In the first scenes of Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, the band doesn’t play as fast as it used to. The documentary starts with their rehearsals before they go on tour after six years.
Director Thom Zimny had a crew film those rehearsals without any idea 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 extra practice time without the frontman because he was concerned the group wasn’t ready to perform.
“What I don’t want is for critics or the public to look at us and say, ‘Well, it’s nice, but these old men are just doing whatever,'” Van Zandt says in the documentary. “I want to go out there and blow their damn minds.”
Zimny also filmed some of Springsteen’s European concerts, hoping to reflect “the spiritual element of the live show.”
“You laugh, you cry, you experience the pure joy of rock and roll,” he said. “The fan in me wanted to try to get as close to that magic as possible.”
Multiple generations attend the shows – from the fans who have followed Springsteen for decades to the children whose music was passed down from their parents.
“You know, Born to run was recorded in 1975, but [time] doesn’t stop people from chasing that high from that music,” Zimny said. “The beauty of those texts that reflect a certain freedom. Everyone understands their place in the world with the music.”
He wanted to break away from the clichés of the music documentary, such as images of ‘tickets being torn and the lights coming on’ in favor of faces in the crowd pointing towards the light and eyes ‘telling a story’.
“You leave at the end of the evening exhausted, happy and emotional,” Zimny said. “Something feels different that tells you that you can start the day again – you can restart, you can keep going.”
Behind the scenes, Springsteen, now 75, struggles with mortality and the realization that he won’t always be able to give 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 performance. Springsteen also took a break from touring in 2023 as he sought treatment for stomach ulcers.
Zimny has been a fan of Springsteen since adolescence and has worked with him for over twenty years documenting performances and recording music videos. He has seen firsthand how time has changed Springsteen and how he appeals to the crowd.
“The theme of mortality and exploration of time is different,” Zimny said. “There are a lot of things that are the same, but there is a sense 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 that he has been on the road for fifty years and that he plans to keep touring “until the wheels come off and as long as the band follows me.”
“That’s the beating heart of my job, to be there and just play for everything that rock ‘n’ roll has to offer,” he continues. “I want to leave you with the possibilities of life, with energy to take with you beyond the concert gates… the smile on your face and a feeling of love in your heart.”
“If I go tomorrow, it’s OK,” Springsteen tells the crowd as they cheer. “What a damn ride!”
