When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band reunited in a New Jersey music room in 2023, Little Stevie says the vibe was a little different.
“It took an extra minute because usually we don’t rehearse at all,” guitarist Steven Van Zandt told me during a chat with Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau.
“We get together for two or three days just to kind of say ‘hello’ to each other again.”
But this time, it had been more than six years since the group last toured.
And during that unusually long hiatus from the road, Bruce, 75, got deep with his hit bio-show “Springsteen on Broadway” at the St. James and Barrymore Theater, there’d been a grind-to-a-halt pandemic and new faces joined the fray.
“So we actually did have to rehearse,” Van Zandt, 73, said. “I don’t know what it was altogether. Two weeks at the most.”
While the E Street Band worked out the kinks, they were joined by veteran documentary director Thom Zimny and his cameras to record the exciting journey.
Landau, 77, remembers conversations about the shape the doc should take: “Bruce just sort of said, ‘Well, OK, so what’s our story?’”
But the narrative became obvious right away: A beloved five-decade-old band with multiple members in their 70s making their triumphant return and showing the world they’ve still got it. The Glory Days are right now.
“We have been away for six or seven years, and people didn’t know what to expect from us,” Stevie said.
“Everybody’s getting a little older, you know. And it was up to us to go out there and say, ‘Hey, we’re not just getting older — we’re getting better, OK? And, yes, we’re closer to the end than we are to the beginning, but we’re still very productive here.”
That early practice would kick off a new world tour — 130-some shows lasting through summer 2025 — an experience chronicled in the excellent new movie “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” which hits Hulu Oct. 25.
I caught the premiere last month at the Toronto Film Festival, and didn’t anticipate getting as emotional as I, gulp, did. But that’s what Zimny bubbles up as he explores the E Street band’s legendary past and future.
“He’s done a number of films that emphasized Bruce,” Landau said of their years of movie collaborations. “But he wanted this to really tell the story of the band in a way that he had not yet told it.”
A unique part of the current tour is a more fixed set list than usual, chosen by Bruce around the album “Letter To You,” a move Van Zandt was behind from the beginning.
“I was into it 100%,” he said.
“[Bruce] walked in with that set, I swear to you, virtually right away, the first day of rehearsal, he just walked in with it. And I don’t think we changed it much at all.”
Stevie says, like “Springsteen on Broadway,” this tour revolves around the theme of “mortality” — balanced out by “vitality” — and that the fans have “responded to that to the extra little bit of focused emotion in this show.
“The intensity of it I think really surprised people in a good way.”
Landau says Bruce has the power to spiritually grab people from the stage.
“That’s what he does every night,” he said. “That’s what he’s aiming to do. And he may not change everybody’s life, but I guarantee you there’s five, 10, 20, 30 people.”
All those diehards, deprived for six years, have been particularly rabid this time around — especially in Western Europe.
“When you get to Italy and Spain, you know, their emotions are a little bit more on their sleeves,” Van Zandt said.
“And they want your sleeves and the jacket that goes with it!”