Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Disney+ review - the Boss grows older defiantly

Director Thom Zimny has become the audio-visual Boswell to Bruce Springsteen’s Samuel Johnson, having made documentaries about the making of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen On Broadway and several more. Road Diary takes as its theme Springsteen’s 2023-4 tour, and uses that as a platform for an often emotional survey of his 50 year history with the E Street Band.

This was the first time the E Street Band had been back on the road since 2017 (the Covid interregnum didn’t help), and there are some wry observations about scraping off the accumulated rust. Drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Garry Tallent describe the first run-through of some of the songs and being amazed at how slow the tempos were (“I can’t play that slow!” Tallent protests).

One of the pleasures of the film is the way it gives the band-members some space to talk and reminisce about their collective odyssey, from gigging in bars and dives on the Jersey shore to sleeping on tables in the back of a camper van while travelling between dates. Tallent recalls with horror how, when they started playing arenas, at the soundcheck Springsteen used to walk round every row in the auditorium to see if it sounded OK. “Playing for four hours, the same eight bars? It’s insane!”

As they knocked themselves back into shape for the 2023 tour, it became clear that the meticulous Springsteen had a master plan. The performances wouldn’t be merely a selection of songs from his catalogue, but would be carefully curated to “communicate the story you’re trying to tell your audience this time around.” This story is in effect the live version of the one he was telling on his album Letter to You (2020), a series of ruminations on age, mortality and the loss of old comrades. But what can a poor boy do except to sing for a rock and roll band, which is the most life-affirming option available. Playing live is “how I justify my existence here on earth,” the Boss explains.

A remark like that might sound like absurd melodrama coming from many artists, but Springsteen has paid enough dues over enough decades to justify it. He’s credited as the film’s writer, and with Zimny has assembled a seamless mix of dynamic live footage, interviews and historic material from the last half-century, evoking the long road the band have travelled together. It also explores the way Springsteen’s dedication to his task has allowed him to seep into the consciousness of his listeners in a quasi-religious way.

As Bruce’s former saxophonist Clarence Clemons remarked about how he first hooked up with him, “I had faith. It was like following Jesus.” Clemons died in 2011, but the band make sure his spirit lives on by giving him a shout-out in the shows, along with organist Danny Federici, who died in 2008. Clemons’s nephew Jake has stepped into the saxman’s shoes with the band, so to that extent the circle remains unbroken (pictured below, Bruce and Steve Van Zandt).

One of the film’s motifs is the way the camera homes in closely on members of the audience, tracking along the front rows as the band rage away in the background. People are singing along, laughing, crying, punching the air, and exhibiting all the characteristics of being in an altered state. And most of them are responsible adults (or indeed senior citizens), so it’s quite possible that they’re not all on drugs. There are plenty of artists who attract ecstatic and fanatical followers, but there does seem to be something different about the kind of loyalty Springsteen inspires. He said decades ago that his raison d’etre was to grow up and grow older with his audience, documenting their hopes, fears, aspirations and whatever. He’s been as good as his word.

The notion of squaring up to the inevitability of death is a topic most performers prefer to steer well clear of, but Springsteen has built his show around it. He adopted the Commodores’ hit, “Nightshift”, as an oblique requiem for the fallen E Streeters, and has created a kind of diptych out of “The Last Man Standing” (“you count the names of the missing as you count off time”) and his epic requiem for a love betrayed, “Backstreets”. Bruce’s wife, Patti Scialfa, adds an extra layer of poignancy by revealing that she is being treated for multiple myeloma, which means she has been forced to limit her appearances with the band.

Road Diary is a thought-provoking and sometimes sombre affair, and may make those of us who aren’t quite as young as we were feel rather uneasy. But the Boss isn’t backing down. “I plan on continuing until the wheels come off… after 50 years on the road, it’s too late to stop now.”

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