{"id":481468,"date":"2026-05-12T21:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481468\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T21:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:00:15","slug":"bruce-springsteens-land-of-hope-and-dreams-tour-an-american-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481468\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams Tour: An American Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt Madison Square Garden Monday night, Bruce Springsteen<\/a> ceded a show-defining lyric to guest vocalist Tom Morello<\/a> during their cover of \u201cClampdown.\u201d \u201cLet fury have the hour,\u201d Morello shouted, as the E Street Band<\/a> channeled the Clash way more credibly than anyone could\u2019ve imagined when London Calling and The River were both on the charts.\u00a0\u201cAnger can be power.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs he does at every show<\/a> on his Land of Hope and Dreams Tour, Springsteen joined in with a harmony on the next line: \u201cDo you know that you can use it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSacha Lecca<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Springsteen reunited the E Street Band in 1999 for their first tour in over a decade,\u00a0Morello was busy playing Woodstock \u201999<\/a> and the first Coachella with Rage Against the Machine<\/a>, and had yet to sing a note in public. At that point, Springsteen hadn\u2019t resumed recording with the band, which left him especially determined to avoid nostalgia. So he steered clear of some of his most beloved songs, added outtakes from his then-new Tracks box set to the shows, and made a metal-adjacent rearrangement of his 1995 song \u201cYoungstown\u201d a centerpiece.\u00a0 He also wrote a new song, \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams,\u201d that offered a utopian vision of possibilities for his band and his nation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the 27 years since then, the E Street Band lost two key members, Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, but plunged onwards. Springsteen wrote and recorded an entire new 21st-century catalog of songs with them, the best of which can stand up in concert next to his Seventies and Eighties classics. E Street\u2019s remaining 20th-century members on this tour \u2014 Max Weinberg, Garry Tallent, Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan \u2014\u00a0 are all in their seventies, and somehow playing as fiercely as ever over nearly three-hour shows. The E Street Band is malleable enough that Morello\u2019s once-jaw-dropping addition of wicky-wicky guitar madness to \u201cThe Ghost of Tom Joad\u201d now just feels at home, simply a counterpart to Lofgren\u2019s equally lofty excursions on \u201cYoungstown\u201d and \u201cBecause the Night.\u201d The band is living up to the wildest promises its leader made, conjuring a world where \u201cthe music never ends,\u201d as Springsteen sings in \u201cHouse of a Thousand Guitars.\u201d <\/p>\n

The nation, though? Ups and downs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSacha Lecca<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike most of Springsteen\u2019s tours since The Rising, this outing has only a single new song, the instant-protest anthem \u201cStreets of Minneapolis,\u201d<\/a> which immortalizes Ren\u00e9e Good<\/a> and Alex Pretti<\/a>, as well as the \u201cfederal thugs\u201d who shot them dead, prompting Boomer-heavy crowds to shout \u201cICE out now\u201d at arenas across the nation. Even without a new album, this tour is far more in-the-moment than any other classic-rock show you could name (excluding the always in-the-now Bob Dylan). The memory of the willful misunderstanding of \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.,\u201d most notably by Ronald Reagan himself, is ever-fresh for Springsteen, so he\u2019s crafted a setlist and accompanying speeches that are relentlessly clear in their indictment of Donald Trump and his administration.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf his catalog is ready-made for this purpose, it\u2019s only because of how long Springsteen has been grappling with issues that too many politicians and artists have ignored. \u201cDeath to My Hometown,\u201d \u201cYoungstown,\u201d \u201cThe Ghost of Tom Joad,\u201d and even \u201cMurder Incorporated\u201d (with a surprise guitar-solo barrage from Steve Van Zandt at MSG) portray the pre-Trump forces that brought us here. Their lyrics offer a vision of a de-industrialized, hollowed-out, safety-net-devoid nation that would inevitably be vulnerable to populist demagoguery \u2014\u00a0in fact, the real-life inspiration for the unemployed mill worker who narrates \u201cYoungstown\u201d told <\/a>the New York Times he was a Trump voter.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSacha Lecca<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmerican Skin (41 Shots)\u201d meanwhile, written years before Black Lives Matter, tackles racism and its entanglement with police violence and overreach.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s also an occasion for some of the most lyrical, emotional, and stunt-free soloing of Morello\u2019s career, beginning with a trilling exchange of licks with saxophonist Jake Clemons, who seems more confident than ever in his role. (As was the case in the Seventies moment when David Sancious and Ernest \u201cBoom Carter\u201d were in the band, the current E Street Band is truly multiracial, with nearly as many Black performers onstage as white ones.)<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tour\u2019s speeches, delivered almost identically each night, should not be overlooked in a moment when the Democratic party seems leaderless, its highest-ranking officials apparently overwhelmed by the ever-growing list of Trumpian outrages. Springsteen\u2019s message is so simple and clear that it\u2019s shocking actual politicians seem unable to adopt it. He refuses to let the horrors inflicted upon Minnesota be forgotten. He reminds us of DOGE<\/a>\u2018s pointless evisceration<\/a> of USAID, and the countless deaths overseas in its wake:\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s not on the front pages anymore,\u201d he said at the Garden, and at every stage so far, \u201cbut it\u2019s happening now. People are dying.\u201d He\u2019s had to add to the list of horrors as the tour goes on, now mentioning the Supreme Court\u2019s attack on the Voting Rights Act<\/a>, and the sea-shell-based persecution of James Comey. Overall, he revives an idea that came up so often in Trump\u2019s first term that it somehow became a liberal-bashing joke: This is not normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory, rogue nation,\u201d Springsteen said. \u201cHonesty, honor, humility, truth, compassion, humanity, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency \u2014 don\u2019t let anybody tell you that these things don\u2019t matter anymore \u2014 they do\u2026. So join us and let\u2019s fight for the America that we love.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tSpringsteen is so fired up this time that the elegiac feel of his last tour<\/a> has slipped away, along with its reminders of mortality. Aside from the always-delightful death-defiance of \u201cWrecking Ball,\u201d he allowed only one moment along those lines at MSG, reminiscing about playing his first New York City show as a teenager, at Cafe Wha. \u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is, thanks for a lifetime,\u201d he said, prompting a long, notably emotional ovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show began with a light lingering on an empty spot behind a mic stand, which\u00a0Springsteen eventually stepped into for his opening speech. In the moments before his arrival, it was hard not to think about that void, and dread the day Bruce Springsteen won\u2019t be around to fill it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Madison Square Garden Monday night, Bruce Springsteen ceded a show-defining lyric to guest vocalist Tom Morello during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[15248,32644,18,117,19,17,337,152427,11893],"class_list":{"0":"post-481468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bruce-springsteen","9":"tag-e-street-band","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-rage-against-the-machine","16":"tag-tom-morello"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116563622693014508","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}