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The River Tour (2016)

2016–17 concert tour by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The River Tour (2016)
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This article is about the tour in support of The Ties That Bind: The River Collection. For Springsteen's 1980–1981 tour, see The River Tour.

The River Tour[3] was a concert tour by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in support of Springsteen's 2015 The Ties That Bind: The River Collection box set and in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Springsteen's 1980 album, The River.[4] The River Tour ended in September 2016. Subsequently, the Summer '17 tour in Australia and New Zealand continued the tour using the same promotional image from the original legs.[5]

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The River Tour was the top grossing worldwide tour of 2016, pulling in $268.3 million globally, and was the highest-grossing tour since 2014 for any artist.[6] Springsteen and the E Street Band also hold the biggest boxscore for 2016, with the May 27 and 29 shows at Dublin's Croke Park taking in $19,228,100 from 160,188 attendance for two sellout shows.[7]

The tour marked the first tour in two years for Springsteen and the E Street Band. All shows on the first North American leg of tour and some shows from the second leg featured a full-length sequential performance of The River album. Other shows featured a large part of the album, albeit not always in album order.[8] Many of the shows lasted over three and a half hours with around 33 songs performed. Springsteen's show on September 7, 2016, at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia clocked in at 4 hours and 4 minutes, his longest show in the United States and the second-longest ever in his career, at two minutes shy of his 2012 show in Helsinki.[9]

The tour was attended by many notable celebrities including; Snoop Dogg (LA show) Aimee Soller (KFC Yum! Centre) Matt Damon (Albany Show)

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Background

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The original River Tour began in October 1980 and continued through September 1981. With sets that regularly approached the four-hour range, the 140-date international tour firmly established a reputation for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as marathon performers.

Springsteen released The Ties That Bind: The River Collection on December 4, 2015. The box set features the original 1980 The River album along with many outtakes from the album's sessions.

The tour was announced on December 4, 2015, with tickets going on sale seven days later. It came unexpectedly, as Springsteen was working on a new solo album and planned to tour in support of that. However, with it already having been two years since his last tour with the E Street Band, Springsteen chose not to delay the next band tour even further. In November 2015, Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, suggested performing The River at a few small shows in New York City and Los Angeles; however, Springsteen said it would take too long to rehearse and suggested doing twenty shows. Drummer Max Weinberg said he got the call from Springsteen on Thanksgiving, a week before the tour was announced to the public. "In all of my professional engagements, I have what I call the Springsteen Clause. It's inviolate. It's my own version of force majeure. It's an act of God or Bruce Springsteen. And it works all the time," Weinberg said. Nils Lofgren had to change dates on his solo tour, while Gary Tallent had to postpone his.[10][11][12]

This was the first Springsteen tour in which all dates featured the same album performed in its entirety. Unlike the previous few tours, the touring lineup was downsized and did not feature a full horn section or backing vocalists.[13] "I knew the basis of the show was going to be The River, and that was a small rock group. The tighter lineup feels much more like the old days", Springsteen said. Like previous tours, Patti Scialfa was not present at every show due to her responsibilities as a mother supporting her daughter in her equestrian career. Due to Scialfa's not being present at every show, along with no choir, Garry Tallent, standing in her spot on stage, sang backup vocals on a consistent basis on the front line.

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Itinerary

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Springsteen performing during the final date of Summer '17, on February 25, 2017, at Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland

North American leg 1

The tour got underway in Pittsburgh on January 16, 2016. Each show kicked off with "Meet Me in the City", followed by the full album performance of The River, and concluding with a twelve-song set featuring songs from the rest of Springsteen's catalog. The show usually finished with a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout". The show scheduled for January 24, 2016, at Madison Square Garden was postponed due to a record-setting snowstorm that hit the East Coast. The show was rescheduled for March 28. On April 23, 2016, at the first of two Brooklyn shows to end the first leg of the tour, Springsteen said that Brooklyn would mark "the last two nights we're officially playing The River from start to finish".[14] That night he opened with "Purple Rain" in tribute to Prince, who had just died.

European leg

On July 13, 2016, for the first time since the end of the first North American leg of the tour, The River was performed in its entirety.

North American leg 2

Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off the second North American leg of the tour on August 23, 2016, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, at MetLife Stadium. The show opened with a performance of "New York City Serenade"; that song became the opener for all shows on this leg of the tour. The final MetLife Stadium performance on August 30 clocked in at over 4 hours and opened with a run of nine original songs written in 1973 or earlier, plus early live favorites Summertime Blues and Pretty Flamingo. The practice of playing a string of tracks from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle continued throughout the rest of this leg.

The show on September 3, 2016, in Virginia Beach was postponed until September 5, 2016, due to inclement weather. On September 7, 2016, at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Springsteen played for 4 hours and 4 minutes, his longest show in the United States and second-longest ever. Springsteen performed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2016, the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The show featured six songs from Springsteen's 9/11 inspired album, The Rising. Springsteen wrapped up The River Tour 2016 on September 14, 2016, in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Oceania leg / Summer '17 Tour

On September 12, 2016, a fourth leg of the tour was announced that included nine shows in Australia and New Zealand in early 2017, named Summer '17 but using the same promotional artwork as the 2016 tour.[8]

Springsteen's concert in Christchurch on February 21, 2017, fell on the eve of the anniversary of the earthquake which devastated the city's center. In the weeks that followed the quake, Springsteen's song "My City of Ruins" was adopted by Christchurch as an unofficial anthem. Springsteen played the song during the concert, dedicating it to the people of the city.[15]

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Record-breaking shows

Springsteen has been known for lengthy shows, and this tour continued that trend. The show on September 7, 2016, at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, ran 4 hours and 4 minutes, which stands as Springsteen's longest show in the United States and second-longest ever after a 2012 show in Helsinki that ran two minutes longer.

Ticket scalping

As with previous Springsteen tours, ticket scalpers were a major problem when it came to buying tickets. Tickets for Springsteen's New York City shows began popping up on resale sites such as StubHub and eBay on December 7, 2015, four days before they went on sale to the public. Scalpers were re-selling tickets not yet available for as much as $5,000. This prompted New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to launch an investigation into how this happened and to write a letter demanding that both companies immediately remove any listings for ticket sales.[16] When tickets finally went on sale on December 11, many fans again were shut out from buying tickets as most venues sold out quickly; within minutes, tickets were appearing for hundreds to thousands of dollars more on resale sites.[17] According to reports, Springsteen's shows sold out in record time. Springsteen's show in Newark, New Jersey, at the Prudential Center sold out in a few minutes. His previous 2012 show at the same venue took two hours to sell out.[18]

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Recordings

All shows were professionally recorded and released on live.brucespringsteen.net. Many were also featured on E Street Radio.

Set list

This set list is representative of the average setlist of the tour's first North American leg as conducted by Setlist.fm, which represents all concerts for the duration of the tour's first leg. The full album performance was dropped following the first leg, although it was resurrected for a few shows on the second leg of the tour.[19]

  1. "Meet Me in the City"

The River

  1. "The Ties That Bind"
  2. "Sherry Darling"
  3. "Jackson Cage"
  4. "Two Hearts"
  5. "Independence Day"
  6. "Hungry Heart"
  7. "Out in the Street"
  8. "Crush on You"
  9. "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)"
  10. "I Wanna Marry You"
  11. "The River"
  12. "Point Blank"
  13. "Cadillac Ranch"
  14. "I'm a Rocker"
  15. "Fade Away"
  16. "Stolen Car"
  17. "Ramrod"
  18. "The Price You Pay"
  19. "Drive All Night"
  20. "Wreck on the Highway"

Post-River

  1. "Badlands"
  2. "Lonesome Day"
  3. "No Surrender"
  4. "She's the One"
  5. "Because the Night"
  6. "The Rising"
  7. "Thunder Road"

Encore

  1. "Born to Run"
  2. "Dancing in the Dark"
  3. "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"
  4. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
  5. "Bobby Jean"
  6. "Shout" (The Isley Brothers cover)
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Tour dates

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  1. Boxscore combined with the boxscore from August 23–25, 2016.
  2. Boxscore combined with the boxscore from August 23–25, 2016.

N/A

Festivals and other miscellaneous performances
A This concert was rescheduled from the show originally scheduled on January 24 which was postponed due to snow.
B This concert was part of the "Rock in Rio Lisbon"
C This concert was part of "TW Classic"
D This concert was part of the "Rock in Roma"
E This concert was rescheduled from the show originally scheduled on September 3 which was postponed due to inclement weather caused by Tropical Storm Hermine.
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Cancelled/postponed shows

On April 8, 2016, Springsteen announced on his website that he was cancelling his concert, two days later, at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina, in protest of the state legislature's new law, the HB2 (nicknamed the "Bathroom Bill"), which banned transgender people from using public restrooms of the gender with which they identify and overturned local laws that ban employers from discriminating against certain workers. "Some things are more important than a rock show", he remarked.[22] Springsteen was forced to postpone his concert on September 3, 2016, in Virginia Beach due to inclement weather from Hurricane Hermine. The show was rescheduled for two days later.

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Songs performed

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Originals/studio tracks/cover songs
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Personnel

The E Street Band

with

and

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Guest appearances

Opening acts

See also

References

External links

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