Springsteen, band leave fans wanting more

It was 8:30 in the morning, not 8:30 at night, TODAY co-host Matt Lauer noted Friday, not a time when rock stars are famous for being awake, let alone coherent.

Yet there they were, rocking Rockefeller Plaza, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

The Plaza was packed for the unprecedented live concert on TODAY, with many people camping out overnight to get prime viewing locations. And Springsteen didn’t disappoint, launching into songs even before the show began its broadcast at 7 a.m. EDT and continuing on and off for the next couple of hours, playing multiple encores, and being what he’s always been — arguably the best live performer in the business.

Lauer looked over the vast crowd and asked Springsteen what he thought of so many coming out so early to hear him sing.

“This is the same crowd you get for the dancing bears. They show up for anything,” Springsteen joked. Then, simply and humbly, he added, “I appreciate it.”

Later, addressing the crowd before another song, he quipped, “I must want to sell some records bad to be up here this early.”

At 58 years old, and four years after the band last played together on tour, Springsteen has reunited the band first formed in the early 1970s, when he was a kid growing up poor with big dreams on the Jersey Shore. Their new album, “Magic,” acclaimed as a return to his musical roots, is being released on Tuesday, Oct. 2, and the band is starting a tour of the United States and Europe — their first in five years — on the same day in Hartford, Conn.