Back In The USA: Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band Release 1st Proper US Show In 11 Years

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’s latest archival recording is The Boss and band’s July 15, 1999 concert at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey (purchase here). The concert marked Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’s first proper U.S. show in 11 years.

In 1989, Springsteen dissolved The E Street Band as far as Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band was concerned. Bruce spent the 1990s working on solo projects like Lucky Town and The Ghost of Tom Joad. While Springsteen briefly reunited with The E Street Band to record new material for the 1995 Greatest Hits, the longtime collaborators would part ways once again following a string of promotional appearances around the compilation.

But in 1998, the same year the Tracks box set arrived, a press release heralded the proper return of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band. But U.S. fans would have to wait until Summer ‘99 as the Bruce and company would trek through Europe first.

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band — pianist Roy Bittan, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, organist/acccordionist Danny Federici, guitarist Nils Lofgren, vocalist/guitarist Patti Scialfa, bassist Garry Tallent, guitarist Stevie Van Zandt and drummer Max Weinberg — played their first proper show in the U.S. since 1988 fittingly in New Jersey at East Rutherford’s Continental Airlines Arena on July 15, 1999. Read an excerpt from Erik Flannigan’s essay on the concert below, picking up where the band is set to play their first proper show in the U.S. in 11 years:

This is the backdrop to July 15, 1999, the first U.S. arena show of the Reunion era and the earliest professional recording of the tour. Having been fortunate enough to attend the show, I can attest to the heightened anticipation in the building before the house lights went down, excitement you can hear just before Springsteen says, “Good evening, New Jersey. We’re gonna bring it to you.”

What follows is an exemplary and evolving performance that finds the men and women of E Street road-tested and ready for action, playing a 26-song set that follows the structural blueprint that would underpin the entire Reunion tour.

That setlist is a mix of faithful if not reinvigorated classics “The Promised Land,” “Backstreets,” “Badlands” and “Born to Run” along with slightly reworked versions of “The River” and “Darkness At The Edge of Town.” Bruce also dipped into his recent solo work with “The Ghost Of Tom Joad,” Lucky Town’s “If I Should Fall Behind” and the Academy Award-winning “Streets Of Philadelphia.”

But Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’s first show in 11 years opened with an outtake, “My Love Will Not Let You Down.” Here’s Erik Flannigan again:

Born in the U.S.A. outtake and Tracks-essential “My Love Will Not Let You Down” opens the show, captured in an appealingly guitar-soaked mix by Jon Altschiller. For those of us seeing the Reunion tour for the first time, a triple whammy was in play: the E Street Band was back on stage for the first time since 1988; Stevie Van Zandt was standing stage left, officially rejoined after a 17-year absence, and Springsteen was playing outtakes many of us never dreamed would feature in a setlist, let alone open a show.

Listen to “My Love Will Not Let You Down” from July 15, 1999 below: