"You can't start a fire. Sittin' 'round cryin' over a broken heart." I love this lyric - it's a lyric to live by and, like many people doing the best we can every day, listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Boss, the Asbury Park workingman's poet, gives us the guns to celebrate the everyday by singing his songs at the top of our lungs.
But let me tell you, there's nothing everyday about Springsteen, who is coming back to Cardiff in 2024 on May 5. His live shows are inimitable, I've seen four of them, but his and The E Street band's ability to connect with a massive, massive amount of people in one venue, be it Hyde Park or the, then Millennium Stadium, is something else.
I first saw Bruce in 2008 in Cardiff, then in Hyde Park in 2012 - yup, the one where the council cut him and Paul McCartney off! - and then back in Cardiff in 2013. Me and my mam - an even bigger fan - then waited a whole decade to see him this summer at Hyde Park for BST live.
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What people bang on about is how long he plays for, even if he wasn't 74, a three-hour show is a feat-and-a-half but it's the content of those impressively long shows that makes it worth your while.
I mean, his back catalogue would take a year to get through live but he always manages to choose a setlist that takes you from stone-cold classics, like Badlands, Thunder Road, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark - from which my introductory lyric is from - to newer, poignant tracks from his more recent albums like Wrecking Ball, Letter to You and Only the Strong Survive. There's heart in his music, a lot of it, and it's hungry to be listened to and enjoyed.
Aside from the music the energy that oozes out of the stage, the performances are intoxicating. Springsteen and The E Street Band have been together for 50+ years and you can tell. There's a shorthand to it, an unspoken understanding of who's doing what next and how they feel like doing it that night.
Bruce's constant shouts of "Come on Steve!" at his guitarist Steve Van Zandt, or Silvio Dante to the TV fans out there, are a proven sign of familiarity and, well, I take them as a byword for "we're having a f**king good time, let's go some more!"
And that's the crux of it - they're having a rocking good time and so the whole place is having a party too. The sax break in Born to Run is insanely iconic.
The connection with the crowd crackles with mutual appreciation and fans love the big number tracks as well as the more thoughtful, maudlin breaks where Bruce talks about friends loved and lost. He's a big crowd interactor and it's one of the foundation blocks of his charm as a live performer. He truly pours his heart into his music, his band and his energy as a live act you can't help but marvel at his stamina (and what must be a great training regime and general constitution of the Springsteen family).
So even after losing my voice chanting: "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce" with everyone else at Hyde Park this summer, I am fully ready to accept that I will be seeing him once more in my home city of Cardiff next year. And if you're even in two minds about trying for a ticket, get one - you'll see one of the globe's greatest performers ever to run around a stage for three hours and put everyone sitting down to shame. Bust that night open. You won't regret it.
Tickets will go on sale for theBruce Springsteen's Sunday, May 5 in Cardiff's Principality Stadium show on Friday, November 3 at 10am. Prices for the Bruce Springsteen gig start at £65 for seated and £120 for standing. You can buy the tickets at Ticketmaster.
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