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Thursday, December 05, 2002

By Scott Mervis, Post-Gazette Weekend Editor

"The Rising" is a powerful reflection on 9/11 that we can buy, play, absorb, get choked-up over and put aside for another day.

	Bruce Springsteen rocks out with Patti Scialfa and Steven Van Zandt. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

But its creator, Bruce Springsteen, has been out there every night reliving the tragedy over and over again through those painful songs.

Obviously, it's nothing compared to what the victims went through, but it's bound to take its toll.

If it has, it didn't show in Springsteen's performance before a wildly enthusiastic, fist-pumping sold-out crowd at Mellon Arena Wednesday night.

After all, we're talking about Bruce Springsteen here. Would he ever get bored with his material? If he did, would he ever show it?

Are you kidding me?

From the moment the guy walks on stage -- any stage, anywhere -- he switches on and pours out every ounce of his being. The Boss and the E Street Band, 10 members strong now, hit the stage, one by one, and from the first notes of "The Rising" we were the congregation in a righteous exercise of rock 'n' roll salvation.

Springsteen's magic is his way of taking on the most desperate human situation or something as mundane as a car engine and finding in it that glimmer of spiritual uplift. A song like "Lonesome Day," with its sad undercurrent of loss, turned into a celebration in the hands of Bruce and the E Street Band.

Early on, especially, he had no trouble threading "The Rising" songs with the classics that Boss fans just gotta hear. Old gems like "No Surrender," "Badlands" and "Night" -- with its rallying cry of "you work 9 to 5 but somehow you survive till the night" -- were delivered with the same earnest intensity.

For the road trip, the E Street Band has already found fresh nuances in the new songs. After a plea for some quiet, Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa introduced "Empty Sky" with a beautiful falsetto vocal. "Worlds Apart" -- a song about how our common humanity goes deeper than our borders -- was carried away by Danny Federici's accordion and then electrified by Springsteen's first and most ferocious guitar solo of the night. As expected, the bittersweet "Mary's Place" has become that "Rosalita"-style rhythm 'n' blues workout -- and how could it not be with chants of both "let it rain!" and "turn it up!"?

	Bruce Springsteen plays from his new album, "The Rising," before a sellout crowd this evening at Mellon Arena. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

Although he still jumped on the piano, still donned a Santa hat and slid on his knees across the stage during a joyously defiant "Out in the Streets," there's something different about Springsteen on this tour. He's toned down the theatrics just a notch (such as the extended E Street Band intro) out of respect for the material and some of the once-soaring tunes were sung in a lower register.

The set lists have been pretty close from city to city, but Springsteen has been localizing the shows. Last night, he stood alone with fiddle player Soozie Tyrell for a dark, haunting version of "Youngstown." And for the first encore he brought out Pittsburgh's favorite Houserocker, Joe Grushecky (and at one point, Joe's son, Johnny), for three songs, including "Code of Silence," an excellent, unrecorded song that they co-wrote.

The encores, more bombastic, more fun but less focused than the main set, ranged from the big Arena bounce of "Dancing in the Dark" and "Glory Days" (two songs his hardcore fans could do without) to Springsteen's rare take at the piano for the gospel-fired "My City of Ruin." A screaming, full-band version of "Born in the U.S.A." was offered up as a "prayer for peace." And with a Santa hat tossed on the stage, he couldn't resist a raucous climax of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

Wednesday night proved again that the ties that bind Springsteen with his fans go so deep that they'll ride along with him through anything, whether it be a choir-like falsetto vocal, a lengthy PSA for the Just Harvest charity or a set of songs themed to the worst tragedy in U.S. history. That's why they call him the Boss.