Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - 28/05/08 by James Ellaby

The 'Theatre Of Dreams' sounds like a place a character in a Bruce Springsteen song would ride to on a 'suicide machine' through 'mansions of glory' on a 'last chance powerdrive', so it's no surprise that when he and the E Street Band arrived on stage at the Stretford End, the first thing the big screens showed was the sign proclaiming Old Trafford as 'Theatre Of Dreams'. Having played up the road at the cricket ground almost five years ago to the day, this venue felt like a slightly more natural place for a gig, and The Boss did not let us down.

He also showed that he was well aware of his surroundings, chatting early on about Manchester United's recent successes and telling the crowd about his teenage son's love of 'soccer', while later on he was thrown a United shirt with THE BOSS on the back. That didn't go down too well with the fans of other teams in the ground, but it was all good-natured, so he got away with it. To be honest, he could have gotten away with pretty much anything on a night where he and the E Street Band were in stunning form, with Springsteen playing up to the crowd at every chance he got, as well as shifting the setlist whenever he saw an impressive-looking banner requesting a song.

Certainly two tracks from his debut album got an airing after he plucked banners out of the crowd, with It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City being requested with a nice drawing of a saint, and Growin' Up being played for a small child on his dad's shoulders with big red ear protectors on (he even got an impromptu lyric change about him). All of this is par for the course at a Springsteen show, with the setlists never set in stone and always changing between gigs, unlike most other big name stadium acts, where the same songs get played every night. To illustrate this, of the 26 songs played here, only six of them were played back in 2003. The possible downside to this rotation of his back catalogue (though to be fair he could probably play any combination of his songs and still make it a cracking show) is that you can't guarantee you'll get to hear all the hits, but the upside is that you get to hear stuff you might not have expected.

And so it was here, with favourites like Born In The USA, Hungry Heart, The River, Atlantic City and Thunder Road all absent, while tracks like Trapped, Adam Raised A Cain and Darlington County were played. There was also plenty from last year's Entertainment Manchester Album Of The Year, Magic, with Radio Nowhere, Devil's Arcade, Last To Die and Long Walk Home all sounding like they had been part of the set for years. The rest of the set was mostly taken from albums like Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The Rising, with the mid-show highlight being a blistering Because The Night, with the hugely-talented Nils Lofgren on scorching form.

Of course, 'hugely talented' goes for everyone in the E Street Band, despite the lack of Springsteen's wife Patti Scialfa ("She's at home making sure the kids don't burn the house down or sell my favourite clothes on eBay," he explained) and Danny Federici, who sadly passed away last month. As usual, Miami Steve van Zandt and saxophonist Clarence Clemons were his main foils for stage antics and the most popular with the crowd, but special mention should go to drummer Max Weinberg for his powerful performance that seemed so completely at odds with his 'a slightly confused Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters' look.

If there was a complaint to be made about the evening, it's that the sound could have been better, particularly for the early parts of the gig, but that is so often the case at big open air shows like this, and it did improve. By the epic run through of Born To Run, with the whole of Old Trafford singing as one, any worries about the sound were long gone, and the closing Irish jig of American Land (The Glazer family might have appreciated that one being played at their stadium) was a raucous end to another stunning show by Springsteen and his E Street Band, still the best in the business.