Springsteen Stories: An Oral History of the Making of ‘Road Diary’ & Origins of the “Greatest Bar Band in Existence”

When I readied myself to interview longtime E Street drummer Max Weinberg and Thom Zimny, the director of their documentary Road Diary, about the reuniting of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and their subsequent post-COVID tour, I did all my usual prep. I accounted for the time allocated to meet with the subjects, wrote questions with the intention of matching the constraints, and attempted to create the best set of topics to discuss.

But something funny happened on the way to the production of a conventional Q&A interview: my subjects were so full of stories and fascinating anecdotes that what started out as an interview evolved into more of an oral history of the making of the film and the history of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. You could think of such a situation as a journalist as a sort of “derailment,” but I found it to be a blessing. There’s nothing I had prepped that was better than listening to Max Weinberg (E-Street Band member since the “Born to Run” tour), and director Thom Zimny (who’s been the in-house Springsteen documentarian for two decades, while also directing brilliant films on Elvis, The Beach Boys, and Sylvester Stallone along the way) trade stories, and reelin’ in the years.

So, what you have before you here is two prompts by me (one about COVID and another about the reflective nature of Road Diary), and two Springsteen inner-circle members sharing what it’s like to live in the world of “The Boss.” The best thing I could do is let the tape rock and roll. This is the result of me getting out of the way and letting Max and Thom take the fuel-injected E Street motorcycle out for a ride and “steppin’ out over the line.”

COVID

Max Weinberg: It was wonderful to get the call to aggregate in the studio. I had been on the road, and I had played all through Covid with my Jukebox band, which is what I do when I’m not playing with the E Street Band, primarily to keep my drumming and stamina intact, because you never know when Bruce might need you. It’s a very specific activity that I do within the E Street Band, so I had been playing. I had just finished fifteen dates in Canada when I found out we were going to regroup in November 2019 for what turned into four days. In the particular venues that I play in, which are large rock clubs and small sort of performing arts centers, particularly in the South where I live, they kept the doors open. So that was a big advantage. Of course, getting the band together was a thrill. Back in 2012 or ‘13, we made a stab at “Janey Needs a Shooter.” Bruce hadn’t finished it at that point. It was really great. Those sessions were fabulous because they were very quick, and if you go back the fifty-one years that I do, for example, or the fifty-four years that Garry Tallent does, six days a week, twenty hours a day in the studio, working out songs to four hours of recording, and then listening back in most cases, we have a shorthand. I think Thom, you’ll probably agree with that and have been a great participant and observer in that shorthand.

On this particular record, “Letter To You,” that shorthand came in real handy. I can remember during those sessions, we were very excited that “Yeah, we’re gonna do San Ciro next summer and we’re gonna open with ‘Ghosts’”. That would have been 2020, but that didn’t happen (due to COVID). Then ‘21 didn’t happen, and then ‘22 didn’t happen. So, I continued to play with my little bands throughout Covid, and I was really raring to go when we regrouped in January ‘23 for rehearsals. As Steve (Van Zandt) has said, and then I think it’s pretty clear in the brilliant documentary that Thom made (Road Diary), Bruce came in with the songs, the set list, and it’s like putting on an old pair of gloves with the E Street Band, particularly the guys who have been there for fifty years or more. It’s like I said, the shorthand. Every once in a while, Thom or one of his cameramen will say, “Do you mind if I come up behind you?” I said no, go wherever you want, particularly if it means I’m going to be in it more, you won’t bother me. (Laughs). So, there were fifteen or seventeen cameras in use.

Thom Zimny: There’s something when you’re a filmmaker and you get the gift of being a guest in the space of the E Street Band, and those core members come together in a shot. There’s a history there. You want to be invisible and let it just happen, but at the same time, you could see the film unfolding. A big part of that experience of standing next to Max’s drum kit was a huge influence for me, because I had been fortunate enough to be in the rehearsal space with them and feel the energy, but then I’m able to go to the side of the drum riser during a soundcheck and hear that force of the stadium and then feel it live. That was a huge gift, because that is some energy that I wanted to try to bottle and put into Road Diary. This is what happens when you’re a fly on the wall, seeing the E Street Band come back together and learn a song. That thing that Max is talking about, it’s very subtle when it happens on film: the musical language, the silent communication that they have.

One thing about watching thousands of hours of dailies is the intense focus that Max and the other guys have in the moment. They’re reading Bruce second by second. I’m an invisible presence as much as I can be. Occasionally, I want to make sure I get another side or another angle and kind of cross over, but the reality is that things are moving very fast. The spirit of the work is very focused. For me, it’s been such a huge inspiration to be around the E Street Band because it’s a force, and to be able to document it or try to unpack it, and Max especially has been amazing, to bring back E Street history. This Road Diary film was the first time that I was able to discover stories and details of the survival of the early band, but also explain how they’ve come together and had this journey, and developed this musical language.

The E Street Band Is More Than The Musicians

Max Weinberg: From our point of view, we don’t look at Thom and his crew as Oh my God, we’re going to be filmed today. He is a member of the E Street Band. If you think of the E Street Band in terms of an aggregation as they used to look at the Swing bands, like the Tommy Dorsey aggregation, I’ve often spoken to people who have come on the band as newcomers, and one of the things I’ve said many times over is whatever you did throughout your life led you to this moment. That’s how it was with me in 1974, joining Bruce and Clarence and Garry and Danny, and that was it. That was the band at the time. It’s so natural to have Thom there because, doing it for so long, he has this unique ability. It’s like playing with Bruce. It’s very relaxed. As intense as it is, it’s extremely relaxed because everybody knows what’s expected of them. Everybody knows what the job is and what their position in that overall job is. One of the things I love about Road Diary is that, as Thom said, with the kind of guys who’ve been around for decades and decades, we finish each other’s stories. It’s that commonality where we went from virtually living together and being with each other 24/7 all year long to where now we’re in our mid-seventies, still playing, still delivering, in my view. I see the looks on people’s faces. I feel it. I hear it. I have the best seat in the house. That’s an incredibly special arrangement, and it’s very rare, and we all appreciate it.

Sometimes, I sound like an old man, but I wish I knew when I was twenty-five what I know now. Of course, it’s impossible. But it’s such a precious thing, and Thom has been able to capture the stuff that you normally wouldn’t see. The other thing I should mention is that there is almost no older footage to curate. There is some stuff that people had access to in the early seventies, but there’s almost nothing of any real thoroughness that was captured because Bruce did not want to be filmed. He was a bit, I wouldn’t say superstitious, but it was like it was growing towards something, and he didn’t want to jinx it. When he finally looked at that (historical) part of his life as an artist with or without the E Street Band, he found Thom. Whatever Thom did before that meeting led him to that moment, just like the rest of us. So when you join, we can all be a bit disciple-like, because that’s the impact of the man on all of us, the man and the artist, really, and you’ve seen that growth. Road Diary is the first time where you can really feel like you are there. I’m very data-driven, so I had a lot of evidence to back up my statements if we’re playing too slowly. And, it’s not really my place, but drummers are great observers. If I have something to say, I’ll say it. But one thing that was very front of mind for me, and Thom, I think you captured it, was that we hadn’t played in six years, and we’re also in our seventies. There’s a tendency for some of these intense rock songs to lope along. If you lope along, and this is the case, I presented to Bruce himself and Jon Landau, if you haven’t played for six years, you run the risk of people in the audience saying, “You should have seen them back in the day.” So it was a conscious effort, particularly on my part, because that’s my job, as the drummer. After fifty-one years, I’m finally getting it. The drummer, any of the people that I admire, leads the band. That’s the drummer’s job. Whether it’s James Brown or Bruce Springsteen up front, they certainly lead the bands, but if they had to worry about what was going on behind them, it would take away from their freedom to do whatever they want to do. So you’ve got to be on it. And everybody has a specific job.

I always say I don’t really care about chords. I don’t need to know chords, and I don’t know chords. I think I said it in the Road Diary film: I’m not watching or listening, or being tuned in to catch what Bruce is going to do; I am tuned in just in case he might do something. One of the things that has sort of been a hallmark, other than the technical aspects, like okay, we’ve got to really jump on top of the beat, is that no one’s ever come off the stage saying that wasn’t the way we rehearsed it. You have to stay in the moment. Thom captured that tremendously in this movie. You’re not conscious of anybody filming. I’ve had cameramen stand an inch away from me, behind me, but you’re not conscious of it. I remember when Thom screened it for us in Europe, when you finally saw it, it was a revelation. Not just the live playing, but the work in the rehearsal studio, and then going to the small arena. I think, you’ll agree with me, Thom, that if you were an outsider and dropped onto the stage during a live concert or rehearsal, you’d be amazed at how relaxed it actually is. You can’t get that kind of intensity and drive without being relaxed. Would you agree with that, Thom?

Thom Zimny: A thousand percent. I love listening to Max because the Road Diary film is a choir of voices. One of the great things about the musicality of voices is that Max is great with the history of the band and dates and placing the story, but also the observation of the magic that’s unfolding. There’s a great quote, and I’m going to paraphrase: there’s a lot of preparation to make it seem so spontaneous. That’s the level of relaxation. Sometimes I would get things, film them, and witness them, and then go back to the E Street Band. They gave me the greatest gift, which was that I could throw any question at them. What was happening here? What happened with the rehearsals? What was going on here? Max referencing the tempo was a perfect example of trust and confidence after all the years of being around and with them. I want to unpack this for the viewer. Sometimes they’re small details, but they add up to the power of E Street. And this mix, for me, I was most happy with, because I did it with the guys from Skywalker. I sent them to shows, and the first thing they talked about was the power of the drums.

I said at the sound stage, ‘I want to hear that crowd, but I want to feel the bass and the drums in this way. ‘ That stems from me as a filmmaker going to see the band on The River Tour as a fan. You carry these emotional connections. There in the edit room, I might return to being the sixteen-year-old, and then I’ll return to the sixty-year-old who sat with the band and unpacked the details. But you’re carrying a bit of your history and thinking, at all times, how is this getting close to the story of E Street, and how is it honoring things that have not been explained before? One of the beautiful things I felt was that everyone in the band brought back Danny and Clarence (who passed in 2008 and 2011, respectively) and their influence and their presence, and that to me was a great thing just to have, because in some ways, I had a little bit of time that I got to be around both of them. That is a big part of the E Street story that I always wanted to bring in and reference.

Clarence & Danny: Fellow Travelers Lost Along the Way

Max Weinberg: There’s a shot, if my memory serves, of us piling out of our luxurious accommodations of the GMC motorhome. And when I say luxurious, it was luxurious compared to what it was before. It was the six of us, and Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, of course. Those moments are extraordinarily present in the individuals who were there at the time in their hearts and memories, which is why we finish each other’s stories. The movie is a peek behind the curtain. That’s what’s so unique about this. It just went for it, and from everybody’s point of view. It was a lovely thing to be involved with. I’ve worked in TV. I spent almost seventeen years in TV with Conan O’Brien. I worked with many different directors, and Thom knows what he wants. He’s got a camera on his shoulder. He integrated so well into those rehearsals that it was as if another musician had joined the band. We had one moment on the last tour that I’m fairly certain is not in the movie. We were flying from somewhere into Washington, D.C., and it was fogged in, so we had to land in Richmond, Virginia,, and wait out the fog. The fog never lifted, so we’re sitting on the plane for about two hours, and we’re spread out all over the plane. At one point Steve, me, Roy, Garry, and. Bruce gathered in the center of the plane and started telling the old stories about when Danny fell out of his bunk and just the stuff that, when you’re sort of a gang, and we were, we were so young, in our twenties, that you experienced and you remember.

It’s like remembering what you did as a little kid. The response from some of the brand new people and even Jake (Clemons, the nephew of Clarence who is the E Street Band’s saxophonist), who’s been with us for a long time, gathering around and spreading out to hear these stories, because we’re talking about Clarence and we’re talking about Danny. For us, and Jake as well, Clarence is soulfully alive as he’s ever been, even though his physical presence isn’t with us. Someone sent me this fantastic video from the Tunnel of Love tour, and Clarence was just like a mountain behind Bruce. It puts you right back there. So that moment on the plane telling these old stories: running across the parking lot in Dallas in the rain, and my glasses got fogged up and I didn’t see the guide wire across the entrance, and then in the front of the hotel with Sleepy Labeef’s station wagon and trailer. It was surreal, something Dalí-esque. That’s a bonding experience, and that’s what Thom captured so perfectly, with each of us. The bond that Bruce has with Steve and the way he depends on Steve for certain things always reminds me of how you had the guys who designed the Corvette, and then you had the guys on the production line who figured out how to make it. So, it was always that visionary versus mechanic thing. The mechanical thing is what Steve really loves to do–arranging and working with the horns. That’s what Thom captured in Road Diary–how we make the sausage. I remember Bruce coming over to me, every day the rehearsals were incredibly short, and he had his notebooks and he looked at me and he goes “Don’t wanna over-rehearse this, we’ve been rehearsing for 50 years.” That’s what you captured, Thom.

Thom Zimny: I love that explanation. When I’m cutting these films, I take a lot of my cues from the rhythm of the storytelling. Steve has a great moment, where sometimes there’s a pause. Each person in the band has a great rhythm in their stories. Honestly, when you put them all together, they are finishing each other’s stories, but they’re also working together. Max had referenced the story to me about the airplane, and it was a huge influence because what he described to me was this feeling of the guys sitting around, going over old stories. And I remember thinking, that’s the cutting that I want to do. That story was a big influence, because can you imagine being a fly on the wall in that airplane and hearing that history. That’s the style of cutting that I tried to have with Road Diary, where people are overlapping, and then Garry comes in with a dry response that cracks everyone up with his different observation of it. There’s a beauty to everyone’s telling of the story. It’s funny that you referenced that plane story of the guys just waiting like that, because it was an influence on me.

There’s a part of me that’s always thinking, “What would be really great for the viewer?” Road Diary felt like you got to hang out with E Street for a while and hear some of these stories, like what’s going on now? It’s very much in the moment. Jon Landau was amazing in his interviews, explaining how the band comes together with the energy it does in the present moment, while also carrying the power of its history. I thought that if I could get that, one foot in the moment of rehearsal, but the other foot still rooted in all that history, it would bring forth a whole new chapter of E Street. Those are the kind of cues I listened for, and those are the kind of cues that I let the film in the cutting room take over and try to direct. When I saw the band live, I wanted to showcase as many of the different styles this tour represented. So, I was determined to honor the different playing styles and genres. That the band can go from “Night Shift” to an all-out rock number to a quieter moment and touch upon all the musical genres, that’s the exciting part to be around filming, when you start to see the range this band can cover.

The Greatest Bar Band in Existence

Max Weinberg: As Bruce says, we are the greatest bar band in existence, and that’s our training. We’re all different personalities and have different backgrounds and grew up under different circumstances. But the one thing that has been the bedrock of the E Street Band is our common musical roots. That’s part of the shorthand. Whether it’s somebody calling out an obscure frat rock song from the audience to play, we know how to do that. That was our training, and that world doesn’t exist anymore. We’re probably some of the last purveyors of that type of spontaneity, and that type of okay, you gotta play seven hours a night, five nights a week, you can’t possibly learn all those songs. You have to know how to fake those songs.
That’s a skill. What you’re seeing with us in Road Diary, and what Thom captured, is not just what we’re doing right now here in this brightly lit room. It’s those fifty years of experience, mistakes, victories, sadness, joy, everything. It all comes out on stage. Bruce did an interview not that long ago where he was asked if we speak all the time and do we hang out and he said no, not really. I have a grandchild. Garry has a grandchild. We did our hanging. We hung out for forty years. So when we’re together, I always make a joke. I’m the jokester–Catskill Mountains comedy. When we’re lined up to go on stage, the band is usually there before Bruce comes out, and I look for these jokes. They’re sometimes stupid, but hopefully they’re funny. I’ll tell the assemblage a joke. Half the time, they’re fairly profane, I’ll say it to the horn section or the chorus and in the dressing room, and that’s part of it. I think Bruce references it in his autobiography about my bringing humor to the band.

Thom Zimny: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been there. The great thing sometimes, in the quiet of the cutting room, is that you’re looking at footage from the Tunnel of Love tour, and you see the guys come together. There’s a certain body language, and there’s a certain gesture, and then it’s a couple of months later. You’re somewhere in the middle of Europe with the band, and you flashback to that footage because what you see is very similar to that tone, either Max making a joke or just an embrace sometimes. I’ll have these moments. I came into this as an editor, so I’ve studied and examined the archival footage of E Street for a long time, just as I do with photos of my children. I know this band that way. Sometimes you have these great moments. I had footage of Max that I used in Road Diary, which came from the “Born to Run” session. It’s a shot of him wearing the headphones from 1975. But there’s an element to the shot that reads as, ‘ That’s Max.’ Sometimes, the power of editing lies in bringing those two things together. It’s not only the distance of time, but you see the continuity of the journey. I tried to do that a lot with Road Diary, where I looked for those tones that allowed you to recognize the soul of the player in the shot.
Reflection & Celbration

In the process of making Road Diary, like a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band song, you carry your own existence in that making of the film. You carry yourself day to day. Standing next to these guys, and then being in the edit room, the impact it has on me is that it reminds me of the feeling of a journey and dedication to this music, being near it, and what a great gift it is. At the same time, Bruce’s lyrics and the beauty of the sonic power of history constantly make you think about your own life and where you are. I’m no different than the fan who connects deeply to the music, but I try to take it within the context of the films. I don’t know the exact years I made these films, but I can tell you that when I first started and saw the footage of the band live in New York, I knew exactly where I was in my life. It’s no different than the albums. I carry them as chapter points in my life. What I’m trying to say is that the impact is very hard to put into words, but these guys have given me the greatest gift as a filmmaker: to be around this focus, this dedication,, and the powerful experience of the music. I hope that makes sense: you’re in it, and then it becomes a chapter in your life. And in that chapter, you have to look at everything around you.

Max Weinberg: I can tell you some anecdotes that people probably don’t know. It’s well known that Bruce loved the movies of John Ford and John Wayne. During the recording of Darkness on the Edge of Town, it was a very emotionally draining time for Bruce. We had a conversation once where he said, Imagine here are the drums. The way I see them, you’re Monument Valley. You’re those mountains,, and the character in the story is John Wayne on a horse, riding across the mountains. That was a very important transitional period for me. I was in my twenties, working diligently, almost in a Zen-like fashion,, to become the drummer I wanted to be, and that Bruce believed I could be. And he did it in such a way that inspired me to do that, just that visual image of you’re the rock, you’re the mountains behind the action. So there’s always been, over the last fifty-one years, those kinds of metaphors and analogies. I can remember him playing me one of his solo records. We took a drive in his Jeep through all the back roads that we know, the “Backstreets,” you might say, and listening to it was kind of a tradition. He’d always do that. And he was describing himself as a miner.
I recently read that Jon Landau (Springsteen’s long-time Manager and co-producer) said Bruce is a repairman. That’s what his songs do. That’s what his music does. So we’re driving along, and he says, ‘I mine this vein over here, and then I may find gold there; I may find nothing, but I’ll know for sure. Then I’ll mine this vein. That’s an amazing thing to listen to someone describe how they view themselves. And it’s true in the E Street Band, it’s the hardest music for him to write, he has said, because a good rock song is impossible to write, because there are so many cliches, and he always tries to stay away from the cliches. I’ve read all about this sort of idea of perfectionism. I never got that in the fifty-one years I’ve been associated with Bruce. I never got that. What I got was this continual striving for excellence because nobody’s perfect. And if you listen to our records, that’s pretty clear. There’s little hiccups here and there, even in the shows. The drummer can’t make mistakes. He’s like the goalie. And I’ve made some doozies over the years that literally stop the show, and people love that. The audience loves that. (Laughs).

They used to love it when Bruce forgot the words. He’s written so many songs. It was Frank Sinatra who convinced him to use a teleprompter occasionally. Frank Sinatra said, Yeah, I invented the teleprompter in the forties. I couldn’t remember the lyrics – there was too much else going on. And so it made it okay. The whole idea is that when we’re up there, despite our age, professionalism, and work ethic, we are still fourteen-year-old kids doing what we love to do. And while this story doesn’t have anything specifically to do with Road Diary, it goes back to what you said about COVID and being prevented from going out on the road. The only other time this happened was during the Darkness years, the lawsuit years, during which we were prevented from recording for a year and a half. So, we rehearsed every single day from two o’clock to seven o’clock at Bruce’s house. There’s a lot of footage of that in the wood-paneled den,, and we lived there; we lived in that place. And so, I guess it was in October 2020 that I got a call from Bruce, and he said, ‘Max, we’ve got a gig. ‘ And this is in the middle of COVID. It was playing on Saturday Night Live. And I said Bruce, I love it. You sound like we’re in ninth grade and we’re waiting to play the school dance in three months. He said, Yeah, that’s exactly the feeling I had. I got it because I remember those days, when we all remember the sixties, and if you were lucky enough, you got a gig that was two months away, and you just counted the days down. I’m doing that right now with this upcoming tour. That enthusiasm that infected us in those days, that’s still exactly the name of the game. I think that’s what people respond to. Just think of how rare it is to be playing with essentially the same people almost all your life at various times. We’ve been together now longer than we were the first time around, when we took that eleven-year hiatus or whatever it was, which was great for everybody. We came back, each man to a man, to a woman stronger and stronger than we’d ever been. That’s a whole other movie. Thom, I’m sure you want to make that, but yeah, if I have the last word, that’s that it’s a privilege for all of us. It’s a privilege for Bruce, Thom—as he’s indicated, us, me, everybody on that stage. One of the beautiful things, and Thom captured it in Road Diary, was that there’s no fiddling around on your instrument. When I stopped in rehearsal, I stopped because I saw Bruce. He doesn’t give a cue to stop, I see he’s ready to stop by just a look in his eyes, or he’ll be looking at the ceiling, so I’ll stop, and we stop on a dime. The other thing I love is that when we hit the stage, the first thing you hear, other than Bruce’s voice saying hello, is ‘1, 2, 3, 4. ‘ You don’t hear anybody noodling. There’s no noodling in the E Street Band. But that’s what Road Diary captures, that continual striving for excellence.

Every time we play, whether it’s in the studio, on stage in a stadium, it’s as if it’s the last time we’re going to play, and it’s as if it’s the first time you’re seeing us. That’s what’s so special, to me anyway, about the experience, apart from all the incredible songs. What’s the hardest thing to get in a rock band? A great front man and great songs. Check those off, and then you’ve got the experience, dedication, and enthusiasm of all the people around you. I’ve described it as a flying off the ledge where everybody plays with Bruce. I don’t think Garry Tallent and I have ever discussed “locking in with each other.” You read the drumming magazines and the bass playing magazines, and they’re always talking about “locking in” with each other. We do it because everybody’s locked in with Bruce. Wherever he wants to go, we’re going to go. We were playing in Philadelphia last August, and Bruce threw in an audible during “Two Hearts” and counted it off really fast. I realized by the time we got to the bridge, he and Steve were going to run out of barrel. So I had to make a decision to slow it down a little bit. We were going like a bat outta hell so fast. It was one two diggity, diggity boom, really fast. Editing is all about decisions, drumming is moment to moment up there. I’ve got to figure out where to pull this back a little bit so they can get through that bridge. When we went into the bridge, I did this big, obvious triplet fill, bump, bump, bump into the bridge. So I pulled it back a little bit, just a little bit, and it was like The Magnificent Seven all riding in tandem, and then suddenly a couple of guys broke off. And so Bruce and Steve kept singing at that tempo. I pulled it back a little, and it separated. It looked like the spacecrafts were separating from each other in slow-mo, and I realized it was a total train wreck to the point where we had to stop. So we stopped. Bruce counted it off again, and it got confusing. Some people came in on three, some other people came in on two, so we had to stop again. This is in front of 70,000 people. I was staying in Philadelphia; Bruce was driving home. I turned the key in my room, and my phone rings. It’s Bruce. Max, no big deal, but what happened? Did I do something? I said to tell you the truth, Bruce, I have no idea, but I’ll find out. So I called George Travis. I said, George, I need John Cooper, our house mixer, to make me a tape of vocals, drums, piano, and bass on “Two Hearts,” right now, when they’re packing up; Bruce wants it. I need it right now. So, I got it within two minutes.

I listened to it, and basically, it was all on me. Half the time, you’re right. Actually, more than half the time you’re right. But when I make a mistake, it comes crashing down. That’s the pressure, but that’s what I signed up for. It’s just like being a catcher, goalie, the point guy. I called Bruce and said I had led you guys astray. And he says, ‘Max, you’re a gentleman for admitting that.’ I’ve always done that. It’s fortunate that we have videotape and audiotape of everything, so if there’s something like that, you want to conduct a bit of an autopsy. In the moment when something like that happens, you think it’s you. What did I do? Did I space out for a second? Whether it’s me or even Bruce or Steve or anybody, you just get a brain freeze. This story has nothing to do specifically with Road Diary, which we’re all immensely proud to be a part of, and proud of the job that the filmographer, videographer, and members of the E Street Band did. Think of the E Street Band as Robin Hood and his merry men. Whether you’ve been there for fifty years or a year or twenty-five years, whatever it is, it’s a band. It’s an organism, it’s an entity. You get pulled up onto that train for your particular talent. Twenty-five years later, here’s Thom Zimny, who has been riding that train, whether it’s with an E Street project or a solo project.

The Road Ahead

Thom Zimny: I carry E Street with me on everything. Whether it’s my Elvis film or my Sly (Stallone doc) film, for which Max wrote me a great note when he saw it. But I carry that influence into all my work. I’m just grateful and look forward to the next chapter when I get to stand near those drums once again.

Max Weinberg: Please do. When I first got the TV job (Conan), for the first six months, it was like walking past an appliance store and seeing yourself on the TV in the window. It was just such a novelty, and you can’t sustain that. I did almost 4,600 late-night shows. So, you get used to it really quickly, or you don’t survive. In the four or five conversations I’ve had with Lorne Michaels, in one of them, he asked me, Max, ‘Do you know why they call television a medium? ‘ And I’m thinking, Marshall McLuhan (the Canadian philosopher), the medium is the message, Newton Minow (former FCC Chairman), and he goes no, no. They call it a medium because it’s never as good, yet it’s never as bad as you think. That really relaxed me. Steve used to say in the old days, Hey, a mistake happens. It’s all part of the show. It’s what we do. You’re seeing not just music and songs, and a singer. You’re seeing our lives up there, and that’s what Thom captured so brilliantly.

Road Diary can be streamed now on Disney+ and Hulu