Bruce Springsteen performed his first concert in Toronto one day after the Nov. 5 U.S. election, and opened the show with the song Long Walk Home, which he called a ‘fighting prayer for my country’.Danny Clinch/Supplied
Bob Dylan, on Talkin’ World War III Blues, said, “I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.”
Bruce Springsteen, on The River, asked, “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true?”
George Constanza, on Seinfeld, said, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
On Sunday, Springsteen and the E Street Band played the first of their two sold-out concerts at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena. Springsteen introduced Long Walk Home, a lament for the way things were, as a “prayer for my country.” On Wednesday, back again at the same arena, he introduced the concert-opening song as a “fighting prayer for my country,” with special emphasis on “fighting.”
The performance was his first since the U.S. presidential election. There was some expectation that Springsteen, an ardent Democrat, would address the Donald Trump victory. He did not, but he really did.
Springsteen, 75, raged musically. He led more with his electric guitar than he did on Sunday. Solos on Candy’s Room and Adam Raised a Cain (both additions to the Wednesday setlist) felt like airings of grievances.
But if there was a vexed, defiant vibe at work, he also sang about dreams and community, beginning with the gospel rock of Land of Hope and Dreams (with an outro bit of the 1960s civil rights anthem People Get Ready). “I will provide for you, and I’ll stand by your side,” he promised. “You’ll need a good companion for this part of the ride.” He had not played the song on Sunday.
On another Wednesday addition, Darkness on the Edge of Town, he explained his reason for being on stage: “Tonight I’ll be on that hill ‘cause I can’t stop, I’ll be on that hill with everything I got / Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost.” And on Badlands, “Talk about a dream, try to make it real / you wake up in the night, with a fear so real …”
After the show, I spoke to a few concertgoers, including a despondent Florida Democrat – “I’m pretty left on the political spectrum” – in town for what he claimed to be his 165th Springsteen concert.
“It wasn’t a joyful show,” said Doug Maesk. “But as sombre and intense as the show was, I don’t feel as down as I did all day.”
Maesk is a mental health counsellor in Tamarac, Fla., an hour south of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. He also attended Sunday’s concert and spent Election Day in Toronto.
“Maybe it was self-delusion, but I just didn’t think our country would elect that man after all he had done the last time, especially on the way out the door.”
Another concertgoer, Toronto’s Tammy Starr, has family members who are dual citizens. “The bits and pieces of my life spent in the United States were seminal and transformative years,” she said. “The trauma of the election is real. The concert was an overwhelmingly emotional experience, given my love for the country and all the memories of past Bruce concerts.”
David Fleischer, of Vaughan, Ont., has seen Springsteen a dozen or so times. He felt the Sunday show was “amazing and fun,” but that the post-election concert was special. “It was the way Bruce didn’t have to say what everyone was thinking,” Fleischer said. “He just let the songs and the passion with which he and the band played say everything that needed to be said.”
After a night of dancing in the dark, Springsteen and E Street cut the tension with Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town. It was not on the set list; a sign held by someone in the floor section requested the yuletide classic that Springsteen scored a hit with in 1985. He performed it wearing a fan’s Santa hat, tossing it back when the song was done.
Springsteen’s gift is the presentation of hope and hard realities not only within the same concert, but the same songs. As such, Wednesday’s election-aftermath performance felt like a concession speech and a campaign rally all in one.
In his new book, There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland, Steven Hyden writes about dreams, a divided country and a Springsteen concert he attended in Minnesota in 2023:
“If America is not a community, but only a business, the one place where the heartland still seemed real was at a Bruce Springsteen show. Inside the arena, the possibilities were practically tactile. You could almost touch the dream with your fingers.”
But outside the arena, after the show, the dream disappeared: “All you had were the broken pieces of America.”
Florida’s Maesk said he had woken up Wednesday to a nightmare. “I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I felt like it was the end of everything – the end of our democracy, the end of our alliances around the world, everything. By the end of the concert, I didn’t quite feel as dark as that. But it’s still a very scary time in the United States.”
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play Ottawa’s Canadian Tire Centre, Nov. 9; Winnipeg’s Canada Life Centre, Nov. 13; Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome, Nov. 16; Edmonton’s Rogers Place, Nov. 19; Vancouver’s Rogers Arena, Nov. 22.
