Watch Bruce Springsteen play 'Viva Las Vegas' and other surprises in Sin City

Just one day After calling E Street Radio and promising fans a more varied setlist on this leg of the tour, Bruce Springsteen took the stage at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and delivered on that promise. The surprises began when he opened the show with the deep 1992 track 'Roll of the Dice', which he hadn't played in seven years. They continued later in the set when he broke out “Hungry Heart” and “Racing in the Street” for the first time since returning to the streets in 2023.

A section of Springsteen's die-hard fans who attend multiple shows per tour have been frustrated with the setlist throughout the past year, as it has remained largely the same from night to night, though he has begun to loosen up from his footing. stage at the end. They were used to wildly unpredictable nights during the 2010s where Springsteen would pull signs from the audience and play almost any song from his catalog at once.

But when he called into E Street Radio earlier this week, he told host Jim Rotolo that things were about to change. “We're approaching it like it's a new tour,” Springsteen said. “There's going to be some stuff from last year's tour that's going to carry over, some of my core themes of mortality and life and those things, you know, I'm going to carry on… I think I'm going to move into the other parts of the set a lot more, so there's going to be a much wider selection of songs in progress. So we're looking at it like, you know, it's a little bit of the old tour, but we're looking at it as a new tour.”

The changes began opening night in Phoenix when he removed 2023 tour staples “Kitty's Back” and “The E Street Shuffle” and added in “Spirit in the Night,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Darlington County”, “Two Hearts” and “Don't Play That Song (You Lied).” But all these songs were played at some point in 2023.

The Las Vegas set was more adventurous, in part because it was only the third time in his entire career that he had played Sin City – following shows in 2000 and 2002 – and he wanted to mark the occasion. The encore began with a cover of Elvis Presley's classic “Viva Las Vegas,” which he hadn't performed since his last appearance there in 2002.

Several shows on this first leg of the 2024 tour were originally booked last year, but were postponed when Springsteen came down with a peptic ulcer. “One of the big problems was that I couldn't sing,” he told E Street Radio. “You sing with your diaphragm. My diaphragm hurt so bad that when I went to bother singing it was killing me. I literally couldn't sing at all, and that went on for two or three months, along with a lot of other painful problems.”

He continued, “During it, before people say to me, 'Oh, no. It's going to go away and you're going to be okay,” you're thinking like, “Hey, I'm going to sing again?” This is one of the things I like to do the best, the most, and right now I can't do it. It took a while for the doctors to say, “Oh, no. You'll be fine.” At first no one said that, which made me nervous. At the end of the day, I found some great doctors and they straightened me out.”

The tour continues on March 25th at Pechanga Arena in San Diego, California. “There's a little California cafe down in San Diego,” Springsteen said in a silly Instagram video along with the E Street Band, referencing his 1973 classic “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).” “I'm Bruce Springsteen. On March 25th, we plan to go down there and look for the son of a bitch. Write it in your diary. 25th of March. It's the day you're going to lose your mind and we're going to make sure of it.”