As the time approached 10:30 Tuesday night, nearly three hours after Bruce Springsteen took the stage at Inglewood's Kia Forum alongside 18 of his musical comrades, the 76-year-old rock legend told the crowd that he had no intention of being there.
“This is a tour we never planned,” he said. “The E Street Band is here with you tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength. And we want to bring you some hope and some strength.”
It was not impossible to believe him.
After a two-year journey that finally concluded last summer amid the release of a massive box set and a splashy Hollywood biopic, Springsteen might have been expected to spend 2026 counting his money and his accolades. However, as he tells it, the actions of a “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and traitorous” president and his administration spurred him back into action.
“If you feel helpless, if you feel hopeless, if you feel betrayed, if you feel frustrated, if you feel angry, I mean, I know. I have been,” he said.
Tuesday's show was the first of two this week at the Forum.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Hence the rushed Land of Hope & Dreams tour: two months of concerts in the United States that began last week in Minneapolis, where federal immigration agents killed two American citizens in January, and will conclude on May 27 with a stadium show in Washington, DC.
“The White House… this “The White House is destroying the American idea,” Springsteen proclaimed during Tuesday’s concert, the first of two this week at the Forum.
Before we get to the performance itself, let's acknowledge that the Boss is sticking his neck out here. Sure, he's protected by his wealth and celebrity; Sure, he's preaching to the choir in every city he and the E Street Band visit.
But what other musician on Springsteen's level is speaking like him now?
On Tuesday, he debuted “Streets of Minneapolis,” a new protest song in which he mentions Alex Pretti and Renée Good by name, with a vividly detailed monologue about the circumstances of their deaths. He then led his musicians through a fervent rendition of the folk-rock tune.
“It's our blood and our bones / And these whistles and phones / Against the s**t of Miller and Noem,” Springsteen sang, a lyric that may have inspired President Trump this month to urge his followers to boycott the singer, whom he compared in a social media post to a “dried plum who's suffered a lot from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon.” (In truth, Springsteen probably enjoyed that.)
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Whatever the risks of his speech, you had to admire – here in our era of political infotainment – the natural delicacy with which Springsteen interspersed his prepared rhetoric on Tuesday's set. He knew exactly when to get the E Streeters drunk so he could talk about NATO and USAID; he knew when it was wisest to lead the audience in an “ICE out” chant.
In fact, as much as he spoke his mind, Springsteen was giving his fans the chance to work out their own anxieties in boisterous sing-along versions of classics like “Born in the USA,” “No Surrender,” “The Promised Land” and “Out in the Street.”
If the impulse animating the concert was outrage, the predominant emotion was joy, even (or especially) when the music was at its highest, as in versions of Edwin Starr's “War” and The Clash's “Clampdown.”
With an additional E Street member in Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Springsteen made “Badlands” and “Death to My Hometown” shine and stomp; “Murder Incorporated” was a gritty soul-rock rave, while “Youngstown” got a lurid guitar solo from Nils Lofgren that reminded you of his other gig at Neil Young's Crazy Horse. (Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa, who said in 2024 that she has cancer, was not part of the band on Tuesday.)
About halfway through the show, Springsteen sang “American Skin (41 Shots),” the early 2000s song about racialized police violence he wrote after the murder of Amadou Diallo at the hands of four New York police officers; He followed with “Long Walk Home,” which he described as “a prayer for our country.”
Bruce Springsteen
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Played one after the other, the songs made you think about how little agreement we have reached over the last quarter century about who can be called an American. Identity is always under attack and always being defended.
Anyone who isn't a Bruce fan would admit that Springsteen leaned a little into recent tunes here: “House of a Thousand Guitars,” “My City of Ruins,” “Wrecking Ball,” and the like.
However, as with his speeches, he can still read a room. “It has to be done,” he said with a smile as the band sped up “Hungry Heart,” one of the few old pop hits he made that broke away from the night's main theme.
Near the end, in a bang-bang-bang encore of “Born to Run” and “Bobby Jean” and “Dancing in the Dark,” Springsteen, his shirt soaked with sweat, took his seat on stage and thanked members of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center for coming to the show. (Also in the house on Tuesday: Henry Winkler.)
He then offered a final homily before closing with Bob Dylan's “Chimes of Freedom.”
“These are difficult times, but we will get through this,” he said. “We are the Americans. What do you say? The Americans do the right thing after they have tried everything else.” He shook his head as if taking a mental inventory.
“F-!”
