This one felt like it was going to be a cursed gig. We barely managed to survive all sorts of craziness on Wednesday afternoon. It was one of those situation where it seemed that anything that could go wrong did go wrong!
Sydney received it’s first big dump of rain in a few weeks,
coming down heavily enough to cause flash flooding in some places, which
wreaked havoc on the roads. If that wasn’t enough, a train hit a person near
Croydon, right at the busiest time of the peak, on the busiest rail line in the
city. Then, to make matters even worse, there was a signal failure on the Olympic
Park Sprint line, which halted the only train service out to Allphones Arena
for long enough that fans got nervous enough about missing the opening of the
set that they braved the pouring rain and walked.
Getting into Allphones Arena and taking our seats was a
major relief. True to tour form, though the ticket said 7.30pm, Springsteen and
the E Street Band were nowhere to be seen, and there were hundreds of people
still filing into the cavernous building. Surely, someone would have told the
Boss and let him know that people were going to be coming in later than usual.
Even as the first song fired up, there were fans still struggling down from the
station, their commute completely collapsing under the weight of the Sydney
Trains issues around Croydon.
When the Boss did come on, he immediately fired up the E
Street Band – sounding as powerful as ever under the closed roof – for an off-the-hook
cover of ‘Friday On My Mind’, a classic Australian song. Everyone was on their
feet immediately, because everyone knows the chorus to that one, right? There
were times during that first song where it seemed Springsteen waited for us to
carry him along. Sure, why not? He couldn’t have chosen a more popular song
with which to start the set.
I was at the show with two people who’d never seen
Springsteen before, and only had a limited knowledge of his music – think ‘Dancing
in the Dark’, ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Born in the USA’ – and watching them as the
set rolled through a great ‘Out in the Street’, a hilarious anecdote about the
toilet in his hotel room that led into an epic ‘Something in the Night’, and
the powerful one-two punch of ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Just Like Fire Would’ was
incredible.
The way their eyes lit up, the way they cheered and screamed
through Tom Morello’s solos, when Bruce went crowd surfing, when he skolled
someone’s beer…I knew there were two more converts in the house. It says
something about a performer that people who don’t know most of the songs being
played expertly before them can still be so impressed that, after three hours,
they both told me that it was the best concert they’d ever seen.
For my part, I didn’t think it was quite as good as the full
“Born in the USA” album show on Saturday night in Melbourne, but hearing the
epic “Darkness on the Edge of Town” from start to finish was great. It’s a real
album of hope out of the grimness of the American heartland, fired up by ‘Badlands’
carried along by ‘Racing in the Street’ and anchored by the title track that
had sounded so good with Eddie Vedder on Saturday night in Melbourne.
Sadly, there was a missing member of the E Street Band
tonight. I noticed it immediately, and soon Bruce confirmed that Jake Clemons
had flown home to America because his father had passed away on Monday.
Stepping into a very difficult breach was Eddie ‘Kingfish’ Manion, who did a
solid job on all of Jake’s solos, and was given an encouraging and appreciative
round of applause each time. I don’t envy that guy his job, but he did it well.
It was great to hear ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’ at the end of
the main set. It’s a completely different sort of song to the one it followed:
the Morello/Springsteen epic ‘Ghost of Tom Joad’, being almost gospel in it’s
makeup. Springsteen really gives it his all, and there’s barely a break – the lights
are down for only a few seconds – before the four guitarists stand together
centre stage.
You hear the opening riff, and suddenly it becomes something
that you know well. At first, I thought I might’ve been hearing things, but no,
it is the INXS classic “Don’t Change”,
and although it isn’t quite like watching the late, great Michael Hutchence up
there, Springsteen knocks it out of the park, again benefiting from an
enthusiastic 18,000-strong choir. As far as Australian covers on this tour go,
I think Sydney got the best of the bunch. I wonder if the Boss caught any of
the INXS miniseries?
After ‘Born to Run’, ‘Dancing in the Dark’, ‘Tenth Avenue
Freeze Out’ and ‘Shout’, Springsteen watched the E Street Band leave the stage
before coming back with an acoustic guitar. He plucked a sign from the crowd:
it was someone’s twenty-third birthday, and that lucky person was going to get
their wish tonight. The Boss sung ‘Surprise, Surprise’, then made thousands of
other people happy by way of a brilliantly mournful ‘Dream Baby Dream’ complete
with a wailing organ track. Three hours, just like that. Disappeared in an
instant. These gigs always go by so quickly. Too quickly!
Once again, the Boss raised the bar. One more show to go,
Saturday night in the Hunter Valley and I have a feeling he’ll raise it once
more there, too.
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