Bruce Springsteen, Bleachers Perform ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Jersey Girl’

The duo last performed “Chinatown” live in 2020

Bruce Springsteen surprised the coastal crowd during Bleachers‘ show in Asbury Park to deliver a pair of nostalgic Jersey-centric songs on Friday night.

“There’s nothin’ like playing at home. There’s nothing like being 16 years old and having to sell a certain amount of tickets so you can play inside the Pony, and it’s just your cousins at the show,” the band’s frontman Jack Antonoff said during the Shadow of the City Festival at Stone Pony Summer Stage. “There’s nothing like playing in the place you wrote the songs from. There’s nothing like going through a lot, then being reunited with your people. It means the world, everybody. It means the world to be supported by you and my friends and my family.”

As Antonoff launched into a rendition of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl,” the crowd roared as Springsteen joined the stage for the nostalgic number. Notably, while it’s one of Springsteen‘s most beloved songs about New Jersey, the track was actually written by Waits and appeared on his 1980 LP, Heartattack and Vine, inspired by his wife Kathleen Brennan. (Springsteen and Waits would come together in 1981 for a duet of the song during a live Los Angeles performance.)

On Friday night, the Boss and Antonoff also delivered a rousing rendition of Bleachers’ song “Chinatown.” The pair collaborated on the track for the band’s third studio album Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, and last performed it together in 2020 during a live performance recorded on the rooftop of Electric Lady Studios in New York City.

In a statement shared at the time of the song’s release, Antonoff said it was “the honor of a lifetime” to perform with Springsteen. “He is the artist who showed me that the sound of the place I am from has value and that there is a spirit here that needs to be taken all over the world.”

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