"Can you feel the spirit?" Bruce Springsteen yowls with preacher-like fervour as "Spirit in the Night" sets out once more on its wild Saturday night down on gypsy angel row with G-man, Killer Joe and that temptress Crazy Janey. It's a sleaze rock rumble from Springsteen's 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, but over 50 years later, in the hands of a 74-year-old veteran of blue-collar heartland anthems, that spirit remains miraculously undimmed.
He may have made his hat-tipping covers albums (The Seeger Sessions in 2006; 2022's soul and R&B set Only the Strong Survive) and his reflective record about death and aging (2020's Letter to You). He might have penned his autobiography, had his Broadway show and flogged his catalogue for hundreds of millions. He may even have had to cancel shows on this two-year world tour due to peptic ulcer issues that threatened to rob him of his singing voice for good. All markers on the last few miles of the rock legend road. But as Springsteen - in waistcoat and tie but with sleeves rolled up for the evening's real business - clocks in at a party-ready Wembley Stadium for another three-hour shift of blazing, hi-octane rock'n'roll, there's no sign of the wear and tear dogging other such Sixties and Seventies greats. He roars and gnashes and stomps and sweats every bit as hard as the runaway rebel rocker of "Born to Run" ever did, foot still firmly on the gas. He's just grown into the new figurehead of what - if Iggy and Mick can keep it up too - they'll soon be calling Gramps Power.
"Hun, hoo, hee, haw," Springsteen grunts, and the E Street Band blast into "Lonesome Day", a cut from 2002's The Rising. It's a song that encapsulates both the fullness and gleam of his post-millennial work, as well as the way he's continually bolstered and rejuvenated his prime setlist canon to move nimbly on from any one particular albatross era. That "Wrecking Ball" and gospel rocker "The Rising" have become such crowd-pleasers, for instance, allows him to skip "Born in the USA" and "The River" tonight and know there'll be a short queue for refunds.
Of the opening hour, only thunderclap anthem "No Surrender" and "Hungry Heart" could be considered classic Springsteen hits, but even his relative rarities are made of showstopping stuff. "Seeds", a track left off the 1984 Born in The USA album, is resurrected as maximal roadhouse rock, Springsteen wrenching a solo from his guitar like cast iron from a furnace. The 2020 single "Ghosts" may be a tribute to lost rock brothers like E Street legends Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici ("By the end of the set we leave no-one alive!" Springsteen bawls) but it's built on a very tangible, tumbling melody. Even stark Nebraska tracks "Atlantic City" and "Reason to Believe" are beefed up into canyon rock powerhouses, the latter now bearing more than a passing resemblance to Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky".
When Springsteen hails his 18-strong backing band as "the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, booty-shaking, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking, death-defying, legendary E Street Band!", he undersells them. Other bands might match their musicianship and chemistry, but none deliver such unified power and joyous character. On "Youngstown", a Celtic devil blues from The Ghost of Tom Joad describing the demise of an Ohio steel town - one of many latter-era songs that have helped Springsteen brush Dylan's hem as a historical chronicler of the great American dilemma - guitarist Nils Lofgren pulls out a solo straight from the crossroads. A spartan "Racing in the Street" blooms into a virtuosic piano solo from Roy Bittan, and saxophonist Jake Clemons summons goosebumps of glory during "Thunder Road" as easily as his iconic uncle ever did. Springsteen himself acts as the front edge of a hurricane, and its friendly face too. During the righteous gospel blast of "The Promised Land" he spots a sign in the crowd offering a live proposal in return for his harmonica, beckons the happy couple to the barriers and hands over his harp like a papal blessing. There's not a dry ironic Eighties sweatband in the house.
This is also the case when Springsteen's septuagenarian cracks inevitably start to show. When "Letter to You" finds Gramps Power (see?) in lines of wisdom and reflection, or when he introduces "Last Man Standing" - played with force and fragility - with a background story about being the only surviving member of his first band The Castiles since the death of his bandmate George Theiss in 2018.
"As you get older the presence of death becomes a clarity," he says. "Grief is the price that we pay for having loved well." Then comes "Backstreets", a stirring Born to Run song with a new spoken-word segment detailing, perhaps, the mementos Springsteen has of Theiss: an old box of 45s; a jacket; a Silvertone guitar; a photo from a wedding day. "These are the things I can hold in my hands," he says, tapping his chest, "and the rest of you I'm gonna carry right here, until it ends."
Springsteen shows and endings, of course, are mortal enemies. After three hours of crowd-lifters and curveballs - howsabout when he turned Wembley into a stadium sized Soul Train with an authentic cover of the Commodores' "Night Shift"? - the encore refuses to quit. Following all-guns-blazing versions of "Badlands", "Bobby Jean", "Dancing in the Dark" and "Born to Run" - played with all the house-lights up - the signature E Street blow-out "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" bleeds into a raucous "Twist and Shout" wherein everybody in band and crowd reaches a mutual agreement to ignore the curfew and anyone who tries to enforce it. For a finale, Springsteen reappears with an acoustic guitar to gently insist "death is not the end" on afterlife ballad "I'll See You in My Dreams". On this evidence, though, when the time comes, he'll surely convince the Reaper to kick back for one more tune, air-soloing on his scythe.