Given his massive popularity, Bruce Springsteen not only continues to share music with fans after six decades of performing but just last year he kicked off another tour. While marking his first tour since 2016-2017, the hitmaker found himself struggling to perform due to his ongoing battle with peptic ulcer disease. The pain became so great that Springsteen eventually announced he was taking a break to focus on his health. With the icon returning to the stage on Tuesday, he recently discussed his current health and how it felt to get back to performing.
Videos by American Songwriter
Speaking on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio, hosted by Jim Rotolo, Springsteen revealed the immense pain he felt in his diaphragm due to the disease. “You sing with your diaphragm. You know, my diaphragm was hurting so badly that when I went to make the effort to sing, it was killing me, you know? So, I literally couldn’t sing at all, you know, and that lasted for two or three months along with just a myriad of other painful problems.”
Already pushing himself past his limit, Springsteen eventually sought help from doctors. Wanting to get back on stage, the singer thanked the doctors for not only helping him get better, but he even admitted to moving around more during his concerts. “They straightened me out, and I can’t do anything but thank them all.”
Bruce Springsteen Admits To Feeling “Great” After Phoenix Performance
As for his performance at the Footprint Center in Phoenix on Tuesday, Springsteen praised not just the town but the band for a spectacular show. “I mean, first of all, Phoenix is a great town for us, and the crowd was off the Richter, off the Richter scale. A wonderful crowd we had, and the band just played great, you know, and I thought they might be tired, you might be a little fatigued, you might be a little rusty. No. You know, the guys were just fabulous from [the] first song on, and I felt great, and the whole band felt great.”
While moving to finish the original schedule, Springsteen looked at the remaining shows as an entirely different tour. “There will be some things from last year’s tour that will hold over, some of my basic themes of mortality and life and those things, you know, I’m going to keep set, but I think I’m gonna move around the other parts of the set a lot more, so there’ll be a much wider song selection going on…”
(Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation)
