
Around 8:55pm, when there was still no sign of the E Street Band, one hour after ticket time, I said something like, “This had better be the best setlist in the world tonight.” It was hot, crowded, it had started to pour unexpectedly right around 5pm, and it was time for the show to start.
Who could have known what the second night in Paris was going to be like? There was a setlist, apparently, which got tossed to the wayside rapidly, as Bruce called audible after audible, hitting the right notes, putting together a collection of songs that worked, that wasn’t just a jukebox or a greatest hits machine, that wasn’t pandering to the crowd (a crowd which, by the way, did not need pandering to. They were eating out of his hand from the first note). There was amazing energy on the floor, in the pit, in the very top rows of the venue, people standing up with their arms up in the air for almost every song. I was standing about 8 rows back from the barrier between Stevie and Patti (closer to Stevie) and was surrounded by Germans, Parisians, and a whole host of Scandinavians. The dude who looked like trouble, wearing the faux biker colors and Las Vegas baseball cap, turned out to be the dude jumping up and down excited for “Easy Money” and who knew “Seven Nights To Rock” by heart. You were happy for the 20-something German girls who had a “Glory Days” sign. You held a water bottle for the guy from Norway trying to take a picture of Bruce at the piano with his iphone.
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