From the left: Steven Van Zandt, director Thom Zimny and Bruce Springsteen attend the world premiere of Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Roy Thomson theatre during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sept. 8.VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images
“All bands break up,” Bruce Springsteen said at the premiere of Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. “They can’t even get two guys to stay together – Simon hates Garfunkel!”
Of course, Springsteen was exaggerating. His band, for one, is very much together. Their first tour in six years – which began in 2023 and concludes next summer – brings them to Canada for seven shows, starting in Montreal on Halloween. The tour is the subject of Road Diary, a rock doc directed by Springsteen’s frequent collaborator, Thom Zimny. At the post-screening Q&A in Toronto, the singer spoke about musical camaraderie.
“All those nights on stage, where you are risking yourself. Because that is what you’re doing: You are coming out, you are talking to people about the things that matter the most to you. You are leaving yourself wide open. But you’re not alone …”
The musicians of the E Street Band have stood aside and behind Springsteen since the Nixon administration. Road Diaries, which premieres on Hulu and Disney+ on Friday, starts off with the booming kick drum and opening line of the song Ghosts: “I hear the sound of your guitar, comin’ from the mystic far.” Though it is about the death of bandmates over the years – organist Danny Federici died in 2008; saxophonist Clarence Clemons, 2011 – the cut off the 2020 album Letter to You ultimately celebrates survival and shared memories.
The day after the film’s premiere at TIFF, Zimny sat down for an extended interview at a downtown hotel. He talked about the themes of Road Diaries (aging, the frailties of life and facing mortality) and about his creative process with Springsteen, who wrote his own narration.
The documentary begins with the band’s first rehearsals for the tour, “on a quiet, cold January morning,” per Springsteen’s voiceover. Because the rocker had messaged Zimny a heads-up – “Getting the band together, you should stop by” – the director was in on the earliest days of preparations.
As Springsteen and the band shook off the rust and worked out the set list, Zimny was there with a film crew. After a rehearsal, he’d typically send Springsteen a note about themes he’d detected, or he’d send him a piece of footage with no note at all.
“I’m making him aware of the things that I’m seeing,” Zimny explains. “Two days go by and at 12 o’clock at night my phone will ting. A text will be there, and sure enough Bruce has looked at the footage or considered a detail I’d introduced to him. He’s written his voiceover, explaining what he was doing in the moment. He’s sharing his process with me.”
The 59-year-old director’s professional relationship with the New Jerseyite began in 2001, when he edited HBO’s Emmy-winning Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live in New York City. His first credit as a director was 2005′s Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born to Run, which earned a Grammy. Other collaborations include more behind-the-scenes docs and live performance films: 2010′s The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, 2014′s High Hopes, 2015′s The Ties That Bind, 2018′s Springsteen on Broadway, 2019′s Western Stars and 2020′s Letter to You.
Unlike, say, the Rolling Stones, who began filming themselves early on, Springsteen started out camera shy. “For a long time he feared being filmed,” says Zimny, who edited The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts concert film released in 2021. “He didn’t like how he came off, how he looked.”
As well, Springsteen and his long-time manager, Jon Landau, didn’t want concert films out there. Springsteen had built a reputation on heroic, sweat-soaked shows that lasted three hours and more. Capturing it on celluloid would be akin to bottling lightning. Besides, myth-building works best by word of mouth.
“Filming him would take away from the live community,” Zimny says of those early days. “You had to get in a car, go to a place and stand with strangers to engage. Bruce and Jon were also smart enough to know that there was a level of intimacy that would be lost.”
Road Diaries toggles between the tour (backstage moments, interviews with band members, eye-popping live performances) and archival footage. In May 2023, Springsteen stumbled and fell on stage in Amsterdam. Later that year he postponed dates because of peptic ulcer disease. In 2024, vocal issues caused further postponements. None of that is in the film.
“I’m not chasing that sort of information,” Zimny says. “I don’t want to kid myself with the low-hanging fruit of news storylines. What I’m chasing is much harder.”
Springsteen is 75 years old. Even though his recent health issues aren’t present in Road Diaries, they certainly mesh with the documentary’s themes of aging and mortality. The film concludes with Springsteen quoting Jim Morrison: “O great creator of being, grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives.”
It’s a prayer, purposely placed as the final thought.
“I see no signs of Bruce and E Street stopping,” Zimny says. “This film is based on an energy I saw every day. They’re going out there night after night, wanting to prove something they started with them at the age of 16 – to deliver the best show and message they can.”