October 28, 2024
EDITOR'S NOTE: To supplement our recent streaming-debut-weekend coverage of Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, we are pleased to present to our readers London-based journalist and Letters To You contributing writer Herpreet Grewal's edited transcriptions and photos from the London premiere of the film, which took place on October 18 at the city’s Ham Yard Hotel. There was a post-screening Q&A hosted by Scottish radio and television personality Edith Bowman, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Stevie Van Zandt, and Thom Zimny. Since we already have posted our own extensive conversation with Zimny about his film, Herpreet has edited her transcriptions of the Q&A to supplement that conversation with a focus on just Bruce's, Jon's, and Stevie's October 18 comments, which not surprisingly were interesting, insightful, moving, and - at times - downright hilarious. Enjoy!
Bruce: “The way we made this picture was we started to rehearse, and we called Thom Zimny. I said ‘Thom, bring your camera down.' And that was pretty much it; that was the beginning of the picture. Thom then films things and sends me pieces of things, and puts them together, and things start to take shape. Thom’s emotional instincts about how things fall together are really excellent. We’ve been working together now for twenty-four years, and done a bunch of other films, too. Thom has given me a visual language that we didn’t have previously... He’s a collaborator, someone with the visual skills, and Thom gave that to me. We’ve been great partners for a long time. We didn’t film in the first iteration of the band, which I regret now, because I was so superstitious about it. Once the band got back together, I said we’re going to film everything we do and make one film for every section of our work life. If we use some of them, they are there, and if we don’t, they are there in the archives. So we’ve been doing that over the past twenty-four years.”
Stevie: “It was important because of the theme. Our show always has a great range of emotions, but this one a little bit more focused because the album [Letter to You] was a bit more focused. So I think it's one of the greatest albums of all time. When you really look at this thing as a songwriter, its really incredible. The depth…It's the most personal record, you know, that we’ve ever made, and so the challenge is to get this across, and because it was a theme about mortality…we knew we had to balance it out with vitality. Yes, we’re closer to the end than the beginning, but we’re not going out quietly... We had to bring a hurricane... There was going to be that one moment in the middle, which Thom captured so beautifully, from '...on the backstreets' to 'I’ll see you in my dreams.' Everything else was going to be like, 'Bam!,' and hit you in the face… We need to bring that every time… We need to transport people to another place for three hours… and then transform people and give them more energy when they leave than when they came. Bruce has always spent time thinking about what is going to be said on the tour. That’s what he needs to spend his time on. So the music... he doesn’t have to worry about it. He took care of the music with the songwriting, and then we made the records. The music is fine; the E Street Band produces themselves. I’ll fix a few things, he may come in and change a few things, but basically the music is going to be there, so Bruce has to spend his time where it counts, which is thinking about what is going to be said, how is he going to say it... And that is what he should be spending his time on, rather than having to worry about the music. He doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.”
Bruce: “Yeah, why do I have to rehearse anymore? It doesn’t make any sense.”
(laughter from the audience)
Jon: “It makes me nervous.”
(more laughter from the audience)
“We actually shoot every night, and our in-house director [Chris Hilson,] who does the screening every night... Thom picks certain locations where, in terms of where he would go for the backstage story and also where we would enhance and get different angles beyond what we do on a nightly basis, and one of the things you can see in the film is the approach to the audience… when Bruce is communicating, and the importance of communicating what Bruce is feeling, right there, right then on that stage, in that moment, in your town. The other side of it is the audience. Thom shows the crowd and the big exciting mass of people, but when you see the film, what he is really looking for are the faces in the crowd. And so during these montages, like for example, where we had 'The Promised Land,' we had the tracking shot that just goes down the line and we see every individual in that crowd, but you see every individual’s personal reaction to the song and the exchange that is two ways that is going from Bruce to audience, but then from the audience, also, back to Bruce and the band. I think throughout the film, the focus on the faces and the eyes and the vignettes with the fans from all over Europe… those five individual people who were so wonderful, and so captured the spirit of the audience and what we hope for the audience... It was a combination of many elements there.”
Bruce: “The key is - I’ve said this for such a long time - you have to look into the audience and find yourself every single night. I look into the audience, go down the line, and I find myself in this kid, or that person, or a hundred people. I spend a lot of time looking at individual faces, and the audience has to look up at the stage and recognize themselves in what you are singing, in what you are doing, and the friends you are there with and this, amongst our group and our audience is a deep, deep, deep, deep, deep experience, because they are looking at me and Steven on stage, and I’ve been with Steven for sixty years. Then they’re seeing me with Roy and Max and I’ve been with them for fifty years. Mr Landau has been around for fifty years - I don’t know how he did it, but he hung in there! So that’s the key... The night you look out and don’t recognize yourself, and the night they don’t recognize you, that’s the night you go home. I have to remind myself I exist every night! That’s really the reason I am up there. ‘Am I really here?’ I got to go up there and prove it.”
“We have a long narrative. It began with [Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ...] I was interested in continuity... of records rubbing against each other and creating new meanings and third meanings, because my film heroes like John Ford made trilogies, different films based on the same themes, and so I kind of like that. So I wanted to make records that kind of fall into one another. Darkness on the Edge of Town falls into The River. The end of The River actually falls into Nebraska. Nebraska exploded into Born in the U.S.A.... so I liked the continuity. What you are doing on stage... you are bringing your history to your audience, while at the same time you are focusing on your latest narrative. So we’re bringing our entire history, and focusing a little more on Letter to You, because that was our last record with the band, because it was a great record and dealt with the idea of rock ‘n’ roll, time, mortality and illness, and that is a big part of all our stories. So I wanted to make sure that was at the centre of the shows. The show peaks not with the rock songs, but... with 'Last Man Standing' and 'Backstreets' - this is what I am talking about. And the rest of the show is... this is how I respond.”
Jon: “One of the things about the documentary form, the convention of it... you don’t need full songs. So pieces of songs can work as well, or even better, than the entire songs, and also the number of songs we were able to include… The film is one hour and forty minutes and in my biased opinion, it flies by, and you know there is so much music actually in it, but it is different than a concert film. We’ve never done this before; it feels right.”
Bruce: “The film is also about the rewards of a band staying together. The actual arc of rock and roll bands is to break up, not stay together. Think about it. How many bands stayed together against how many who broke up? It’s waaaay 90/10. Forget about bands; you can’t get two people to stay together. Simon hates Garfunkel. Sam hates Dave. Hall hates Oates. Phil hates Don Everly… Oh, Noel and Liam; how could I forget them?! It’s challenging - very, very challenging - but the film shows the rewards. It's a separate art, staying together; it's a separate art itself. You got to imagine... you’re in high school, and those four people you hung around with in high school... how about them being the same four people you’ve worked with every single day of your life until you are 75?! That’s insane to expect any sane person to be able to stand, but the art is, you know, to make it happen.”
Edith Bowman: How do you stay together?
Bruce: “I pay a tremendous amount of money. That greases the wheels pretty good, and I am a pretty nice boss. The truth is, you needed to cast your band well, you know, with people who have the same sort of respect and feeling and seriousness about what they were doing and what you were doing. Everyone has to hold that music in a very high place, and there are certain boundaries; we don’t fuck with that. So the band has to be cast very well. Steve and I have been friends for sixty years… A musical companion... It's not like anything else. Jon and I, fifty years... but it's an art. That’s an art. Each and every one of those relations... there are more than one moment[s] where it could have gone the other way. So that appeals to me in [Road Diary...] watching a bunch of people work together for that long.”
Edith Bowman: "Stevie, you said a great thing in the film... This kid you grew up with, and him being a really shy introvert, but on stage he commands these people... Is it still a wonderful thing, as his friend, to see what he achieves and what he does on stage?
Stevie: “It’s a miracle. First of all, part of what makes it stay together is that democracies don’t work in bands. This is a benevolent monarchy, and that’s how it needs to be, and that’s how it works."
(MUCH laughter from the audience)
“Most of all, this thing... From the beginning, Bruce has had a bizarre career, if you look at it. It was never a commercial enterprise, which changes everything. It’s been an artistic adventure from the beginning. So that’s what he means when he says to cast the band well…you have to do that with that in mind, because if you are strictly concerned with commercial success, you have to cast it differently, because you’re going to be interested in short-term revenue and all that, but this was never the case for Bruce. From the very first album, his music had nothing to do with what was going on. Never fashionable, never trendy, completely unique from day one. It was a personal artistic adventure, so anyone joining that thing knew what they were getting themselves into. Luckily we have had some commercial common ground along the way, which was great, but that was never the intention. That intention of communicating something important and personal artistically is what has kept this thing so vital and important for the audience, because they understand that.”
Bruce: “It was the funniest thing… In [late] 1972, my first record was about to come out and I am at a place called Kenny's Castaways in New York. It's a little club. I am there by myself. A buddy from another band walks in, and he’s got a mink coat on, and a nice-looking girl by his side. I’d performed with them before in and around New Jersey. So he sees me by myself on stage at Kenny's Castaways, playing to about twenty-five people, and after I was done, I came down [to see him.] He says ‘What the fuck are you doing?! We saw a half-hour act from you!’ And I said, ‘Yeah that was great, but you know, I think I know what I am doing now.' I played the long game. [I had thought] well, first two records didn’t do very well, third one kept us in the game. I always played the long game, and if you do that right, other things work out. Money comes, money goes, but if you do it right, other things come your way, or if you get the art right, the band right, the music right, and the performances, where you go out and play every night like it's your last night on Earth... That was the serial philosophy of the band, and we’re sticking to it.”
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is now available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.
All photos by Herpreet Grewal - used with permission