Intoxicating: Bruce Springsteen, at BST Hyde Park, reviewed

Seven years ago, I asked Bruce Springsteen what he meant when he talked of the covenant between himself and his audience. It was a long, thoughtful and thorough answer, and when I transcribed it, I realised he would have won Just a Minute, so clear was his reply. Part of what he said was this: ‘I have built up the skills to be able to provide, under the right conditions, a certain transcendent evening, hopefully an evening you’ll remember when you go home. Not that you’ll just remember it was a good concert, but you’ll remember the possibilities the evening laid out in front of you, as far as where you could take your life, or how you’re thinking about your friends, or your wife, or your girlfriend, or your best pal, or your job, your work, what you want to do with your life.’

I’ve felt transcendence a bunch of times at Springsteen shows in the past, but it was only after my third taste of his current tour, in the rain on Saturday night, that I experienced that same intensity again.

What an intoxicating thing it was: a rush of euphoria and intimacy, felt even within a crowd that stretched way up from Hyde Park Corner to Marble Arch. It was the most joyous show you could imagine about death, ageing and trying to hold on to the light as the darkness draws in. It was that joyousness that had confused me on the first two visits (I went to both Hyde Park shows and to Birmingham a few weeks back). Here I finally understood what he was trying to say. That it was time to let go of the E Street Band – time for us, certainly, and perhaps for him, too – because death has been calling for some time, and the calls are only going to get more frequent.

Death wasn’t just a passing reference (every review has noted the acoustic performance of ‘Last Man Standing’, written when Springsteen realised every other member of his high school band was dead), it was present throughout.