Springsteen on Broadway

‘I had not heard rock music put in quite this frame before. It is a delight.’

Bruce Springsteen. | Photo: Rob DeMartin/Courtesy of the artist.

‘What canst thou say… what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’

If George Fox put this question to Bruce Springsteen, he would say ‘I took my fun very seriously, it is my service, it is my long and noisy prayer’. In this stage show he tells this story, interspersed with his music. It’s just him, his guitar and a piano. I watched the show on Netflix, knowing nothing about Bruce Springsteen other than that he is a US singer-songwriter. But soon I found him warming my heart and tingling my brain. His life and music is full of surprises. Out of the oft-grim reality of his early years – his father’s unreachability balanced by his ma’s love of life and dance – came a yearning for escape. From all this, amid wide skies and the road, he forges a powerful reverence. Then rock and roll arrived as some sort of magic spark, a light to his inner life. His life story became bigger, he says, through an elemental love that he experienced as ‘before, now and beyond’.

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