ROB DeMARTIN
Bruce Springsteen performs at The Footprint Center in Phoenix on March 22.
Two days after launching his 2024 tour with The E Street Band at The Footprint Center in Phoenix, Bruce Springsteen called in to SiriusXM satellite radio to discuss the tour, his 2023 health problems and other topics with E Street Radio (channel 20) host Jim Rotolo.
“The last four shows, I was playing really ill,” he said of the Aug. 26-Sept. 3 stretch. “So that was Foxborough (Massachusetts), which was a great show, and the three Meadowlands shows (at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford), which were all, really, the band playing at its best, and in front of a great New Jersey audience and a great Boston audience. But I was really not well.
“I had a little medication in me that got me up there and kept me up there for the rest of the night. You know, once you’re onstage, you’re letting it go, no matter what. You’re playing as hard as you can. And they ended up being great shows. But I knew, when I came off after the last Meadowlands show, that’s the last one while I’m sick.”
He says on the 2024 leg of the tour, which began March 19 at The Footprint Center in Phoenix, there will be “a much wider song selection going on.”
He also said he is “looking at it like a new tour.” Still, key songs such as “Last Man Standing” and “Backstreets” will stay. “Some of that second half of the set, it’s built so solid that a lot of it’ll stay,” he said. “The opening … I’m not sure what’s going to happen up top. But it will shift around. I’m waiting to see, myself, just where the show’s going to take me.”
Springsteen’s next show with The E Street Band will take place at The T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, March 22.
His only currently scheduled upcoming New Jersey show will take place Sept. 15, at the Sea.Hear.Now festival, on the beach in Asbury Park.
“I have slept on that sand,” he told Rotolo. “I have surfed just north of that beach. So yeah, it’s gonna be fun, bringing it all back home. And the bill is great. There’s a bunch of other great acts that they have, too.”
ROB DeMARTIN
Bruce Springsteen at The Footprint Center in Phoenix.
Here is the setlist from Phoenix:
“Lonesome Day”
“Night”
“No Surrender
“Two Hearts”
“Darlington County”
“Ghosts”
“Prove It All Night”
“Darkness on the Edge of Town”
“Letter to You”
“The Promised Land”
“Spirit in the Night”
“Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)”
“Nightshift”
“Mary’s Place”
“Last Man Standing”
“Backstreets”
“Because the Night”
“She’s the One”
“Wrecking Ball”
“The Rising”
“Badlands”
“Thunder Road”
Encore
“Born to Run”
“Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”
“Glory Days”
“Dancing in the Dark”
“Tenth Avenue Freeze-out”
“Twist and Shout”
“I’ll See You in My Dreams”
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