Exactly forty years have passed since the first historic Bruce Springsteen concert in San Siro, but the boss still wonders the stadium of an adoring crowd of over 58 thousand spectators who greets him at his stage on the stage next to Little Steven, who returned on tour after the operation at appendicitis, with an ovation that not even a goal at the Champions League final. But – Spoiler – This is not a simple concert but a rally, a tough j’accuse towards the Trump administration “corrupt, traitor and incompetent”.
“Hi San Siro, are you ready?” Springsteen asks before leaving with NO Surrenter together with his and Street Band from Born in the USA, the album written in 1984, the year before debuting at Meazza. Bruce, however, does not look to the past but to current affairs.
“Tonight we ask you to support democracy, to get up and make your voice heard against authoritarianism and make freedom resonate,” he says in English while the translation in Italian passes on the giants. “Welcome to the tour of the land of hope and dreams” which shows “the right power of art, music, rock and roll in dangerous times” he explains before intoning The Land of Hopes and Dreams. And if someone has doubts about his opinions, he adds that “when in a country there are the conditions for a demagogue, he shows up” before intoning Rainmaker, the rain magician, and then Atlantic City. With Promised Land, he shows off his harmonica and goes down to greet the first rows and let them sing. Hungry Heart sings her directly the public, while he for the first verse merely incites the spectators. Then The River starts, Ballad who gives the title to his 1980 album. With white shirt, waistcoat and tie, he does not seem to suffer for the heat of the last few days and losing breath in the final where he remains only voice. From the harmony we move on to the disarming with Youngstown. The city will be young people, as this song by The Ghosts of Tom Joad states, but San Siro is all his.
Intonate “a prayer for my country” or Long Walk Home then then returns to talk to say that what “is between democracy and authoritarianism” are the people “like me and you” and perform alone with the guitar and harmonic House of a Thousand Guitars in which he sings of the “criminal clown who stole the throne”. Hand on the heart passes to My City of Ruins not before an even harder j’aba.
“I have always tried to be a good ambassador to America” but “things are happening now that alter the nature of democracy and they are too important to ignore them” as the persecution “of people because they exercise freedom of speech and dissent”, the cut of funds to universities “that do not bend to their ideological requests”, the exploitation of the poor, the alliance “with dictators”. “The majority of elected representatives totally failed in protecting the Americans from the abuses of an unsuitable president and a dishonest government” but “we will survive at this moment. I have hope because I believe in the truth enunciated by the great writer James Baldwin: ‘In these world there is not all the humanity that would like to exist, but there is enough”.
Because the night, Wrecking Ball warm the audience. Badlands and Thunder Road conclude the ‘official’ concert, but everyone knows that Bruce is the king of encore. So away with Born in the USA with the enlightened day stadium and everyone to sing and then Born to Run, Bobby Jean, Dancing in the Dark, 10th Avenue Freeze-Out, the now inevitable Twist and Shout, to conclude with Chimneys of Freedom. Forty years of concerts and not feeling them.
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