Johannesburg - The Boss is coming to town – with the E Street Band.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform at Bellville Velodrome in Cape Town on January 28 and 29 and FNB Stadium, Joburg, on February 1, Big Concerts said on Sunday.
With more than 120 million albums sold, he has won 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked his Born To Run and Thunder Road in its Top 500 greatest songs of all time.
His backing band could include Stevie van Zandt, Patti Scialfa, Max Weinberg, Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent and Roy Bittan.
Springsteen, who turned 64 in September, began his musical career in the late 1960s, recording his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. in January 1973., followed by the September 1973 The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.
In May 1974, in one of the most quoted music reviews of modern times, Boston’s The Real Paper music critic Jon Landau wrote “last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock ’n roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time...
“Springsteen does it all. He is a rock ’n roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-sh*t rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock ’n roll composer.”
And while he is perhaps best known for the albums, Born To Run (1975) and “Born In The USA (1984), true Springsteen afficionados rate his 1982 solo acoustic classic, “Nebraska” as being one of the greatest folk rock albums of all time.
CEO of Big Concerts, Attie Van Wyk, said that “after 24 years, it’s a dream come true to promote Bruce Springsteen in South Africa. It’s definitely a personal highlight to confirm The Boss.”
* Tickets will go on sale on Friday through www.bigconcerts.co.za and Computicket. - The Star
* The video in this story contains highlights from the Wrecking Ball tour, set to a new recording of Dream Baby Dream by the band Suicide. It was released as a thank you to Springsteen fans. - IOL