Since its release, The Boss has embarked on a huge number of tour dates globally over the past two years, and overcome health issues that left him forced to cancel several shows last year.
Now, despite going through all of these experiences, the singer has claimed that he hasn’t written any new music in two years, and can happily go a long period of time without feeling the need to work on new material.
“Songs don’t come that often,” he reveals in the aforementioned biopic. ‘I’ve gone two years without writing anything.”
Just because he’s not writing clearly doesn’t mean he’ll stop making music, as his last album confirmed.
This year, Springsteen also contributed guitar to Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler’s ‘Going Home: Theme of Local Hero’, a star-studded rerelease in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. He’s also set to headline Kamala Harris rallies in swing states, as America gears up for its election on November 5th.
Perhaps part of why Springsteen hasn't written anything lately is the ever-present specter of mortality, which infuses both his songwriting on Letter to You and the subject matter of Road Diary.
"You get up around our age and those are the things you're thinking about," he said. "Patti [Scialfa, Sprinsteen's wife] and I have had to deal with her illness, and it's a part of your life now, mortality. Like I say in the film, there's a lot more yesterdays and goodbyes once you get up around where we are than there was 30 or 40 years ago."
As highlighted by Far Out, this struggle to write new tracks is a sharp contrast to the way in which some of his other material came together. Back in 2020, for instance, he revealed that his album at the time ‘Letter To You’ was written in just two weeks. The LP came as a tribute to late bandmate George Theiss.
“He wrote it in two weeks, which never happens,” Van Zandt, 73, told The Post. “We recorded it in four days, which never happens.”
Featuring songs such as “Burnin’ Train,” “Last Man Standing” and “Ghosts,” the record is the basis of Springsteen’s current world tour, the band’s first in more than six years, which lasts until summer 2025.
The journey — from rehearsal to international arenas — is told in the new Hulu documentary “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” out Oct. 25.
“I knew that this was going to be different because the album was different,” Van Zandt added of the ongoing tour.
“He never had a theme, an album that focused thematically, you know. Maybe only ‘The Rising’ comes to mind, but not quite this literal … He knew what he wanted to say the minute he wrote it.”
“It was just waiting to be born, this thing, you know? And we couldn’t wait to play it. We knew it was going to be great live.”
A throughline of the 75-year-old rocker’s album is mortality.
“That called for a series of new discussions about how do we do this and make sure it works,” Van Zandt said of the distinctive tour with a more introspective tone.
“And part of it was was balancing out that very, very specific theme of the album and tour of mortality. Balancing that out with vitality was going to be an absolute requirement.”
