Documentarian Thom Zimny has been making videos and concert films for Bruce Springsteen since 2001. So when the Boss declared he plans to rock until “the wheels come off” in Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, a new documentary streaming on Disney+, Zimny wasn’t surprised.
He had known for quite some time that the 75-year-old rocker won’t ever quit.
Zimny, 59, says Road Diary — which captures the E Street Band’s first post-pandemic tour that began in 2023 and touches down in Toronto Sunday night with additional shows planned this month in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver — is the culmination of his relationship with Springsteen, whom he met along with his longtime producer-manager Jon Landau when he was editing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live in New York City in 2001.
“They’ve given me a space of trust and time to make these films,” Zimny told Postmedia last month in Toronto. The trio have collaborated on 14 film projects, including Letter to You (2020), Western Stars (2019), Springsteen on Broadway (2018), The Ties That Bind (2015) and The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town (2010).
“I’ve witnessed the band when (saxophonist) Clarence Clemons and (keyboard player) Danny Federici were alive and I’ve witnessed when the E Street Band came back after losing those members. I’m watching Bruce introduce new music to the band. By being witness to this, I’m able to make the film Road Diary now,” he said. “I have years of seeing this and know its importance.”
Road Diary goes behind the scenes as Springsteen rehearsed and chose the songs that make up his latest tour. These concerts, Springsteen says in the film, are “a deep and lasting part of who I am and how I justify my existence here on Earth.”
The project is part of an ongoing conversation Zimny has had with Springsteen on film for a big chunk of his career.
But Road Diary documents a musical partnership between Springsteen and keyboardist Roy Bittan, bassist Garry Tallent, drummer Max Weinberg, guitarist Steve Van Zandt, saxophonist Jake Clemons, guitarist Nils Lofgren, and his wife, singer-guitarist Patti Scialfa. It is one that has lasted for over 50 years, spawned 20 Grammys, and led to the group’s status as one of the most unforgettable concert appearances.
“There’s something visually euphoric, whether it’s capturing the band rehearsing in a tiny cabin (as he did in Letter to You) or seeing thousands of faces at a stadium in Barcelona and Rome,” Zimny said. “Bruce once said to me, ‘There is no Born to Run 2,’ and I love that because it’s a reminder of staying present and never repeating a journey you’ve taken before. Each one of the films has been a conversation. I’m tapping into a side of Bruce’s internal dialogue that he wants to share with his fans.”
With Road Diary, Zimny showcases Springsteen performing a different kind of live show as he hit the road to promote 2020’s Letter to You. That album found the singer-songwriter wrestling with the loss of longtime friends, his past and facing questions about his own mortality.
“We’ve been good a long time,” Springsteen said while promoting the film in Toronto last month. “All those nights out onstage where you are risking yourself, because that is what you’re doing. You’re coming out, you are talking to people about the things that matter the most to you. You are leaving yourself wide open. But you’re not alone … That only happens to a few bands. Bands break up. That’s the natural order of things. All bands break up. They can’t even get two guys to stay together. Simon hates Garfunkel. Sam hates Dave.”
The E Street Band managed to survive, Springsteen said, because they operate as a “benevolent dictatorship” and enjoy a friendship that has never waned.
“The people you went to high school with, at 75, you’re still with those people. I mean the same people you were with at 18 and 19, 50, 60 years later, you’re still with those people. You live your life with them. You see them grow up. You see them get married. You see them get divorced … You see their hair get grey. And you’re in the room when they die,” Springsteen said. “In one way, I would wish you all such a lovely and complete experience with your good friends. On the other hand, it lays a weight on you that is slightly different because of the length of time you’ve spent together and because of the things you’ve done. It reminds me of that scene in Blade Runner … ‘I’ve seen (things you people wouldn’t believe).’ We’ve seen some of that s***.”
Archival footage from the 1970s, shows Springsteen and his band as they made their meteoric rise from the tiny clubs in which their musical dreams first started to the arenas and stadiums that became a church for the E Street Band’s legion of fans.
“The film has a different tempo compared to the other ones we’ve done,” Zimny says. Filming and interviewing Springsteen’s fans conveys the ecstatic excitement he brings to audiences when he plays live, the filmmaker adds.
“The beautiful thing about filming the fans was I saw that universal thing of people engaging in a community and feeling great in this world that is standing together listening to the music of Bruce Springsteen,” Zimny says. “I had many people I could have talked to, but I chased the people I felt reflected a sense of time as fans. People for whom the music has been in their life and been an influence. That reflects a lot of the themes Bruce was talking about himself.”
Also in the documentary, Springsteen’s wife and E Street bandmate Scialfa reveals that she was diagnosed in 2018 with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Her illness caused her to step back from performing live.
Zimny said the revelation came from a place of being around her and Springsteen and “developing a sacred trust.”
“I think there was a comfort and a place of trust,” he said of the surprising confession.
There’s great joy in the music of Springsteen, but mortality and the shortness of time run as a thread throughout the doc and this latest tour and the songs he plays onstage.
“A Bruce show has all range of emotions, and I want this film to be that way as well,” Zimny said. “I want you to be happy, sad, surprised and then end with a little bit of a feeling of, ‘This was different.’”
The setlist of shows that are documented in Road Diary has remained largely unchanged. Springsteen plays several songs from Letter to You, his meditative 20th studio album that was released during the pandemic, and closes every concert with the elegiac I’ll See You in My Dreams.
In Toronto last month, Springsteen repeated a promise he has been telling fans all throughout this most recent tour: “We’re going to rock you into the ground,” he said of his planned Canadian shows.
“This is what people want from their work,” Springsteen said. “I wish it on everyone. We don’t live in a world where everybody gets to feel that way about their jobs or the people they work with. But I sincerely wish that we did because it’s an experience like none that I’ve had in my life.”
Pausing, he broke into a smile. “If I went tomorrow, it’s OK. What a f***ing ride!”
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is streaming now on Disney+.