Last night’s show at the Izod Center delivered some actual news — toward the end of the night, Bruuuuuce announced the E Street Band will close down the soon-to-be-shuttered Giants Stadium with three shows in the fall. But we were more interested in news of the much less valid variety — what’s going on with the Bruce adultery story? Backstreets.com has noted that Springsteen’s wife and E Street co-band-member, Patti Scialfa, has been on and off the tour since an April 22 horse-riding accident, although our conspiracy-theory-hungry minds couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with that dude who claimed the Boss slept with his wife.
The story was sort of debunked yesterday — the alleged mistress, Ann Kelly, says her husband made the whole thing up to try to extort money during their divorce proceedings (although Kelly is buddies with Bruce from some fancy private gym they both go to. Just saying …). Patti was onstage last night, and we kept our eyes peeled for any lingering awkwardness, just in case, during their duet on “Kingdom of Love.†Results were inconclusive, although the Boss did chase her down for a kiss at the end.
The show itself was, of course, predictably awesome, from a rambling mid-set Bruce speech about “building a house of love†to the passing of the mike to a couple of adorable front-row moppets who, terrified, still managed to squeak out a few lines of “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.†Max Weinberg was totally M.I.A. (prepping for the Tonight Show?), but his 18-year-old son Jay more than ably filled in on drums. The encore was particularly epic, with “Thunder Road†segueing into “Jungleland,†and “Rosalita†capping things off — “Is this New Jersey?†Bruce hollered, to roars. “Then we can’t go home until we’ve played this one!â€