Critical and Commercial Reaction
The show was definitely a challenge to its audience, especially when presented in a cavernous arena. Casual Springsteen fans, if they came at all, would leave a bit bewildered. The faithful often found the shows rewarding. In retrospect, however, some fans wondered if some of the limitations of the tour might have been overcome if Springsteen had stuck with his original small-band lineup. However, others believe the Devils and Dust tour was Springsteen at his best, creating some of the most exciting shows longtime fans have ever seen. Springsteen played a total of 140 different songs during the tour. Few artists have ever played such a large variety of songs during one tour. Springsteen showcased his musical talent and made fans want to follow him on tour from the excitement created by so many different songs being played each night. The Devils & Dust material had been the ones most using the offstage instruments, and these fans believed even more would have helped, as effective large-group versions of that album's "Devils & Dust" and "Long Time Comin'" proved on the following year's Sessions Band Tour.
Critical reaction to the Devils & Dust Tour was generally favorable. Daily Variety reviewed a Los Angeles show by saying, "On a night that can be described as nothing short of magical, his solo show was a dream come true ... nearly every moment in the 2½-hour show resonated with truth." Billboard called the show "spare and pensive", noting that "the artist has consistently changed up the set list and reinvented dozens of songs from his more than three-decade career." The local Asbury Park Press portrayed Springsteen's attitude during the show as " has seen some things, heard some things and done some things — most of them terrible, some of them extraordinarily wonderful. As the pilgrim stands before the crowd, he makes no grand pronouncements. He seems puzzled by both the evil and the beauty in the world." LA Weekly was less impressed, objecting to Springsteen's choice of unfamiliar material and that he "insists fans neither clap nor sing along." New Jersey's Upstage magazine liked the show in general, but felt that the use of off-stage musicians was unsettling, saying "the idea of a solo acoustic tour loses something when it features other musicians who are neither given credit for their work nor seen on stage." (In the final two shows of the tour, Springsteen brought out and introduced the off-stage keyboard player, Alan Fitzgerald, and played with him on-stage.) The Austin American-Statesman found the show uneven, with Springsteen unlikely to gain new fans from it.
Attendance was disappointing in a few regions where Springsteen's drawing power had gradually been showing weakness, and everywhere but in Europe tickets were easier to get than in the past. Nevertheless, the tour did well commercially overall. Billboard reported that "Springsteen's stripped-down Devils & Dust tour did big business in 2005, grossing more than $33.4 million from 65 shows reported to Billboard Boxscore, 46 of them sellouts."
The Devils & Dust Tour subsequently won the Billboard Roadworks '05 Touring Award for Best Small Venue Tour, an award based on sales.
Read more about this topic: Devils & Dust Tour
Famous quotes containing the words critical, commercial and/or reaction:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“So by all means let’s have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delivered by a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, selling ergot pills. After all the public is entitled to what it wants, isn’t it? The Romans knew that and even they lasted four hundred years after they started to putrefy.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)