The Boss is back with another powerful political message and doesn't look like leaving Australia behind anytime soon.
On the brink of his third Australian tour in three years, it's clear Bruce Springsteen has something special in store for his fans down under.
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The Boss is back in Australia
Bruce Springsteen sets the scene of his 2017 tour of Australia
The global rock star belted out his classic New York City Serenade during a special sound check for a small gathering of media ahead of his opening show with the E Street Band at Perth Arena on Sunday Night.
The classic song, from his second album The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973), is one Springsteen rarely plays live, and in a nod to the dark political cloud that hangs over his 12-leg Australian tour, it was followed by 2012's Land of Hope and Dreams, the song played at the end of outgoing US President Barack Obama's farewell address last week.
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Springsteen clearly has politics on his mind as well as his adoring Australian fan base as he embarks on the third leg of The River tour after stints in the US and Europe.
The active Democrat, who also played a private show for Obama at the White House last week, is fired up by Donald Trump's inauguration as American's 45th president.
During the only interview of his 12-leg Australian and New Zealand tour, Springsteen said his thoughts were with the middle-class Americans he has so often inspired during his 40-plus years in the music industry.
"Home feels a long way away, our hearts and our spirits are with all the millions of people that marched yesterday," Springsteen said in Perth on Sunday.
"The E-Street band, we are part of the new resistance.
"[Our job is] to witness and to testify, that is the basic job of the E Street Band... we observe and we report and hopefully through doing so, we lift up and help people transcend.
"We try to inspire people during tough times... it's been our job for 40 years and it will continue to be so in the next coming years."
Springsteen said he could understand why many Americans who were fans of his music voted for Mr Trump: the new President won votes based on many of the issues The Boss himself wrote about in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
[Our job is] to witness and to testify, that is the basic job of the E Street Band... we observe and we report and hopefully through doing so, we lift up and help people transcend.
"Plenty of good people voted for Donald Trump on the basis that ... the industrialisation of the United States and globalisation and technological revolution hit many people very, very, very, very, hard," he said.
"Something the recovery of the United States didn't really get down to a lot of those folks.. so I think it makes you sort of easy pickings for a demagogue – which I believe Donald Trump is – with some very powerful statements.
"But look I hope he brings those jobs back, gets a big infrastructure program going that will get people hired... I hope that that happens, that he keeps some of his promises."
The 67-year-old had much more positive news for his Aussie fans, revealing a special connection formed a few years ago had brought him and the E Street Band here again for a third time in as many years.
"About three tours ago we seemed to hit something down here – we've always had a good time down here, but we hit something that felt like a deeper relationship, a deeper connection with our audience down here and suddenly it got very, very exciting and very, very fulfilling," Springsteen said.
"It's going to be a regular stop on our tours from here on in, that's for sure.
"We've developed a beautiful audience, a dedicated audience down here, and that always feels great, that feels good so..."
Indeed politics and Springsteen shows have eerily become the norm when The Boss is down under but his message never loses clarity and the magic remains in the music, despite him being a long way from the upheaval at home.
His first concert here, in Sydney in March 1985, was just weeks after another controversial Republican, Ronald Reagan, was sworn in for a second term, after a campaign in which the actor-turned-president hijacked Sprinsteen's famed Born in the USA as a patriotic rallying cry for Vietnam veterans, when in fact the song was a cry of anger about the treatment of Vietnam veterans.
At the time, Springsteen objected and he didn't let the matter die at that Sydney show, even wearing a local veteran's badge on stage that night.
Music writer Neil McMahon remembers March 2003 as Springsteen's most politically and emotionally charged moment on an Australian stage, with that tour's opening concert in Melbourne coming just hours after US President George Bush unleashed his "shock and awe" attack on Iraq.
On that tour he opened his shows in Melbourne, Sydney and then Brisbane with a sad, solo, stripped-back version of Born in the USA on acoustic guitar, before launching into the classic protest song War, with his Aussie fans shouting back its famous lines "What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'."
McMahon says the mood was especially electric during that tour because it was in support of Springsteen's wrenching post-9/11 album The Rising.
At his final show in Brisbane, he introduced Land of Hope and Dreams as "a prayer for peace, a prayer for the safety of our sons and daughters, Australian sons and daughters, innocent Iraqi civilians and the end to the hostilities in Iraq."
Now in 2017, fans of Springsteen and the E Street Band wait with giddy eagerness what the post-inauguration message will be, especially considering it's another controversial Republican leading a divided America.
Springsteen said on Sunday he and the band felt a special connection with Australia ever since something clicked when they were here during the Wrecking Ball tour in 2013, so you can bet that although his message will be far from his home town, it'll still be heard around the world.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play Perth Arena on January 22, 25 and 27, Adelaide Entertainment Centre on January 30, AAMI Park in Melbourne on February 2 and 4, Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney on February 7 and 9, Hanging Rock, Macedon, on February 11, Brisbane Entertainment Centre on February 14 and 16 and Hope Estate, Hunter Valley, on February 18.
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