93. 'Land of Hope and Dreams'
Get it on: Live in New York City (2001)
It's funny how we spend our lives looking back on the little moments in life. The things we remember. Your first kiss. All that stuff. Things which last a second or two stay with us for years.
We also expect too much from our heroes, from those we idolise or even those we just admire. We think them to be above the pains and worries of the mere ordinary, and rely on them to provide us with the extraordinary on our command. But life doesn't work like that, no matter how much we want it to. So it was cringe-worthy to see the expectations of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as they embarked on their 1999-2000 tour. All of a sudden, people seemed to forget that the intervening years had even occurred and miraculously expected everything to be as it was when they saw Bruce in 1975, or 1978, or 1981 or 1985... whenever their favourite period or tour was.
They wanted songs to be played just like the way they had been played when they had seen the band on some cold night one December long ago. Forgetting the changes in themselves, or perhaps acknowledging them, they wanted to be transported back to a time when things seemed idyllic. But that was never going to happen. People were going to see a new E Street Band, and even though the band members were the same, each of them bought to the table everything they'd experienced and learned in the time apart.
For 134 nights, the band played their guts out. Gone were the two sets with an intermission. Fans got two and a half hours of sweat each and every night. By the time they got to New York City you could forgive them for being completely exhausted. But for 10 shows, they gave everything they could. The July 1, 2000 show is where the recording of 'Land of Hope and Dreams' comes from. The final night of the tour, and since it always closed the show (or was second to last), it was one of the last performances of the whole tour.
Let's take a little tiny detour for a bit...
I'm not a fan of the fascination of continuing to write songs with metaphors about hopping on train and getting on board. It's a fallback position, it's cliched and it's pretty lazy writing. Sure, once upon a time when the train symbolised a gateway to another world where one could start their life over again, trains held some meaning, but today, hopping on a train just means sometimes to me that you can't bothered getting stuck in traffic. Besides... why try to sing a song about getting on a train when we've already got 'People Get Ready'? What more needs to be said?
So, my first impression of 'Land of Hope and Dreams' wasn't an overly warm one. But then, you know what? I began to like the song and the train metaphor seemed to make sense. Debuted in the warm-up shows to that tour, it wasn't great at all. It was clunky, and symbolised a band who hadn't played together in far too long. But it had promise. As the tour rolled along, the song gathered steam (pardon the awful train puns, I promise they're not intended), and by the time the tour pulled into Madison Square Garden for 10 shows, it had been played at every single show and the band had it down to a tea.
But just based on everything I knew about the song to that point wouldn't have got it into the top 101. Again, there's a sax solo which basically says to me that "we can't have a new song on this reunion tour and not have Clarence on it", but since it isn't horrible, I'll let it slide. By the time of the NYC shows, any doubts about Max Weinberg being dispensable had been lay to waste as night after night he proved himself to be a colossus behind the kit.
But the one tiny moment (in the scheme of things) which elevates this to where it is occurs late in the piece. You can hear Bruce's exhaustion, but as the song is winding down, he rallies himself for one final medieval wail. My god it's miraculous. I listen and listen to the song for that one moment. Then I wind it back just to catch that moment again. I listen to it and continue to listen to it and I can still not believe it.
Maybe the fans were wrong to ask the past of Bruce. But maybe I was wrong in thinking that he could never replicate the highs of those days. Maybe he was looking for new peaks to climb, and on July 1, 2000, he'd reached his new summit. For all its flaws, 'Land of Hope and Dreams' rises above all but a relative handful because of nine seconds of greatness. And I have no problem with that.
The Best Bit: It's what I just spoke about. 8:11 in and Bruce lets out his colossal wail. It's jaw-droppingly good and far more than you could ever expect from a nearly 51-year-old man during the second-last song on the last night of a tour which had seen him play over 130 dates.
Get it on: Live in New York City (2001)
It's funny how we spend our lives looking back on the little moments in life. The things we remember. Your first kiss. All that stuff. Things which last a second or two stay with us for years.
We also expect too much from our heroes, from those we idolise or even those we just admire. We think them to be above the pains and worries of the mere ordinary, and rely on them to provide us with the extraordinary on our command. But life doesn't work like that, no matter how much we want it to. So it was cringe-worthy to see the expectations of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as they embarked on their 1999-2000 tour. All of a sudden, people seemed to forget that the intervening years had even occurred and miraculously expected everything to be as it was when they saw Bruce in 1975, or 1978, or 1981 or 1985... whenever their favourite period or tour was.
They wanted songs to be played just like the way they had been played when they had seen the band on some cold night one December long ago. Forgetting the changes in themselves, or perhaps acknowledging them, they wanted to be transported back to a time when things seemed idyllic. But that was never going to happen. People were going to see a new E Street Band, and even though the band members were the same, each of them bought to the table everything they'd experienced and learned in the time apart.
For 134 nights, the band played their guts out. Gone were the two sets with an intermission. Fans got two and a half hours of sweat each and every night. By the time they got to New York City you could forgive them for being completely exhausted. But for 10 shows, they gave everything they could. The July 1, 2000 show is where the recording of 'Land of Hope and Dreams' comes from. The final night of the tour, and since it always closed the show (or was second to last), it was one of the last performances of the whole tour.
Let's take a little tiny detour for a bit...
I'm not a fan of the fascination of continuing to write songs with metaphors about hopping on train and getting on board. It's a fallback position, it's cliched and it's pretty lazy writing. Sure, once upon a time when the train symbolised a gateway to another world where one could start their life over again, trains held some meaning, but today, hopping on a train just means sometimes to me that you can't bothered getting stuck in traffic. Besides... why try to sing a song about getting on a train when we've already got 'People Get Ready'? What more needs to be said?
So, my first impression of 'Land of Hope and Dreams' wasn't an overly warm one. But then, you know what? I began to like the song and the train metaphor seemed to make sense. Debuted in the warm-up shows to that tour, it wasn't great at all. It was clunky, and symbolised a band who hadn't played together in far too long. But it had promise. As the tour rolled along, the song gathered steam (pardon the awful train puns, I promise they're not intended), and by the time the tour pulled into Madison Square Garden for 10 shows, it had been played at every single show and the band had it down to a tea.
But just based on everything I knew about the song to that point wouldn't have got it into the top 101. Again, there's a sax solo which basically says to me that "we can't have a new song on this reunion tour and not have Clarence on it", but since it isn't horrible, I'll let it slide. By the time of the NYC shows, any doubts about Max Weinberg being dispensable had been lay to waste as night after night he proved himself to be a colossus behind the kit.
But the one tiny moment (in the scheme of things) which elevates this to where it is occurs late in the piece. You can hear Bruce's exhaustion, but as the song is winding down, he rallies himself for one final medieval wail. My god it's miraculous. I listen and listen to the song for that one moment. Then I wind it back just to catch that moment again. I listen to it and continue to listen to it and I can still not believe it.
Maybe the fans were wrong to ask the past of Bruce. But maybe I was wrong in thinking that he could never replicate the highs of those days. Maybe he was looking for new peaks to climb, and on July 1, 2000, he'd reached his new summit. For all its flaws, 'Land of Hope and Dreams' rises above all but a relative handful because of nine seconds of greatness. And I have no problem with that.
The Best Bit: It's what I just spoke about. 8:11 in and Bruce lets out his colossal wail. It's jaw-droppingly good and far more than you could ever expect from a nearly 51-year-old man during the second-last song on the last night of a tour which had seen him play over 130 dates.
