Brooooooooooce!!!!

Last night we went to the Emirates to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - a superbly chosen, very generous present from my staff last Xmas.

It is hard to think of a better rock'n'roll band on the road today. Granted the Led Zep re-union was pretty special, I have never seen U2 and I am sure the Stones still cut it on a good night, but for sheer tightness, drive and joy the E Street Band are hard to beat. Most of them are in the late 50's so one wonders how many more tours they will fancy. Maybe it is the last time? Not that they couldn't do them I expect, especially Clarence Clemons who gets to bang a tambourine most of the concert and blow his saxophone for about five, albeit five fantastic, minutes.

The Emirates is a great venue. You walk up to it up a long thin street, Drayton Park, a bit like they do in Fever Pitch. We were on the pitch with a great view, good sound, big screen right in front of us and a bar not far behind. Perfect.

When I last saw Bruce at Wembley Arena I was way back and they didn't have screens in those days. He was just a highly-animated, pin-prick in the distance. This time you could see every tic, every grimace, every grin. My wife said he reminded her of Tom Jones. Funnily you can see the resemblance with his all-black outfit, his dyed brown, bouffant hair and his cheesy, crowd-pleasing smiles. I didn't think Bruce did cabaret but maybe every act turns to cabaret after 25 years. Nevertheless he still comes across as a guy from the crowd who decided to go on stage and act out his dreams. There is nothing starry about him at all.

He and the band were pretty awesome. Loads of songs from Magic, Darkness and Born to Run. Some from even earlier. I especially like Jungleland with a huge solo from Clarence on Jungleland. Other great moments included Backstreets, Growing up, Badlands and Radio Nowhere. The trouble for me with a Bruce concert is that I grew up reading about these four/five hour concerts he used to do in Asbury Park, New Jersey on Xmas Eve in the seventies and you always expect to get something of the same. 150 minutes of non-stop classics would be amazing from any other group but from Bruce it feels, ridiculously, like he is short-changing me. Can't win can he?