Bruce Springsteen Releases Live EP ‘Land of Hopes & Dreams,’ Complete with Anti-Trump Speeches
On May 14, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band began his Land of Hopes & Dreams Tour through Europe with an opening performance at Manchester, England’s Co-op Live. As a refresher for anyone fortunate enough to tune out the President of the United States for a week, that show set off a very public beef between Trump and The Boss when the latter passionately voiced his objection to the “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration” in three fiery interstitial speeches.
Naturally, the President responded with a bizarre social media rant in which he commanded the “‘dumb as a rock’… dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!)” to “KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country… Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!” Many of Springsteen’s fans and peers, including Neil Young, have rightly argued that those bruised attempts to suppress artists’ free speech are, at best, the least of Trump’s concerns. For his part, Bruce doubled down, releasing a live EP from the performance complete with his onstage rallying cries.
Springsteen’s Land of Hopes & Dreams EP landed on streaming services yesterday, May 21. The release collects 30 minutes from the first Manchester show, comprising his treatments of the title track, “Long Walk Home,” “My City of Ruins” and Bob Dylan’s 1964 Another Side of Bob Dylan classic “Chimes of Freedom,” which he performed for the first time in 37 years, as well as five minutes of urgent observations on the state of the union. In his introduction to “My City of Ruins,” the icon asserted: “There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent–this is happening now.
“In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They are removing residents off American streets and without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.
“A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government,” Springsteen concluded. “They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and–regardless of its faults–is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said, he said ‘in this world there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.”
Springsteen and the E Street Band will return to the stage on Saturday, May 24 for a performance at Lille, France’s Stade Pierre Mauroy, then continue on the Land of Hopes & Dreams Tour for 12 further stops across Europe through July 3; these will be the band’s only live dates of 2025. From the road, Springsteen is continuing to roll out Tracks II: The Lost Albums, a collection of seven full-length records he finished between 1983 and 2018, but stuck on the shelf for one reason or another, which is due on June 27 via Sony Music. Learn more at brucespringsteen.net.
