2005-10-12 Northrop Auditorium, Minneapolis, MN

Scheduled: 19:30 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

Premiere of "The New Timer" (replacing "The Hitter") and a welcome outing for "Thunder Road" - its only performance of the tour. Piano songs are "For You", "Thunder Road", and "Jesus Was An Only Son". "Idiot's Delight" and "Johnny 99" are with the bullet mic. "Into The Fire" and "Dream Baby Dream" are on pump organ. "Wreck On The Highway", "Back In Your Arms", and "Nothing Man" are on electric piano. "I Wanna Marry You" is on ukulele. Another instrument premieres - "The New Timer" is on autoharp.

Bruce Springsteen

Intro to “Back In Your Arms”
´´Good to be in Minneapolis, I always have to, uh, you know….I always gotta put a disclaimer on, on that last verse ´cause the lyrics actually should have been ´I ain´t gonna fuck it up too bad this time´….I say that every night, I couldn´t fit all the words in, uh, and sing them well so I left that out but it should´ve been ´I´m not gonna fuck it up too bad´….so ….or it could´ve been ´I´m not gonna fuck it up badly,´ that, that would´ve worked also…. ´I´m not gonna fuck it up badly this time,´ yeah (?)….´´

Intro to “For You”
´´Thank you….alright, this was, uh….a request from a lady out back, alright….let´s try a little less piano….´´

Intro to “Ain´t Got You”
´´Thank you, when I´m, uh, I´m often approached on the street by fans….usually a, uh, usually a fuselage of curses drives them away but not always….but uh….and, uh, I´m asked many questions, uh, ´Do you have any change?´…uh, yeah, and ´How do you do it?´ (chuckles) but one of the main ones I always seem to be asked quite often is, uh, ´What is it like to be the Boss?´ I get asked that quite a bit….now, uh, usually, over the years I have this very bullshit humble response that I give out, like, ´It´s no big deal´ or ´That´s the way, you know, those are the breaks, that´s the way the cards are dealt,´ uh, you know, uh, so I´ve done pretty well with the whole humble bit and I´m going to be sticking with that for the rest of my career so, uh, uh….but, uh, but actually the actual answer would be, uh, ´Fantastic beyond your wildest dreams´….and uh….I don´t, I don´t, uh, I don´t usually give that answer out, I don´t usually say that answer because it can feel like you´re lording it over people and, uh, I´d rather do that in private personally….but I did, I did write about it once and, uh, uh, it was, and nobody liked it, nobody liked it, so but I, I, I just did it in the interest of full disclosure, you know, let´s, let´s, let´s figure it out here….´´

Intro to “One Step Up”
´´That´s, uh, that´s about the size of the whole thing right there…..´´

Intro to “Nothing Man”
´´Thank you, gonna bring out the little piano, this is a major frigging procedure….alright, there it is, yes, thank you, gentlemen….yes, their jobs are secured….´´

Intro to “Thunder Road”
´´Thanks, I´ll do a song I haven´t, I don´t I´ve played it on this tour, I´ve given it a rest for a while, some of those old bastards need that, you know, how it is (chuckles) they need a rest, but I´m gonna play this one tonight for a special friend of mine, J.J, if you´re, I hope you´re still here (J.J: ´I´m here´) oh, alright, this is for you, my, my, my good friend….´´
^{[ According to the Backstreets Magazine, J.J is a young man who is battling leukemia and who met Bruce before the show and was present at the soundcheck. ]}

Intro to “Jesus Was An Only Son”
´´Thanks, I, uh, grew up, uh, Catholic in this little town and, uh, we had an L-shaped block and there was my grandmother´s house where I lived in with my dad and my mom and my sister and my grandparents, uh, then there was a field and a nuns´ convent, a priests´ rectory and the church on the corner and across the street was my aunt´s and cousins´ house and a couple of cousins and an aunt in there and then next to them was, was my aunt´s house and uncle´s and I had two or three kind of grown cousins, man cousins in there, you know (chuckles) and uh….then you went down the street a little bit, there was my great-grandmother´s house and, uh, and across the street, that was the Irish side of the family, and across the street were the Italians and that was my grandmother´s house, my mother´s mom, and she had a sister in there and, uh, two cousins and then about three or four blocks away, there was a whole host of, of cousins and aunts (chuckles) so it was, uh, and in the middle of it all was the Catholic church and that kind of was the centre of everything you did and I saw every wedding and funeral, uh, uh, I saw hundreds, maybe thousands, I don´t know, by the time I was twelve years old because my mother would, uh, would drag me by the hand up the street to the church to see the weddings ´cause she wanted to see the dresses, you know, and she´d go ´Oh, she´s beautiful, oh, she´s so beautiful´ (chuckles) and then me and my sister would pick up the rice off the ground, that was back in the day when you could throw rice, uh, that´s one of the things that´s gone, you can´t throw rice any more, I don´t know if you´ve heard about that, but….nowadays they have little bags that paper comes out of or something but there´s no rice thrown, it kills the birds or something, but back in the day when you could throw rice, we threw a shitload and uh….uh, and we saved it up, saved it up, over the years we saved it and, uh, we´d pick it up and bring it home and bring it back next wedding and throw the rice….and, uh, pick it up again, bring it home in a little brown bag, bring it back, throw the rice, I think we might´ve thrown at few of the funerals also….we had so much damn rice, but, uh, but anyway, I grew up, you know, I was surrounded with all of that and that sort of penetrated all my writing and, and, uh, on this record, there was a lot of beauty and poetry and terror (chuckles) in the Catholic religion so, uh (chuckles) uh, uh, so, anyway, I was writing a song about parents and children a lot, on the record a lot of songs are about parents and children and, and, and I went back and what was Jesus like as somebody´s son, you know, just as, uh, uh, all good Irish and Italian rockers know that before there was Elvis, there was Jesus, Jesus and the disciples, before Elvis and the Jordanaires was Jesus and the Disciples….and, uh, so this is ´Jesus Was An Only Son´….
(….) at His mother´s feet….now the first thing that hits you when you have your kids is how ….there´s this feeling in your gut that there´s nothing you wouldn´t do to keep them safe and, uh….a general shock to self-involved musicians but, uh, uh, that´s your life sentence…..
(….) shall pierce your dreams this night….I always figured that….your choices are given value by the things that you sacrifice, we choose something and we give something else up…. and, uh….and I figured that Jesus had to be thinking how beautiful it was down in Galilee this time of year down….and how there´s that nice little bar by the seashore that needs a manager….and how Mary Magdalene could probably tend bar in the place….they could´ve had a bunch of kids and got to see the sun fall on their faces….and, uh, watch their lungs fill with air at night when they´re sleeping….and got to see the next day….and the day after that ….and the day after that….and the day after that….and the day after that….´´

Intro to “The New Timer”
´´Thanks a lot, this was a song that was inspired by a book - I´m gonna try, I´m gonna do something I haven´t done before - alright, well, this is a song that was inspired by a book I read by Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson called ´Journey to Nowhere,´ which, uh, uh, chronicled the decline of the steel mills and the Rustbelt in the ´70s and ´80s, it´s a beautiful book, uh, uh, about people who built the country and then were marginalised so, uh, it´s called ´Journey to Nowhere,´ this is a song I wrote for….for them, let me see if I, I don´t know if this is gonna work out….´´

Intro to “Matamoros Banks”
´´Thank you….this is, uh, this is a song I wrote as a sequel to a series of California songs I wrote when I was living in California and, uh, there were four of them on ´The Ghost of Tom Joad,´ kind of border-songs, uh, every year there´s hundreds of people that die trying to come in across the southern border into the United States, they, uh, die of dehydration in the deserts, this is been a particularly hot summer, uh, they die trying to cross the river and in the backs of vans being smuggled in and, uh, if you eat strawberries or lettuce or tomatoes or, all of those things have to be harvested by hand, they can´t be machine-harvested, those things are all picked and put in a basket and brought in, their hands are at all our table, uh….so we´re in need of some sort of a humane immigration policy, a worker program….uh, this is called ´Matamoros Banks,´ this is a song I wrote, wrote, it´s written backwards, uh, the story begins at its end with the body at the bottom of the river, traces back through the journey across the desert…..´´

End of “I Wanna Marry You”
´´I´d be proud if you would wear my name hyphenated….´´

Intro to “The Ties That Bind”
´´Yeah, it´s, uh….it´s time, it´s time to bring the ukulele back, that´s my opinion….it´s been gone too long, it´s time to bring it back and into the forefront, uh, the size, uh, does not always count so (chuckles)….´´

Intro to “The Promised Land”
´´Thank you, I wanna thank everybody for coming out to the show tonight, thank you very much….appreciate it, thanks a lot, thank you, everybody upstairs….yes….thank you….a nice theater you got here, uh, I just wanna give a shout-out to the Second Harvest, uh, Heartland Foodbank, they´re here in Minneapolis, they, uh, fight hunger (?) they distribute food and, uh, non-food items to more than 800 agencies in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin and they directly serve a lot of struggling citizens here of, uh, Minnesota and Wisconsin, they could use your support, they´re in the hall out there tonight, on your way out, if you could just check them out and, uh, give them a hand in some fashion or another, that would be appreciated and, uh, uh, (?) the Guthrie Organization, it´s a group dedicating to saving the historic Guthrie Theater….in Minneapolis from demolition, they got a petition to sign, if you wanna keep the place standing and uh (chuckles) and they´re also collecting donations, you know, it´s, uh, it´s, it´s, it´s nice to hold on to the, the, the things that give a place a sense of place, one of the difficult things that happened in Asbury was, Asbury was many just beautifully elegant theaters and there were two incredible ones that I have so, so many memories of when I was a kid, one when they, when ´The Bridge on the River Kwai´ came out, they built a bridge across Ocean Avenue out of sticks and hay as a promotion for the picture and, uh, those are the days I remember when my mother used to take me to the theater, when we walked in, not even inside, when you walked in, the lobby, you know, it was, we were going someplace, you know, so (chuckles) and there was a sense of that in, uh, in those, in those, in those great old theaters and it also gave the town, once again, it was an integral piece of, of the city´s identity and it´s nice to hold on to those buildings and places that have some history in them, if possible, so, uh, check them out….this is for those folks…´´

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

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