Road Diary: New Bruce Springsteen Doc Illustrates Why They Call Him “The Boss”
By Liz Braun
Rating: A
The Boss, Bruce Springsteen himself, was in the Toronto audience when Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band had its world debut at TIFF in September.
The documentary about gearing up for their recent tour takes a viewer behind the scenes and into the heart of band history and relationships over 40 years. “Now you see how the sausage is made,” joked Springsteen at the end of that first screening.
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band is a terrific film about a singer-songwriter and a group of musicians who have played together almost their entire adult lives.
The seed for this latest collaboration with filmmaker Thom Zimny was planted during the pandemic, when Springsteen promised himself that, if he got through it, he would throw the biggest party ever — leading to the band going back on the road together for the first time in six years.
What follows are fly-on-the-wall rehearsal scenes, with each member of the E Street Band readying himself or herself to leap once more into the fray. It’s actually endearing to watch these guys shake off the cobwebs and get back into the touring groove; each of the musicians gets a “solo” here. The band that goes on the road for the 2023-24 tour also includes some new horn players and another percussionist, and a viewer gets to see it all come together.
Late band members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons are lovingly lauded in the film.
For the tour that eventually got underway, Springsteen made a song list of 28 titles and did not vary from it, quite a change from the fluctuating song stack of yore. The songs Springsteen chose, “tell the story I want to tell right now,” he says in the film, and that story is one of celebrating and living in the moment — even while defying the passage of time and one’s own mortality.
Longtime Springsteen manager and producer Jon Landau states it plainly: the subtext is approaching death. “If I went tomorrow, it’s OK — what a fucking ride,” is how Springsteen cheerfully addressed the subject when he spoke in Toronto.
Zimny makes good use of archival footage and photos, bits of concert performance and interviews (including fan interviews) to create a hugely energetic but, not surprisingly, somewhat bittersweet film. It’s oddly disconcerting to see images of the 1970s and ‘80s Springsteen in concert, especially for fans who’ve been along for the whole five-decade ride.
How did all that time go past in the blink of an eye?
Just how far Springsteen et al have come is illustrated in an amusing sequence that shows, through archival footage, how the band travelled when they were first starting out: someone’s car, an old bus, an RV. These days it takes an entire plane just to transport the band’s equipment between cities.
Zimny and Springsteen worked together on such movies as Western Stars and The Making of Darkness on The Edge of Town and on several music videos. They are no doubt very comfortable working together and that translates into the finished product here. The film shies away from hagiography, but there are moments that seem a little too perfect, not that any diehard Springsteen fan will notice.
Those diehard Springsteen fans get their moment in Road Diary, especially in exhilarating scenes from the concerts in Barcelona.
Further to fans: Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, while not a concert film, contains enough performance footage to be satisfying. Yes, OK — electrifying, even.
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Directed by Thom Zimny, with narration from Bruce Springsteen. Available October 25 on Hulu and Disney+