Bono Joins Bruce Springsteen Onstage in Dublin
Towards the end of the main set of their concert at Dublin's Croke Park yesterday (May 29), Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band brought out one of Ireland's favorite sons, Bono, to help them out. The song they performed was "Because the Night," which is embedded above.
The U2 frontman sings the first verse, while Springsteen takes the second, and they share a microphone on the choruses and bridge. Nils Lofgren helps out with a scorching guitar solo that last nearly two minutes.
Springsteen wrote "Because the Night" for 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town, but gave the song to Patti Smith via Jimmy Iovine, who was engineering Darkness at the same time he was producing Smith's Easter. Smith re-wrote the verses and the song reached No. 13, her biggest-ever hit, and it's been a staple of Springsteen concerts ever since. 10,000 Maniacs took their version from MTV Unplugged to No. 11 in 1993.
U2 covered another Smith song, "Dancing Barefoot," on the b-side of "When Loves Comes to Town," their 1989 duet with blues legend B.B. King. It was given a wider release on the soundtrack to the 1994 movie, Threesome.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band began their European tour two weeks ago in Barcelona and will remain overseas until July 31 in Zurich, Switzerland. After three weeks off to rest, they will play three weeks of dates in the U.S. Although it's still billed as The River 2016 tour, they are not playing the album in its entirety, as they had done this winter in the U.S., they are performing a good portion of it nightly.
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