Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band Earn Glowing Reviews As They Start US Leg Of Tour

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are back in America and kicking off the second leg of their tour in a big way.

The band opened a slate of shows this week with a number of well-received concerts, pleasing fans with long shows and many of their classic hits.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band started the American leg of the tour with a show at Fenway Park in Boston after playing a blistering set of shows in Europe, NJ.com noted. The band played a string of great shows in Europe including a show in Helsinki that capped off the tour on July 31 that lasted more than four hours.

The Fenway Park show was so fantastic that reviewer Stan Goldstein of NJ.com called the show a “perfect game.”

“It’s days like these when you wake up the next morning and, reflecting back on the night before, say, ‘Damn, it really was that good,’ ” Goldstein wrote.

The show had many of Bruce Springsteen’s hits from the 1970s and featured an incredible 18 songs, Goldstein noted.

A second show at Fenway Park brought much of the same energy, though it was channeled in a different direction, Peter Chianca of GateHouse News Service wrote. He said:

“If Bruce Springsteen’s first show at Fenway Park this week was an example of the powerhouse tour-de-force the Boss is known for – complete with a theme and a meticulously planned flow of classic and current songs – night two was an equally effective example of the other kind of concert he sometimes has up his sleeve: A loose, fly-by-the-seat-of-his pants party filled with surprises, unexpected detours and an anything-goes energy.”

The tour has been extra special for Bruce Springsteen and his bandmates.

“This tour has been a little been more meaningful than most,” Steven Van Zandt said on Tom Cunningham’s Bruce Brunch show on 105.7 The Hawk. “It’s a different scene. Scene of economics and death and loss. It’s really been something special, a little bit more meaningful maybe, because of that.”

The tour has been dedicated to bandmates and friends of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band, Van Zandt noted — Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Terry Magovern, and Lenny Sullivan.