Bericht vom 02. April 2001 / Chicago Tribune
Neue Springsteen CD "Live in New York City

LIVE SPRINGSTEEN CD: TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING 

By Greg Kot 
Tribune rock critic 
April 2, 2001 

Bruce Springsteen once warned of falling into the trap of endlessly reliving the past. And Springsteen's "Live in New York City" (Columbia), which documents the final shows last summer of the singer's lucrative reunion tour with the E Street Band, works best when the Boss follows his own advice.

The double-CD, which goes on sale on Tuesday, begins not with a shot from the Springsteen hall of fame, but with a song that had even a few hardcore fans exchanging puzzled glances when it was first played on the year-long tour.

"My Love Won't Let You Down" is an outtake from the 1984 "Born in the USA" sessions that sounded completely unremarkable when finally released on the "Tracks" box set (1998), but not now. Teeth-rattling guitars, the DC-10 roar of Danny Federici's Hammond organ, and Max Weinberg's demon drumming vaporize the cheesy synthesizers of the studio version. Each time the song sounds like it's about to fade, Weinberg brings it back with a never-say-die press roll.

"Live in New York City" doesn't sustain that standard over its two-hour length. The problem isn't so much with the performances, which are superb, but with song selection. Most fans already own such warhorses as "Prove It All Night," "Born to Run" and "Jungleland" in several versions, and there's little to justify their inclusion here. There's also some obvious flab: The moody instrumental passages that frame "The River" cause this landmark tune to meander, and only fanatics will want to replay the tedious band introductions that push "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" past the 16-minute mark.

What's left is one killer CD of nostalgia-free E Street swagger and soul. One minute they're playing with cartoonish exuberance -- yukking it up or sounding like they're swaying arm-in-arm like old pals from the Jersey shore out for a weekend fling -- the next they've got blood in their eyes, and their guitars flash like switchblades.

The top end of Steve Van Zandt's already marginal voice has been sanded off since he became more famous for starring in "The Sopranos," but the urban-soul influence he brought to the 1970s incarnation of the band becomes apparent on "Two Hearts," when his duet with Springsteen morphs into a snippet of the Marvin Gaye-Kim Weston Motown classic "It Takes Two."

The guitarist who replaced Van Zandt in the mid-'80s, Nils Lofgren, is wickedly gifted, and Springsteen apparently has finally figured out how to exploit his talents. Lofgren's rave-up solo brings the anger underlying "Youngstown" to a boil, in contrast to the somber, subdued version that Springsteen recorded on his "The Ghost of Tom Joad" album. Lofgren also gives "Mansion on the Hill" an arid country feel with his moaning pedal-steel tones.

On a solo "Born in the USA," Springsteen reinvents the song as a stark, anguished howl -- "They're still there, but he's all goooooone!"-- far closer to the spirit of the lyrics than was the fist-pumping, flag-waving version of the '80s arena tours. This tour de force mates one of the finest vocal performances of Springsteen's career with eerie slide-guitar voicings that manage to evoke both the Far East and Mississippi.

The impact of that performance is exceeded only by "American Skin (41 Shots)," a new song that Springsteen unveiled in the closing weeks of the tour. In the tradition of the great protest singers of generations past, Springsteen ventured into the belly of the beast to deliver this moving commentary on the shooting of an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, by New York City police in 1999. In a case that divided the city, four officers testified they shot Diallo 41 times because they thought he was reaching for a gun when he was apparently reaching for his wallet. They were acquitted of murder charges.

When Springsteen performed the song at Madison Square Garden, he was jeered by concertgoers, castigated by police officials and scolded by the city's mayor.

But the lyrics don't try to separate villains from victims so much as examine how such tragedies ultimately damage us all. The song distills slow-burn disbelief, outrage, and fear into a mournful mantra of "41 shots," with the singer concluding, "You can get killed just for living in your American skin." In Springsteen's vision of Amadou Diallo's America, nobody is safe. It's a chilling message and an overwhelming song, and its inclusion alone justifies the release of "Live in New York City."