Bruce Springsteen Covers Bowie & Plays ‘The River’ In Pittsburgh

On Saturday night Bruce Springsteen brought a much smaller version of the E Street Band than he last toured with to Pittsburgh’s Consol Energy Center to kick off “The River Tour.” Springsteen and his band tore through each and every track from the 1980 double album The River, but also worked 14 other songs into the marathon performance in Steel City including a tribute to David Bowie.

Springsteen opened the show with River outtake “Meet Me In The City” before telling the capacity crowd, “The River was a record where I was trying to fit in. By the time I got to that record, I was taking notice of the things that bond people to their lives: work, commitments, families. I wanted to imagine and I wanted to write about those things and I figured if I could write about them, maybe I’d get one step close to realizing them in my own life. I wanted to make a record that was big enough so it felt like life or like an E Street Band show” as per Rolling Stone. With that, The Boss and his band tore through the material from The River including a version of “I Wanna Marry You” that saw a wedding proposal in the audience.

Coming into the tour fans knew Springsteen would play The River in its entirety every night, so the big question for setlist watchers was what would follow. On opening night Bruce treated fans to such classics as “Badlands,” “Backstreets,” “Because The Night” and “Brilliant Disguise” within the main set as well as more recent tunes “Wrecking Ball” and “The Rising.” The encore consisted of six songs starting with the debut cover of “Rebel Rebel” dedicated to David Bowie. “Not enough people know it but he recorded our music way, way, way back in the very beginning, 1973. He rang me up and I visited him down in Philly while he was making the Young Americans record. He covered some of my music, ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City,’ ‘Growin’ Up,’ and he was a big supporter of ours. I took the Greyhound bus down to Philadelphia, that’s how early on it was. Anyway, we’re thinking of him,” Bruce said of Bowie. The show then ended with “Bobby Jean,” “Dancing In The Dark,” “Born To Run,” “Rosalita” and a cover of “Shout.” Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band continue the tour on Tuesday in Chicago.

Watch fan-shot footage of “Rebel Rebel” thanks to 3 Guys & A Movie: