, it was all about the music.

As the show crept towards it’s end, with the twin anthems ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Dancing in the Dark’ before ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’, a raucous ‘Shout’ and the full E Street Band treatment of one of my favourites, ‘Thunder Road’, I felt myself getting sad. Four shows (including two absolute belters in Melbourne) had gone by so quickly, though there are plenty of things I’m never going to forget from what was easily the best week of concerts in my life.

When you think about how old the Boss is – sixty-fucking-five, as he told us in Sydney on Wednesday night – there’s a good chance that we won’t see the E Street Band and it’s legendary front man on Australian shores again. If that’s the case, at least he went out with a giant BANG!