“I plan on continuing until the wheels come off,” Bruce Springsteen says in Road Diary, a documentary account of how him and the E Street Band have conquered Planet Rock. His manager Jon Landau talks to Stuart Clark about The Boss’ enduring passion for music, his Irish love affair and his equally legendary pals Paul McCartney and Eddie Vedder.
“Time moves quickly when you are on the road and I’ve always believed the audience does not pay necessarily to hear their favourite song or see your aging face again. But they pay for the intensity of your presence, how alive you are on any given evening. That’s the beating heart of my job. To be there and only there playing for all the stakes rock ‘n’ roll has to offer, for you in your town on this night. And in doing so, I want to leave you with life’s possibilities, with energy to take outside the concert gates to bring into your life. With a smile on your face and some feeling of love in your heart. A quiet soul and hopefully a lifted spirit. It’s my job…”
That’s Bruce Springsteen inRoad Diary explaining his and the E Street Band’s covenant with their fans, a relationship spanning a remarkable six decades.
The new documentary is directed by long-term collaborator Thom Zimny and produced by Jon Landau, the former Rolling Stone writer who on May 9, 1974 heralded The Boss as ‘The Future Of Rock N Roll’ and four years later became Springsteen’s manager. He’s been helping to plot his charge’s next move ever since whilst also providing wise counsel at various junctures to the MC5, Jackson Browne, Natalie Merchant and Shania Twain.
The recipient in 2020 of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ahmet Ertegun Lifetime Achievement Award, the 77-year-old is an amiable presence who recalls how the Road Diary project came together.
“We were talking to Bruce and I said, ‘You know, the streaming companies have expressed a general preference with musical artists for documentaries rather than a straight concert format.’ We backed and forth-ed and decided that, as well as telling the story of this first tour in six years, we’d also give a bit of a map of the history of Bruce and E Street Band and why it’s so unique – in terms of both the music and the relationships, some of which date back to the early 1970s and others that are newer. We’ve given voice in the film to all nineteen current members, which deepens and compliments what Bruce has to say.”
It most certainly does. One of those E Street lifers, bass-playing wiz Gary Tallent, tells a great story about a recent-ish pre-gig group huddle when Bruce told the gang, “This is the place where I warmed up for the band Chicago and got booed off the stage. That’s not going to happen tonight. Somebody say, ‘Amen!’”
Was being cold shouldered by audiences a regular occurrence back then?
“That was a legendary E Street Band nights,” Jon resumes. “He was with one of the biggest agencies and had his first album,Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., out. They said to his prior manager Mike Appel, ‘Hey, great, we’ve lined you up to open for Chicago’ who were the biggest band in the land at the time. So Bruce goes on and the Chicago audience has zero or subzero interest in him and he routinely got shunted aside, ignored or literally booed off the stage. He famously said, ‘Mike, I’m never opening for anyone again. I’m the artist. If ten people come, at least I know they came to see me. I’m not interested in these promotional ideas.’ And that is exactly how he built his career.”
ROAD DIARY: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND - Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band offer the most in-depth look ever at the creation of their legendary live performances, including footage of band rehearsals, backstage moments, rare archival clips and personal reflections from Springsteen himself. (Courtesy of Disney)BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, STEVEN VAN ZANDT
Every country likes to claim part-ownership of The Boss, but he does seem to have a particular grá for Ireland with one of the Road Diary film units being dispatched to Dublin to document the E Street Band’s May 2023 run of RDS shows.
“Does Bruce have a special bond with Ireland?” Jon deadpans. “You bet he does! A lot of that stems from our wonderful promoter Jim Aiken, who god bless him is no longer with us, and his son Peter who we’ve known since he was a baby and has turned into just such a fantastic person. We called Peter and said, ‘Where else can we play besides Belfast and Dublin?’ which are the two routine stops for international acts. Peter goes, ‘Hey, we’ve a load of old soccer stadiums…’ and we were like, ‘Book it, book it!’ If you look back at Bruce’s schedules over the past ten years, we’ve gotten out there in Ireland and he’s loved it.”
I’m not sure that Munster Rugby and the Cork and Kilkenny GAA will like Thomond Park, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and Nowlan Park being called “old soccer stadiums” but he’s certainly showed Ireland the love down through the years.
Road Diary includes an interview with Irish superfan, Jimi Coughlan, who shows us his treasure trove of Bruce memorabilia. This includes a poster for 1985’s legendary Slane Castle show, which was the first time the E Street Band had played an outdoor gig of that size.
“It was the victory lap, if you like, forBorn In The U.S.A., which had sold 25 million copies and produced hit single after hit single,” Slane head honcho Henry Mountcharles told me recently. “Bruce had played to big crowds before, but none as massive as the 80,000 attending Slane and he was nervous. To alleviate those nerves somewhat, he rehearsed his entire set – it must have been heading towards thirty songs – in the dining-room to a small gang of us, which was every bit as extraordinary as it sounds!
“Rather touchingly, he came back a few years ago with his family to revisit what turned out to be the scene of his triumph. After Slane, it just got bigger and bigger for him.”
Jon Landau also remembers that June night by the Boyne like it was yesterday.
“Slane was a great success and learning episode that’s etched in our minds but it was also a bit crazy!” he laughs. “We weren’t quite prepared for the liveliness of the crowd. It was a little shocking but a great way to begin our career playing outdoor shows. I remember thinking, ‘We better get ready for this because this is not the same thing as playing indoors.’ And, yeah, afterwards Bruce became a master of the large venue.”
ROAD DIARY: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND - Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band offer the most in-depth look ever at the creation of their legendary live performances, including footage of band rehearsals, backstage moments, rare archival clips and personal reflections from Springsteen himself. (Courtesy of Disney)STEVEN VAN ZANDT
One of Road Diary’s most poignant moments is when his wife, Patti Scialfa, reveals that she’s been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer called multiple myeloma.
“This affects my immune system, so I have to be careful what I choose to do and where I choose to go,” she reflects. “Every once in a while, I come to a show or two and I can sing a few songs on stage and that’s been a treat. That’s the new normal for me right now, and I’m OK with that.”
Always a bit of an E Street Band show-stopper, the Road Diary version of Patti and Bruce singing ‘Fire’ together is guaranteed to put goosepimples on your goosepimples.
When in 2004 I asked Bono “Who’s the competition?” he shot back, “The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, the new kids on the block.” Is Bruce locked in a battle with Paul McCartney and the Stones or like U2 is he looking at the young whippersnappers coming through?
“Let me give you a careful answer… Bruce does not express or show competitiveness. What he shows is tremendous affection towards people like Paul McCartney who you mentioned. These past twenty years they’ve become great friends. Bruce just loves him and whenever they have a chance to spend time together they just fall right in. He loves music as much today as he did when he saw Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show and takes a great interest in new artists. Bruce has been to see Taylor Swift – loves her show – and Lady Gaga as well.
“He loves music – and he loves musicians. For example, Eddie Vedder who’s another friend. When on his ukelele tour Eddie was crossing over with us in Australia, Bruce worked up this version of ‘Highway To Hell’ to play in Adelaide because he wanted to pay tribute to AC/DC. He invited Eddie, who was on an off night, to join him and, well, if you want to talk about magic, that was frigging magic!”
ROAD DIARY: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND - Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band offer the most in-depth look ever at the creation of their legendary live performances, including footage of band rehearsals, backstage moments, rare archival clips and personal reflections from Springsteen himself. (Courtesy of Disney)BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, CURTIS KING
And needless to say on YouTube. Unlike on previous tours, his 2022/’23 dates found Bruce playing pretty much the same twenty-five songs every night.
“I stuck closely to our original setlist because it told the story I wanted to communicate: life, death and everything in between,” he explains inRoad Diary. “Playing music as you get older is an interesting and tricky business. Now I plan on continuing until the wheels come off and for as long as the band will follow me. There’s one thing I know – after 50 years on the road, it’s too late to stop now.”
Or to put it more succinctly: “Time’s running out, I’ve got to get shit done!”
Does Jon get a sense of his friend wrestling with his own mortality?
“My answer is, ‘Yes, there is some of that’,” he replies. “He’s 75, I’m 77, the core band are all in their seventies too. As you get into this age range we all, regardless of what we do, become cognizant that time is more and more precious. Bruce, as an artist, is on a mission and it’s part of his consciousness that he keeps pushing things forward.
“He does not live in the past as evidenced by this current tour. There are plenty of ‘hits’ and other songs from the past that he loves to play – and the audience loves to hear – but the core is the four tracks from theLetter To You album that best express how Bruce is feeling right now. I think we showed that well in the film.”
There are several trillion to choose from but does Jon have an all-time favourite Bruce and the E Street Band moment?
“I wear a couple of hats and was the producer on most of the famous albums from the ‘70s and ‘80s right into the ‘90s,” he concludes. “The night we recorded ‘Born In The USA’ in the Power Station was a phenomenal event. We’d run through the song to get ready, which sounded great, but then we went for the actual take and what came through the speakers blew our minds. Everybody in the room had the same reaction. Creatively, how that song elevated from the run through was an electrifying moment. I’ve been told by everyone that I need to write my book, so I’ll save the several thousand other moments for that!”
• Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band is streaming on Disney+ now