
When the pandemic occurred in early 2020, suspending the live music scene altogether, feelings of missing out on Norte stars like Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band were made worse. As artists get older there are fewer performances and less time left in which to practice what have been their life’s work. Many of these people had not even been in the same room together since the recording of Letter to You (2019). It is clear that when the band came together to rehearse for the upcoming tour, they did so with a very particular narrative in mind.
Thom Zimny’s closing piece which is of the film “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” is a personal lens of the band looking back and wanting to honor their past but also being excited for what is ahead. With such a background around the Boss-Zimny is more like the official historian of the artist-he enjoys a unique rapport with the band. That intimacy in detail, especially the peripheral aspects of how Springsteen and co. arrange a concert, plays a crucial role in a film that has a simple purpose – documenting the concerts.
The film has no title to announce forever and is subheaded into segments as per convenience. The beginning of the film contains a focus in the first 20 minutes which are devoted to the band rehearsals.
In the middle of it, Springsteen’s voice-over gives clues about his priorities in these run-throughs: Get rid of the dust and decide what kind of plot a setlist should have. For the most part too, during these onset scenes, the only anxiety the band seems to be having is that of failing to meet the expectations of the fans regarding the kind of performance that they have become used to. The band is, after all several years older than before with time having been felt even more with every passing year since the last professional live concert they did. Repeatedly, when they first come together to attempt playing She’s the One, it is incredible how much slower she plays than she usually does. There is a new addition to the band, who is also a singer and percussionist, by the name of Anthony Almonte. New tracks from the “Letter to You” album, which are covers, and are from Springsteen’s “Only the Strong Survive” R&B album are also featured in the film. These two albums, just like this film and the tour it documents, are reminisce of times gone by.
As is the case with a number of albums seen throughout the film, the other loss the viewer has, less than seven minutes into the film, is weight – the whole tension Springsteen and the band seem to be holding. They have indeed done so, relevant as it is to reminiscence but not in a legitimate way, since there has been a great deal of it, focusing, among other events, on the Castile’s formation, and, without even having a closer connection to the band, on the deaths of E Street saxophonist Clemon and keyboardist Federici.
As presented in Letter to You and other archival materials featuring the remarks of the two most famous E Street Band members, Clemons and Federici, he does not view the idea of a perfect performance as a simply accurate one. Rather, it is a means to recreate the songs and the band with the feelings and memories they have in connection with the audience and one another.
Zimny’s narrative is also about the great accident of intertextual and stylistic reiteration of the tour’s current epoch with its crashing delights of playing and memories about unpolished transportings of random small venues. In the present-day sequences, Steven Van Zandt frequently appears to be in primary positions, serving as the Music Director of the tour and carrying out rehearsals. He is also very witty and warm, which helps a lot. Zimny addresses all the members of the team: Garry Tallent, Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg, Nils Lofgren, and Patti Scialfa, who has no shyness at all. Tallent feels wretched even when thinking of about how Springsteen used to sound-check so many arenas in past years (strolling around rows of the arena and listening to the band for hours as it played). It will be less surprising that these persons are very open in these interviews, as it has become normal for all of them in the presence of Zimny.
This film, but in the same way many other road movies, belongs to the category of films which have been edited for a specific purpose.
Zimny respects his subjects too much, forgetting that he should be pushing for the relieving of the band’s workload by the Boss (Van Zandt even points out that the rehearsals were too short and he had to put in longer time leading the band). Zimny also features some die-hard fans who talk about the experience of the band on the road. These moments are nice in theory but do not develop organically within the film.
The film is largely dominated by the primary images of first Springsteen and then the entire company creating these works. Since Springsteen wished for the setlist to tell a narrative, the order of songs didn’t differ that much from one night to another (an aspect that stands out for a band that prides itself in taking public requests). A clear example of this building is how his Adoration of the Night Shift cover progressed over the tour. Conversely, I was not a fan of his different approach to the “Only the Strong Survive” version. The song’s main texture and essence are its harmonies. These were set aside in Springsteen’s studio recording of the piece. We do, however, witness him working with his singers to recreate those elements for the performance, making Night Shift undoubtedly one of the best tours of the entire show.
It is quite unfortunate that these moments of evolution are too few, and you only wish that there were a few more.
More events make a stronger case for the plot points of the documentary than the songs to which the setlist is repeated. It changes the mood of almost every shot as Kenji moves to the superlative Last Man Standing: It is hard to imagine what stills can be more evocative than the suffering of the last of the witnesses. This is where it all falls into place: It’s not what “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” tried to do. It only hails one type of perspective, it comes from both sides of the head and it continually rotates until the center point of the entire tour which is death becomes louder and more powerful than the music.
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