Bruce Springsteen/The Point: He came to town with a very serious reputation and left with it enhanced. And by some distance, writes Joe Breen.
Based on the advance reports of this tour, notably his apparently memorable performance at the New Orleans jazzfest last month, Bruce Springsteen had a lot to live up to but I wager nobody among the packed audience left that hall on Friday night feeling short-changed after an awesome and exhilarating performance.
This tour follows the release of We Shall Overcome - the Seeger Sessions, an album of folk covers inspired by, and associated with, the veteran American folk giant Pete Seeger. On the face of it this might seem a very odd departure for the 56-year-old American rock icon. But folk music is about people and their experience, and this has been consistently the prime concern of Springsteen's music as well.
This is apparent on the "folky" albums such as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, but draw back the rock 'n' roll curtain of electric guitars, drums and sax from his most famous material and you are left with songs about people, their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their sadnesses.
And though rich beyond imagination, he has been, like the subject of his tribute, an activist in causes that could generally be described as community-based, environmental, even, God-forbid, left-wing. So his decision to record a tribute album to one of the greatest living left-wing Americans should be no great surprise.
But what he has managed to do with this motley collection of tired and tattered old songs must even surprise him. Certainly watching the 20-plus people onstage with him on Friday night there was still a visible frisson among them as solos and vocals were stretched and new highs reached in what was a remarkably fluent performance. These humble echoes of a distant past are renewed, Pogues-like, in a cauldron of sound enriched by many shades of American "folk" music from honky tonk piano to New Orleans brass, from Gospel choirs to Cajun accordion, from Irish ballads to Appalachian fiddles and banjo.
Yet the integrity of these songs remains, their purpose undiluted. This is not a rock 'n' roll show though certainly it rocks with a vengeance.
Underlying this multi-layered approach is a rare passion. When he sings the 1815 Irish anti-war song Mrs McGrath there is no doubt that its timeless anger is directed at those who prosecute war today, and when he calls on people to "rise up" in a haunting City of Ruins, his song about New York post 9/11, the lyrics become more a call to arms than a lament.
He and this large ensemble, including wife Patti Scialfa on vocals and guitar, dwelt on the new album, playing only four of his own songs in the two-hour plus set: City of Ruins, Johnny 99, a dramatically reworked Adam Raised A Cain in a bluegrass vein which lost none of its edge, and a barnstorming You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) during the outstanding encore.
The Gospel material such as O Mary Don't You Weep, Jacob's Ladder and Eyes on the Prize, performed with a palpable sense of spiritual intensity, contrasted with the blue-collar brashness of John Henry, Pay Me My Money Down, Erie Canal, Jesse James and My Oklahoma Home or the playfulness of Old Dan Tucker which opened the show as it does the album.
Yet it was left to two very worn songs and a forgotten classic to strike the deepest note: We Shall Overcome was moving and passionate, as was a dark and sombre When the Saints Go Marching In, while his newly-written lines for How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live, reflecting the anger at what has happened, or not happened, since Katrina hit New Orleans, underlined the discreet political nature of the performance.
But, as ever with Springsteen, this show was also about entertainment. Even with 20 or so other excellent musicians on stage on Friday, Springsteen's presence was huge. And when at the close the applause echoed across the hall, suffice to say that it was fully justified.
