Bruce Springsteen's European stadium concerts harness rock's ‘righteous power' in ‘dangerous times'

Los Angeles Times

a day ago

BERLIN — In a country that saw its democracy die in 1933, the more than 170,000 people crowding into three of Germany's biggest soccer stadiums for Bruce Springsteen's rock concerts in recent weeks have been especially receptive to his message and dire warnings about a politically perilous moment in the United States, one that has reminded some of Adolf Hitler's power grab in the '30s.
At these gigantic open-air concerts in Berlin, Frankfurt and Gelsenkirchen, which have been among the largest concerts to date in Springsteen's two-month-long, 16-show Land of Hope & Dreams tour across Europe, the 75-year-old rock star from New Jersey has interspersed short but poignant political speeches into his exhausting, sweat-drenched performances to describe the dangers he sees in the United States under the Trump administration.
'The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock 'n' roll in dangerous times,' Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert. 'In my home — the America I love, the America I have written about — the America that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.'
Springsteen's words have had special resonance in Germany, where memories of the Nazi past are never far from the surface and the cataclysmic demise of the Weimar Republic, which led directly to Hitler's takeover, is studied in great detail in schools and universities. With that Nazi past embedded in their DNA, German fears of President Trump's tactics probably run higher than anywhere else.
'Germans tend to have angst about a lot of things and they are really afraid of Trump,' said Michael Pilz, a music critic for the Welt newspaper, who agrees that the death of German democracy in 1933 is a contributing factor to the popularity of Springsteen's anti-Trump concerts this summer. 'A lot of Germans think Trump is a fool. It's not only his politics but the way he is, just so completely over the top. Germans love to see Trump getting hit. And they admire Springsteen for standing up and taking it to him.'
The crowds in Germany have been as large as they are enthusiastic. More than 75,000 filled Berlin's Olympic Stadium on June 11; 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18; and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27. All told, more than 700,000 tickets have been sold for the 16 shows in Springsteen's tour (for concerts that last three or more hours), which concludes on July 3 in Milan, Italy.
'The German aversion to Trump has now become more extreme in his second term — Germans just don't understand how the Americans could elect someone like Trump,' said Jochen Staadt, a political science professor at the Free University in Berlin who is also a drummer in an amateur Berlin rock band. Staadt believes Springsteen's 1988 concert may well have helped pave the way for the Berlin Wall to fall a little over a year later in 1989. 'Germans are drawn to Springsteen as someone who played an important role in our history when Germany was still divided and as someone who may have helped overcome that division with rock music.'
Springsteen has been filling stadiums across Europe in the warm summertime evenings with his high-energy shows that not only entertain the tremendous crowds but also take on Trump's policies on civil liberties, free speech, immigrants and universities in thoughtfully constructed messages. To ensure nothing is lost in translation, Springsteen's brief forays into politics of about two to three minutes each are translated for local audiences in German, French, Spanish, Basque and Italian subtitles on the giant video walls onstage.
To ram the message home to more people, Springsteen also released a 30-minute recording from the first stop of the tour in Manchester, England, that contains three songs and three of his speeches onstage.
'I've always tried to be a good ambassador for America,' said Springsteen while introducing 'My City of Ruins,' a song he wrote after the 9/11 terror attacks that has taken on a new meaning this summer. 'I've spent my life singing about where we have succeeded and where we've come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams. I always just thought that was my job. Things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of our country's democracy and they're simply too important to ignore.'
Springsteen's first speech during the tour's Manchester show on May 17 prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump on his Truth Social platform. 'Springsteen is 'dumb as a rock'… and this dried out 'prune' of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that's just 'standard fare'. Then we'll all see how it goes for him!'
Springsteen did not respond directly. Instead, he repeated his messages at every concert across Europe. He delivered more political commentary in introducing his song 'House of a Thousand Guitars' by saying: 'The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people. You and me. It's the union of people around a common set of values. That's all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we've really got is each other.' In the song, Springsteen sings about 'the criminal clown has stolen the throne / He steals what he can never own.'
His concerts also included the live debut of 'Rainmaker,' about a con man, from his 2020 'Letter to You' album. At the concerts in Europe, Springsteen dedicates the song to 'our dear leader,' with a line that goes: 'Rainmaker says white's black and black's white / Says night's day and day's night.'
He also changed one line in the song from 'they don't care or understand what it really takes for the sky to open up the land,' to 'they don't care or understand how easy it is to let freedom slip through your hands.'
Springsteen's enormous popularity across Europe has long been on a different level than in the United States, and that gap could grow even wider in the future. Springsteen's close friend and the band's lead guitarist, Steve Van Zandt, recently observed in an interview with the German issue of Playboy magazine that the E Street Band may have lost half of its audience back home because of the group's unabashed opposition to Trump. (The band's concerts in the United States are often held in smaller indoor arenas.)
But in Europe, Springsteen and his band have been reliably filling cavernous stadiums during the long, daylight-filled summertime evenings for decades with improbably enthusiastic crowds that sing along to the lyrics of his songs and spent most of the concerts on their feet dancing and cheering. There are also large numbers of hearty Springsteen fans from scores of countries who use their entire yearly allotment of vacation to follow him from show to show across the continent. This summer, Springsteen's message has been amplified even more, sending many in the boomer-dominated crowds into states of near-ecstasy and attracting considerable media attention in countries across Europe.
'The message of his music always touched a deep nerve in Europe and especially Germany, but ever since Trump was elected president, Springsteen's voice has been incredibly important for us,' said Katrin Schlemmer, a 56-year-old IT analyst from Zwickau who saw five Springsteen concerts in June — from Berlin to Prague to Frankfurt and two in San Sebastián, Spain. All told, Schlemmer has seen 60 Springsteen concerts in 11 countries around the world since her first in East Berlin in 1988 — a record-breaking, history-changing concert with more than 300,000 spectators that some historians believe may have contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall just 16 months later.
'A lot of Germans can't fathom why the Americans elected someone like Trump,' said Schlemmer, who had the chance to thank Springsteen for the 1988 East Berlin concert at a chance meeting after a 2014 concert in Cape Town, South Africa. 'We saw for ourselves how quickly a democracy was destroyed by an authoritarian. The alarm bells are ringing about what a danger Trump is. People love [Springsteen] here because he tells it like it is and because he is standing up to Trump.'
Stephan Cyrus, a 56-year-old manager from Hamburg, said Germans view Springsteen as a trustworthy American voice during a period of uncertainty.
'When Germans hear Springsteen speaking about his worries about the United States, they listen, because so many of us have so much admiration and longing for the United States and are worried about the country's direction too,' said Cyrus, who saw the June 11 concert in Berlin. 'He definitely touched us with his words.'
In one of his concert speeches, Springsteen goes after Trump without mentioning his name.
'There is some very weird, strange and dangerous s— going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.'
Springsteen then adds: 'In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they are inflicting on loyal American workers. They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They're defunding American universities that won't back down to their ideological demands. They're removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.'
He tells the audiences that those in the administration 'have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.'
But Springsteen ends on a hopeful note, promising his audiences: 'We'll survive this moment.'