Something to watch tonight: Friday 8 November

Music double-feature featuring Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple (Teck, 2024) and Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Zimny, 2024)

When I thought about covering these two new (and related) music documentaries, I assumed I would be featuring the Springsteen and that the Van Zandt was going to be a bit more of a sideshow.

Then I watched them both back to back last night and I realised my mistake. Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple (the name comes from his band the Disciples of Soul rather than any spiritual inclinations) is a heavyweight film about one of the most interesting people in the music business – someone whose influence has been far greater than his profile. He also seems like one of the nicest people in the world.

That’s not to say that the new Springsteen (Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band) isn’t good, but it dishes out its insights sparingly and feels like one for the fans – at least those fans that don’t already know this story in fine detail already.

Van Zandt and Springsteen go way back. They were in different teenage bands often on the same bills but while Bruce was putting together the early versions of the E Street Band, Steve joined a road crew (literally fixing roads not roadying for bands) and then headed off on an oldies tour with the Dovells where he paid his dues and learnt some showmanship from greats like Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In the film he talks about how angry those guys were that the British Invasion had effectively put them out to pasture when they should have been at the peak of their powers. And that there wouldn’t have even been a British Invasion if it hadn’t been for those pioneers.

Anyway, Van Zandt returned to New Jersey and hooked up again with Springsteen who was struggling to put the finishing touches to Born to Run. Van Zandt completely rearranged “10th Avenue Freeze-Out” and one of the great partnerships in rock and roll was (re)born. (In Road Diary, Van Zandt jokes that Springsteen recently officially made him music director for the tour “about 40 years too late!”)

I shouldn’t go into any more detail here because the film is a packed two and a half hours and you should just find a way to see it, but I do want to touch on the extraordinary achievement that was the Sun City project. Van Zandt had wanted to write something about the parallels between apartheid South Africa and Native Americans but the success of Live Aid and We Are the World prompted him and hip hop producer Arthur Baker to think even bigger.

Artists United Against Apartheid made good use of the white superstars of the time (Springsteen, Bono, etc.) but also prioritised the participation of black artists like Run-DMC, Gil Scott-Heron and Miles Davis. I bought that album in 1985 and must still have it around here somewhere.

Watching the videos (shot by Jonathan Demme) for Sun City and thinking about the star-studded Amnesty International tours in the 80s, I found myself wondering whether today’s pop stars playing two songs at a political rally or sending a single message to their fans on social media is really doing enough in these tough times. Van Zandt’s work helped free Nelson Mandela. What are Taylor Swift’s plans for ongoing resistance to the incoming government, I wonder.

There are plenty of fun stories – choosing Little Richard as his marriage celebrant is a good one – and, if you are at all interested in the music of the era, you’ll enjoy spending time in Van Zandt’s company.

As I mentioned before, he also features in Thom Zimny’s film about the E Street Band’s first tour in six years, Road Diary. We all know that Springsteen never misses an opportunity to tell you stuff – the Springsteen on Broadway show one Netflix is well worth a look – but he restricts himself to a few voiceovers and lets the band speak for themselves for a change.

They’re all amazed that they’ve been on this ride together for so long and there’s plenty of opportunity taken to remember the fallen ones – Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici – as well as introduce us to some of the happy new members.

As we discovered in the film of the making of Springsteen’s last album, Letter to You, mortality is much on the Boss’s mind these days and the film points out how he structures the setlist for the 2023 tour in order to make some points on that subject, avoiding the usual improvisatory programming or audience requests that have been a feature of past tours.

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Where to watch Steve Van Zandt: Disciple