Bruce Springsteen, Manchester: The Boss pulls no punches in the most political show of his career
Bruce Springsteen opened his first shows of 2025 with a political speech fired with sombre anger, this great rock and roll bard of the American dream proclaiming that his beloved country had fallen into the hands of 'a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration'.
As his magnificent 18-piece E Street Band launched into stirring gospel rock anthem Land of Hope and Dreams, their 75-year-old leader called out for 'all who believe in democracy and the best of the American experiment to rise with us!' It was stirring stuff, the only peculiarity being that he was delivering this speech in Manchester, England at the start of a British and European tour, and not on his home territory where it might have had more biting impact.
The local audience may have cheered, roared and sung along in all the right places, but the only big boo of the night came when Springsteen mentioned a recent visit to Liverpool. He looked briefly baffled, then grinned. 'Oh yeah, that thing you call football!'
There has always been a strong element of the protest singer in Bruce Springsteen's expansive oeuvre, but time, age and the second election of Donald Trump have pushed it to the fore. This was the most directly political show of his long career, punctuated by tightly scripted speeches excoriating 'an unfit president and rogue government', with specific comments expressing dismay about recent events in America, including the defunding of universities and deportation of residents without 'due process of law'. The whole set was constructed to drive home this narrative, with Springsteen choosing songs that either shone a light on his faith in American values or burned with righteous fury at what he perceived as their betrayal.
Given that Springsteen has been wrestling with such themes his whole creative life, it did not mean a set of obscurities. Huge anthems from a fierce Born in the USA to a rousing The Promised Land have always made Springsteen's sympathies clear. But the judicious sprinkling of less famous songs such as the brooding Rainmaker (played for the first time, a stark portrait of a con man dedicated to 'our leader') and an intense acoustic Land of A Thousand Guitars (on which his line 'the criminal clown is on the throne' drew a cheer in the arena) served to keep politics front and centre.
There were three burning rockers from 1978's Darkness at the Edge of Town and a sense of darkness ran right through the centre of this carefully constructed three hour show. It all built to a joyously explosive finale when Springsteen went walkabout in the crowd, delivering a celebratory Fifth Avenue Freeze Out whilst swigging from a pint offered to him by a fan.
The 18,000 capacity Co-op Live arena is the smallest venue Springsteen will be playing on his stadium tour, and he treated it with the intimacy of a club. 'I still get a little nervous on the first night,' he claimed. For me, the show lacked a certain thrilling looseness that had crept back into his sets during the E Street Band's last round of British dates in 2024. At that point, it was if he had taken the reins off what had started out as a tightly scripted set around a theme of mortality. Now the reins are back on at the beginning of a new phase.
The politics infuses his new set-list with a sharp edge, albeit the British location blunted the message. But these were tiny margins on the opening night of a show that was still by some distance the most uplifting, thrilling blast of rock and roll you could ever hope to witness. 'The America I've sung to you about for 50 years is real,' Springsteen insisted. 'Regardless of its faults, it's a great country with great people.' Springsteen did more than enough to remind the faithful, one more time with feeling, that he stands amongst its very greatest.
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