Hours after Bruce Springsteen brought to an end his two hundred and thirty-six show Broadway run and his “first ever day job”, Netflix’s Springsteen on Broadway gives fans who experienced the show personally a chance to relive, and those who were unable to attend an opportunity to understand the reasoning behind this being touted as one of the greatest decisions he’s ever made.

More so than any album, any live show or subsequent archive release, any autobiography or interview, Springsteen on Broadway gives fans the definitive Bruce Springsteen. With vocals perfectly raw to fit the setting, Springsteen begins with some advice, his magic trick, on what you need to perform in front of any audience, whether it be eighty or eighty-thousand. On this occasion he’s playing for nine-hundred in attendance, and the one hundred and seventy million people who may be watching this on Netflix. Setlist-wise, it’s the most excellently structured selection of songs in his career, and while many diehards were ambivalent at the thought of this man, whose live legacy is partly built on an always changing variety of songs, the sixteen songs played are quintessential in forming the person, the music, the career and life of Bruce Springsteen.

“Like any magic trick, it starts with a set-up” says Springsteen as he begins to play the opening chords of “Growin’ Up”, a song that was always guaranteed to be featured in this show, but still one (of three in particular) that I’m happy has the chance to be heard by millions. While “Growin’ Up” has always been notable for its spoken interludes, this one isn’t like the one from The Roxy in ’78 or the Meadowlands in ’84. Here we’re told about the inspiration for him wanting to play the guitar from his greatest musical inspiration, Elvis Presley, the man who changed it all and started a revolution. It gives the first glimmer of love and support Springsteen’s mother, Adele, had for him when he was young, and provides us with more advice in that as long as you can look good posing with a guitar, playing it might not be the most important thing in the world at first. There’s also some fantastic lines and comedy from Springsteen here, including what may be the best transition line into back the song, “I smelt blood“, and the classic “it was bye-bye New Jersey, I’m gonna be airborne“, which was great to hear in a show far different to the usual Springsteen concert.

Until he was airborne however, there’s the next two songs focusing on life in New Jersey. “My Hometown” is summarised by his statement that “everyone has a love-hate relationship with their hometown” and that regardless of him being “Mr Born to Run“, he still lives just ten minutes from where he grew up. It’s a reminder that we’re all parts of our communities and, as he stated one night in New Jersey in 1984, he’s responsible for what happens to that place. With a solemn piano intro Springsteen paints the picture of Freehold, New Jersey, quite simply commenting on how he and the other members of the town “shared in the shame and glory of the best and the worst of it.” It’s the first heart-wrenching performance of the show and most definitely not the last. “My Father’s House” follows and while not everyone who has listened to or seen Bruce Springsteen may know it, they’ve all experienced an example of him paying tribute to his dad. Whether that be in songs such as “Independence Day” or “Adam Raised a Cain” or in seeing playing him live wearing the “working man’s clothes” that he states here paid tribute to his greatest hero, and his greatest foe. The story and the song refer to the struggles Springsteen had with his dad, Douglas, with the emotional highpoint being the moment he tells of us of the dream he had where his dad is back from the dead sitting in the front row on the aisle while Bruce plays in front of thousands, and then he’s right beside him, telling him that the man on fire onstage, the man adored and loved by thousands because of commitment, his passion and so much more, is how he sees his father.

Taking us “off suicide watch”, Springsteen brings up the theme of the show following the song about his dad, with the he wrote for his mother. In contrast to the story of his dad that seems full of regret, there is a much more prideful tone in Springsteen’s voice in the way he speaks about Adele Springsteen and the way she worked so hard for her family. What I found really interesting was how openly Springsteen talked about her now seven-year struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and it was at this point it hit me how openly personal and raw this show is, to the point where you can not only see how visibly shaken Springsteen is, but also how fuelled he is after talking about this. There seems to be a bit of anger there that this woman who he’s just talked about how wonderful she is, is suffering from such an evil illness, but at the same time he appears calmed when he talks about how she’s always loved to dance and that even in these last seven years, that hasn’t changed.

The opening four songs focusing on youth, community and family are concluded, ironically, with “Thunder Road”, the song Springsteen has many times said is his invitation to the audience to join him and get onboard. On this occasion Springsteen comments on how the only thing he misses while getting older is the unpredictability of life and “the beauty of that blank page waiting for you to write on it.” In recent years there have been multiple acoustic versions of “Thunder Road” but this isn’t one of those times where I’d advise you to check out a particular version in favour of this one, because this show isn’t about the quality of Bruce’s vocals or the little intricacies in him playing guitar. This show is about the narrative being told through the stories and the music and it must all be heard completely, because this complete story is a beautiful ride.

“The Promised Land” is the second of those three songs I mentioned I’m happy was included in the setlist, and is actually the one I’m most pleased was included. It’s been a consistent part of Springsteen’s shows for forty years now and I believe it has as much right to be in this show as “Thunder Road” before it and “Born in the U.S.A.” afterwards. The song is essentially the start of the second half and is preceded by the longest monologue of the show. Bruce talks, with more great comedic timing, about having to finally get out of New Jersey, because living there wasn’t getting him anywhere in terms of being discovered as a musician. This monologue includes mentions of Mad Dog Vincent Lopez and Danny Federici and stories of their travels. With a reading of an extract from his 2016 autobiography, Born to Run, Springsteen concludes the monologue stating how these long travels gave him a lasting love affair with the desert. I’ve been looking forward to hearing this Broadway version of “The Promised Land” for a while now and really loved the minor change of lyrics. Instead of singing “I believe in the promised land”, Springsteen sings “I believe there is a promised land”, which ties the song into his story about finding this place as a young man in such a magic way. When the song was released on Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978 he’d found the promised land, but at this stage of his career, it was still some ways down the road. This performance also features beautiful dark red lighting to represent the sun going down in the desert and the second instance – after “Growin’ Up” – of Springsteen walking away from the microphone while singing.

There were many things about this show that I loved, but one I loved a lot was “Born in the U.S.A.”, which was sung and played like a protest song from the 50s and 60s and featured Bruce outright telling the audience that it’s a protest song with the chorus being a “shameful declaration of where the protagonist was from“. This is emphasised with the mentioning of Ron Kovic, writer of Born on the 4th of July, the Vietnam war and mighty struggles veterans have faced following it. There’s also the interpolation of names such as Walter Cichon and Bart Haynes, young musicians Bruce looked up to as an aspiring musician, who died in the war in 1969, at a point when government officials “already knew it was a lost cause.” I’ve mentioned in previous reviews of Springsteen shows how stark the solo version of this song is, and after Springsteen talks about how he avoided going to Vietnam, the brief moment of silence and step back from Bruce before playing, preceded by “but somebody did” is absolutely harrowing. In 2018 the song is still heavily misinterpreted, so hopefully its place in this show on a platform as accessible as Netflix will inform all of those who still don’t understand about what the song actually represents.

Up next was my most anticipated moment of the show, my favourite moment of the show and the first instance that made me genuinely emotional. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, the story of a band! The story of friendship between Bad Scooter and The Big Man. I had such a grin on my face watching Bruce playing the piano riff of the song while talking about daily life being “1+1=2”, but how a group of musicians coming together and moving mountains together being “1+1=3”. The moment he adds in the names of The E Street Band members is such an amazing moment, as while Springsteen on Broadway is the one-man show and Bruce Springsteen alone is a household name, I love how he makes it abundantly clear that Bruce Springsteen AND The E Street Band is the legacy. Of course, Bruce mentions that the one man from The E Street Band to grab the attention of the audience like no other was Clarence Clemons, and this begins the most emotional sequence I’ve ever experienced as a Springsteen fan, where he talks about the two of them side-by-side, how together they were the greatest of pairings, and how when Clarence passed away in 2011, it was like losing the rain. If you aren’t hit by Springsteen saying “see you on the other side, Big Man“, check your pulse.

Following “Tenth” Springsteen stays at the piano and brings out his wife, Patti Scialfa to duet with him on “Tougher Than the Rest” and “Brilliant Disguise”. “Tougher” is an expression of their love for one another with great vocal harmonies between the two whereas “Brilliant Disguise” is preceded by how “trust is a fragile thing“. Watching the latter I remembered how, when I initially saw the setlist for the show I thought “One Step Up” would work so much better given how it also focuses on trust but ends with an expression of love, whereas “Brilliant Disguise” doesn’t exactly have a happy ending. Watching these two perform together on guitar, looking into each others eyes as they sing, “Brilliant Disguise” for the first time ever seemed to me to be a song about redemption as much as it is an anthem for a lack of trust in yourself and in your partner. Now I’ve seen it I know for certain that I was wrong and Bruce Springsteen was right in this setlist-making decision – shocking, right?

As Patti walks off-stage and Bruce changes guitar, he states he’s going to add “this one to the set”. ‘This one’ was “Long Time Comin'” and to my surprise it wasn’t preceded by the Devils and Dust Tour speech about how with having kids you go from the “benevolent hand of God, the almighty, all-knowing to a tolerable idiot with the money”, but instead Bruce talked about the night before his first child was born and how his father drove a few thousand miles to see him, to tell him that “he was good to his mother and him, but he wasn’t good to Bruce”, it’s the culmination of everything you’ve ever heard about Bruce and Douglas Springsteen. I remember reading this extract in the book and also remembered hearing Bruce saying it on his BBC Radio 2 interview back in late 2016, but in reading and listening to that I never got the impression how important this was for Bruce, even with him saying “that was all I needed”. Hearing him state how that moment was “the greatest he’d ever shared with his father” and evidently being emotional whilst playing not only put the statement in a new light, but the song as well. “Long Time Comin'” for me was a song about Bruce hoping his mistakes wouldn’t be passed onto his kids, but I never until watching this performance realised this notion was created by the mistakes Douglas made raising Bruce. It’s another example of just how from the heart of Bruce Springsteen this show was.

As was expected, following this Bruce comments on current sociopolitical events to at this point of the show the loudest reaction from members of the audience. He speaks out about how in the last couple of years he’s been seeing things that he thought were long gone and that these ghosts of America’s past are being brought up by the men at the top who have no interest in uniting the country, despite how much they say that’s their goal. Having mentioned the trouble on the borders Springsteen switches out “Long Walk Home” for “The Ghost of Tom Joad”, which is just as good, if not better, to highlight the problems people are facing and the struggles the country is experiencing. “The Rising” follows with no introduction and this is the third song I’m happy was included. I’ll admit I have at times been a bit bored of “The Rising” consistently being in Springsteen’s live setlists, there is no disputing that since 2002 it is one of the most established songs of his setlist, so in a show based on the narrative of his career, this song about how people and a country react in response to hard times and to tragedies had to be played. This version is magnificent and is even greater thanks to the darkened lighting used to where we can only see one side of Springsteen’s body while he plays. As usual in shows this is a setlist closer and brings the second half to an end.

With the lights now up, Springsteen gives a speech that, if you didn’t know any better would think was a retirement speech, thanking the fans for their support and stating how he hopes he’s been a good travelling companion during the good times and the bad times (he has, just to clarify). He disregards any confusion about retirement by quoting Joe Strummer in one of the spoken highlights of the show, and harking back to what his mother’s mantra has always been. “The future is not yet written, so when times get darkest, put on your dancing shoes and get busy!” “Dancing in the Dark’s” place in this show is as pivotal as any other when taking into account MTV and the mainstream successes of 1984/85 that led him into megastardom, and also because this is the best version of the song I’ve ever heard. I really loved him pausing after “there’s a joke here somewhere” – “give me a minute, I’ll find it” – which was really unexpected and I adored the transition into “Land of Hope and Dreams” – and so did the crowd who gave him a standing ovation at this point – which is unquestionably the musical peak of the show. It’s another song that’s been pivotal in setlists during the modern era and Springsteen does with this version what he does with any other. He uses this as a call to his fans and to those watching him for the first time courtesy of Netflix that you can still jump onboard the train, because it’s still going strong.

The epilogue of the show begins with Springsteen talking about a ride he took to his old neighbourhood a few years ago, and his horror in seeing that the tree he talks about during “My Hometown”, had been cut down to the roots. It’s at this point he delivers one final emotional blow, telling us that while this tree that was there long before him was now gone, it still remains, and with that so do the spirits of all those who have passed. The likes of Doug Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Terry Magovern, are no longer with us, but their spirits are still with us in these houses, in the wind, in our minds. The death of loved ones is something everyone experiences, but it’s a lovely reminder that nobody is ever truly gone. After reciting The Lord’s Prayer, there’d be no other way for this show to be ended other than with “Born to Run”, the magnum opus of Springsteen’s career, the song that kept him signed with Columbia Records, that millions have been brought together by singing at the top of their voices, the song that has brought all fans to this very point in time.

I’d be really remiss if I didn’t mention the work put in by Thom Zimny to make this show so visually effective. The cinematography is absolutely outstanding and truly gives viewers at home the closest thing possible to watching this live in person – making this not just a watch, but a genuine experience of magic in the night. If you’ve ever been remotely interested in Bruce Springsteen I can’t recommend watching this show on Netflix enough. If you’re a Springsteen fan who has soured on him under the impression that he’s “strayed from his roots”, I think it’s worth mentioning that around halfway through I thought of the November 5th 1980 show from Tempe, AZ that’s available to watch on DVD, how that was the best ever documentation of live Springsteen, and how this was completely blowing it out of the water. After two hours and five minutes of this, there’s no question that this is the best of live Springsteen.

Rating: 10/10

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