Bruce Springsteen at LCA in Detroit: Timeless energy, hours of hits, reflective moments

For half a century, Bruce Springsteen has offered his audience a tantalizing prospect: Is there salvation to be found via rock ‘n’ roll?

In a contemplative moment Wednesday in Detroit, briefly breaking from the musical euphoria that otherwise ruled the mood at a packed Little Caesars Arena, Springsteen stood alone with an acoustic guitar to address worldly mortality head-on.

The 73-year-old New Jersey native, speaking with his customary storytelling color and eye for detail, recounted his first teenage band, the mid-’60s garage group the Castiles. With the 2018 death of longtime friend and bandmate George Theiss, Springsteen told the LCA crowd, he became the group’s lone surviving member.

At age 15, life is full of hellos, Springsteen mused. Decades later, it’s the goodbyes that prevail — and with them comes a clarity about the preciousness of life. From there, he eased into a gentle, moving performance of 2020’s “Last Man Standing,” inspired by Theiss’ death.

That quiet stretch seemed designed to inject valuable perspective into a rollicking night at Detroit's arena, staged in the round for a crowd of about 18,000 that included University of Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh and former NBC News anchor Brian Williams

Springsteen’s robust, 2-hour-45-minute LCA show was the latest stop on a year-long arena run that seems no-nonsense right down to its upfront name: 2023 Tour.

Fit and toned, energetic in a way that tempts the word “ageless,” Springsteen was joined by his core E Street Band mainstays and supplementing musicians that often grew into a 17-person ensemble, complete with five-piece horn section and four-singer backing.

Saxophonist Jake Clemons (nephew of the E Street Band’s late Clarence Clemons), now a decade into his tenure with the touring group, has settled into a comfortable spot, confident in his playing and his romps across the stage alongside E Street vets Max Weinberg (drums), Garry Tallent (bass), Roy Bittan (piano) and guitarists Nils Lofgren and Steven Van Zandt. (Missing once again was Springsteen’s wife, guitarist Patti Scialfa, a tour absence that hasn’t yet been explained.)

In most ways, Wednesday was vintage Bruce: hard-working, playful, musically textured, equal parts joyous and sentimental, driven by a fist-pumping audience hanging on every note. It was a night of familiar rituals, with Springsteen’s shouted count-ins (“1-2-3…”) as much a part of the music as the crowd’s affectionate cries of “BRUUUCE.”

Still, something was a different this time. Springsteen isn’t exactly running through the motions — he still looks invested onstage — but watching Wednesday’s show, you couldn’t help feeling he’s now mostly running on instinct.

Two months into his 2023 Tour, it’s safe to say this is the Boss’ most rigorously structured E Street outing yet. The show is compact, the pace brisk and businesslike. There have been few song variations from town to town, and there’s minimal chatter between numbers.

While the set list is strong — a career-spanning array of hits and deeper fan favorites — that rigidity is a departure for an artist famous for calling onstage audibles.

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Case in point: Springsteen’s new album of soul covers, “Only the Strong Survive,” is packed with Motown material, including “Nightshift,” the Commodores’ 1985 tribute to late Detroit stars Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. But when Springsteen performed the song Wednesday at LCA, there was no acknowledgement of place and occasion — an omission that would have been implausible at his freewheeling Motor City visits of yore.

Those are just quibbles, because even a routine Springsteen concert is still a cut above. Wednesday’s concert was brimming with meaning and time-tested themes, where youthful restlessness (“Thunder Road,” “Born to Run,” a tour-debut “Darkness on the Edge of Town”) mingled with aged resilience (“Wrecking Ball”), where vulnerability (“Backstreets”) had a place next to yearning optimism (“The Promised Land,” “The Rising,” “Badlands”).

Springsteen’s vivid, East Coast-flavored vignettes — songs like “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “The E Street Shuffle,” “Rosalita” — offered old-school seasoning, while the pairing of an intense “Candy’s Room” and slinky “Kitty’s Back” set up a showcase for the band’s chops.

The show's encore found Springsteen and company hopping through some of his best-known hits, including “Born to Run,” “Glory Days” and “Dancing in the Dark,” as the house lights came up to seal a bond between artist and audience. Fans at LCA, most of them as gray-haired as Springsteen himself, did their part to match his energy through the closing stretch.

Rumors abound this may be Springsteen’s final tour with the E Street Band. Hints are out there; nothing is clear. But if he is indeed winding things down, he left Detroit late Wednesday with one audience very happily wound up.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Bruce Springsteen at LCA in Detroit: Timeless energy, hours of hits