The jeans aren't as skintight as they used to be. His once dark brown hair is now more salt than pepper. And with his blue Western shirt tucked into his jeans, his waistline suggests that maybe he's not doing quite as many abs-tightening crunches anymore.
Bruce Springsteen, long the age-defying rock star, almost looks like the 73-year-old grandpa that he is.
But once he and the expanded E Street Band tore into "No Surrender" Sunday night at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul to open his first Minnesota concert since 2016, it was obvious that there is no surrendering for the Boss — not to age or to COVID-19 that has sidelined some of his musicians on this month-old tour or to the fan blowback over exorbitant ticket prices.
Springsteen's 2¾-hour performance was the most rewarding, spirited and fulfilling late-career Twin Cities concert probably ever by a rock icon of long standing. He was more energetic and in better voice than Paul McCartney. He had more compelling recent new tunes than Elton John. He played way longer than the Rolling Stones. And he covered a greater range of material than Bob Dylan. Maybe Neil Young could compete if he tours arenas or Madonna when she comes this summer.
Springsteen, rock's mythic concert marathoner for six decades running, is setting new standards six years after earning rave reviews — and a Tony Award — for "Springsteen on Broadway," his one-man show featuring stories and songs about his life.
Like the Broadway masterwork, Springsteen's current arena show was a carefully structured, smartly paced, 26-song retrospective, with both a purposeful message as well as a sense of liberating fun. In front of 18,000 overjoyed fans, he touched on 10 of his 21 studio albums (including five tunes from 2020's "Letter to You" and one from last year's soul covers, "Only the Strong Survive"). There were early deep tracks (1973's multi-movement "E Street Shuffle"), a slew of rockin' arena favorites (including the heroic anthem "Promised Land," the dramatic mini opera "Thunder Road") and a few message songs reflecting on friendship, mortality and faith.
As band members and old friends have passed on, Springsteen has grown more ruminative and unabashedly philosophical, adding numbers like 2020's "Last Man Standing" to contemplate life's phases after staking his claim in 1975 as a young man with dreams in the jubilantly escapist "Born to Run," a highlight once again Sunday.
He introduced "Last Man Standing" by talking about the first band he joined at 15 and how he recently said farewell to its last other living member, who died of cancer. "At 15, life is all tomorrows and hellos," the Boss reflected, "later it's a lot of goodbyes … so make every moment count every day."
