After 14 rich and record-shattering months on the road, "The Rising" is getting ready to set.

Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band take the field at Shea Stadium tonight to wrap up a tour that has sold more than 3 million tickets around the world and drawn near-unanimous critical acclaim both for its music and its message. The band returns to Shea on Friday and Saturday, then leaves the road from the city whose Sept. 11 tragedy inspired the CD, "The Rising," on which the tour was built.

All shows are almost sold out, though a few seats are often made available at showtime. The production has showcased the enduring power of both the band and Springsteen himself. Though he turned 54 on Sept. 23, he still gives a three-hour show with singing that would turn most vocal cords to rhubarb. Few would blame any of the E-Streeters if they wake up Sunday, pull out the crossword puzzle and settle in for a long break. But the man with the best seat in the house says that's not how things work with E Street or its boss.

"We've never thought in terms of a tour with X number of shows," says drummer Max Weinberg, who joined Springsteen in 1974 and has carved out another niche for himself during the last decade as the bandleader on NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."
"Our whole focus is on the show we're doing right now - or, really, the song we're doing right now." That was a notion he picked up his first day with Bruce.
"It was at the Main Point outside of Philadelphia," says Weinberg. "We had two shows, about 2 1/2 hours each, which is a lot of playing. Bruce told me the trick was not to pace yourself, but to go into every song with everything you had." It's counterintuitive, in a sense, but anyone who has seen a Springsteen show knows that's how the band still operates.
"If we do 'Because the Night' into 'Badlands,' " says Weinberg, "I don't hold back just because 'Badlands' is a hard one."
This full-throttle approach also takes each Springsteen show down its own road - one reason hard-core fans will see 20, 50 or more shows on a tour.
"Most artists - even the great ones - do the same show every night," says Weinberg. Springsteen doesn't, and that keeps the band on its musical toes. "He's always changing set lists, calling audibles," says Weinberg. "Sometimes, it's something we've rehearsed. Sometimes not. Sometimes, he'll call out a song and I won't be able to hear him, and as he's counting it off, I literally won't know what we're about to go into."
But it works out. After 20 or 30 years, E Street can please even a notorious musical perfectionist like Springsteen.
"You'd be surprised how relaxed it is on stage," says Weinberg. "We're having fun."

The question for fans on Sunday morning is what's next. That's always a tricky call.
Springsteen has mixed rock with the quieter music of the "Nebraska" and "Ghost of Tom Joad" CDs. He followed his anthemic "Born in the U.S.A." tour with the dark "Tunnel of Love," and he disbanded E Street altogether to use a different group for "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" in the early '90s.
"That hiatus was a little disorienting at first," Weinberg says. "But we all went out and grew in separate ways, and it made us even stronger when we came back together."
While it's no secret the E Streeters would love to keep it going, Springsteen calls that shot, and here, too, they'll take his cue.
"I never project ahead," says Weinberg. "A musician is a freelancer. I'm incredibly lucky to have had two great gigs - Bruce and Conan - that have had long lives." But music takes you where it takes you.
"Like Bruce says," Weinberg muses, " 'My job tomorrow is to write a better song than I wrote today.' "