The Magic Tour was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's 2007–08 concert tour of North America and Western Europe.
The tour began October 2, 2007, in Hartford, Connecticut, and concluded August 30, 2008, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This was his first tour with the E Street Band since 2004's Vote for Change shows and the first prolonged outing with them since the 2002–2003 Rising Tour."Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band Announce First Full Scale Tour Of US & Europe Since 2003" , Shore Fire Media, August 28, 2007. Accessed August 28, 2007.
After the conclusion of the tour's first leg on November 19, 2007, organist Danny Federici took a leave of absence from the tour to pursue treatment for melanoma."Statement" , Shore Fire Media, November 21, 2007. He was replaced by Charles Giordano, who had played with Springsteen on the 2006 Sessions Band Tour. Federici made his only return to the stage on March 20, 2008, during the tour's third leg, when he appeared for portions of a show in Indianapolis."March 20, Indianapolis: Return of the Phantom", Backstreets.com. Accessed March 21, 2008. He died on April 17, 2008; the next two shows of the tour were postponed.
The Magic Tour was one of the biggest tours of the year and won the 2008 Billboard Touring Awards for Top Tour, Top Draw, and Top Manager (for Jon Landau). The Magic Tour had the second-highest gross worldwide for 2008 in Billboard's rankings, with $204.5 million and trailing only Bon Jovi's Lost Highway Tour. In Pollstar's calculus for North America, the Magic Tour had the sixth-highest gross for 2008 at $69.3 million. In any case, in total over its two years, the Magic Tour grossed more than $235 million.
Itinerary On August 28, 2007, it was announced on Bruce Springsteen's website that there would be a tour with the E Street Band immediately concurrent with the release of his album Magic."BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND ANNOUNCE FIRST FULL SCALE TOUR OF US & EUROPE SINCE 2003" , Brucespringsteen.com, August 28, 2007. Accessed August 28, 2007. The two first-announced legs followed the practice established during the 2002–2003 Rising Tour, of quickly visiting cities in North America followed by the same in Western Europe. Possible lengthier engagements, or dates in areas outside the Northeastern United States, where Springsteen's commercial appeal had dimmed, were viewed as additional legs in 2008.
In an interview at the time of the tour's announcement, Springsteen made clear that this outing would be a return to expectations after the substantial stylistic departures of the solo, multi-instrumental 2005 Devils & Dust Tour and the big folk 2006 Sessions Band Tour: "Yeah — I'll be playing the rock music this time.""Dates are set; Bruce revs up E Street Machine for Fall", Backstreets.com, August 28, 2007. Accessed August 30, 2007. Magic selections would be likely heavily featured, as they were written for playing in concert. And he shot down fan speculation that (with band members getting on in age and health and drummer Max Weinberg likely heading to Los Angeles when Conan O'Brien would take over The Tonight Show in 2009) this might be a farewell tour – "I envision the band carrying on for many, many, many more years. There ain't gonna be any farewell tour.... I'll never do that, man — you're only gonna know that when you don't see me no more" – as did band members the following year.
As per past Springsteen practice, the tour proper was preceded by a couple of weeks of the band holding closed rehearsals at Asbury Park Convention Hall – but now with loudspeakers playing local radio stations positioned outside the hall to foil the Springsteen faithful who gathered outside the building to hear a glimpse of the set lists and arrangements to come. This was followed by two rehearsal shows (which doubled as charity benefits) at Convention Hall on September 24 and 25, an early morning appearance on The Today Show'''s concert series on Rockefeller Plaza on September 28,"Rocking Rockefeller Plaza: Bruce & the E Street Band live on Today, Sept. 28", Backstreets.com, August 30, 2007. Accessed August 30, 2007. and another, small-audience rehearsal at Continental Airlines Arena that night.
The first, North American leg began at the Hartford Civic Center on October 2, 2007, and played in arenas through two shows at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston, concluding on November 19. The second, European leg began on November 25 at the Palacio de Deportes de la Comunidad de Madrid and finished at The O2 in London on December 19. As customary on some other Springsteen tours, a two-month winter holiday break was then taken.
The third, North American leg again started up at the Hartford Civic Center on February 28, 2008, playing both previously visited and unvisited markets, in arenas. It concluded on May 2, 2008, at BankAtlantic Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (The leg's conclusion was followed by a special out-of-tour, very-high-priced benefit show May 7 for, and at, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, where Springsteen's classic 1970s albums Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born to Run were played in sequence in their entirety.) Meanwhile, both arenas and stadiums were scheduled for a fourth, European leg to take place in mid-May through mid-July 2008, beginning at the RDS Arena in Dublin.
The fifth and final leg of the tour would return to North America for a few stadium and mostly arena or smaller outdoor venue shows, starting at Giants Stadium in New Jersey and visiting such places as Hershey, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Virginia, Nashville, Tennessee, and the like. The tour officially marked its end at the Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary Celebration in Milwaukee on August 30, 2008, which Rolling Stone viewed as "a very odd way to end an epic tour."
A more extensive final leg, running into the autumn, was "in the works" but scrapped in mid-June 2008. Fans, however, still hoped for something after the Harley show, and were rewarded when plans were announced for Springsteen and the E Street Band to play the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII, with strong speculation extending to a new album in early 2009 and a tour run before Max Weinberg went to California for The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.
The show
When the tour opened at the Hartford Civic Center, several things were immediately apparent. The show was clearly shorter than in years past, beginning at around 8:30 and ending at around 10:45. However, more songs were played than could be extrapolated from this time, given past practice, due to the omission of elongated numbers with stage hijinks, and in particular no long monologues or band intros. As guitarist Nils Lofgren said of the tour's start, "Bruce tried to do an experiment with condensing everything, covering all the emotional territory he needed to."
Soozie Tyrell, while now clearly not an official member of the E Street Band by analysis of publicity material, tour T-shirts and the like, was nonetheless a full member on-stage, appearing on every song with some combination of violin, acoustic guitar, and backing vocals. On the front line of the stage, age was taking its toll: on one side Clarence Clemons was once again sitting in a chair when not playing his saxophone or percussion parts and needing a steadying hand for getting on and off stage, while Danny Federici was also looking a little frail. On the other side, not only was Springsteen's teleprompter (a fixture since the early 1990s) still in view, but sidekick Steven Van Zandt had his own (for lyrics) as did wife and band member Patti Scialfa (for guitar chords). In the latter respect, however, the show featured a breakthrough: the first Scialfa song played in its entirety, the mid-set "A Town Called Heartbreak", which would continue to be played intermittently on the first leg of the tour. Drummer Max Weinberg also had a small teleprompter within his drum kit, showing lyrics, unusual in that Weinberg does not sing onstage.
The set list heavily leaned on Magic material, as might be expected, with The Rising initially also well represented. The 1970s were also featured, with a number of songs off Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Thematically, the show was organized in recent Springsteen fashion, with certain fixed sequences that appeared every night, interspersed with "wild card" sequences in which a variety of recent or old songs might appear. Shows usually began with a calliope playing "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" as the band took the stage, followed by several calls out from the darkness by Springsteen — "Is there anybody alive out there!?" Then, as might be expected, Magic's first single "Radio Nowhere" and its expression of social longing began the concert. This was followed by some older number, such as "The Ties That Bind" or "No Surrender", that supplied that social connection, and then by The Rising's "Lonesome Day" to balance the equation. The next part of the show brought out ''Magic'''s political undercurrents, first with a spoken introduction to "Magic" that made clear that song's understated lyric: "This is about living in times when the truth gets twisted into lies and lies get twisted into truth. So, it's not about magic. It's about tricks." Thus set up to follow was just that, a trick: yet another at-first-puzzling rendition of the always challenging "Reason to Believe". The Nebraska closer was transformed from a low-key acoustic number to a heavy-hitting, harmonica-driven, boogie-woogie blues rock version, with Springsteen pumping up the audience with phantom overhand throwing motions ... all for a song that represented, despite frequent misinterpretations, a void empty of hope; pp. 137–139. only a return of the Devils & Dust Tour's ultra-distorting "bullet mic" at the end served to reveal a bit of the deceit. An explicit public service announcement rap during "Livin' in the Future" listed Springsteen's complaints about developments in American during the George W. Bush administration, including extraordinary rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the continuing Iraq War. "The Promised Land" followed by wild card slots would then alleviate the mood.
Another fixed, socio-political sequence occurred at the end of the main set, "Devil's Arcade" into "The Rising" into "Last to Die" into "Long Walk Home" into "Badlands". In an interview, Springsteen said of the transition out of "The Rising" and into "Last to Die", signalling the course of American society from the September 11 attacks to the Iraq War, "The whole night is going to turn on that segue. That's what we're up there for right now, that thirty seconds." Encores started with the relaxed lament of the new "Girls in Their Summer Clothes". This was followed by potluck back catalog choices, often involving one of his long epics, the inevitable "Born to Run", a celebratory "Dancing in the Dark", and as the show finalé, "American Land". This, the only holdover from the Sessions Band Tour, featured Clemons on pennywhistle, both Federici and Bittan on accordion and joining Tyrell and the others on the front stage line, in an up-tempo jig that sought to convey the whole tale of immigration to the United States. As such it careened wildly in purpose between a rousing closer and a message summation; these dual roles were found in the start with Springsteen's exclamation over drums, “It's your country, don't let anyone take it from you!”Erik Remec, "Bruce Springsteen - Magic", FREE! Magazine Reprint, Retrieved June 14, 2012. and was emphasized as the tour went on, when the large video screens above the stage began scrolling the lyrics as the song played, and then illustrated Springsteen's quick-paced band intro spiel with 1960s Batman-styled cartoon bursts: E! Street! Band!