Jon Landau on new Bruce Springsteen documentary ‘Road Diary’: ‘I don’t think the band’s ever played better’

Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau has spoken to Rolling Stone UK about new tour film Road Diary, the mournful feeling at the core of the E Street Band’s latest tour, and why the band are at the very top of their game.

The new film – directed by Thom Zinny and produced by Springsteen and Landau – tracks the rehearsals for the band’s first tour in six years, and its glorious march across North America and Europe for the last 18 months.

“There are a lot of great rock films, but I don’t know that there are a lot of great rock films where people really cry,” Landau told Rolling Stone UK, explaining how the tour – and film – balance a recognition of death with an acceptance and celebration.

“We were really trying to tell a story, and we were trying to tell it with depth,” Landau – who was a founding critic at Rolling Stone in the 1960s and has managed Springsteen since the mid-1970s – said. In between raucous performance videos from the opening night in Tampa, Florida in February 2023 to a jubilant Barcelona gig and beyond, it’s a film that gorgeously translates the never-ending fire at the heart of the E Street Band, as well as a newfound sense of reflection.

Road Diary is out now on Disney+ in the UK. Read our interview with Landau about the film, his memories of the tour, and why Springsteen has “no patience” for prima donnas, below.

At the start of the film, in the tour rehearsals, you see a little bit of tension and worry within the band as they kick back into gear – did you feel that concern too?

I think [with] the six-year layoff, there was a sense that Bruce wanted to do something different with the show, and the guys didn’t yet know what it was. [It wasn’t] friction. We don’t have it. It’s not allowed. What we have is an unusually intelligent group of people. We have adults. They’re all adults. They’re all very mature and as several indicate in the film, they are all so happy and appreciative to be there after all this time, and the fact that Bruce is motivated to do this. Because if Bruce doesn’t go to work, none of us go to work. The film doesn’t show you, but I could tell you that there is no drama. The kind of people who thrive on drama, prima donnas and so forth, got weeded out in the ‘70s. Bruce has no patience for it.

Bruce’s leadership is virtually non-verbal. It’s just very minimal, the direction, and he’s got the cast that he wants, and he knows what they can do. He’s a little of this and a little of that, and they’ll take the ball and run with it. Part of the beauty of being in the band for all those years is they’re all mind readers. They almost always land where they need to land. There’s a great moment where Soozie Tyrell, our violinist and great singer, says, when Bruce used to just take signs, requests and so forth, she’d see what song we’re going to be playing it [and] say, ‘Well, we haven’t played that one in 10 years. Wait a second, I don’t think we’ve ever played that!’ Then you just gotta somehow… well, they find a way. But that was not this tour. This tour was, as the film shows, very rigorous and very planned. Did you see the shows in Wembley?

I did…

How about that? We love Wembley. Bruce came off the stage, and I’m standing next to him. I swear to God, I said this to him. I said, ‘Stand right here with me’. He’s so energised. He’s so happy.  He’s a boss. I said, ‘Right now, right here, we’re standing on sacred ground.’

Wembley was another level. He came out there, first night at Wembley, and I see him before he goes on. We had that little circle, and you could just see in his eyes, he wanted to tear that place down.

The cornerstones of the set have been Letter to You tracks ‘Last Man Standing’ and ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’, both very mournful tracks – why was it important that they anchored the new show and the film?

There is this focus and point of view to the show. It wasn’t planned so that every song contributes to that, because he wanted it to be a great rock show [and] great entertainment, but embedded in it he wanted to have this statement. Even a song like ‘Night Shift’ [was] generally perceived in the United States when it came out as a slightly schlocky song. It’s a fabulous record [from] the Commodores. I mean, the singing is unreal. My point in the film is that the song itself is structured as a tribute to two of the greatest founders of R&B, Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, and it’s got this sentiment about them having passed on, which culminates in the line, ‘We all remember you. Your song is coming through’.

I never discussed it with Bruce, but as they say in the film, I always heard it as a way of tribute to Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, our two lost members from the band. It blends right into the mortality theme, if that’s what we want to call it. What Bruce is getting at in the film is that when you’re 30, the world is just completely open. You’re not sitting around thinking about the end – you’re thinking about all the great things you’re going to do with your life. When you’re 75, a lot of the die has been cast. You know that train is coming right at you, as he puts it. Time becomes more precious, because whatever you want to do, you have less time to do it. It permeates [you], not in a negative way, but it’s part of your consciousness. ‘I don’t have forever’, you know? That’s what gives the film depth. It’s deep. That’s deep stuff.

Did these overarching themes also influence why this film was the right time and place for Bruce’s wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa to announce her cancer diagnosis?

I think so. That revelation tells the audience that, in addition to what he had talked about with [late ex-bandmate in his early band The Castiles] George Theiss and the death of his mother, her vulnerability is part of the general ‘I’ll see you in my dreams’ [theme]. She had not acknowledged this publicly, and that was her choice. She wanted to be in the film, because she is a member of the band, even though the circumstances has prevented her participation in a lot. She chose to speak out in the way that she did, which I thought was very beautiful and incredibly thoughtful.

The opening monologue from Bruce in the film said he promised that he would throw the biggest party on earth after the pandemic. Did you ever worry that the band wouldn’t return?

The pandemic was terrifying for all of us, and there were certainly points at which we were afraid early on. They were piling bodies up in Central Park. I harboured some inner feeling that something resembling normal would return as it did United States. We lost 1,100,000 lives. People want to forget about that and pretend that it didn’t happen. There’s a lot of foolish discussion going on, but the reality is 1,100,000 people died, and I know the losses here in Europe were phenomenal. As Bruce says in the film, his promise was that when the coast was clear, he was going to come out swinging, and that’s what we did.

I don’t think the band’s ever played better than it’s playing right now. That’s just my opinion. Max Weinberg  – he’s a gift from God for the E Street Band. Roy Bitten, there’s no end to his talent. I don’t want to leave anybody out, but these are my friends, and I’ve watched them grow musically. You can say, ‘Well, I liked the way they looked in ’78’, or ‘I like the song selection in ’78’, and I understand that could be your favourite tour, but they’ve never played better than they’re playing right now.