Bruce Springsteen on stage in Barcelona on April 30, 2023.
Photo: Redferns, Xavi Torrent. All rights reserved.
The summer season is concert and festival season. With big and small stories. Highlights on and off the stage. tops and flops. Personal Dönkes and world star moderate appearance…
A mixture of all this has now been picked up by the local press in Cologne. As is well known, Bruce Springsteen and his longtime guitar brother Little Steven more or less “incognito” attended a concert by Peter Gabriel in the Lanxess Arena, which was packed with 16,000 fans. The local media photographed the US stars discreetly leaning against a side table in the mixer zone.
Springsteen is in service in Europe itself. He was “off time” for Gabriel’s gig in Cologne. His schedule is loosely timed. For example next Wednesday (June 21) in Düsseldorf and then in July as a stadium and racetrack rocker in Hamburg, Vienna, Hockenheim and Munich.
On the fringes of his guest performance in the Netherlands, not far away, legends stopped by at the comeback show of the colleague from the western English spa town of Bath.
As the “Kölner Stadtanzeiger” now reports, Springsteen super fan Jan Makurath has a kind of saint appearance there.
The Rhinelander is an outspoken Springsteen disciple, has seen umpteen records, recordings and also many Boss concerts. He was quite astonished when he saw his idol “completely unexpected” and without a large entourage standing next to the Gabriel mixing desk. “My friend Volker had accidentally received so-called crew passes for the concert, so we were allowed to stay in this area,” he tells the newspaper. The two would have been “completely perplexed” and during the first songs by Peter Gabriel they considered whether they should at least risk a short hello. Maybe a little photo…
But what is a real, adult fan can also respect the privacy of its star:
“The two want to see the gig, we won’t talk to them now,” was the boss’s disciple’s thoughts. “Although I thought about asking the security man if I could buy them a Kölsch in the Cologne way.”
Conclusion in retrospect: “Unfortunately, we were very polite and reserved”. Not even a mini-shooting with the smartphone with his heroes was requested.
Springsteen and Steven could listen to the idiosyncratic Gabriel program in peace and quiet.