Springsteen Reigns Over Bonnaroo

Posted on Jun 14th 2009 4:10AM by Benjy Eisen
Comments

Performing at just their second festival -- according to their leader -- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band gave Bonnaroo a three-hour lesson in rock 'n' roll as Saturday night's main stage headliner.

Steamrolling through a set of anthems that included 'Thunder Road,' 'The River,' '10th Avenue Freeze-out,' 'Badlands' and 'Born to Run' while introducing the kids to hit material from his more recent albums, Springsteen proved a worthy main attraction at a festival that in recent years hosted acts like Radiohead, Tom Petty, Tool, Metallica and Pearl Jam in marquee slots. Bruce, naturally, pulled rank, declaring himself the Boss. "We came all the way from the great state of New Jersey to fulfill a vow to rock the house," he told the crowd. "But we didn't come all the way to the beautiful state of Tennessee just to rock the house -- we came to build a house."

The house to be built in this field two hours from Nashville, Springsteen declared, was to be "a house of love, of joy, of sexual healing" and so on and so forth. In fact, he systematically named all the bad things in the world -- fear, pain, sorrow -- and swore to replace them with a house built on "the power of rock 'n' roll."

While no physical new abode rose up above the fields of Bonnaroo by the end of the set, Springsteen can still take credit for this: one of the last great American rock 'n' roll heroes just tore the roof down at the current greatest American rock 'n' roll festival.