On the list of things I’d never have expected to be a witness to, Bruce Springsteen kicking off his first-ever show in South Africa with a rousing singalong of “Free Nelson Mandela” would have ranked pretty high if it had even have occurred to me put it on the list.
But I was there, and it was an amazing, surreal experience–my first day of my first visit to South Africa, kicking off a week of new discoveries and friends. I’ll always remember the days before the South Africa shows as much as I do the evenings–there’s something about new places that makes everything more vivid and detailed, and that held true for the concerts as well.
Even the songs I’d heard dozens of times live were fresh and exciting because they were new experiences for virtually everyone around me. What a gift it was to be in a crowd that was witnessing for the first time Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing live.
The “arena” itself was strange–it was actually a velodrome, basically a giant bowl. It was really small (you can see that in some of the videos that follow), and Bruce compared it to Asbury Park’s Convention Hall. For the first show, I didn’t make the pit, but I was able to see directly over it with an unobstructed line of sight to the stage by standing off to the side along the edge of the “bowl.” The price I paid for standing and dancing on a steep incline all night: aching calves the next day. It was worth it.
Check out the videos, and you’ll feel the mood that held for the whole evening–an exuberant celebration. The crowd wasn’t quite sure what to do during some of the audience participation parts (“Spirit in the Night” was particularly funny–when Bruce asked the audience if anyone knew the question he was there to ask, he got responses like “I love you!” and “Italy!”) but they figured it out pretty quick on the subsequent nights.
I expected this stand to feature setlist surprises, guest-stars and memorable audience moments (and we got all of them). What I didn’t expect was to get a taste of three different tours on three separate nights.
Night 1 featured a High Hopes Tour setlist (although I had no idea at the time what that would look like, given that this was the opening stand), but Night 2 felt like a throwback to 2006 and the Seeger Session Tour.
There was a reason for that: Pete Seeger died during the down day between Nights 1 and 2, and Seeger had a huge influence on Bruce. Going into the show that night, I expected a tribute song at some point.
Sure enough, leading off the encore was “We Shall Overcome,” dedicated to Seeger and to Nelson Mandela, sung in unison by the entire audience, and resonating more in South Africa than it ever did on the Seeger Sessions tour. Those minutes existed out of time and remain one of my most memorable experiences at a Springsteen show.
But Bruce must have had Pete Seeger on his mind the whole night, because interspersed throughout the set were two other Seeger tour staples not seen since 2006: the swing arrangement of “Open All Night,” and “This Little Light of Mine.”
Bruce was also much looser at this show than at the opener. On Night 1, there were no requests, and the audience interactions were awkward (it was, after all, the first show for most in the audience). By Night 2, the audience was figuring out their participation parts, and Bruce spotted and granted a few requests signs.
Night 3 was a strange mix: on one hand, it was a throwback to the Wrecking Ball Tour, opening with “We Take Care of Our Own” and featuring standards from that tour like “Jack of All Trades,” “Shackled and Drawn” “Death to My Hometown,” and “Rocky Ground.” It’s almost as if Bruce felt bad that he skipped South Africa on that tour and wanted to give the locals a taste of what they missed.
But it was also a night of premieres (including the first ever performance of “This is Your Sword,” which Steve was clearly not prepared for), sign requests (including a memorable one for “Tougher than the Rest“), surprises (Tom Morello’s brother proposed on-stage to his fiancee), and guest-stars (Mos Def joined the band during the encores for a unpredictable-yet-inevitable cover of “Sun City.”
All three Cape Town shows were unusual in that they were a throwback to the old “first-come, first-in” pit system, instead of the lottery system that had been in place for a decade by this point. Since I’d never been to Cape Town before (and didn’t know if I’d ever make it back), I decided to spend my days seeing the city instead of waiting in the pit line–so for the first two shows, I wasn’t anywhere close to the stage.
But for this last show, I was determined to be up front, so I spent the day making friends in line and got a prime spot leaning on the stage–and had a great vantage point for moments like this:
While the High Hopes Tour would go on to soar to much greater heights than these opening shows, I’ll always remember these three among my favorites–from days spent hiking and exploring with fellow fans to standout performances and surprises each night, this was a very special run of shows for me.
