Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Palace Theatre, Providence, RI, July 20, 1975

SETLIST: INCIDENT ON 57TH STREET / SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT / TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT / GROWIN' UP / IT'S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY / THE E STREET SHUFFLE / BORN TO RUN / THUNDER ROAD / NEW YORK CITY SERENADE / KITTY'S BACK / ROSALITA (COME OUT TONIGHT) / 4TH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK (SANDY) / A LOVE SO FINE / SHA-LA-LA / QUARTER TO THREE

The E Street Band at this moment is Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Miami Steve Van Zandt, and Max Weinberg.

Venue capacity: 3,000

“We’d like to introduce - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.”

Roy hits the opening chords, and there’s respectable applause, but once he finishes those bars and cycles into the opening motif, there is a gigantic, enormous burst of applause. Is it because someone, either Bruce or Clarence (or both) walked onstage together at that moment or is  because they recognized the song or because it was “Incident”? It feels like more than that, even on tape, this enormous wave of energy like several thousand people exhaled with relief in unison. To quote from our friends at JEMS, “This may well have been the earliest Springsteen show where hardcore fans in the northeast converged because it was the first chance to see him in months.” 

The last time you could have seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band was back in March at Constitution Hall in DC. You might have known that there were some shows in Atlanta that got cancelled after that, you might have done the math that there had to be a new record coming out soon given that WIESS came out in November of 1973, if you were paying attention you may have noticed that some new songs were showing up in setlists and sometimes Bruce would even mention that they were from their new record that would be out “soon.” But also? There was always a chance that your favorite band could just disappear, never to be heard from again, no dramatic announcements on multiple platforms. Just…poof. 

The audience doesn’t know that the band has literally finished recording what will be the next album earlier that day, that they were rehearsing on one floor of the Record Plant while Bruce and Jimmy Iovine and Jon Landau and Mike Appel were trying to finish the record on another floor. It’s still not finished finished, he has to go back to overdub vocals on “She’s the One” in a few days --  but the tour was booked and the record had a release date and was on the schedule, the machinery was already in motion. 

But this is still “Incident,” and tonight it’s just Bruce and Roy because Suki Lahav and her husband are no longer part of the organization, they have returned home. I loved those versions of “Incident” with her part but honestly? I prefer it like this. You could call it “unadorned” but, man, “Incident on 57th Street” is a monument, it does not require anything else. Listen to the moment at the end of the third verse, where Bruce first sings, “Those romantic young boys,” where in this era you’d be waiting for Suki to echo the refrain, but now Roy repeats the melody while Bruce keeps singing. It is more than enough. It is probably better.