Live music happens all the time. No matter what city you are in, what time of the year it is and how people are feeling, there will be someone, somewhere, with a guitar or a piano, singing their heart out. As such, there is a lot of music to see, so much so that you’re never going to see it all, but someone you should try to catch live is The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.
At a Springsteen gig, you get a lot more than just music; you get a full-blown experience. It’s rare to go to stadium gigs with tens of thousands of people there and still feel like you’re part of a community. You can usually bank on an experience like that in a small venue that feels much more intimate, but never at a stadium. That’s the magic of Springsteen.
It doesn’t just seem to be fans who get a lot from these shows, either. Thanks to his plethora of sold-out shows, hit singles, and number one albums, Bruce will have enough money to keep himself, his kids, and his kids’ kids secure for their entire lives, yet one quick Google will show you he is touring for most of 2024. No one sticks at it for this long if they don’t love it, and that love is reflected in his and the E Street Band’s performance.
Despite having a massive discography, Bruce’s affinity for live music and constant touring schedule makes him happy to occasionally throw some covers in there. Some of which he has reeled out in the past include ‘The Fever’, ‘Fire’, and ‘Hearts of Stone’. However, one of his best performances of someone else’s song has to be when he played ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison.
The clip below of Bruce covering ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ epitomises everything that makes his live shows great. Firstly, it sounds excellent. The performance was impromptu, yet it sounds like a track the group plays together frequently. Bruce’s vocals are amazing, the E Street Band keep up, and the crowd join in, bringing the whole track alive.
The other reason is the way the performance came about. The people joining Bruce on stage aren’t special guests you don’t recognise; they were some people in the crowd dressed as characters from the TV show The Honeymooners. Upon seeing them in the crowd, The Boss invited them on stage to perform ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ together. One man, who shares the mic with Bruce, has an intimate moment with the whole stadium; as Bruce’s back is turned, he points at the rock legend and shrugs his shoulders as if to say, “I know, I can’t believe it either.”
Finally, it’s the fun that everybody is having on stage. From the two women joining in with the chorus and sharing a mic with Steve Van Zandt or Bruce slapping the man’s hand as he almost runs away with the mic. It’s a stadium gig for which people will have paid a lot of money, but it plays like some friends just getting together and making music. Never has a three-minute clip captured what people love about an artist more than this.
