2005-05-30 Forest National, Brussels, Belgium

Scheduled: 20:30 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

Bruce returns to Forest National, where he last performed in 1981. Tour premiere for "State Trooper", performed on the Gretsch guitar and with the "normal" vocal, taking the place of "Part Man, Part Monkey", which drops out of the set for the first time on the tour. Piano songs are "The River", "Tougher Than The Rest", "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 performances in Belgium of "Reason To Believe", "Devils & Dust", "Long Time Comin'", "Silver Palomino", "Tougher Than The Rest", "State Trooper", "All The Way Home", "Reno", "Real World", "Further On (Up The Road)", "Jesus Was An Only Son", "Leah", "The Hitter", "Matamoros Banks", "My Best Was Never Good Enough", and "Dream Baby Dream".

Bruce Springsteen

Intro to “Long Time Comin”
´´Thank you….yes….guten abend, good evening….I have, uh, three children….they´re getting bigger…they´re as big as me, one, now and, uh….there are three stages of parenthood….one, you are the benevolent hand of God, two, you are a tolerable idiot, three, you are a fucking idiot (chuckles) but we do the best we can, this is ´Long Time Comin´´….´´

Intro to “Silver Palomino”
´´Thank you….actually, the words to that last verse should´ve been: ´I ain´t gonna fuck it up too bad this time´ (chuckles) I should´ve put that qualifier in there….but, uh ….I wrote a lot of songs on this record about sons and mothers and uh….what happens when that bond gets broken, this is a song I wrote for, uh, some friends of mine, their sons, they lost their mom at a very young age and so this is a story about a young boy who loses his mom and uh….sees her spirit in this horse that comes out of the….the border, the border mountains at night, this is called ´Silver Palomino´….´´

Intro to “The River”
´´Thank you, I didn´t, uh, I didn´t write a lot of love, loves, love songs when I first started…my, uh, my, my dad told me, uh, that they were government propaganda and uh….you know, that was impressionable on a 13-year-old mind and uh….the idea was that they were supposed to get you married and then you´d have to pay taxes and join the rat race, I guess….and my mother, she was the opposite, she had all the romance novels and the, uh, I don´t know if they have it like over here but all the covers looked like they, uh, like Fabio was on them or something, I´m not sure (chuckles) I don´t know, I don´t know if Fabio is here or not (chuckles) anyway, I, I hid my love songs, I hid them in other songs and so, uh, this is one where I, where that´s what I did….´´

Intro to “Tougher Than the Rest”
´´Then, uh….about, uh, oh, about eight years after that I started to write ´em for real and I….hid ´em less (chuckles) I´ll try one of those….´´

30.05.05 Brussels, Belgium, after ´´Tougher Than the Rest”##
´´Yeah, I think my fingers were searching for Roy Bittan on that one (chuckles)….´´

Intro to “All the Way Home”
´´Alright, band….oh, come on, kid, mmm….let Jimmy take over (chuckles)….´´

Intro to “Nebraska”
´´Thank you….I wrote this figuring, uh….everybody knows what it feels like to be condemned….here´s ´Nebraska´….´´

Intro to “Real World”
´´Thank you….this is a song I cut in the early 90´s, uh, it was on Human Touch but we didn´t quite get it right so, uh….I´ll take another swing at it here (?)….´´

Intro to “Jesus Was an Only Son”
´´Thank you, I was, uh….I was raised Catholic so Jesus is my homeboy….and uh….I mean I don´t practise any more….let me see, but I got a bunch of real churchgoing relatives, they try to get me to go down and get Communion all the time….but I try to explain to them that I, I was, that I got divorced and so I´m excommunicated…that, uh, you know, those are the rules! (chuckles) you can´t have it! (chuckles) but they don´t care, they just push me up to get it any way….sometimes I do (chuckles) but I was interested in the relationship between Jesus and Mary, as Jesus as being someone´s son, Mary´s son….and, uh, the idea that our kids, our children, they have their own destinies and they make their own choices and it´s the things that we give up that give our choices meaning….the parts of life we leave be and we let go….this is called ´´Jesus Was an Only Son´´….
(….) at his mother´s feet….now, the first thing….that shocks you as a parent is….how there´s nothing you wouldn´t do to protect your children….it comes as a sudden shock to very self-involved musicians (chuckles) but, uh, you wake up and it´s there so deep ….Mother prays….
(….) shall pierce your dreams this night….now, if you believe that what makes our choices meaningful….are the things we give up, what gives them weight and consequence….I always figured….Jesus had to be thinking….´There´s that nice little bar down in Galilee, the weather´s real nice this time of year….Mary Magdalene could tend bar….we could have some kids….do the preaching on the weekend….and just live, get to see the sun fall on their faces….get to feel the breath in your lungs…. just get to see the day….in the garden….´´

Intro to “Leah”
´´Thanks, uh, we, uh….all carry the seeds of our destruction, it´s the merry part of the human package, along with the, uh, seeds that….create good things but it´s a real wrestling match (chuckles) I find (chuckles) but, uh, this is a song about somebody just coming down on the right side of that equation….this is a love song called ´Leah´ ….´´

Intro to “The Hitter”
´´Thank you….this, uh, this next song is kind of, uh….the opposite side of….that equation, I guess, it´s, uh….the seeds of, the seeds of our destruction and it´s about a young guy that gets in trouble and leaves home for New Orleans, becomes quite a champion, comes back through town at the end of his life and has this conversation with his mother through a locked door so, uh, Freud is smiling in his grave somewhere, I´m sure (chuckles) but, uh, I grew up in a house that was both sort of touched by fortune and by the real harsh hand of fate and I found out that those things don´t cancel each other out, you just end up living with the two of them and that sort of defined the perimeters of my songwriting over the years but….uh, this is called ´The Hitter,´ ´The Hitter´….´´

Intro to “Matamoros Banks”
´´Thank you, this is a, uh….this is a song that I wrote as a sequel to the song called ´Across the Border´ on The Ghost of Tom Joad and, uh, it tells a similar story of a man coming….coming across the border looking for work, trying to send some money home to his family….uh….all human hope is the same….and every year hundreds of people die trying to come into the United States, across the southern border, they die in, they freeze in the mountains and they die in the deserts and….the backs of vans and in the rivers….so on this song I wrote, uh….I wrote this song backwards, I start with the body at the….in the river to the journey across the desert to the banks of Matamoros, this is called ´Matamoros Banks´….´´

Intro to “The Promised Land”
´´I want to, uh, thank everybody for coming down to the show tonight, thank you very much….just say thanks for taking my music into your lives over the past 30 years or so, I appreciate that and, uh….you were really, uh, a beautiful audience tonight too, thank you….of course if you keep going with those little flash cameras, I´m gonna kill you….(chuckles) alright….´´

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

Allan Smith

A brilliant show! Bruce looks very happy and the performance was mostly awesome! Overall rating 8.5/10.

Peter VDB

First of all: thanks to the audience. Bruce asked for complete silence in the two national languages (French and Dutch), and he got it. You could hear the needle drop, from the very first to the very last second of the show. 7,000 people listening in awe, savouring every sound that came from the stage, applauding and cheering when appropriate, not shouting requests… This was a great show - not just a 'good' one. I'm not going through all songs - just pick a few. Reason to believe: caused many discussions afterwards. Some find this rendition lame - I thought it was amazing. Going back to the absolute roots of blues and rock, the distorted voice and the rythm menacing… The River: his announcement led us to believe he was going to do 'Reno', since he talked about not writing love songs (his daddy said they were government propaganda), so he disguized his love songs… The River and Tougher than the Rest were brought on the piano. I was glad he turned back to the original River: during the reunion Tour, he tried out a different tune and that didn't work for me. He opened the Brussels concert of the Rising-Tour with the River as well, by the way. Maybe it's got something to do with his first Belgian concert ever, in 81, in the same Forrest National-venue, where he amazed us for the first time… State Trooper was a tour premiere, and was very, very intense. Nebraska: always seemed like a 'cold' song to me, about cold things and people… Now it turned out to be very warm. Racing: keeps amazing me, this song is - how old? And it's still there, still magic. Jesus Was an Only Son: in between the verses, he described how he was a child once, and has become a daddy now. How hard is can be to raise children. Laughter from the audience with his jokes. Ramrod: funny how the same shaker from his stadium tours is still shaking - in a completely different way. Nice - the audiance on its feet, clapping now - but a bit strange to me. I thought he ought to either continue with 2 or 3 shakers, or not bring any at all. But then again: never complain about his set list! Dream Baby Dream: as in all of his tours, he brings a song that's not his. This man has written so many classics, he has such an enormous arsenal of songs he can choose from - and then he ends with a song nobody knows. You have to have heard it before you understand why: this is pure magic, people drove home in a trance, this is so… amazing. This was my 26th show - seen two Tom Joads nine years ago. It gets a spot in my top five. He's proven, again, he is a league of its own: there's only a few artists who can entertain a crowd of 50,000 and come back 2 years later, alone, and do this to 7,000 people.

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