Stevie Van Zandt: Bruce Springsteen’s health is ‘completely back to normal’
TORONTO — Having its world premiere Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival is “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” an up-close look at the preparations for the ongoing 2023-2024 world tour that reunited the star with his band after an extended hiatus along with rollicking concert footage once the tour is underway. Following its premiere at TIFF, the new film will begin streaming on Hulu and Disney+ on Oct 25.
Directed by Thom Zimny, who has worked with Springsteen for more than 20 years and won an Emmy for “Springsteen on Broadway,” the film is a portrait of the band as an active unit, bringing in new members, working up new material and setting out to prove they are still a force to be reckoned with. Springsteen himself wrote and delivers narration throughout with a startling emotional candor.
Zimny and Stevie Van Zandt, who has been one of Springsteen’s closest collaborators for more than 50 years, got together on a Zoom call last week to discuss the new film. Top of mind for many fans will be Springsteen’s health after issues around a peptic ulcer caused dates on the tour to be postponed.
According to Van Zandt, Springsteen is doing “remarkably well, he is really completely back to normal. I think we did the right thing, playing it safe, taking extra time off and letting him heal. And he’s been terrific, really good shape.”
Thom, were you surprised when you were filming those early rehearsals and the band was kind of struggling? Had you ever seen the band like that before?
Thom Zimny: In some ways it was a new story, but there were threads of this that I recognized in making these other films. So this was a fly-on-the-wall moment to watch Stevie stop everything and go, “Wait a minute, we’re going back. We’re going to work on this.”
What I saw happen was Stevie following up with details and Bruce hungry to get out there on the stage. Those two energies were in front of me and as a storyteller, I knew I had a narrative arc in that, there was something going on right before my eyes. Everyone was excited to be back, but there’s a magic that’s called E Street that I would never be able to say I could describe.
Stevie Van Zandt: If I may, you mentioned the word struggling, which is really not exactly accurate. What you’re witnessing in this film, which is really interesting, is Bruce coming off of three, four years of being a solo artist again, a year-plus on Broadway, the “Western Stars” project and then the whole COVID thing. So what you’re seeing is just that transition back from being off for six, seven years from the band, doing solo stuff, which is a whole different mentality entirely.
Struggling is really too strong a word. It’s just Bruce reorienting himself for what’s about to happen band-wise. And then, as [manager] Jon Landau mentions in the film, it became obvious at some point that Bruce was ready to trust me and the rest of the gang with tightening things up musically. He has to focus on, what’s going to be the storyline? What’s the script and how is he going to communicate that? The details of the vocal parts or the horn parts, the musical details he knows I can take care of. I know that process very well. I’ve seen it every tour and it was just a little bit more pronounced on this tour because of the length of time we were away.
Throughout the documentary, Bruce talks in the voiceover about that idea of the story he wants to tell with this set list at this moment. Stevie, is he talking to you specifically about that concept or is it just a vibe that you pick up from the songs that he’s choosing to play?
Van Zandt: This was the most focused theme I’ve ever seen from him, starting with the album [2020’s “Letter to You”]. He usually takes his time with records and finds his way through them as he goes. Not this time. This time he came in knowing exactly what he wanted to say. He wrote it in two weeks, which is remarkable. We recorded it in four days. He was incredibly focused from moment one, and that theme was going to run throughout the show. Not quite in a linear fashion, not quite literally, but it colored quite a bit of the songs. There was that theme of mortality balanced very consciously with vitality. The most focused emotionally that I’ve ever seen from his work. And at the same time, we’re closer to the end than we are to the beginning, and what does that mean as far as living every day? We were very conscious of that. And we talked about that and wanted to make sure we came out like a hurricane. We figured, people don’t know what to expect after six or seven years, and, geez, you know, maybe they’re getting older and who knows what’s going to happen. So we wanted to come out and be like, ain’t no 20-year-olds on the planet can outperform us.
The movie isn’t reluctant about grappling with the fact that you all are aging. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, they’re all in their 80s and they’re still out there touring quite a bit. Do you feel like there’s a precedent for what you all are doing with the E Street band as you guys are getting older?
Van Zandt: There’s a remarkable phenomenon going on which somebody at some point is going to write about, which is I believe we have changed the concept of chronological time. And I’m not exaggerating. When I grew up, I didn’t know anybody past their 60s. My grandparents were gone in their 60s, or they were in senior citizens’ homes. I personally know 20 people in their 80s on stage performing. And the entire British Invasion is turning 80 this year. So something remarkable has taken place. Now, I attribute it to rock ‘n’ roll, but of course I’m prejudiced in that way. I’m sure medical science has been a little bit of a help, but doesn’t really explain how we’ve gained 20 or 25 years, not on our lifespan, but on our productive lifespan. ... The way I put it is, as long as the Rolling Stones are out there, we’re the new kids on the block. So may they go forever.
There’s a moment in the film, you’re performing “Prove It All Night” and Bruce calls you over to his microphone and the two of you trade vocals and it is the kind of ecstatic, transcendent moment that’s why the audience shows up for you. Are you as lost in a moment like that as we are? Or is that pure stagecraft and showbiz razzle-dazzle?
Van Zandt: We don’t really have much stagecraft. [Laughs.] Whatever we do has happened spontaneously. We really don’t rehearse a whole lot of that stuff. Other than, like I mentioned in the film, “OK, the horns maybe will come down at this point in the song and the singers will come down to the lower part of the stage at this part of the song.” That’s about it. What me and Bruce do on stage is completely spontaneous. I am very much in that moment. We go on stage with that same feeling that we always have, when we were 15 years old. Growing up in a renaissance like we did, those standards were set so high by the British Invasion and the early folk-rock people, that ‘60s music was at such a high level and such high quality in our minds, I don’t think we’ll ever quite get there. We keep reaching for that level of excellence. And we haven’t really changed that attitude after all these years. So we’re very much in that moment, almost trying to win people over in a way. We are engaged in consciously wanting to give people the best experience of their lives. We want them to go home saying, “That was the best show I’ve ever seen.”
We’re not there for escapist entertainment. We’re there to provide a service, which Bruce talks about wonderfully in Thom’s film. We go on stage with a purpose, so that purpose keeps you in the moment all the time, because every show is different. It’s a different audience, a different city. They’re seeing it for the first time, as far as you know. As far as our attitude goes, it could be the last show we ever do. Who knows, right? So we make sure we give 100% every single time.
And I think that the friendship that we have is the thing that communicates what you’re talking about. That’s what a band’s all about. Why a band is different than a solo act is that interaction. It’s the communication of friendship, of family, of the posse, the team, the gang. It’s ultimately a communication of community. And that’s part of Bruce’s themes all the time, is connecting to the community. Let’s make tonight a community and then let’s expand that when everybody leaves this place to make it a bigger community. And I think that’s communicated when we’re on the same microphone. That friendship, that interaction, is most dramatic at those moments.
Thom, do you recognize moments like that as they are happening?
Zimny: Absolutely. I have two things going on. I’m taking in the moment, but I also go back and study that footage. And I have spent a lot of hours looking at this stuff, and there’s never a repeated moment. There’s no structured gag, but there’s an energy that I recognize again and again with the band. And this moment, that spontaneity, is what I, as a fan and filmmaker, can’t put it into words. But I just know I want my camera to be there to get those small details. I want to capture a moment that represents a history, a musical conversation that is impossible to really explain. No one’s playing to camera, and no one’s seeing me. I’m a guest in a way, after 24 years; they’re not thinking about me. So it’s a beautiful place to come from it as a filmmaker, because in that moment, when Bruce goes and yells into the mic, Stevie come over, and I see that scramble and people are moving, and the energy, that core E Street language is something you could study forever as a filmmaker. Because this is a freight train moving fast.
Stevie, this is an election year, and Bruce’s music so often is picked up by people on both sides of the political aisle. Are you surprised, even 40 years later, that the song “Born in the U.S.A.” in particular is such a a political flashpoint?
Van Zandt: I just think people don’t really pay attention to the lyrics, to be honest. They hear the title, and it is a patriotic title, patriotic in a true sense of the word. My definition of patriotism. I wrote a song called “I Am a Patriot,” because that word gets co-opted quite often by the right wing. Which is not what it means. It means being proud of our American ideals and the fact that we are still a work in progress. But I think people just hear the title and want to wave the flag a bit. And it is perfectly understandable, but we’re certainly not going to allow the extreme right wing to use it. Bruce stopped Ronald Reagan from using it. So if he didn’t allow Ronald Reagan to use it, he certainly ain’t gonna allow this new crop of clowns to use it. I saw a list of like 50 or 60 artists now who have told Republicans to stop using their music. I mean, it’s a pretty big list.
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