Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s ‘Road Diary’ is a must-see for fans but also somewhat of a Boss-sponsored infomercial

Even Bruce Springsteen has been booed in Philadelphia.

Not “Bruuuuuce!”-d but actually booed. As in informed by the audience that they’ve had enough, and would you please go home.

That incident happened on South Broad Street in June 1973, the first of 32 times that Springsteen played the Spectrum before it closed in 2009.

It is referred to in the Thom Zimny-directed Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the concert documentary that premieres on Hulu Friday. In an interlude when the musicians in the now 18-member band describe the backstage huddle that happens just before the ensemble takes the stage, one of the horn players harks back to that summer night. Springsteen’s pep talk included him saying, “This is the place I warmed up for the band Chicago and got booed off the stage. It will not happen tonight! Somebody say amen!”

Back in 1973, Springsteen’s Greetings From Asbury Park debut had released five months earlier. He was allotted 45 minutes at the Spectrum but began to hear it from the impatient audience 30 minutes in. According to the fan site BruceBase, he kept singing and waving his middle finger in the air.

Road Diary documents the current Springsteen tour that began in February 2023 and continued this year, with a summer run that included two shows at Citizens Bank Park in August and a historic hometown gig at the Sea.Hear.Now festival on the Asbury Park Beach.

The tour with the E Street Band resumes on Halloween night in Montreal, but before that, Springsteen will make a series of swing state appearances with his podcast pal Barack Obama in support of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, including one in Philadelphia on Monday.

Road Diary is a behind-the-scenes documentary with an emphasis on how the tour — Springsteen and the band’s post pandemic return to the road — comes together, from the rehearsal hall to the arena and stadium stage.

It’s plotted to dramatically present Springsteen — who turned 75 last month — a half century into a career, belting out life-affirming, three-hour-plus performances supported by the same core band since the musicians were scrappy Jersey Shore musicians in their early 20s.

“Since I was 16, playing live has been a deep and lasting part of who I am and how I justify my existence here on Earth,” Springsteen says in his voice-over narration. “A lot of it comes together when I count off the band.”

Along with footage shot during rehearsals that began at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank and Cure Insurance Arena in Trenton before moving on to 2023 indoor dates in the U.S. — including a March 2023 Wells Fargo Center show — and stadium concerts in Europe, Road Diary also spends some time routing the history of the E Street Band.

All 18 band members are interviewed at least briefly, including Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, who revealed that she was diagnosed with early stage multiple myeloma in 2018.

That news explains Scialfa’s absence on most dates of this tour, and renders the duet between the singer and her husband on “Fire,” which is included in the film, all the more tender.

It also adds resonance to the theme of mortality that courses through these Springsteen shows, which muse on Springsteen’s advancing age and take their carpe diem cue from 2020’s Letter To You.

That album’s “Last Man Standing” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams” were written in response to the death of George Theis, the leader of Springsteen’s teenage rock and roll band, the Castiles.

The theme of mortality is presented in Road Diary in somewhat spooky interview segments with E Street’s two deceased band members, organist Danny Federici, who died in 2008, and sax player Clarence Clemons, who died three years later. And the passage of time is written on the faces of longtime band members Steven Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Roy Bittan, and Garry Tallent, and Springsteen himself.

The key to E Street longevity, Springsteen joked in a post-screening panel discussion at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, is that he runs a “benevolent dictatorship.” “It’s hard enough with two guys. Simon hates Garfunkel, Sam hates Dave, Hall hates Oates,” he said.

Road Diary reminiscences about the early days of E Street include memories of Springsteen’s first Philly area gig at Hollinger Field House on the West Chester University campus, opening for comedy duo Cheech and Chong and R&B group the Persuasions. Tallent says that a leather jacket he left backstage was stolen, and he sounds like he’s still interested in getting it back.

The movie’s title is something of a misnomer. It’s deeply concerned with the mechanics of the tour — how Springsteen chooses the set list and why, how band members react to his cues, from recent arrivals like singer Ada Dyer and percussionist Anthony Almonte to guitarist Nils Lofgren, who jokes that with only 39 years in, he’s still “the new guy” in the core band.

But the movie, which gives much screen time to Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau as the narrator, doesn’t function as a day-to-day account of life on tour. And with the exception of the news about Scialfa’s health, the movie doesn’t get into personal detail about Springsteen beyond what he chooses to share through his performance.

Thanks to Road Diary, we now know that Springsteen stays “lean and mean” by only eating one meal a day, and that Forbes “got that real wrong” when they reported that Springsteen is a billionaire.

But those things aren’t revealed in Road Diary. They came out during the press tour to promote the film, which is the fifth Springsteen movie directed by Zimny.

The two big issues that surrounded the tour are the outrage expressed by fans at the sky high cost of some tickets due to Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing, and Springsteen’s peptic ulcer disease that caused him to postpone many shows, including two Philadelphia dates. Neither topic comes up in Road Diary.

Zimny is a talented filmmaker, and the performance footage is often electrifying, starting with Letter To You’s “Ghosts,” in which Springsteen and Van Zandt make a shared vow that “by the end of the set, we leave no one alive.” It’s fun, too, to see Springsteen’s super enthusiastic and often young European followers interviewed, though curiously, no U.S. fans are included.

Springsteen has spoken about his reticence to capture the band’s early years on film, saying that he was “too superstitious,” too busy obsessing about living in the moment. Thankfully, some of those performances have survived, such as the Hammersmith Odeon, London ‘75 concert film and The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts.

Springsteen has called Zimny “the 19th member” of the E Street Band, and credited him with giving the group command of a “visual language” that they lacked for decades. While that means that every Springsteen project now arrives with a Zimny-directed making-of film that benefits from unparalleled access, it also feels like a state-sponsored promotional film.

That’s the case with Road Diary. It’s a must-see for fans who want to relive the majestic, moving, and often flat-out inspiring performances that Springsteen and the E Streeters are still delivering on a nightly basis, while also getting a backstage perspective. But it also comes across as an in-house production in which nothing is revealed without the final approval of the Boss.