2005-05-28 Royal Albert Hall, London, England

Scheduled: 20:00 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

Piano songs are "The River", "Two Faces", "Real World", "Racing In The Street", and "Jesus Was An Only Son". "Reason To Believe" is with the bullet mic. "My Beautiful Reward" and "Dream Baby Dream" are on pump organ. First ever performance in Europe of "Black Cowboys" and in England of "All The Way Home".

Bruce Springsteen

Intro to “Long Time Comin”
´´Thank you….(some guy yells: ´(?) but I still fooking luv ya!´) (chuckles) alright, it´s been done (chuckles) I, uh….been in London for a few days and a couple things I´ve noticed, one, it gets hot here….I didn´t think it got that hot, I lost a few stones standing still last night….and the other thing is I went to the park for some relief….you guys are feeding the wildlife too much….had a squirrel jump up on the bench right next to me, then jump in my lap….I never seen that before….and squirrels, they´re kind of cute at a distance but like up close, they look fucking insane….their little eyes are bulging, I was afraid the thing was going straight for the nuts….(?) (chuckles)….oh, but man, I don´t know what that´s about (chuckles) anyway, had a big fight with my son and uh….it´s happening, it´s happening already ´cause the next thing I heard was the, the door slamming and (strums his guitar loudly) coming out of the room so ….he knows I can´t say ´Turn it down´….I´d love to but I can´t say it….so here´s to parenthood….to getting it not right but better the second time around, there´s only three stages, one, you´re the benevolent hand of God, two, you´re a tolerable idiot, three, you´re a fucking idiot (chuckles) so with that in mind, good luck….´´

Intro to “Black Cowboys”
´´Wrote a, uh….lot of songs about, uh, sons and mothers on this record, kind of what happens when….when that bond gets severed….this was a song I wrote, it kind of combined, when I was a kid, I was transfixed by Westerns and, uh….on the streets in the city….if someone dies in a certain spot, they build a street shrine, it´s got a picture and candles and flowers….uh…. and so that sort of inspired this song, this is a song called ´Black Cowboys´….(?) we triage our citizens as the price of doing business….´´

Intro to “The River”
´´Thank you, I was telling the folks last night that I, uh, didn´t write a lot of love songs when I first started out, uh, the, the whole damn thing was just too confusing….and uh….I think I grew up in a house where there was a lot of mixed signals, you know, my father told me that, uh, uh, love, all love songs were government propaganda….and uh, they were made, like, for you to get married and, you know, pay taxes and….and, uh, then, but my mother was kind of swept up in, in the romance novels and she had on AM-radio in the morning and, you know, the AM-radio was filled with doowop music when I was in grammar school and so there was all these men sort of trying to sing like beautiful women….which, uh, uh, all these beautiful voices and occasionally you still see ´em, we have public television in the States, gets them all together and they ask for you to send in some money but these guys are 60 or 70 years old and they come out and they still have these unbelievably vibrant and, and youthful voices, kind of filled with, uh, a lot of (?) and an incredible amount of 1950´s-style horniness, you know, so….horniness being the appetite for sex (giggles) but anyway, so what I did is I, I (?)(people clap) I´m ready to translate it (?) during the night (chuckles) it´s like (chuckles) so what I did was I, I hid my love songs, the first ones and so, uh, this was one, I´ve told the folks that this one was hidden (?)….´´

Intro to “Two Faces”
´´Thank you….then about, uh….ten years later I came right out and started to write ´em but, uh, uh, but they weren´t happy (chuckles)….´´

Intro to “Part Man Part Monkey”
´´Evolution….a big topic in the States right now….we´re trying to figure out if it happened or not….the President says the jury´s out on evolution….the whole thing´s just, it´s just very iffy, it´s, there´s not enough proof (?) it´s out….now, personally I think the President believes in evolution….but he´s just doing what he has to do so he can do what he wants ´cause the monkey-vote don´t put you in office or send in campaign-contributions (people clap)(?)….so 80 years ago there was the Scopes´ Monkey Trial where they put a man on trial for teaching evolution….this is probably one of those ´only in America´-deals….but basically I think they came down to deciding if the monkeys had something to do with it, which I don´t think in any way took away from, you know….the Big Guy, it just showed He had a sense of humour ´bout the whole thing….but uh….right now in Kansas they reopened the whole issue and…. it´s kind of sweeping across the States as we speak, that´s right, you….I guess if we haven´t evolved….you haven´t either, I hate to tell you (chuckles) but uh….a lot of strange censorship, they made a movie about the Scopes´ Monkey Trial called Inherit the Wind, well, that´d probably be banned from the theaters today and, uh, the Flintstones, you get the Flintstones over here, right? (people: ´Yeah´) they, uh, right, ´Yabba dabba doo´….well, they couldn´t make that in the States today, that´s, that´s, it´s too controversial, the whole neanderthal-caveman setting and the homosexual undercurrents of the Barney-Fred-relationship, it would, uh….throw the whole thing right to the crapper….so as Dorothy said ….´There´s no place like home´….
(….) Now, Bubbles, come home….we´ve come a long way, baby….oh, and we´re going back….´´

Intro to “All the Way Home”
´´Ooh, mmm, gimme some of that, alright….´´

Intro to “The Line”
´´(tunes his guitar, people yell) (?) silencio (chuckles)….alright (keeps tuning) oh shit….I practised this backstage but it was in a different tuning…..hey….be good, Kevin (chuckles) ….I got it….(somebody: ´Yeah!´) hell, you don´t even know what the fuck I´m doing yet (loud cheers) Jesus Christ!….´´

Intro to “Real World”
´´Alright….let´s see what I got here, one second, woh! oh no, we don´t need that (?) (chuckles) a little Marx Brothers routine (chuckles) actually, wait a minute, maybe I think I will (chuckles)(?) one second!….alright (?) this is for your wife, it´s not the song you requested but this was a love song of mine that kind of got away, I wrote it in the early 90´s and it slipped away from me a little bit but I´ll give it another shot here, alright….´´

Intro to “Jesus Was an Only Son”
´´Yeah, uh, I was, uh, brought up in Catholic school….so….that means Jesus is my homeboy and uh….also means, uh, I had the shit scared out of me by The Exorcist the first time I saw it (chuckles) I still can´t see it, I sleep with the lights on after I see that movie but, uh….you know, you kind of think you get away from a lot of that stuff….then the older you get, eventually you just ´fess up to it and say….it´s like that Al-Pacino line, you know, you try to get out, they keep pulling you back and, uh (chuckles)….I was telling the folks last night why, why did I name all those girls Mary all the time, what the hell was that about, you know….well, I don´t know (chuckles) but uh….but now I sort of have the, uh….my relatives are all still solid churchgoers, they get me over there once in a while and uh….it´s alright, it´s alright, you know, uh (?) but I have a lot of little pagan babies myself, I don´t know (chuckles) but occasionally I….I get back to the old convent where I was tortured, you know, and uh….it´s, it´s not so bad now, now, like I was telling the folks last night, now I get free beers when I go there….the Sisters have beer in their refridgerator…that´s an improvement…. wasn´t any beer there in 1957, I tell you that…..and, uh, they let me watch the baseball game, that´s pretty nice….uh….(?) either that or the strip clubs, you know, so it´s a….works better all the way around….this was a song that I, uh….I wrote, once again, about the sons and the mothers and I was sort of thinking of Jesus as somebody´s boy, what, uh….as Mary´s son, as obviously when you´re a parent, you wanna protect your children, it´s the first thing that, that never changes….and at the same time they grow and they have their own destiny and you gotta….you just have to surrender….so this is called ´Jesus Was an Only Son´….
(…) As he lay reading the Psalms of David at his mother´s feet….I think the first thing that shocks you….about parenthood is here comes this stranger who you would die for (chuckles) for self-involved musicians that´s a big surprise (chuckles)….but all of a sudden it´s just there ….it´s just there….A mother prays ´Sleep tight, my child, sleep well, for I´ll be at your side. That no shadow, no darkness, no tolling bell shall pierce your dreams this night´….I always figured that, uh….what makes your choices mean anything is what you give up, you choose something and….you give up something else….that´s what gives our choices weight and power….and I always figured He had to be thinking….´That Galilee is pretty nice this time of year….I could do the preaching on the weekend….I could manage that little bar….Mary Magdalene could tend the bar….we could have some kids and uh…..watch the sun fall on our face´….In the garden at Gethsemane….´´

Intro to “Leah”
´´Well, we carry, uh, this is a song about how we carry the seeds of our own destruction, as a merry part of the human package and, uh….along with the seeds for building things and how life is just a tug-of-war between those two poles and, uh….this is a song about a guy who just figures out how to just come down on the right side of that equation….this is called ´Leah´…´´

Intro to “The Hitter”
´´Thank you….this, uh….this is a song that sort of, uh….takes the flipside of that equation, I guess…adheres to our destruction….and uh….a young guy leaves home and, uh, gets in trouble, heads down into New Orleans and becomes quite a champion, comes back, sells himself short….comes back, uh, into the town he grew up in towards the end of his life and the whole song´s a conversation he has with his mom….through this locked door….like I say, Freud is smiling in his grave somewhere (chuckles) but, uh, I kind of grew up in a, I grew up in a house that sort of felt both the hand of fortune and the very harsh hand of fate and, uh…. that sort of defined the parameters of my songwriting, along with general behavior often (chuckles) but, uh….uh, the only thing I found out was that, uh, they don´t cancel each other out, you gotta live with them both….this is called ´The Hitter´….´´

Intro to “Matamoros Banks”
´´Thank you….this is a song, uh….I wrote it as a sequel to ´Across the Border´….sort of tells a similar story, a man tries to come across the wire into the United States, uh, looking for work….every year hundreds of people die trying to cross the border, they die in the deserts and the mountains, in the backs of vans and in the rivers….I wrote this song backwards, it starts from the body in the river to the walk across the desert to the banks of the Matamoros, which is a town across from Brownsville, Texas, this is called ´Matamoros Banks´….´´

Intro to “Ramrod”
´´Alright…(?) alright, this song, uh, let me see, I was telling the folks last night, started this song, there was a hill close by my house where you could, uh, pull up at night, you could see New York City and there was a little church that you passed on the way there and I had a girlfriend at the time that I was pretty hot on….was, uh, late, and, uh, I remember I´d go by that hill and say ´You and me are gonna be married right there!´….now, uh, fortunately we split up and she sold a lot of my stuff to the Hard Rock Cafe and, uh….(?) church and it burned down one night so, but anyway….it´s still a good song….
(…)(towards the end of the song) I guess, I guess that´s the end of the song but why stop now? (plays a bit more)….´´

Intro to “My Best Was Never Good Enough”
´´It´s a dirty job but somebody´s got to do it….´´ (just after Bruce is groped by a few female audience members)

Intro to “The Promised Land”
´´I wanna thank everybody for coming out to the shows I did here in London….thank you very much….I´ve been coming here for 30 years and I appreciate the loyalty of my fans here and, uh….it means a lot so thanks, hope youse enjoyed yourselves….´´

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

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