\u201cIf you\u2019re feeling helpless, if you\u2019re feeling hopeless, if you\u2019re feeling betrayed, if you\u2019re feeling frustrated, if you\u2019re feeling angry \u2014 I mean, I know I\u2019ve been,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Tuesday\u2019s show was the first of two this week at the Forum.<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Thus the hastily arranged Land of Hope & Dreams tour: two months of U.S. concert dates that began last week in Minneapolis, where federal immigration agents killed two American citizens in January, and will wrap May 27 with a stadium show in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe White House \u2014 this White House \u2014 is destroying the American idea,\u201d Springsteen proclaimed during Tuesday\u2019s gig, the first of two this week at the Forum.<\/p>\n
Before we get to the performance itself, let\u2019s acknowledge that the Boss is sticking his neck out here. Sure, he\u2019s protected by his wealth and his celebrity; sure, he\u2019s preaching to the choir in every city he and the E Street Band visit.<\/p>\n
But what other musician on Springsteen\u2019s level is speaking out the way he is right now?<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, he introduced \u201cStreets of Minneapolis\u201d \u2014 a brand-new protest song in which he mentions both Alex Pretti and Ren\u00e9e Good by name \u2014 with a vividly detailed monologue about the circumstances of their deaths. Then he led his players through a fervent rendition of the driving folk-rock tune.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s our blood and bones \/ And these whistles and phones \/ Against Miller and Noem\u2019s f\u2014 lies,\u201d Springsteen sang \u2014 one lyric that might\u2019ve inspired President Trump this month to urge his followers to boycott the singer, whom he compared in a social media post to a \u201cdried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon.\u201d (In truth, Springsteen probably enjoyed that.)<\/p>\n
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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Whatever the risks of his speechifying, you had to admire \u2014 here in our age of political infotainment \u2014 the natural finesse with which Springsteen threaded his prepared rhetoric into Tuesday\u2019s set. He knew just when to have the E Streeters vamp so he could talk about NATO and USAID; he knew when it was wiser to lead the audience in a chant of \u201cICE out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, as much as he was speaking his mind, Springsteen was providing his fans with an opportunity to work out their own anxieties in rowdy singalong versions of classics like \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.,\u201d \u201cNo Surrender,\u201d \u201cThe Promised Land\u201d and \u201cOut in the Street.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the concert\u2019s animating impulse was outrage, the prevailing emotion was joy, even \u2014 or especially \u2014 when the music was at its most pointed, as in covers of Edwin Starr\u2019s \u201cWar\u201d and \u201cClampdown\u201d by the Clash.<\/p>\n
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