Bruce Springsteen delivers nostalgic, high-energy concert at PPG Paints Arena

It might’ve seemed strange to the uninitiated to hear what sounded like booing from the crowd at Thursday night’s Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert at PPG Paints Arena. Of course, the audience wasn’t voicing their displeasure — they were just chanting “Bruce!”

After a long wait — and nearly a year after these shows were originally scheduled — The Boss clocked in for a nearly three-hour shift on stage at the first of two Pittsburgh shows this week.

Springsteen has had an epic rock career. With 21 studio albums, 20 Grammy Awards (out of 50 nominations) and even a stint on Broadway, the 74-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is unquestionably one of the greatest musicians of our time. His backing band, The E Street Band, is so legendary that they have a spot in the Hall of Fame all their own — and for good reason.

Thursday night’s show was an impressive tour through the band’s extensive discography, with a few covers thrown in for a good measure. They played 28 songs in total, coming in at just below the three-hour mark. No opener is necessary for a Springsteen show, what with this group of top-notch musicians having an amazing time onstage.

They kicked things off with “Seeds,” a great example of the kind of story-driven, working-class rock for which Springsteen is so well-known. The stage stayed dark as The Boss growled out the first lines, but as the second verse hit, the rest of the band came roaring in, the stage lights came up in brilliant color, and the crowd went wild.

“Pittsburgh! We finally got here!” Springsteen said before kicking into “Lonesome Day.”

In a white button-down shirt, black vest and black tie, Springsteen looked like an elder statesman of rock. His voice isn’t the same as it was 40 years ago, but he maintains the distinctive gravel and attitude he’s always had — and man, can he still make a harmonica sing.

On “No Surrender,” he used the earnestness ever-present in his voice to great effect, and that harmonica really meshed with Jake Clemons’s saxophone on “The Promised Land.”

When the band’s Billboard top-five 1980 hit “Hungry Heart” started, Springsteen let the crowd sing the entire first verse — which they did, loudly — before taking over for the rest of the song. As the horn section took their turn toward its close, he encouraged the crowd to wave their arms back and forth in the air.

That was followed up by a back-to-back of tracks from 1982’s “Nebraska” — “Reason to Believe” and “Atlantic City” — and then the dark story-song “Youngstown,” a crowd favorite (especially when he name-checked the Monongahela Valley in the lyrics).

Before playing “Long Walk Home,” Springsteen declared, “This is a prayer for our country.”

Things got a little more lighthearted after that.

Springsteen pretended to play conductor to a discordant horn section, coaxing them into the bombastic opening of the bouncy “E Street Shuffle.” The band’s two percussionists, Max Weinberg and Anthony Almonte, had a mind-blowing drum-off at the bridge, not to be left out of the song’s zesty groove.

Next up was a cover of the Commodores’ “Nightshift,” with the help of a group of backing vocalists, which certainly were worth hearing more from throughout.

The show veered into a bit of wistfulness then. Springsteen seemed especially pensive all throughout the night, doing much reflecting on his career and those who are important to him. After “Racing in the Streets,” he paused to tell a story to the crowd about an old high school classmate, George Theiss, who got him to join his first real band as a teenager.

“I could barely call myself a guitar player, I was in one other band, and they threw me out,” he said before laughing.

“If you cut forward 50 years from that afternoon, it was another summer day when I found myself standing at the side of my good friend George’s deathbed. … I realized that with George’s passing I would be the last surviving member of the group of guys who got together that afternoon so many long summers ago. As you get older, death brings a certain clarity. Its lasting gift to us, it’s an expanded vision of living,” he added.

He played “Last Man Standing,” a song looking back at that high school band and the treasured memories it left with him. After that, “Backstreets” was equally nostalgic. He said at the bridge, “All the rest of you, I’m gonna carry you right here” as he laid a hand on his heart.

“Until the end,” he sang over and over again.

• James McMurtry on scaled-down touring, Americana and more ahead of free Pittsburgh show

• Primus, Coheed and Cambria provide eclectic musical evening at Stage AE

• Pittsburgh fans relive decades of Bruce Springsteen shows

Gears shifted with the recognizable piano opening of Patti Smith’s “Because The Night,” which Springsteen wrote, that shone especially bright because of an incendiary guitar solo from Nils Lofgren.

After the effervescent “She’s The One” and “Wrecking Ball,” with fiery and determined lyrics and an excitedly clapping crowd, a litany of huge hits began. “The Rising” is a song that Springsteen penned about the tragedy of 9/11 and still sounded as powerful today. “Badlands,” with its distinctive keyboard riff, got the loudest sing-along from the audience yet. And the last song before the encore was “Thunder Road,” a classic, quintessential Springsteen song that allowed every single member of the band to flex their musical muscles. It felt like being in a church of rock and roll.

The whole band stepped to the front of the stage to take a bow before quickly returning for the encore, kicking off with “Born To Run.” As the song began, the house lights came up to illuminate a crowd going wild. Nothing is quite like the musical adrenaline rush of hearing The Boss start belting out the third verse of that song.

That was followed by two songs from the band’s massive 1984 album “Born in the U.S.A.” They were “Bobby Jean” and lasting hit “Dancing in the Dark,” both sounding newly fresh in the band’s capable hands. During “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” images and videos of deceased E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici were projected on the screens. Clemons may be a missed presence onstage, but his legacy is living on beautifully — his nephew, Jake, is now the saxophonist for the E Street Band, and he was nothing short of incredible at Thursday’s show.

The band ended their encore with a cover of “Twist and Shout.” Midway through, The Boss had a little fun with the audience.

“Hey Steve, Stevie, Little Steven,” he said to guitarist Steven Van Zandt, ”You know, the crowd is looking a little bit tired. And I think — I’m not sure, but I think — they’re ready to go home.”

That time, the crowd did actually boo.

“Oh, so you’re telling me that you think you can outlast the E Street Band? Ain’t nobody gonna outlast the E Street Band! But if you think you can, I wanna see what you’ve got!” And they kicked back into the classic tune, Springsteen spinning the guitar around his body by its strap while the band played their big finale.

The band left the stage and the lights went down once again, but the defatiguable Springsteen stuck around for one last emotional song about grief and love, “I’ll See You In My Dreams.”

“The E Street Band loves you!” he yelled out to the crowd as the song’s last strains sang from his guitar.

And then The Boss clocked out for the night. But it’s clear he’s still got a lot left in him.