Bruce Springsteen Dedicates ‘I’ll See You In My Dreams’ to Robbie Robertson At Wrigley Field N. American Tour Kick-Off
The Boss paid tribute to the leader of The Band on Wednesday night (Aug. 9) at the kick-off of the E Street Band’s North American stadium/arena tour at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Just hours after the world learned that legendary singer/songwriter/composer Robbie Robertson of The Band had passed away at age 80 following a long illness, Bruce Springsteen dedicated a song to his fellow hard core troubadour.
“To my good friend Robbie Robertson,” Springsteen said before the band kicked into the emotional ballad “I’ll See You In My Dreams” from the E Street Band’s 2020 album Letter to You according to the Asbury Park Press. The sentimental track is an a tribute to a lost loved one in which Springsteen takes solace in a dream world reunion as he surrounds himself with the departed’s books and records.
“The road is long and seeming without end/ The days go on, I remember you my friend/ And though you’re gone and my heart’s been emptied it seems/ I’ll see you in my dreams,” Springsteen sings before hitting the hope-filled chorus on the song that closed out the 26-song, three-hour setlist for Wednesday night’s show. “I’ll see you in my dreams/ When all our summers have come to an end/ I’ll see you in my dreams/ We’ll meet and live and laugh again/ I’ll see you in my dreams,” Springsteen manifests on the chorus.
Earlier in the day, E Street Band guitarist “Little” Steven Van Zandt called Robertson “good friend and a genius. The Band’s music shocked the excess out of the Renaissance and were an essential part of the final back-to-the-roots trend of ‘60s. He was an underrated brilliant guitar player adding greatly to Bob Dylan’s best tour & best album,” he wrote on Twitter.
The APP noted that, like Springsteen, 73, Toronto native Robertson worked the boards on the New Jersey shore in the mid-1960s, working at clubs such as the former Tony Marts in Somers Point, NJ with The Band.
Robertson had just wrapped work on Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon, the 14th collaboration with the man the legendary director called “one of my closest friends, a constant in my life and work.” He was one of the dozens of musicians, friends and admirers who paid tribute to Robertson, whose career spanned more than 65 years as a band member, solo star, actor and film composer.
From his beginnings as a teenage guitarist in Little Caesar and the Consuls to his stint in Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in the early 1960s, a fruitful run with Bob Dylan in the mid-to-late 1960s and then the formation of Americana progenitors The Band, Robertson was a beloved, deeply soulful and thoughtful artist who former President Bill Clinton referred to as a “brilliant songwriter, guitarist and composer whose gifts changed music forever.”
Check out fan footage of the performance below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
