Bruce Springsteen takes charge of First Ave protest concert

Two American rock legends from the 1970s, Bruce Springsteen and First Avenue, met up for the first time at the Jan. 30 Defend Minnesota! protest concert denouncing ICE.

Springsteen took to the Minneapolis rock haven’s stage at 1:55 p.m., piggybacking on a midday concert organized by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine fame. The Boss sang two songs, including his new anti-ICE single “Streets of Minneapolis.”

“This is for the people of Minneapolis, the people of Minnesota,” he told a crowd of 1,500 fans, most of whom had already figured out he was the show’s advertised “very special guest.”

Anyone paying attention to his music of the past half-century also could’ve easily figured Springsteen would take a stand against ICE operations in Minnesota — a stance evidenced by “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” the older tune he played on the stage where Prince filmed “Purple Rain.”

He performed a loudly electrified version of the 1995 acoustic track with Morello and his band. He also stuck around to join in the concert’s closing song, John Lennon’s “Power to the People,” featuring all the performers involved in what Morello rightly called “the greatest brunchtime concert in the history of” First Avenue.

From the storied stage, Springsteen told a tale about how Morello recruited him to come to Minneapolis to sing “Streets of Minneapolis.” He sent the song to his fellow Rock & Roll Hall of Famer the day he recorded it (which he said was only one day after he wrote it).

“Don’t you think it’s kind of soapbox-y?” Springsteen recounted asking Morello, whose response was: “Nuance is nice, but sometimes you just gotta kick them in the teeth.”

That background led to instant speculation that Bruuuuuce was going to be the surprise guest when the First Ave concert was announced Jan. 28 — also not so coincidentally the day Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis,” which quickly rose to the top of the most-played songs on iTunes and other streaming services.

The crowd seemed aware the Boss was coming as it filed into the nightclub around 11 a.m., looking like any normal concert audience, with a lot of beer cups in hand and rock band T-shirts for wardrobe choices.

Among the signs this was a different kind of First Ave gig were all the anti-ICE pins and T-shirts and the preshow crowd chants, including, “Freedom now!” and, “[Expletive] ICE!” There also was an unusually boisterous sing-along to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” before the movie screen curtain went up. And it’s not every day you see CNN reporter Sara Sidner standing at the First Ave soundboard wearing a sweatshirt from the Prince-affiliated ‘70s band Grand Central.

“Welcome to the home of the brave!” the concert’s opening act, Ike Reilly, yelled as he took the stage.

A First Ave regular and friend of Morello’s from their mutual hometown of Libertyville, Ill., Reilly opened with “At Least Another Day,” a song he wrote to honor the Twin Cities’ resilience following George Floyd’s murder. Also from the Chicago area, Tim McIlrath and Zach Blair of the punk band Rise Against dropped in snippets of the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” and Soul Asylum’s “Misery” to honor Twin Cities culture around their appropriately picked own songs, such as “Prayer of the Refugee.”

The benefit show raised more than $35,000.

All the profits from the concert are being donated to the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by federal agents during the ICE surge in Minnesota this month.

Some of the show’s attendees joined a protest taking place in downtown Minneapolis, but many just stood in awe and marveled outside First Avenue after the concert.

“It was unbelievable!” Josh Madden of St. Louis Park said. “It was a religious experience for many of us, but then to have it happen in the middle of everything else that’s going on — that made it even more special.”