In the first scenes of Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, the band is not playing as fast as they used to. The documentary opens with their rehearsals before going on tour after six years apart.
Director Thom Zimny got a crew to film those rehearsals without any idea of what the footage would become. He told Yahoo Entertainment that he simply wanted to capture “special, unseen moments” — like when guitarist and musical director Steven Van Zandt called for additional practice time without the frontman because he was concerned the group wasn’t ready to perform.
“What I don’t want to happen is for critics or the audience to look at us and say, ‘Well yeah, it’s nice but these old men are just going through the motions,’” Van Zandt says in the documentary. “I wanna go out and blow their f***ing minds.”
Zimny also filmed a few of Springsteen’s European concerts, hoping to reflect “the spiritual element of the live show.”
“You’re laughing, you’re crying, you’re in the pure joy of rock and roll,” he said. “The fan in me wanted to try to get as close to that magic as I could.”
Multiple generations attend the shows — from the fans who have been following Springsteen for decades to the kids who have had his music passed down to them from their parents.
“You know, Born to Run was recorded in 1975, but [time] doesn’t stop people from chasing that high of that music,” Zimny said. “The beauty of those lyrics that reflect a certain freedom. Everyone has an understanding of their place in the world with the music.”
He wanted to buck the cliches of the music documentary, like shots of “tickets being ripped and the lights going up” in favor of faces in the crowd pointed up to the light and eyes “telling a story.”
“You leave at the end of the night exhausted, happy, emotional,” Zimny said. “Something feels different that tells you that you can start the day again — you can reboot, you can carry on.”
Behind the scenes, Springsteen, now 75, grapples with mortality and the realization that he won’t always be able to put on energetic live performances. His wife and bandmate, Patti Scialfa, revealed in Road Diary that she was diagnosed with blood cancer in 2018, which affected her ability to perform. Springsteen also took a break from touring in 2023 as he sought treatment for peptic ulcer disease.
Zimny has been a fan of Springsteen since his adolescence and has worked with him for more than 20 years documenting performances and shooting music videos. He’s seen firsthand how time has changed Springsteen and how he addresses the crowd.
“The theme of mortality and examination of time is different,” Zimny said. “There are a lot of things that are the same, but there’s an awareness of time and a hunger … to acknowledge the past and look at it while being very present.”
At the end of the documentary, Springsteen says he’s been on the road for 50 years, and he plans to keep touring “until the wheels come off and for as long as the band will follow me.”
“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 you,” he continues. “I want to leave you with life’s possibilities, with energy to take outside the concert gates … the smile on your face and some feeling of love in your heart.”
“If I went tomorrow, it’s OK,” Springsteen tells the crowd as they cheer. “What a f***ing ride!”
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