SYNOPSIS: Like The Boss’s best work, “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” a brand new doc now streaming on Disney+, has a good beat and you can dance to it, but closer examination reveals a deeper understanding of what make Bruce tick.
CAST: Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa, Danny Federici, Roy Bittan, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, Clarence Clemons. Directed by Thom Zimny.
REVIEW: First and foremost, “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” is a celebration of half a century of music and live shows. Archival footage of Springsteen thrashing around the stage like a spinning top is butted up against footage from the band’s recent US and European tour, captures the excitement of a lifetime of his live performances.
“I made a promise to myself that if I got through this,” Springsteen says of touring after the pandemic lockdowns, “I’d throw the biggest party I could,” and he did, in a worldwide tour captured by director Thom Zimny’s cameras.
And the good times roll, but while watching the 73-year-old Springsteen form these familiar songs into a carefully curated set list, it becomes clear he’s a man on a mission to tell a story, through the lyrics, that act as a treatise on mortality and an examination of a life spent making music. The cumulative effect is joyfully melancholic, a memorial to youth with a nod to mortality.
The doc’s more conventional aspects—the slightly self-congratulatory tone of some of the testimonials and the profiles of fans from around the world—feel unnecessary, but they are minor annoyances in a sincere movie that offers music fans interesting behind-the-scenes footage of the Springsteen’s creative process, the band blowing off the cobwebs after a six-year layoff from playing live and heartfelt tributes to dearly departed E-Streeters Clarence “Big Man” Clemons and organist Danny Federici.
There is plenty of fan service in “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” but it isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about friendship, age, mortality and, as Springsteen says, playing music “until the wheels come off.”
Early on in “Western Stars,” a concert-concept film based on Bruce Springsteen’s album of the same name, the rock icon says, “It’s my 19th album and I’m still writing about cars.” It’s a funny comment but loaded with meaning. Metaphorically the cars in Springsteen’s songs are always moving forward and at just shy of age seventy Springsteen does the same, showcasing music here unlike anything he’s ever made. Looking in the rearview mirror to influences like the country-pop music of Jimmy Webb while keeping the pedal to the metal, he charts new territory.
Shot in the hayloft of a 140-year-old barn on Springsteen’s Colts Neck, New Jersey property (“A place filled with the best kind of ghosts and spirits,” he says) in front of a small, private audience, the concert features a 30-piece orchestra and band, including wife Patti Scialfa. Taking center stage under the cathedral ceiling he unfurls the album’s 13 songs of melancholy (plus a bonus track at the end). Told from the point of view of a faded cowboy b-movie star, the tunes evocatively tell stories of blue-collar Hollywood stuntmen, loss and bravado (“Once I was shot by John Wayne,” he sings in the title track. “Yeah, it was towards the end. That one scene brought me a thousand drinks. Set me up and I’ll tell it for you, friend.”) The performances are energetic but solemn; this isn’t the fist-pumping “Dancing in the Dark” Boss but an introspective artist sharing soulful, personal moments through the narrative of his music.
Instead of the usual concert film interviews—”It was an honour to work with Bruce… etc.”—Springsteen and longtime collaborator Thom Zimny link the songs with arty short films that illuminate Springsteen’s headspace as he wrote the songs. Shot in the Joshua Tree desert, these moody visual pastiches of Bruce in American legend mode, in cowboy hats and boots, are personal reflections that deepen the understanding of the music. “We’re always trying to find somebody whose broken pieces fit with our broken pieces,” he says, “and something whole emerges.” His words reflect on the art but his comfortable on-stage interaction with Scialfa, his wife and musical partner of thirty years, also intimates he found that with her. It’s a cinematic riff on his “Springsteen on Broadway” show but instead of anecdotes here he gives a look at his inner life, laying bare some profound personal introspection.
“Western Stars” is an intimate performance with great music, lyrical soul-searching (“The older you get,” he says, “the heavier that baggage becomes that you haven’t sorted through.”) and a restless spirit that suggests Springsteen is mining his baggage to create vital, beautiful new art.
