springsteen tour 1989

How Bruce brought down the Berlin Wall

It’s been 30 years since Springsteen played East Berlin. More than two per cent of all GDR adults were there, and just over a year later the Wall came down. With Europe in turmoil once again, Malcolm Jack visits the site of the historic show to relive the glory days of a cultural hero in this week's The Big Issue

On the evening of   July 19 1988, an all but forgotten patch of the once-divided city of Berlin – the tipping point between the Communist East and liberal West – was scene to arguably the most unifying open-air rock show of all time . That night, Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band at the peak of their peerless powers helped bring down the Berlin Wall, end the Cold War and save the world through the invigorating, liberating, life-altering power of pure, unfiltered rock’n’roll. Or so a theory goes.

That concerts ever took place at the Radrennbahn Weißensee in north-east Berlin is difficult to envision today. Distinguished only by a wonky-looking socialist relief of some sportsmen on a wall beside the boarded-up ticket offices, the entrance to the largely derelict German Democratic Republic-era cycle track stands shrouded in graffiti, weeds and overgrown grass. The gates which once saw hundreds of thousands of excited young East Germans rushing through hang rusted and sagging on their hinges. In the corner of the field where a huge stage stood, now there’s a football pitch where some kids lazily kick a ball in the hot afternoon sun, oblivious to the dramatic events that unfolded here 30 summers ago.

For some it was the spark that lit a fire of demand for reform in the dry tinder of the failing communist state, culminating 16 months later in the tense night of November 9 1989, and the eventual opening of the border. Others dismiss such fanciful notions, and soberly point to Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika , and the much bigger conflagration of events igniting east of the Iron Curtain.

One thing all agree on is that Springsteen’s show at Weißensee, the first in East Germany by an artist of his stature, enriched and transformed countless lives – the vast majority had never seen a rock musician before, far less one of the greatest. With 30 years of hindsight, it is undoubtedly a moment worthy of much greater recognition in music history.

“When we were playing our regular shows in West Germany, Bruce said to me, ‘When are we playing East Berlin?’ About a month later there we were.”

That’s the basic account by Springsteen’s longtime manager, producer and friend Jon Landau of events that led to Checkpoint Charlie allowing into East Germany New Jersey’s true blue-collar hero whose songs of freedom, escape and self-empowerment were as life-affirming as they come. A star whose tidy blue-jeans-clad backside alone – enshrined in rock iconography after being superimposed over an American flag on the cover of 1984’s 30 million-selling album Born in the U.S.A. – could scarcely have represented a more threatening symbol of capitalist decadence and swagger.

In short, Bruce wanted to do the gig and, as part of an ultimately misguided bid to placate the youths with a string of shows by visiting Western rock stars that year, East German authorities wanted Bruce to do it too. Scarcely a few weeks after the idea was first proposed, Springsteen was behind the Iron Curtain, jeans-clad butt and all. Being driven around in a Lada.

“It was a short one-hour tour through East Berlin,” remembers Conny Günther, today the Berlin bureau manager and culture correspondent of The Economist , but back then 28-year-old Conny Rudat, Springsteen’s East German translator and chaperone for the day on a quick sightseeing sojourn. “That was with Bruce and his girlfriend from the E Street Band, Patti Scialfa,” Günther recalls. “She is his wife now, but this was when they had just started getting together, it was still secret.

“What I really liked,” Günther remembers fondly, “it was not like I was explaining to them sights in East Germany, but they also asked me questions. And I thought ‘why are they interested in my little life behind the Iron Curtain?’ I underestimated foreigners in general, but with Springsteen in particular it quickly became clear, he’s not just a rock star coming and playing then he’s off again, he was very interested.”

It gave us a feeling of how the world, or how life could be

East meeting West proved to be a learning experience for all involved. “It may sound corny,” Landau tells The Big Issue, “but the feeling among us was that this place just wasn’t working. And with Gorbachev’s influence in the general European atmosphere at the time, it seemed like change was a real possibility – although none of us had any idea what the change would be and how soon it would come.”

Other Western rock stars including Bob Dylan, Depeche Mode, Joe Cocker and Bryan Adams had already played East Berlin in 1988, and yet Springsteen’s draw proved more enormous than anyone imagined. People travelled from all over East and even West Germany to be there. Officially 160,000 tickets were sold, but many more fans showed up, and in the end authorities had to do something practically unheard of in such a tightly controlled society – throw open the gates. It’s estimated that at least 300,000 and maybe as many as 500,000 packed the Radrennbahn that July evening – around 2.5 per cent of all adult GDR citizens. It wasn’t just the biggest crowd Springsteen has ever played for, but as he acknowledged in his 2016 autobiography Born to Run , “The largest single crowd I’d ever seen… I couldn’t see its end”.

Some fans waved homemade American flags despite the risk of reprisal from security services. The mood was tense but expectant. The scene was set for something epic.

“It was under a world microscope that we walked into that town and played that show,” E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren tells The Big Issue.

Tempers had frayed backstage on discovery that, unknown to Springsteen, the whole thing had been billed as a concert for solidarity with Nicaragua, such was the East German authorities’ stubborn insistence on putting a socialist spin on everything. “I remember the whole dressing room was laid out like an army barracks,” Lofgren recalls. “There were these drab-coloured tents, there was a lot of political figures around. It was a very politically run thing.”

Lofgren’s most vivid memory of the performance was Springsteen’s short address to the enormous crowd, delivered around halfway through a typically marathon set, straight after a rousing Born in the U.S.A. and over the hopeful opening strains of a cover of Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom. “It’s nice to be in East Berlin,” Springsteen began, in creaky but carefully calibrated German. “I want to tell you that I’m not here for or against any government, I have come to play rock’n’roll for the East Berliners, in the hope that one day all barriers will be torn down.”

Learned phonetically from a translation by his German tour bus driver – and dramatically tweaked and re-learned mid-show after all involved got spooked at the potentially grave consequences of Springsteen saying the highly charged word “Wall” – his short dispatch was met with a spine-tingling roar. In his must-read book Rocking the Wall: The Berlin Concert that Changed the World , Erik Kirschbaum calls those two sentences “one of the most under-appreciated anti-Wall speeches ever made”, more important even than those of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. A man accustomed to the power of simple words, Springsteen had just spoken some of the most potent of his life.

“Bruce made a beautiful speech where he talked about breaking down barriers,” Lofgren remembers, proudly. “Which of course is in a lot of his songwriting – some of the greatest songwriting with political commentary. Even more than political, but just a human commentary.”

Landau was confident that Springsteen had struck the right tone. “I knew when Bruce showed me the text that it was a pitch-perfect statement,” he says. “Not too specific about the government, but very specific about the need for greater communication among all people on the ultimate journey to freedom. It was magic and I knew it would reverberate.”

To assess just how much those words and that show reverberated among East Germans, you need to ask a few of them. Their responses don’t always quite fit with the romantic version of events.

I meet Springsteen’s translator Günther in the bright atrium of Berlin’s Bundespressehaus, part of the shiny new political district which has sprung up by the River Spree behind the restored Reichstag since reunification, not far from where the Wall once ran. She has great memories from her short time with Springsteen and reminisces about it happily. Yet she cautions that it’s a very Americanised view to assume that it had to be one of their cultural icons who helped bring down the Berlin Wall – an achievement also often erroneously attributed to others such as Michael Jackson (who played West Berlin a few weeks before Springsteen), and, absurdly, David Hasselhoff (the Baywatch hunk in trunks was a big star in Germany, but he performed by the Wall only after it had started to be torn down).

“Of course there is a much, much broader aspect to it,” Günther insists. She agrees, however, that the East German regime’s surprisingly naive choice to admit Springsteen and other Western artists blew up in their faces. “They thought they could calm people down, but in fact they created more desires and more longings,” she says. “Not only for more bands here in the East, but also to go to West Berlin and to go to somewhere like England. In a way it backfired.”

Igor Hartmann was a 20-year-old production manager for East German state TV in 1988, and is still in television today. He was part of the broadcast team working on the Springsteen concert, shoddy but nonetheless compelling footage of which was beamed almost live into homes right across the country, meaning scarcely a single young East German didn’t know at least something about it.

He shows me around the derelict remains of the Radrennbahn on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a site he hasn’t revisited in 30 years. “To say that the music helped to overcome the Wall? To be honest, not me,” he shakes his head, despite his thrilling fly-on-the-wall proximity to events. “No. I think that music was important for fleeing your life and finding your niche.

“The main force was that people felt unsatisfied,” Hartmann adds. “People were less and less satisfied with their way of living. Berlin always was kind of an island, because when things got better it was mostly for Berlin. In terms of people unsatisfied, it was mostly in the rest of the country, like the rallies which started in Leipzig, not in Berlin.”

It’s worth noting that both Günther and Hartmann had unusual jobs that placed them both backstage, and not out there among the surging throng of young East Germans. Such as Sabine Wendt – today a senior executive for the VisitBerlin tourism bureau, but in 1988 just a normal 17-year-old East German schoolgirl from the Weißensee neighbourhood, who sneaked in to the concert with her older brother when they heard a rumour that tickets were no longer being checked. Like many present, Wendt’s next experience of being among a huge, tense and expectant crowd would be during the popular protests on the streets of Berlin in the final days before the Wall cracked.

Does she think the Springsteen show changed things? “Definitely,” she responds. “Because it gave the people, it gave me, the picture of the world the GDR could be. It gave us a feeling of how the world, or how life could be.

“Music concerts and travelling, these were the things that we really, really missed,” she continues. “All these things like food and clothes was nice. But the thing that really gave us the power to fight against the government or the system was the travelling, to be able to be allowed to travel and to listen to music and to celebrate things. This way of being free and to express yourself.

“This concert changed something in our minds and our hearts. It had nothing to do with the revolution on the street and with Gorbachev. But with something that changed in our attitudes and our understandings and our feelings.”

“Rock’n’roll is a music of stakes,” writes Springsteen of the East Berlin show and its place in history in memoir Born to Run . “The higher they’re pushed, the deeper and more thrilling the moment becomes. In East Germany in 1988, the centre of the table was loaded down with a winner-takes-all bounty that would explode into the liberating destruction of the Berlin Wall by the people of Germany.”

Nils Lofgren is less cryptic. “Do I think it helped? Of course I do,” he asserts. “To just be in that throng for three hours, four hours, and know that you were allowed out there – you were sanctioned by your own corrupt government, and you were free for those few hours. I can’t imagine what it was like for them. To get to be in this colourful, wild band in front of that crowd, with all kinds of colours and placards. It felt like all of a sudden we just inserted our little moment of freedom. And that was very powerful.”

“For myself,” states Landau, “I believe we came to East Berlin at a time when Bruce’s show was on fire, he did a great show, and tried to do something constructive for the people who attended.”

And if Springsteen really did help to achieve everything some claim he did? Well, it would just have been another day’s work for The Boss. “Bruce always inspires and if he inspired some to think larger thoughts about the future,” Landau contemplates, “well, that’s his job.”

Image: Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images

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When Bruce Springsteen and Sting Began the Human Rights Now! Tour

Bruce Springsteen , Sting and Peter Gabriel kicked off the Human Rights Now! tour on Sept. 2, 1988 at London's Wembley Stadium. The 20-date tour was a benefit for Amnesty International in honor of the 40th anniversary of the United Nations' adoption of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights .

Since 1976, Amnesty had called upon musicians to help raise money, most famously with the Secret Policeman's Balls concerts in London and the six-show Conspiracy of Hope U.S. tour in 1986. But now they were taking it worldwide. Over the course of six weeks, they played major cities on five continents, including places not usually frequented by Western rock acts, like Harare, Zimbabwe; New Dehli, India and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Ticket prices for the Third World concerts were reduced, with the cost defrayed by a grant from the Reebok Foundation.

In addition to the three stars, all of whom were at the peak of their global popularity, Tracy Chapman and Senegalese star Youssou N'Dour (best known to most radio listeners as the voice at the end of Gabriel's "In Your Eyes") were the main acts. The bill was filled out at each stop with a few guest stars from that country.

The shows began and ended with everybody singing Bob Marley's anthem "Get Up, Stand Up" (see video above); Bob Dylan 's "Chimes of Freedom" was also regularly performed. The musicians made speeches about the importance of global human rights and frequently guested during each other's sets. Springsteen, Sting and Gabriel wore identical black vests without shirts onstage, possibly as a show of solidarity.

The tour's finale, on Oct. 15 in Buenos Aires, was broadcast on the radio and shown on HBO a few months later. As a footnote, it was the last concert Springsteen would play with the E Street Band until their reunion in 1999.

A DVD box set of the Human Rights Now! tour and three other all-star Amnesty benefit concerts was released in the fall of 2013. For more information, visit their website .  

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Bruce Springsteen

Rock star Bruce Springsteen is a beloved singer-songwriter best known for his songs that chronicle his working-class roots in New Jersey.

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Bruce Springsteen News: Singer Postpones Remainder of 2023 Tour

The “Glory Days” singer, who recently turned 74, had previously postponed eight shows during September. The new postponements—affecting stops in Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and throughout Canada—bring the total to 22, according to the Associated Press . Makeup dates are expected to be announced soon. This tour is Springsteen’s first with the E Street Band since 2017.

Peptic ulcer disease causes ulcers to form in the stomach and small intestine that can cause heartburn, nausea, and stomach pain. Although it can lead to bleeding and other emergency situations, a gastroenterology doctor told AP people who receive treatment “recover completely.”

Quick Facts

“the boss” and the e street band, albums and songs, springsteen on broadway, marriages and children, who is bruce springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen began his career by playing the bar circuit in New Jersey while assembling his famous E Street Band. His breakout 1975 record, Born to Run , united arena rock with human-size tales of working-class America. With dozens of awards under his belt, including 20 Grammys, and more than 65 million albums sold in the United States alone, Springsteen is one of the most successful musicians of all time. Also known for his left-leaning political causes, the artist was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2016.

FULL NAME: Bruce Springsteen BORN: September 23, 1949 BIRTHPLACE: Long Branch, New Jersey SPOUSES: Julianne Phillips (1985-1989) and Patti Scialfa (1991-present) CHILDREN: Evan James, Jessica Rae, and Samuel Ryan ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra

Born on September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen was raised in a working-class household in Freehold Borough. His father, Doug Springsteen, had trouble holding down a steady job and worked at different times as a bus driver, millworker, and prison guard. Adele, Bruce’s mother, brought in steadier income as a secretary in a local insurance office.

Springsteen and his father had a difficult relationship. “When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house,” the singer later recalled. “One was me, and the other was my guitar.”

Years later, however, Springsteen suggested that his fraught relationship with his father had been important for his art. “I’ve gotta thank him,” Springsteen said upon his induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, “because what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us? We would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs—and I tried it in the early ’90s, and it didn’t work… Anyway, I put on his work clothes, and I went to work. It was the way that I honored him. My parents’ experience forged my own. They shaped my politics, and they alerted me to what is at stake when you’re born in the U.S.A.”

Springsteen first fell in love with rock ’n’ roll when he saw Elvis Presley perform on The Ed Sullivan Show . “[Elvis] was as big as the whole country itself,” Springsteen later remembered, “as big as the whole dream. He just embodied the essence of it, and he was in mortal combat with the thing. Nothing will ever take the place of that guy.” Springsteen’s mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar for his 16 th birthday, and he hasn’t stopped playing the instrument since then.

An outsider and recluse in school, Springsteen frequently got in trouble at his Catholic elementary school. “In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that’s where I belonged,” he said. “I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.” Several years later, he skipped his own high school graduation because he felt too uncomfortable to attend.

In 1967, an 18-year-old Springsteen was drafted for military service in the Vietnam War. But, as he later told Rolling Stone magazine, the only thought in his head as he traveled to his induction was “I ain’t goin’.” Springsteen failed his physical, largely due to his deliberately “crazy” behavior and a concussion previously suffered in a motorcycle accident. Springsteen’s 4-F classification—unfit for military service—freed him from having to go to Vietnam and allowed him to pursue music full-time.

By the late 1960s, Springsteen was spending most of his time in Asbury Park on the New Jersey Shore, playing in several different bands while he forged his unique sound and introduced audiences to the gravelly baritone voice that later became famous. It was there that he first met the musicians who formed his E Street Band. Around this time, Springsteen also acquired his nickname, “The Boss,” because he had a habit of collecting money earned during shows and then distributing it evenly among his bandmates.

In April 2014, the E-Street Band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Springsteen’s music is often associated with the “heartland rock” genre, which according to the University of Idaho explores themes of isolation in the working-class population. Artists with similar music include John Mellencamp , Tom Petty , and Bob Seger.

A testament to his lasting popularity, Springsteen became the first artist to have a top-five album in six different decades with the 2020 release of Letter to You .

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Springsteen has had 15 platinum-certified and two diamond-certified albums throughout his career. Statistically, the biggest is 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. , which was sold more than 17 million copies and includes popular songs like “Cover Me,” “Glory Days,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and the titular track. Other top-selling albums include Born to Run (1975), The River (1980), and the compilation Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live 1975-85 (released in 1986).

All together, Springsteen has 12 songs that reached the Billboard top 10, including “Hungry Heart,” “I’m on Fire,” “Tunnel of Love,” and “My Hometown.” Surprisingly, however, none of them ever ascended to the No. 1 spot. The closest was “Dancing in the Dark,” which peaked at No. 2 in 1984.

In 2017, Springsteen made his Broadway debut in Springsteen on Broadway . Held at the Walter Kerr Theatre, the solo effort featured the artist performing some of his hits and sharing stories of his influences and formative years. After receiving a special Tony Award in June 2018, presented by Billy Joel , Springsteen closed out his show at the end of the year.

The following summer, Springsteen’s music was the focal point of the movie Blinded by the Light , about a British teenager of Pakistani descent who draws inspiration from the working-class yearnings of The Boss. According to director Gurinder Chadha, Springsteen expressed his appreciation of the film after a screening, saying, “Thank you for looking after me so beautifully.”

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Springsteen’s total net worth is valued around $650 million as of September 2023.

His net worth was boosted greatly in December 2021, when Springsteen sold his music catalog to Sony for an estimated $550 million—including separate deals for his recorded work and his songwriting rights. Sony owns the Columbia record label under which the singer worked throughout his career. “During the last 50 years, the men and women of Sony Music have treated me with the greatest respect as an artist and as a person. I’m thrilled that my legacy will continue to be cared for by the company and people I know and trust,” the singer said at the time in a statement.

After the whirlwind of commercial success that followed Born in the U.S.A. , Springsteen met and married actor Julianne Phillips in 1985. The marriage quickly began to fall apart, however, and Springsteen began an affair with E Street Band backup singer Patti Scialfa, who shared his working-class New Jersey background. Phillips filed for divorce in 1989.

Springsteen moved in with Scialfa, and they had two children—a son named Evan and a daughter named Jessica—together before officially marrying in 1991. Their third child and younger son, Samuel, was born in 1994.

Jessica is a professional equestrian who began riding horses on the family’s farm in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey. She competed for Team USA at the 2020 Olympics—postponed to the following year because of the COVID-19 pandemic—and won a silver medal in the team jumping competition.

Samuel—a firefighter for Jersey City, New Jersey—and his partner welcomed a daughter, Lily Harper Springsteen, in 2022, making Bruce and Patti grandparents for the first time.

Springsteen’s liberal politics became more pronounced as he became a strong backer of 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama . When Obama won the election, “The Rising” was the first song played at the victory party, and Springsteen went on to open the show at Obama’s inaugural celebration.

Honoring Springsteen at the Kennedy Center in 2009, Obama said, “I may be the President, but he is The Boss.” Springsteen campaigned for Obama’s reelection in 2012, and the president later named the music icon a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. Springsteen was also tapped as one of the performers during a prime-time virtual celebration for Joe Biden ’s presidential inauguration in 2021.

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SPRINGSTEEN’S LIVE SET A TRIBUTE TO AMNESTY…

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Springsteen’s live set a tribute to amnesty internationaltour.

It came as a shock when Bruce Springsteen, during a concert radio broadcast from Stockholm on July 3, declared his involvement with the Amnesty International tour. His short speech, followed by a moving version of Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom, are the focal point of the four-song live set he released.

Titled Chimes of Freedom (Columbia Records) and released in multiformats of vinyl, tape and CD, the Springsteen package is an eloquent scene-setter for the Amnesty tour. It’s a practical scene-setter as well, for some of the proceeds will benefit Amnesty, which has booked Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’dour into six continents in the next six weeks.

The Springsteen speech pays tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, which is sanctioned by the United Nations. His point is hammered home in Chimes of Freedom, a song as relevant today as when Dylan wrote it in 1964. The song stems from a dreamlike thunder-and-lightning storm in which Dylan imagines bells tolling “for the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse/ An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe.” Springsteen does it justice with a worldly wise treatment that rises in passion as it sweeps through its seven-minutes-plus length.

The other three tracks are from his Tunnel of Love tour. They’re like a condensed, miniversion of the tour, covering the new, country-style song Tougher Than the Rest (the tour was filled with new material); a rollicking B- side Be True (the tour was filled with surprise B-sides); and a stately acoustic version of Born to Run, in keeping with the tour’s theme of how much Springsteen has changed from his mid-’70s party days.

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Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s World Tour Setlist: All the Songs They Performed For Their First Show of 2024

After a six-month break, Springsteen and the band resumed their tour in Phoenix, March 19. Here's every song played.

By Melinda Newman

Melinda Newman

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Fans were delayed but not denied their visit from The Boss Tuesday night (March 19) in Phoenix as Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band relaunched their world tour after a six-month break. 

Springsteen was originally slated to play the Arizona date on Nov. 30 last year, but it was one of 29 shows postponed after he came off the road in early September for treatment for peptic ulcer disease . 

He made no reference to his health troubles (which were clearly in his past, given his extreme energy on stage) until the closing tune of the 29-song set, when he apologized for inconveniencing anyone by having to move the show, explaining, “I had a motherf**cker of a bellyache.”

The 2 hour 45 minute concert, which started right at 7:30pm , was a rollicking, high-energy affair. Gone are tour mainstays from the earlier leg, such as the funky “The E Street Shuffle” and the jazzy 7-minute “Kitty’s Back” (both from 1973’s The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle ), and six songs from Springsteen’s last album of original material, 2020’s Letter to You (Tuesday’s show was down to four from that set), replaced with tunes that make for a fast-paced, non-stop thrill ride of a show. 

Springsteen will spend the rest of the year on the road, with more than 50 dates on the 2024 docket, including a European leg that starts in Cardiff, Wales in May and includes multiple stadium shows in cities like Milan, Madrid and Barcelona, before he returns stateside in August for stadium shows. 

Below is the setlist for Phoenix’s opening night of the new leg. The tour resumes Friday  (March 22) night in Las Vegas.  For a deeper dive, go here .

"Lonesome Day"

The Rising (2002)

Born To Run (1975)

"No Surrender"

Born In The U.S.A . (1984)

"Two Hearts"

The River (1980)

"Darlington County"

Born In The U.S.A. (1984)

Letter To You (2020)

"Prove It All Night"

Darkness On The Edge Of Town (1978)

"Darkness on the Edge of Town"

"letter to you", "the promised land", "spirit in the night".

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

"Don't Play That Song"

Only The Strong Survive (2022)

"Nightshift"

"mary's place", "last man standing", "backstreets", "because the night".

Live 1975-1985 (1986)

"She's The One"

"wrecking ball".

Wrecking Ball (2012)

"The Rising"

"thunder road", "born to run", "rosalita (come out tonight)".

The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973)

"Glory Days"

"dancing in the dark", "tenth avenue freeze-out", "twist & shout".

Isley Brothers cover

"I'll See You In My Dreams"

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tour documentary to debut on Disney+ and Hulu this fall

Bruce Springsteen is coming to the small screen.

On Tuesday, Disney announced that a new documentary film titled “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” will debut on Disney+ and Hulu this fall, offering viewers “the most in-depth look ever at the creation of their legendary live performances” from the band’s 2023-2024 world tour.

The doc will look into the band’s pre-tour preparation process, follow them throughout their travels as they perform in front of tens of thousands of concertgoers and feature “fly-on-the-wall footage of band rehearsals and special moments backstage,” the release read.

Viewers will also hear from Springsteen himself and see him develop “the story he wants to tell with this tour’s setlist – interspersed with rare archival clips of The E Street Band, underscoring themes of life, loss, mortality and community.”

The film was directed by Springsteen’s longtime collaborator, award-winning director Thom Zimny, who previously worked with the “Dancing in the Dark” singer on his “Springsteen on Broadway” show.

Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off their most recent tour in February of 2023. In September, the 74-year-old rock legend announced he had to reschedule over 20 shows as he recovered from “peptic ulcer disease.” The band is currently performing the international leg of their tour, which is slated to conclude in November.

One of the most celebrated rock musicians in the modern era, Springsteen is known for hits like “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Streets of Philadelphia” and “Born to Run,” among many others.

“Road Diary” will debut in October, with an exact air date yet to be announced.

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David Sanborn, Jazz Saxophonist Who Played on David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans,’ Dead at 78

By Kory Grow

Smooth jazz saxophonist David Sanborn , who played on recordings by Stevie Wonder, James Brown, and Carly Simon and performed live with David Bowie and the Rolling Stones, died in Tarrytown, New York, on Sunday afternoon. A rep confirmed the news to Rolling Stone . A message on Sanborn’s social media cited complications after an extended battle with prostate cancer. He was 78.

“Mr. Sanborn had been dealing with prostate cancer since 2018 but had been able to maintain his normal schedule of concerts until just recently,” the message said. “Indeed he already had concerts scheduled into 2025.”

As a solo artist, Sanborn made a blend of jazz, pop, and R&B his trademark sound. Throughout his career, he released more than two dozen albums, nine of which went gold or platinum, and won six Grammys. It was a miracle since Sanborn, who grew up near St. Louis, survived a polio diagnosis at age 3. “I wasn’t like the other kids,” Sanborn told JazzTimes in 2008. “My mantra was, ‘Hey, guys, wait up.’ I used to lie in bed a lot, listening to the radio, which was my theater of the imagination.”

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Before he was a solo artist, though, he joined the Butterfield Blues Band and was a part of that group’s lineup when it performed at Woodstock. Sanborn toured with Stevie Wonder and played on the musician’s Talking Book album. In addition to touring with Bowie, he played the saxophone solo on “Young Americans.”

“On the Young Americans tour, Bowie would sometimes let the band play for 20 minutes before he came on,” Sanborn told Downbeat in 2017. “I remember we had a week at the Universal Amphitheater in L.A. It was a great rhythm section with Doug Rauch on bass and Greg Enrico on drums. On the Young Americans album, there was no lead guitar, so I played the role of lead guitar. I was all over that record.”

Throughout the Seventies, Sanborn effortlessly bounced back and forth between jazz, blues, and pop music, recording with B.B. King, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Bruce Springsteen (contributing to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” on Born to Run ), Elton John, Chaka Khan, Ron Carter, George Benson, Kenny Loggins, and Eagles, to name but a few. The Eighties found him playing alongside Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Roger Water, Eric Clapton, and Mick Jagger, among others.

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He has also hosted a syndicated radio program, The Jazz Show , and produced a YouTube series called Sanborn Sessions with his nephew and brother-in-law, and guests like Sting and Christian McBride, and a podcast called As We Speak . During Covid-19 lockdowns, Sanborn offered master classes in saxophone over Zoom.

“I’m not so interested in what is or isn’t jazz,” Sanborn told Downbeat . “The guardians of the gate can be quite combative, but what are they protecting? Jazz has always absorbed and transformed what’s around it. … Real musicians don’t have any time to spend thinking about limited categories.”

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