Last Wednesday night, I was there. I was there when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off their latest tour.
The Co-Op Live Arena, in the shadow of Manchester City’s ground, was packed. And there hadn’t been as much shock in the air since my lot won there in 2014.
Actually, that trivialises the situation. What Bruce Springsteen did that night made global headlines. His attacks on Trump and the US government were astonishing. And if, in the review I wrote, I questioned whether music still has the power to change the world—a view I stand by, incidentally—it doesn’t alter the fact that the world’s finest live performer had clearly thought through and refined his words to such a degree that Mark Ellen said on the Word In Your Ear podcast that it was the most astonishing thing of its type in rock history.
Which brings us to this: the Land of Hope and Dreams EP. Whether they’d planned to release it before the reaction, only they know—but it features four songs from the night, along with the two main speeches Bruce gave.
Listening back to the intro of “My City of Ruins” here, it seems even more incredible than it did last week. The most vicious, calm excoriation you’ve ever heard. I couldn’t do it. Ask me to speak out about someone I wanted to vilify, and I’d lose my points in anger, swearing and bile. Springsteen never does.
It’s why he’s the best—and I’m just some geezer who spent £200 to sit in the ambulant disabled seats to the right of the stage.
The four songs themselves are exquisite, but somehow secondary. “…Dreams” is given the full-on gospel treatment, and “pray” or “prayer” is a word the man himself uses before both the brilliant “Long Walk Home” and the despair of “…Ruins.”
That he chose to end the show with Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom”—for the first time since 1988—felt significant at the time. I’ve got a version of him singing it at an Amnesty International benefit, and it was special to see it again last week.
Any time you see Springsteen is special. This one was supercharged, though, and its significance has seemingly grown in the intervening seven days.
People will look back on it in years to come. For now, though, it belongs to all of us.
REVIEW: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E ST BAND – LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS EP (2025)
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