Bruce Springsteen was joined by Bon Jovi, Public Enemy and others at a star-studded New Jersey event – see footage below.
The two-day concert series was thrown for the opening of the new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey this week (June 4 and 5). The institution officially opens on June 13.
The shows celebrated 250 years of American music, with the first night focusing on pioneering artists such as Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, while the second saw performances of songs by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Dion and Public Enemy.
The latter two artists were on hand, as were Darlene Love, Sheryl Crow, Jackson Browne, Nils Lofgren and Gary Clark Jr., while Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul served as the house band.
Springsteen covered Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Burnin’ Love’ and joined Sheryl Crow for Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ and Gary Clark Jr. for Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s ‘Further Up The Road’. Jon Bon Jovi then took to the stage for a version of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’, his first time singing in his home state since 2018.
Bon Jovi, Jackson Browne and Public Enemy joined forces for a rendition of Eddie Floyd’s ‘Raise Your Hand’, while Springsteen brought the show to a close with a solo version of ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’.
“My God,” Springsteen told the crowd. “At 19, I was on this campus…not going to school. But played here on the steps over at the big building they have over there. If you had told me then, in 1969, that anything like this would ever, ever occur, I would’ve said, ‘You are out of your fuckin’ mind, my friend’.”
Springsteen has playing on his ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’ tour in recent months, using his time on stage to mount criticisms of the Donald Trump regime. It was prompted by the killing of two Minneapolis citizens by ICE agents earlier in the year, with the Boss saying that US citizens are “living through some very dark times” as the “American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before”.
In response, Trump has labelled Springsteen as a “pushy, obnoxious JERK” and a “dried out prune of a rocker”, although the musician took a principled stand in the wake of a recent assassination attempt on the President.
