27168
Timothy S. Griffin

Bruce Springsteen @ Giants Stadium for the last time - pics

photos by Tim Griffin

Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen

Giants Stadium heard its last sha-la-las — at least, the amplified kind with tens of thousands of voices singing along — on Friday night, when Bruce Springsteen played the final concert before the stadium is demolished. During the three-hour set, sha-la-las filled this year’s “Working on a Dream,” the 1984 song “Darlington County” and Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl,” the finale that Mr. Springsteen called the stadium’s “last dance.” It was Mr. Springsteen’s 24th performance, dating back to 1985, at Giants Stadium, where the audiences are his most fervent fans: fellow New Jerseyans.

So in a way, Mr. Springsteen could identify with the place, and he did — at least half-seriously — in “Wrecking Ball,” a robust, guitar-strumming song he wrote to start off each of his five final concerts at the stadium. (A video performance is at brucespringsteen.net.)

It may be the only song ever to make Giants Stadium itself the narrator, “raised out of steel in the swamps of Jersey.” It remembers games played and blood spilled, and envisions the stadium’s fate, when “all this steel and these stories, they drift away to rust/and all our youth and beauty’s been given to the dust.” Typically, Mr. Springsteen was thinking about work, mortality, and a sense of place, on his way to a chorus where everyone could join in.

He wasn’t overly sentimental. Later, he pointedly called Giants Stadium “the last bastion of affordable sports seating.”

At each of the Giants Stadium concerts, Mr. Springsteen played one of his albums all the way through, and the one he chose for Friday was his 1984 blockbuster, “Born in the U.S.A.” Before he started the title track, he said it was “the song we started out with the first time we entered this arena.”… [NY Times]

I already posted all five Giants Stadium setlists (first four shows & Friday night). More pictures from the final show, below…

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Heart Full of Soul
Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

The Boss
Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bring on Your Wrecking Ball
Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Max Weinberg
Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Clarence Clemons
Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bring On Your Wrecking Ball
Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

The 12-song Born in the USA set, performed in such an enormous setting, was a powerful reminder of that album’s contagious energy, and with the opening bars of the title track, the concrete vibrated all the way up to the upper deck. It could’ve been 1985, though instead of Courteney Cox dancing with Springsteen on-stage during “Dancing in the Dark,” it was a middle-aged bald man pulled from the crowd.

The album portion of the show closed appropriately with “My Hometown,” but the band rallied for 13 more songs, including the Rolling Stones’ “Last Time,” Moon Mullican’s “Seven Nights to Rock,” and a rollicking, folksy “American Land.” In closing, Springsteen kissed the lady farewell with “Jersey Girl,” leaving the masses swaying and wanting more. [EW]

More about the show with the set list, HERE.

videos…