Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, on stage, on tour - a reunion, some folks call it. A rededication, Springsteen keeps saying. But let's face it: it's a bit of a throwback.
These guys, with give-or-take the same line-up, made five astonishing albums between 1975 and 1987. Over a slightly longer period, they played hundreds of gigs that left audiences gasping for superlatives. However, for a decade or more, Springsteen has been trying new sounds, different moods - for the attention, it must be said, of a dwindling audience.
Now, here they are, together again on a monster-rock tour, "trying to recapture a little of the glory" (as he prophesied in 1984's Glory Days). It's easy - very easy - to mock Bruce and the boys as another collection of rock dinosaurs failing to grow old gracefully. In 1999, Springsteen is simply not arena-rock popular (though nostalgia can fill a lot of seats) nor is he remotely fashionable.
Mind you, he never was - fashionable, that is. Your more "sophisticated" aficionado was generally able to compare Springsteen unfavourably with the wit of Bob Dylan or the grit of Neil Young. And a quick nod in the direction of the eejits who swarmed on to the Born in the USA bandwagon was enough to convince others that there couldn't be anything significant happening there.
Hell, I went to high school in a multi-ethnic, working-class New Jersey town between 1977 and 1981, and Bruce was unfashionable even there and then. He was too white for the black kids; too plodding for the disco ducks; too wordy for the guitar-worshippers; too clean for the metal-heads; too rawly emotional for the new wavers; too Old Rock for the punks. Fine. Everyone needs a private passion. Tonight, I reckon, takes me into double-digits for Springsteen gigs attended, but "my best Bruce concert" took place in 1978, in an old movie theatre a couple of miles down the road in Passaic, and - thanks to the unavailability of a grown-up/ car when tickets went on-sale - I wasn't there. Instead, I turned out the lights, turned up the stereo on a radio broadcast of the show and, aged 14, I consummated a love that turns 21 this year.
Bruce himself turns 50 this year. The songs and stories have changed over the years, but running through Springsteen's work is a strain that has taken me and other listeners from adolescence to - well, maybe it's helped keep us there. Homo Springsteenicus is the (flawed) hero of an essentially spiritual struggle, for respect, for peace, for forgiveness, for redemption, for love.
In so many of the songs, there's a desperate, quasi-religious sense that getting your own head and heart together - preferably in the company of someone else - is sanctified work, even when you've got to crawl through some dirt to do it. The fact that completing the task seems to be impossible just lends the effort more credibility. That helps explain the 14-yearold in the dark room. What's rather incredible is what tens of thousands of people in the RDS arena and surrounding neighbourhoods will rediscover tonight: in concert, Springsteen takes a deeply personal and pained collection of songs and turns them into one of the loudest, most exuberant parties you've ever seen.
The struggle, he says, is worth celebrating, even worth laughing at; it's no accident that one of his stage personae is that of a manic, rockin' preacher man. As Springsteen prays in Open All Night (from Nebraska) and again in Living on the Edge of the World (from Tracks): "Hey-ho rock 'n' roll/ Deliver me from nowhere." (This paradox, of the solipsistic party animal, has an equally ironic mirror image: when Springsteen has self-consciously put on the social-protest mantle of Woody Guthrie - one of the century's great sing-along entertainers - he's produced beautiful songs, then insisted we shut up, sit on our hands and listen carefully.) Enough with the quibbles. Three years ago, when Springsteen was in Ireland playing acoustic solo concerts, I chatted with a pilgrim from Asbury Park and said I couldn't see the point of a return to E Street-ery. Tonight - when the band kicks off, most likely, with the characteristic seduction/ promise/quest rocker My Love Will Not Let You Down - I'll be the guy pushing my way to the stage to scream out the names of the musicians in a Jersey/Dublin accent.
By God, I'll even make a virtue of the fact that Springsteen is not touring on the back of a significant collection of new (as in really new) material. That outtake and B-side CD set, Tracks, has been a disappointing seller, and on the basis of the setlists from earlier in this European tour, it is unlikely to contribute more than a couple of songs. Instead, for the first time, we can hear how he sizes up the trajectory of his career, what he sees as the work that's worth presenting again in this setting with these musicians. We can expect something like half the tracks from 1975's Born to Run and 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town. Particularly for older fans in Ireland, where he first appeared at Slane in 1985, that alone should be worth the price of admission.
Those Irish fans have also never before seen the E Street Band with its "real" guitarist, Miami Steve Van Zandt - a.k.a. the very cool Little Steven, who put together Artists United Against Apartheid and 1985's Sun City record. Courtesy of the intense stories of male-to-male love that run through the first half of Springsteen's recording career, Van Zandt holds a special place as the putative object of Bruce's affections - a place cemented among fans by his wonderful performances on stage.
Like drummer Max Weinberg, who heads the house band on TV's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Van Zandt has been lured from television for this tour: Steve plays a hitman on HBO's critically-adored mafia series, The Sopranos, which will reach our shores later this year.
Such slightly anorak concerns aside, why should the uninitiated and sceptical care about Bruce Springsteen? What's the point of heading down to Ballsbridge tonight if the weather's fine? (Yes, there are standing-room tickets available.)
Well, the songs. All the cliches about Springsteen being the (presumptuous) chronicler of grease-stained working-class life or the (heavy-handed) romantic balladeer of beautiful losers - they're wrong. Damn, even a rudimentary listen to his lyrics will tell you that, for Springsteen, the way you walk is far more important than what you drive. At his most romantic - Thunder Road, say - he has a light touch that playfully undermines the pose he strikes. At his most earnestly chronicling - most of The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995), the only rock-star album I know with footnotes and a researcher credited - he maintains a careful, respectful distance between his own quest for relevance and the life-or-death struggles of his characters.
At his best - all of Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River (1980), Tunnel of Love (1987); an extraordinary proportion of Tracks - he embodies, in passionate, precise words and powerful, moody music, the contradictions we all know about. The lies we tell to find the truth. The hurt we cause in the name of love. The solitude we embrace in search of companionship. The dreams we abandon, so we can dream again.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play the RDS Arena tonight
