Bruce Springsteen received thunderous applause from the audience in Manchester, England as he kicked off his 2025 Land of Hope and Dreams European tour Wednesday night with a strong denunciation of the “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous” Trump administration.
After walking on stage, Springsteen told the crowd:
“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll, in dangerous times. In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and 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 the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring. This is ‘Land of Hope and Dreams.”
In better times, just four years ago, Springsteen performed a solo acoustic guitar version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” at the start of the Biden Inaugural Committee’s television special, “Celebrating America,” on the evening of Jan. 20, 2021.
Springsteen and the E-Street Band closed the number by referencing The Impressions’ “People Get Ready,” written by Curtis Mayfield, which became an anthem of the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s.
Rolling Stone wrote:
He followed up “Land of Hope and Dreams” with “Death to My Hometown,” a politically-charged song from his 2012 LP Wrecking Ball about how rapacious corporate greed contributed to the Great Recession of 2007/08.
A bit later in the show, he performed “Rainmaker” from the 2020 album Letter to You for the first time in a concert setting. The song is a cautionary tale about how demagogues exploit desperate people by offering easy answers to their problems. “Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white,” Springsteen sings. “Says night’s day and day’s night/Says close your eyes and go to sleep now/I’m in a burnin’ field unloadin’ buckshot into low clouds.”
The theme of economic desperation and dislocation continued later in the show with “My Hometown” (“Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows/And vacant stores”) and “Youngstown” (“Now the yards just scrap and rubble/He said, ‘Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do,'”)
Before playing “My City of Ruins,” Springsteen delivered another impassioned short speech about the trampling of rights and the pain inflicted by Donald Trump and his cronies.
“There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there. 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.
“And in my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they are rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and moral society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.”
“My City of Ruins,” was originally written for Springsteen’s hometown, Asbury Park, N.J., which had suffered through an economic depression, but took on new meaning when lyrics were added to reflect the 9/11 tragedy. It offers a message of hope, rebirth and the resilience of our country. There’s the repeated chorus of “Come on, rise up!”
The Boss’ Manchester concert featured an array of his iconic hits including “Born to Run,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town, “Thunder Road,” and, of course, “Born in the U.S.A..”
Springsteen closed the concert with his cover of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” The United Classic Rock website said it was the first time Springsteen had performed the Dylan song since 1988.
Here’s the opening verse:
Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.
