The Boss came, he sang and he conquered all of us! What to say about Bruce Springsteen’s concert at the Villa Manin, located a mere 15 kms or so from Udine? Simply fantastic! Out of the 148 concerts I’ve seen so far I’d this performance in the top 10. Indeed a tremendous honour for the folks in Udine and Friuli to have hosted such a magnificent performer. Menacing clouds the day before and the day of the concert threatened those 10,000 fans with a good downpour. Instead, Bruce’s great charisma spared us all the rain as the stars even came out for the concert. Bruce was joined on stage by “only” 17 terrific musicians, including his wife Patti Scialfa who has also been part of Bruce’s legendary E Street Band (which, in total honesty, I did not personally miss last night as his “Seeger Session Band” was simply superb) and violinist Soozie Tyrell who was part of his 2003 world tour. After his “Born in the USA” concert in 1984 in Toronto and his epic world tour 3 years ago in Florence (3.5 hour concert with a record 3 encores), The Boss ONCE again outdid himself with a wonderful performance of old tunes by Pete Seeger. He began at 9 pm on the dot and ended at 11.30 pm with about 20 songs or so, including “The River” and “My City of Ruin” in honour of 9/11 plus naturally songs from his latest work with the Seeger Band, in particular “Jacob’s Ladder”. Forget hearing “Born in the USA” or “Born to Run”, this was Springsteen singing perhaps the roots of his own music (mixed in with some old Irish ballads). One of the concluding songs was everyone’s favourite (even for Italians), “When the saints come marching in”. His band members? You name it, he had them: banjo, tuba, horns, fiddles, drums and even washboards! I had stated publicly that when you go see a Tina Turner or Springsteen concert and you’ve spent a lot of bucks/euros, you come away very, very satisfied for the money you’ve spent. This is once again confirmed with Bruce’s performance last nite. And oh, another thing, both he and Paul McCartney REALLY know how to work an audience (Bruce is now 57 years old). At one point he yelled out in perfect Italian: “Udine e’ anche famosa per la grappa, ma dov’e’”? He repeated this about 3 or 4 times. Finally, after the 5th time he repeated the same phrase, a roadie came out on stage with a bottle of grappa and glasses! Seeing that in this part of Italy they make some mighty fine grappa, the crowd naturally went wild. And there was Bruce serving grappa to all his band members. Upon conclusion of the concert, I said to some friends: “Gee, I wonder if the grappa he had was the Nonino version”? Just as I said it, Mrs. Gianola Nonino, of the same grappa distillery, passed right under my nose with her husband. I only presume that The Boss, no doubt a drinker in his life of some fine Jack Daniel’s whiskey, no doubt probably appreciated a crate or two of Nonino grappa, considered by many one of the finest grappas in all of Italy (all pics by M. Rimati)!
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