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Bruce Springsteen delivers fiery, political show at Inglewood’s Kia Forum

April 8, 2026

When Bruce Springsteen walked out to join the E Street Band on stage on Tuesday, he wanted to make sure that everyone inside the Kia Forum knew exactly what to expect on the Land of Hope and Dreams Tour.

“Now the mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen declared after asking fans for a prayer for the American military serving overseas.

“We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution,” he continued, drawing a contrast between these ideals with the actions of the current administration. “Our sacred American promise, the America I love, the America I’ve written about for 50 years, that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performs at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performs at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

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“Tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency,” Springsteen pleaded like a preacher in a tent revival at altar call. “Truth over lies. Unity over division, and peace over —

” – War! Hunh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” Springsteen sang as he and the E Street Band, kicked off the show with Edwin Starr’s 1970 anti-war hit, a song about a different war and a different time, though the same issues loom large again today.

Springsteen, of course, has a long history of songs of protest and political themes, a populist streak that defended the poor and downtrodden, the immigrant and the unemployed, throughout his career.

But this is something different. Pushed by current events such as the ICE enforcement action in Minneapolis, earlier this year, Springsteen and the E Street Band decided they weren’t done with the road, as they’d thought when a world tour that ran from 2023 through 2025 wrapped up.

So back out they went — Tuesday’s show at the Forum, where they also play on Thursday, April 9, is their third of the year — with what’s almost certainly their most passionately political sets ever.

“War” was followed by “Born in the U.S.A.,” Springsteen’s massive hit in the ’80s about the hardships Vietnam vets faced upon returning from that conflict.

“Death to My Hometown” landed like an Irish lament with accordion and fiddle accents and a lyrical tale of hardship amid economic inequality and uncaring corporate callousness.

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine is a special guest on this tour, adding guitar and vocals to those first three songs and leaving the stage after a fourth, a cover of the Clash’s “Clampdown,” which showed up here in Springsteen’s set for only the seventh time in his career, and first since 2014.

Not every song had an overt message of resistance and protest, of course. Yet the context of the tour and the times added new themes to such otherwise apolitical songs, such as “No Surrender” and its innocents with big dreams, and “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” and its beaten-down protagonist who won’t give up.

“Streets of Minneapolis,” which Springsteen wrote and recorded after the shooting deaths of protestors Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in January, roared with its live full-band arrangement, and fans loudly joined Springsteen in its chants of “ICE out now!”

Across 27 songs and three hours, Springsteen mixed the heavy and light. Songs such as “Out In the Street” and “Hungry Heart” delivered joyful singalong moments with Springsteen circling the stage to play to all parts of the arena, handing his harmonica to one fan and a guitar pick to a small child.

Those flowed into harder-edged tales such as “Youngstown,” “Murder Incorporated” and “41 Shots (American Skin),” each of which incorporated the band’s guitarists ripping into glorious solos, Nils Lofgren on the first, Steven Van Zandt the second and Morello the third.

After “Long Walk Home,” which Springsteen introduced as “a prayer for our country,” and “House of a Thousand Guitars,” which he performed solo on acoustic guitar and harmonica, he paused to talk about the times in which we live again.

“Honesty, honor, humility, truth, compassion, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency,” Springsteen listed after citing an equally long list of societal and political ills he sees all around. “Don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore. They do.

“They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we want to be, the kind of country we want to leave to our children,” he continued. “So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people. Join us, and let’s fight for the America we love.

“Are you with us? Los Angeles, are you with us?” Springsteen shouted several times. The shouts and cheers that crashed back upon him on the stage delivered an unequivocal answer.

As the final third of the night unfolded, many of Springsteen’s bigger, more powerful anthems filled the set. “Because the Night,” which he wrote and gave to Patti Smith, soared with another Lofgren solo to the finish. The jaunty rhythms of “Wrecking Ball” and its Jersey-centric lyrics went down wildly well with the crowd, as did the passionate singalong choruses of “The Rising.”

Morello returned to the stage for the final three songs of the main set, kicking off things with “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” which saw Springsteen and Morello trading verses and jaw-droppingly great guitar solos in their electric version of Springsteen’s original acoustic ballad. [Win a bar bet with this nugget: Springsteen and Morello first played the electric version of “Tom Joad” in April 2008 at Honda Center in Anaheim.]

“Badlands and “Land of Hope and Dreams” took us to the break, though that was really more of a dim-the-lights-and-keep-on-rockin’ kind of encore pause. Around here, you really start to wonder how they do it. Springsteen is 76, and E Street Band guitarists Lofgren and Van Zandt, bassist Garry Tallent, drummer Max Weinberg and pianist Roy Bittan are around the same age.

But the Boss is the motor that keeps this machine, which included as many as 19 musicians on stage for much of the night, running strong.

And in the final stretch, Springsteen ran through “Born to Run,” a moment that brought chills as he dropped his vocals at points to let the crowd roar the words back at him, sang the nostalgic ode to old friendships of “Bobby Jean,” showed off his dance moves in “Dancing in the Dark,” and then did a lap around the pit at the front of the floor while singing “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.”

He’s 76, and I’m almost winded just typing that sentence.

In his final moments talking to the crowd, Springsteen expressed his hope and belief that America will not remain the divided country that it often seems to be today, and he finished with one last call to action.

“As the great civil rights leader John Lewis said, ‘Go out and get in some good trouble,’” he said. “Say something, do something, anything. Hell, sing something. That’s all I do.

“If you’re feeling helpless, if you’re feeling hopeless, if you’re feeling betrayed, if you’re feeling frustrated, if you’re feeling angry, I mean, I know, I get it,” Springsteen continued. “This is a tour that we never planned [to do]. The E Street Band is here with you tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength.”

Then, as he walked back toward the microphone where he and the band would wrap up with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom,” he finished that thought.

“And we want to bring some hope and bring some strength for you. I hope we’ve done that here.”

Bruce Springsteen delivers fiery, political show at Inglewood’s Kia Forum Orange County Register

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Bruce Springsteen delivers fiery, political show at Inglewood’s Kia Forum

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