Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour

The Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour was a lengthy, top-grossing concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band that took place over 1999 and 2000.

The tour was the first set of regular concerts given by Springsteen and the E Street Band in eleven years, since the 1988 Tunnel of Love Express and Human Rights Now! Tours, and followed two lengthy tours by Springsteen without the Band in the intervening years.

The tour was not intended to promote any Springsteen records; the release of the box set Tracks six months earlier had been oriented towards the holiday shopping market, and no longer held any chart action by the time of the tour. The release of the cut-down, single disc 18 Tracks did coincide with the start of the tour but received little publicity or sales.

Tour preparations began in March 1999 with a series of rehearsals at Asbury Park, New Jersey’s Convention Hall. Several dozen of the Springsteen faithful, eager with anticipation at what the long-awaited reunion might bring, stood outside the Hall on the cold and windy boardwalk and beach, hearing what they could from inside the walls and reporting their findings on several Springsteen Internet forums. It was during one of these sessions that fans first heard runthroughs of “The Train Song”, which would become the tour’s closing epic “Land of Hope and Dreams”. This practice of listening in on rehearsals would continue for all of Springsteen’s subsequent tours. Springsteen then held two public rehearsal concerts in Convention Hall, a practice that would also continue for tours to come.

Springsteen opted to start the Reunion Tour in Europe, perhaps to get the show in top shape before coming home to greater attention. The first leg of the tour formally began on April 9, 1999, with the first of two nights in Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi. Barcelona was in the process of becoming one of the strongest centers of Springsteen popularity, and additionally there were hundreds of travelling fans in attendance. The Europe leg would run through the end of June, finishing in Oslo, and encompass 36 shows in all, featuring a mixture of arenas and stadiums and often playing two nights in a location.

Two weeks later the second leg commenced back in the United States, and took place solely in arenas. It began with 15 consecutive shows in New Jersey’s Continental Airlines Arena. More multi-night stands followed, as the tour concentrated on Springsteen hot spots such as Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. After 52 shows, the leg finished in Minneapolis in the end of November.

Bruce Springsteen's Cardiff gig starts European leg of tour - BBC News

 

 

A three-month winter break ensued. The third leg started up in late February 2000 with a show at Penn State University. This leg focused on mostly single-night stands in areas that hadn’t been reached on the previous leg, including a couple of dates in Canada, and again took place in arenas. Totalling 44 shows, it concluded in June with 10 consecutive dates in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, ending on July 1, 2000.

In all, the tour played 132 shows in 62 cities over a span of 15 months.

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