Bruce Springsteen's first concert in Europe

Much to his embarrassment, the first visit of Bruce Springsteen in Europe it was advertised excessively by its record label, the Columbia Records. The label wanted to ride the growing excitement surrounding Springsteen’s third album, “Born To Run” (read the review here), which, released at the end of August, in mid-October 1975, had reached third place in the US sales charts.

To give a measure of the excitement caused by the album in the United States, on October 27, 1975, two prestigious newspapers, Time and Newsweek, gave the honor of the cover to the musician from New Jersey, presenting him as “The new Dylan”. A label that, to tell the truth, had accompanied him since his debut in 1973 with the two albums “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” (read the review here) And “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle” (read the review here).

Bruce Springsteen he has always been a concert animal, he had hundreds of live performances behind him, but until November 18, 1975 he had only performed in the United States. He was twenty-six when he arrived in west London for his European stage debut at the Historic Hammersmith Odeon. At the entrance to the venue there were posters with the claim: “London is finally ready for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band”. Bruce was annoyed to say the least and started tearing up the posters in the lobby of the London venue.

The pressure on the shoulders of what Jon Landau had called ‘the future of rock’n’roll’ was at its peak. It’s understandable, it was still a debut, so there’s no need to be surprised if things didn’t turn out exactly as one might have hoped. British magazine reviews following Bruce’s performance were consistent in reporting the same unflattering thought. Simon Frith of Creemnot without a good dose of sarcasm, shouted the following: “This is the future of rock’n’roll??”. He echoed it NME’s Tony Tyler which went down flat without mincing words: “Let me say that on Tuesday I didn’t see the future of rock ‘n’ roll, or even the new Bob Dylan.”

Tyler wrote again: “I have been told that, by Springsteen’s standards, Tuesday was a bad concert. By the audience’s standards it seemed like a successful concert, but not a great one. By my standards it was a mediocre concert, full of untapped potential, but by no means a classic.” Tyler did not even spare himself a merciless judgment on the song “Born to run” branding it as “rather disappointing”.

Bruce Springsteen
in his autobiography he recalled his European ‘premiere’ in London with these words: “Whatever happened, that first evening at the Hammersmith Odeon (a second followed six days later, on 24 November 1975, ed.) has become one of our ‘legendary’ performances”.

In this case the good morning had not been seen since the morning. In fact, Great Britain, after the United States, is the place where Springsteen performed the greatest number of times in his career – according to the concert bible setlist.fm he held 113 live shows – but he never returned to play after those two concerts in 1975 atHammersmith Odeon of London.