POP MUSIC REVIEW : Killing ‘Em Softly With His Songs : An emotional set answered the questions that were hanging in the air as Bruce Springsteen stepped to the microphone. Had he changed? Was one of rock’s most absorbing chapters at an end?

It promised to be one of the most dramatic moments in Bruce Springsteen’s spectacular career--and it was.

After a two-year absence from concerts for Springsteen, Friday’s acoustic benefit performance at the Shrine Auditorium was time for the man who reintroduced the concepts of integrity and “hero” to rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘70s--and his fans--to see if they still applied in the ‘90s.

A lot has happened since Springsteen’s last formal appearances on the 1988 Amnesty International tour.

Gone as he walked on stage shortly before 11 p.m. was the stylish dark suit of the “Tunnel of Love” album cover and tour.

Gone, too, was the E Street Band, which had been at his side for almost 20 years.

Also gone, it was quickly apparent, was the supreme confidence that characterized his performances ever since the triumphant “Born in the U.S.A.” days of 1984.

Instead, Springsteen headed for the microphone alone, his shirt-tail hanging over his faded jeans.

As he strapped on a guitar to start his portion of the benefit for the Christic Institute, Springsteen seemed nervous. He no longer looked like the body-building sex symbol, but a man without pretense trying to establish a moment of truth.

Much of the pop world had been wondering in recent months about the effect of the upheaval in his life over the last two years--events, including divorce and his dismissal of the E Street Band--that turned an exceptionally private man’s life into gossip fodder and led at least part of his audience to wonder about his sense of allegiance--whether he had changed, whether he was still tougher than the rest.

Compounding the questions surrounding Springsteen was the strangely impersonal performance at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on the Amnesty tour. A performance in which he did not seem, for the first time in memory, to be revealing anything of himself.

The questions still applied as he stepped to the microphone Friday: Had Springsteen changed? Was one of rock’s most absorbing chapters at an end?

Signs of Springsteen’s own anxiety were apparent at many places during his 80-minute set, including momentarily forgetting the words to one of his most prized songs, “Thunder Road,” and uncharacteristically asking the audience to be quiet twice during especially intimate numbers.

Yet Springsteen was clearly a man on a mission. He faced the issues and questions of the last two years head-on by opening with “Brilliant Disguise,” the 1987 song that stands as one of the most uncompromising expressions of romantic guilt and confusion that has ever reached the Top 10.

Sample lyrics:

Tonight our bed is cold

I’m lost in the darkness of our love

God have mercy on the man

Who doubts what he’s sure of.

With that song, Springsteen boldly pulled us immediately back to the gossip and uncertainty of the late ‘80s, sharing some of the anguish of the time. The song became a supreme moment of confrontation and confession.

Springsteen followed with “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” another song about being caught in an emotional maze and the need to find a way out:

Everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something that they just can’t face . . . .

‘ Til some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag ‘em down.

There was a lonesome sigh at the end of some of the lines in Springsteen’s intense vocals as he defined in the songs and subsequent ones the issue of the struggle in life between disillusionment and dreams.

After establishing the former in the opening four songs, he momentarily cut loose some of the pain himself, moving on to a couple of new, raucous numbers, including one playful romp--”Red Headed Woman”--that suggested a renewed happiness in his life now. He dedicated “Woman” to Patti Scialfa, the mother of his son, and Bonnie Raitt, who co-starred on the benefit bill Friday (and a second show Saturday) with Springsteen and Jackson Browne.

Moving between songs of innocence and despair (including five numbers from the dark, somber “Nebraska”), Springsteen finished the evening with another new song--the anxious, philosophical “Real World”--that dramatically summarized the evening’s theme of finding the strength and faith after disappointment.

Springsteen returned with Browne and Raitt for encore versions of Bob Dylan’s stinging “Highway 61 Revisited” and the poignant, socially conscious Ry Cooder-John Hiatt-Jim Dickinson song “Borderline.”

Yet the encore was anticlimactic. The question of Springsteen’s emotional and artistic commitment had been answered. The word is the rock album that he has been working on for almost a year in Los Angeles should be ready by next March or April and that he’ll go on a tour at that time.

After a period of public fall and embarrassment, Springsteen has emerged from the long, dark tunnel with his vision and integrity intact.