Vedder covers Springsteen’s ‘My City of Ruins’ after Trump -Association

Eddie Vedder paid tribute to Bruce Springsteen during Pearl Jam’s concert in Pittsburgh on Friday night (May 17) and performed a solo acoustic reproduction of “My City of Ruins” in what seemed to be a quiet but powerful reaction to Donald Trump’s recent public criticism of Springsteen.

Vedder did not directly refer to Trump and did not mention Springsteen by name until he performed the song. But the election was probably intentional as Springsteen has performed the 2002 track during his tour along with fiery speeches condemning what he describes as an attack on bourgeois freedoms of Trump and his allies.

During the kickoff of his European tour on May 14, Springsteen told the audience, “In my home it is America I love, the America I have written about, and has been a lighthouse for hope and freedom for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treacherous administration.”

Trump responded to truth social on May 16, called Springsteen “heavily overrated”, “dumb as a rock” and “a dried turn of a rocker.” He also threatened to prevent the musician from returning to the United States after his tour and wrote, “Springsteen should keep his mouth closed until he comes back in the country. Then we all see how things are going for him.”

Springsteen didn’t go back. “Things are happening right now that change the democracy of nature itself, and they are too important to ignore,” the rocker told the crowd in a three-minute speech on Manchester’s Co-Op Live scene on Saturday, which heard in a video posted by La Times.

“In my home, they pursue people for their right to freedom of speech and expressed their dissent. It is happening now,” said Springsteen, repeating what he had been talking about on his Show 14 May. “In America, the richest men take the satisfaction of giving up the world’s poorest children for illness and death. It is happening now. In my country, they are sadistic joy in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”

Springsteen continued, “They remove residents from US streets without proper legislation and insert them into foreign detention centers as a prisoner. It is happening now … they are no concern or idea what it means to be deeply American.”