Review: Bruce Springsteen ups his game for incredible Easter Sunday show

Bruce Springsteen put on a magnificent show on Thursday night at Chase Center in San Francisco. Then he went out and topped that effort by delivering an even better concert at the same venue on Easter Sunday.

“Happy Easter,” the 74-year-old New Jersey native greeted the full house of fans. “It’s a religious crowd here tonight, I can tell — spiritual crowd.”

For his part, Springsteen went about his work with the enthusiasm of a revival tent preacher, strutting about the stage with passion and purpose and delivering each batch of words like they might be the ones that will change the very lives of those listening.

And the 16,500 followers in attendance ate it up — every single word — during all 29 songs of the approximately three-hour set.

Unlike Thursday’s show, which got off to a somewhat tepid start, Springsteen and his incredible 17-piece E Street Band came racing right out of the gate with a fiery “Light of Day.” That relative rarity — which was being played for the first time on this 2024 tour — was actually first recorded by Springsteen in 1983 as part of the “Born in the U.S.A.” sessions, but never ended up making it onto one of his studio albums. “Light of Day” would actually first surface in a performance by Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett (playing as the fictitious band the Barbusters) in the 1987 film of the same name.

There were a lot of other differences between the two sold-out Chase Center shows, both of which consisted of 29 songs. Most significantly, the setlists varied in satisfying fashion, giving fans plenty of reasons to attend both.

On Thursday, fans got “Something in the Night,” “Two Hearts,” “No Surrender,” “Atlantic City,” “Death to My Hometown,” “Racing in the Street” and “Bobby Jean.” Those songs were absent on Sunday, replaced with “Light of Day,” “Night,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Darlington County,” “My City of Ruins,” “Glory Days” and a deliriously fun and unexpected cover of the Top Notes classic “Twist and Shout” (which most people know from the hit Isley Brothers and Beatles versions, the latter of which was introduced to an all new generation through “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”).

The concert was a juggernaut early on, as The Boss and company continued through the “Rising” anthem “Lonesome Day” (which has nicely settled into the No. 2 spot on this tour setlist) and the “Born to Run” cut “Night.” Setting a likely unintended theme, Springsteen went on to include four more night-titles in the show — with the others being “Prove It All Night,” “Spirit in the Night,” the Commodores cover “Nightshift” (featured on his 2022 covers album, “Only the Strong Survive”) and, of course, the powerful Patti Smith co-write “Because the Night.”

He’d draw from 10 studio albums, as well as the 1992 live effort “In Concert/MTV Plugged,” during the setlist, with the lion’s share going to the legendary 1975 outing “Born to Run.” He’d pull a half-dozen tracks from that career-maker, including two — “Born to Run” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” — that would come during the eight-song encore.

No matter how many times you experience it, “Born to Run” — performed with the house lights up — is an adrenaline rush that never fails to satisfy. It remains Springsteen’s greatest rock song, with “Thunder Road” being a somewhat distant second.

Yet, what will stick with many fans is the surprise that came at the end of the first encore.

The Boss has been closing this segment with “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” on this tour — and, for good reason, since it’s a fun rocker that puts a real exclamation point on the E Street Band portion of the show. Then Springsteen remains onstage and plays a soft solo acoustic version of “I’ll See You in My Dreams” as the real finale.

But as the last notes of “Tenth Avenue” were still ringing through Chase Center, Springsteen decided to rev up one more — “by request,” he said — and led the E Streeters in a glorious old-school run through “Twist and Shout.” It was one of those special moments where Springsteen — who has been one of the biggest artists in rock ‘n’ roll now for some 40 years — channeled his Jersey bar band roots in such brilliant fashion.

A wave of pure joy washed over the 16,500 fans — some of whom were likely old enough to remember when the Beatles performed “Twist and Shout” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964 — illustrating once again why so many people consider Springsteen and the E Street Band to be the greatest live act in rock history.

Setlist:

1. “Light of Day”
2. “Lonesome Day”
3. “Night”
4. “Prove It All Night”
5. “Darkness on the Edge of Town”
6. “Darlington County”
7. “Ghosts”
8. “Letter to You”
9. “The Promised Land”
10. “My City of Ruins”
11. “Spirit in the Night”
12. “Hungry Heart”
13. “Nightshift”
14. “Last Man Standing”
15. “Backstreets”
16. “Because the Night”
17. “She’s the One”
18. “Wrecking Ball”
19. “The Rising”
20. “Badlands”
21. “Thunder Road”
Encore:
22. “Land of Hope and Dreams”
23. “Born to Run”
24. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”
25. “Glory Days”
26. “Dancing in the Dark”
27. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”
28. “Twist and Shout”
Encore 2:
29. “I’ll See You in My Dreams”