Review: Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

Stars: Bruce Springsteen, The E Street Band, Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan

Director: Thom Zimmy

Streaming on Disney+ and Hulu

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

 

Besides singing his greatest hits, Bruce Springsteen also does a lot of talking in this high-power account of his ongoing concert tour. Sometimes the talk is scripted (and, truth be told, just a little stilted). But occasionally he goes off script — or seems to — and that’s when we really get to learn a thing or two about The Boss.

For example, there’s an unguarded moment in Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band when Bruce offhandedly refers to himself as “a band leader.” Not as a frontman, not as a lead guitar-wielding singer, but as the counterpart of that guy who whipped your high school marching band into shape before each football game.

The appellation seems just a bit odd, until we witness Springsteen immersed in rehearsals: conducting the horns and arranging the vocalists, advising drummer Max Weinberg, collaborating with his partner in crime Steven Van Zandt.

And then we get it: Yeah. Springsteen is as much an heir to legendary band leaders like Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton as he is to rocking blues legends like James Brown and Sam and Dave.

Documentary director Thom Zimmy has made a career of putting Springsteen on film, so he is the perfect choice to chronicle the story of The Boss and the Band returning to the stage after a six-year COVID-related hiatus.

“If we get through this,” Springsteen promised himself and his fans in the depth of COVID-19, “we’ll have the biggest party ever.”

That “party” is still going on as I write this: Springsteen is in the midst of a worldwide, 130-show concert tour that began last February in Tampa, Florida, and is expected to wrap up next July in Milan. Road Diary captures not only the earliest days of that tour, but most significantly the intensive rehearsal sessions that preceded it.

“Gotta knock the rust off,” says Springsteen, convening his bandmates for the first time since 2017. Zimmy’s camera peers from the periphery as the guys plunge into an intensive rehearsal period in Red Bank, New Jersey. It’s just like old times, with a twist: The band members notice almost immediately that Springsteen is decidedly more laid-back than in the past. For the first time in some 50 years, he conveys the title “musical director” on Steven Van Zandt (a gesture the guitarist transparently suggests should have happened long, long ago). And to the absolute astonishment of all concerned, one afternoon Springsteen exits the studio, telling the gang to work out a number on their own — a notion that would have been unheard of throughout the prior history of the E Street Band.

Then it’s off across the USA, singin’ the hits. But despite Springsteen’s willingness to delegate authority, the performances themselves reflect a lot more discipline and planning than Bruce’s legendary freewheeling shows of the past. For one thing, instead of playing “Stump the Band” with audience requests, this time Bruce creates an actual 28-song playlist.

The reason: Influenced by his hit Broadway show, which employed his music to create a narrative, Springsteen is now drawing from his entire catalog — from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. to Letter to You — to trace the arc of his life.

Springsteen is among the most self-revelatory songwriters of our time, so it was unlikely from the start that a documentary would tell us much we don’t already know about him (or much more than he wants us to know). Director Zimmy — whose first collaboration with Bruce, The Making of ‘Born to Run,’ has been followed by more than 25 movies and music videos — well knows where not to tread.

Even among the band members who have had public fallouts with Bruce, their ultimate affection and respect is palpable here. Van Zandt, while bristling at waiting 40 years to be named musical director, nevertheless speaks fondly of his childhood friend as “the most introverted guy you’ve ever met” — until, that is, he grabbed that guitar and vaulted onstage.

There are lots of such reflective moments here; some with Bruce, most with his bandmates. But the lifeblood of any music documentary is the music itself, and as the hundreds of thousands of die-hard fans who scream and swoon their way through this celebration of life will tell you, The E Street contingent has not lost one step in more than 50 years.