Rock God: Springsteen at The Apollo review by Russ Burlingame

Typically, Bruce Springsteen's deep catalog of hits and his willingness to experiment makes his setlists—even during years-long barnstorming tours—somewhat unpredictable. Still, out of the twenty-five or so songs that the Boss and the E Street Band will play on any given night, something like 15 or 18 of those are fairly static during any given tour, and many of them will be predictable (the first single off the current new album is usually either the first or second song in the set, for example, with “Badlands” in the first third and “Born to Run” in the finale).

It was with some interest and curiousity, then, that Springsteen's fans tuned into Friday night's concert at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater. It was the first show of a new tour, released just three days after the official street date of his new album, Wrecking Ball. And while a good chunk of the night was spent paying tribute to the soul and R&B legends who helped build The Apollo (using a series of MoTown covers which are unlikely to be repeated with any frequency), the energetic show not only set the bar pretty high for the rest of the tour, but certainly seems to have given fans some things to think about.

First of all, it's worth noting that after guitarist Steven Van Zandt's comments in an interview a while back that last year's The Promise—a boxed set of rarities from Springsteen's fan-favorite Darkness on the Edge of Town album—was likely to figure prominently into this tour, not a lick of that music was played during the two-hours-plus show. Whether his own archives were briefly shelved to make room for the MoTown material or whether Van Zandt was simply wrong in his impression that the tour was promoting two albums and not one (his words), remains to be seen.

What did make the stage was almost as notable—during the twenty-song setlist, Springsteen managed eight of the new album's eleven tracks, leaving off only “This Depression,” “You've Got It” and “Easy Money,” the last of which felt like a shoo-in to make the concert tour after being quoted by basically every critic who looked at the record. Meanwhile, “The E Street Shuffle” made the cut, a song that's popular with fans but not often performed. That nearly forty-year-old song made its network television debut a week before the Apollo show on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, garnering rave reviews from Springsteen fans, which suggests it might have a semi-regular spot in concerts on this tour for the first time in decades.

Further, Springsteen and company didn't shy away from controversy—in their first full concert since losing Clarence Clemons, the night featured a number of sax solos by his nephew Jake, one of two sax players who will replace him on the tour, and even a performance of “10^th Avenue Freeze-Out,” in which The Big Man, Clemons' E Street nickname, is repeatedly name-dropped. Fans had speculated that if any songs were to be retired in deference to Clemons, it would be either “10^th Avenue Freeze-Out” or “Jungleland,” a fan-favorite tune with an iconic sax solo. While “Jungleland” didn't make the setlist and its fate is still in question, “10^th Avenue Freeze-Out” stopped dead for a lengthy ovation at the first mention of the Big Man.

In the absence of Clemons, Springsteen has added a horn section. In addition fleshing out some of the songs nicely (especially those with sparse arrangements on the record), it brings some of the grander songs more into line with their studio versions. On albums, Springsteen is notorious for over-producing, with huge, elaborate arrangements. Traditionally he's played live venues like a big, loud bar band. At The Apollo, he managed a little of both, seeming to set a standard for the tour that marries the two approaches and brings him somewhat closer to the folk-rock and Motown sounds from which he's clearly drawing his influences.

Perhaps most notable was the transformation of “My City of Ruins,” a song written about the economic destruction of Asbury Park but reinterpreted after 9/11 as a song dedicated to those lost on that day, as a rousing celebration of the band and those they've lost. It's replaced “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” not in the playlist but as the band-introduction song, and ballooned to over ten minutes long in the process. Having introduced all the members standing behind him, Springsteen asked the room if there was anyone missing—after a lengthy ovation for Clemons and bandmate Danny Federici, who died of cancer in 2008. “The only thing I can guarantee tonight is that if you're here, and we're here, they're here,” Springsteen said of the missing members, repeating the phrase and integrating it into the song itself.

With Michelle Moore on hand at The Apollo to perform her rap in “Rocky Ground,” one wonders whether that song might not appear too much on the tour if she doesn't join the band full-time. That would harken back to “Worlds Apart,” one of the more talked-about tracks on Springsteen's The Rising, which was a rarity on the setlist for that tour because it featured backing vocals by Pakistani singer Asif Ali Khan.

With no songs at all from his previous two studio albums (“Magic” and “Working on a Dream”), “Born in the USA” or two of the three previous folk-rock efforts (“The Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Devils and Dust”), it seems unlikely that this setlist will be indicative of what fans are likely to see on the tour. It's also very cover-heavy and a little on the short side for Springsteen, unless age is finally catching up with him. That said, it was a great batch of songs that brought an inspired performance out of Bruce and the band, and fans could do worse than to see at least half of these carried over into regular circulation.

Just, please Bruce, quit it with “Waiting on a Sunny Day.”