Bruce Springsteen Digs Deep at Historic Asbury Park Festival: 7 Highlights

Ever since they returned to the road in February 2023 following a six-year hiatus, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have largely stuck to a rigid setlist that tells a story about friendship, loss, resilience, and making the most of the time we have left. This has frustrated some longtime fans who travel across the globe to see multiple shows, but as the upcoming documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band reveals, it was inspired by Springsteen’s experience on Broadway in 2017-18, and crafted with meticulous care.

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As fans filled up the Asbury Park beach on Sunday for Springsteen and the E Street Band’s headlining set at the Sea.Hear.Now festival, there were widespread hopes that this would be a night different than the ones that came before: It was the largest crowd he’d ever faced in his adopted hometown of Asbury Park, and his final show in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.

But it didn’t become clear just how different it was going to be until Springsteen addressed the audience after opening with “Lonesome Day.” “I wrote this song about 500 yards north [of here] on Loch Arbor beach,” he said. “We haven’t played it in a long fuckin’ time. We got a lot of stuff we haven’t played in a long fuckin’ time for you tonight. Let’s see how we do.”

He then broke out “Blinded by the Light” for the first time on the tour. It was the start of a mind-blowing run of rare songs that had the hardcore fans pressed up against the barricades screaming in ecstasy for the next two hours, until it finally reverted back to (mostly) standard fare for the final hour. Near the end, Springsteen nearly got choked up talking about the significance of the massive event, which would have been unimaginable a couple of decades back when Asbury Park was in very rough shape.

“I feel fuckin’ old tonight in a good way,” he said. “I never thought I’d live to see this sight, nowhere in my lifetime. When the band was here on that little street corner, nobody was here. I didn’t know when I’d see folks in this good town again.”

Prior to this set, Springsteen also played “Kitty’s Back” with Trey Anastasio, and then traveled across the boardwalk to perform “History Books” and “American Slang” with the Gaslight Anthem on another stage. But here are seven highlights from Springsteen and the ESB’s marathon show.

Greetings, once again, from Asbury Park
After opening with “Lonesome Day,” Springsteen launched into three consecutive songs from his 1973 debut LP, Greetings From Asbury Park : “Blinded by the Light” (unplayed since 2017), “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” (also unplayed since 2017), and “Growin’ Up.” He took a quick Greetings break for “The Promised Land,” before heading right back to it with a joyous “Spirit in the Night.” There were brief hopes he might play the entire record out of sequence throughout the night, but that would have meant digging out super obscurities “The Angel” and “Mary Queen of Arkansas.” And he had way too much other ground to cover to do all that.

“Thundercrack”
Following the Greetings four-pack, Springsteen pulled out “Thundercrack.” This was one of the band’s showstoppers in 1972 and 1973, and they cut a studio version during the The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle sessions, but it was cut since it was too similar to “Rosalita.” The epic song wasn’t officially released until Tracks in 1998 when he invited original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez back into the studio to record additional vocals. They hadn’t played it live since a Philadelphia gig in 2016, and this was just the third one since 2013.

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“4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”
The 1973 theme continued after “Thundecrack” with a rousing “E Street Shuffle,” and an emotional “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” which hadn’t been played since 2016. Springsteen wrote “Sandy” to say farewell to Asbury Park (“for me this boardwalk life’s through”), and it prominently featured Danny Federici on accordion. Weeks before the organist died in 2008, Springsteen brought him back onto the stage in Indianapolis, and let him pick whatever song he wanted to play. He opted for “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” “He wanted to strap on the accordion,” Springsteen said in his eulogy for Federici, “and revisit the boardwalk of our youth during the summer nights when we’d walk along the boards with all the time in the world.” At Sea.Hear.Now, Springsteen dedicated it to him. Roy Bittan took over accordion duties, but he’d be the first to admit nobody could convey the sound of the boardwalk on that instrument quite like Danny.

“Local Hero”
After leading the crowd through a singalong rendition of “Hungry Heart,” Springsteen told a story about driving through his childhood hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, in the Eighties and coming across a black velvet portrait of himself in a J.J. Newberry five and dime story between similar paintings of a Doberman Pinscher and Bruce Lee. “I had the headband and the muscles and the whole thing,” he said. “And so I went home and wrote this song.” The true die-hards in the audience knew that “Local Hero” was coming up, but many had no clue what he was playing. The Lucky Town deep track was used to open an April 2023 show in Newark, but this was only the fourth performance since 1993. It was very appropriate for this occasion, since this show was his ultimate local hero moment.

Patti Scialfa returns
Just one week ago, we learned that Patti Scialfa sat out the vast majority of this tour because she’s been battling multiple myeloma since 2018. “This affects my immune system,” she says in Road Diary, “so I have to be careful what I choose to do and where I choose to go.” But she’s made select appearances throughout the tour, and she came out to join Springsteen for a tender rendition of “Tougher Than the Rest” from Tunnel of Love . The song carried an entirely new meaning in light of the news about her health.

“Meeting Across the River”
Born to Run ends with the gut-punch of “Meeting Across the River” and “Jungeland.” The former is a haunting piano ballad about a desperate heist that’s clearly going to go tragically wrong. At very special shows, Springsteen plays the two songs in tandem. He did at Sea.Hear.Now to kick off the encore set, which was the first live “Meeting Across the River” since 2016. Singing “Tonight we’ve got style” on a packed Asbury Park beach with tens of thousands of Springsteen fans was a wonderfully cathartic moment. (Kudos to trumpet player Curt Ramm for perfectly nailing Randy Brecker’s parts from the record.)

“Jersey Girl”
At practically every show throughout the past two years, Springsteen wrapped up the night with a solo acoustic rendition of “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” (The third MetLife Stadium show in September 2023 was the sole exception.) But he didn’t play a single song from Letter to You at Sea.Hear.Now, and “I’ll See You in My Dreams” wouldn’t have worked without the story of his late Castiles bandmates George Theiss he’s told at every show besides this one. Instead, he closed with “Jersey Girl.” This is a Tom Waits song, but Springsteen made it his own decades ago by adding in a new verse that transforms the Jersey girl into a single mother, utilizing lines from his 1979 outtake “Party Lights.” There could have been no better ending to an evening that is destined to go down in history as one of the greatest post-reunion shows in Springsteen history.

Here is the complete setlist:
Lonesome Day
Blinded by the Light
Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?
Growin’ Up
The Promised Land
Spirit in the Night
Thundercrack
The E Street Shuffle
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Hungry Heart
Local Hero
Atlantic City
Tougher Than the Rest
Long Walk Home
Racing in the Street
Because the Night
She’s the One
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
Badlands
Thunder Road
Meeting Across the River
Jungleland
Born to Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Bobby Jean
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Twist and Shout
Jersey Girl

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