After bringing Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out to a stadium-shaking close, Bruce Springsteen told a rapturous crowd : "That's my story and I'm sticking to it." And what a ride it has been, as he proved over a high-energy three-hour performance at Arsenal's new home that triumphantly revisited most of his glory days with the E Street Band from Asbury Park to Mary's Place. Once more re-united with Miami Steve and company, the Boss wasted no time in making his intentions clear. After the intensity of his State of the Union album Devils and Dust, then his homage to Pete Seeger, this tour was about celebrating his own past, as arguably rock's greatest live performer.

Within minutes he was down into the crowd, with the first 100 rows having arrived with their favourite Springsteen song painted on cardboard. One of the joys of this tour is that the set changes every night, with Darkness and Born To Run figuring prominently on Saturday. Dressed all in black, he attacked the likes of Because the Night, Promised Land and She's The One as if he had recorded them the night before. The set list was, however, sprinkled with songs from last year's album, Magic. If not quite the return to form that some over-enthusiastic reviewers suggested, performed live the songs certainly allow his old bandmates to shine. Girls in their Summer Clothes provided a particularly lovely moment, with young women in the front rows hanging on to his legs as the Boss sang of the middle-aged man's fate of being "passed by". The Rising brought a warmth to the Emirates not witnessed since Thierry Henry left for Barcelona.

Before Growing Up, Springsteen paid a tribute to Danny Federici, the E Street Band's long serving keyboardsman, who died in April. But the whole evening was, in a way, a tribute to Danny, with so many of the classics keyboard-driven, none more so than the haunting intro to Back Streets. As darkness fell, saxophonist Clarence Clemons rose from his golden throne on the stage, to bring Jungleland - and the night - to a majestic conclusion.

But, as ever with Springsteen, there is always more. He encored with Born To Run and the Seeger-inspired American Land. I left humming Long Walk Home as a five-hour journey back to Oxford began thanks to chaos on the Underground. But that's an altogether less happy story than the one Bruce had to tell . . .