October 1, 2024
"Springsteen on Screen: From the Vault with Thom Zimny," last Saturday night's presentation by The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, was announced originally as a "special event celebrating Bruce Springsteen’s 75th birthday," taking place inside Monmouth University's Pollak Theatre. “We look forward to another memorable evening with Thom Zimny as he shares with us rare and intimate glimpses into the life of Bruce Springsteen,” said the Springsteen Archives' Director, Eileen Chapman. “Thom’s films will show the history of Bruce’s prolific career and will give us an intimate look into the mind that created such amazing music.”
All of that definitely happened on Saturday night, but about a week beforehand, a special guest was announced and added to the mix, someone who greatly enhanced and expanded the focus of the event: Mighty Max Weinberg, longtime and hard-working E Street Band drummer for "the hardest-working white man in show-business." Weinberg was engaged in a riveting conversation with Zimny throughout the evening, accompanying each treasure from the vault with fascinating and often hilarious insights and anecdotes. Thom also worked with Max in selecting and preparing a set of video-segments that, of course, featured Bruce Springsteen rehearsing, recording, and performing with the E Street Band during historic periods of their 50+ years together, but simultaneously allowed Weinberg and Zimny to place a special extra spotlight on the work of that bespectacled guy behind the drum-kit.
Even before Max and Thom got started, the Archives' Executive Director Robert Santelli had some exciting stuff of his own to share with the audience. Introducing the evening, Santelli noted that what we were about to see was "a peek of what's to come on a pretty regular basis, when we have our new building come April 2026." He also announced that in late winter/early spring of next year, the Archives will be launching its charter-membership program, offering fans a very special opportunity to support the Archives while receiving some special perks/benefits as charter members. (Stay tuned for more details as they emerge.)
Once "The Max and Thom Show" began onstage at the Pollak, Max Weinberg quickly began proving yet again why he remains one of Thom Zimny's favorite interview subjects. Max is one of the E Street Band's most articulate and insightful members, and over the years he's gathered a ton of great stories to tell. (Not surprisingly, The Mighty One also delivered some great interview footage in Zimny's soon-to-be-released Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, but more on that later, as October 25th draws closer.) He got a few relatively minor details wrong on Saturday night, but overall Max's memory remains stellar, and the oral history he provided in his running commentary was invaluable. Another piece of exciting news shared onstage was Max's revelation that through the decades he's been keeping his own detailed diary of his various experiences and encounters. (Somebody get that man a publishing deal NOW!)
Just a few of the key highlights:
Max stating that, despite the fact that "I didn't even play on it," The Wild, The Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle is his favorite album by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (He also explained how sometimes he'll throw in a bit of Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez's and/or Ernest "Boom" Carter's style during his drumming - and, just as important, sometimes he won't - in homage to and out of respect for the two E Street Band drummers who preceded him.)
Max speaking at length about how much he learned from both Bruce and Jon Landau about great soul drumming by the likes of Al Jackson, Jr. and Roger Hawkins
Max revealing that sometimes during a concert, while grabbing some water to drink and/or to cool off a bit by Max's drum-riser, Bruce will engage in a bit of conversation with him. One night, in the midst of the "Jungleland" sax-solo break, Bruce marvelled to Max, just like any fan certainly would, that the song is a "goddamned masterpiece."
The story of Bruce actually genuflecting before the late, great Levon Helm when Max introduced Bruce to Helm backstage in 1988
Thom Zimny's sweet story of keeping the letter of thanks that he received from Max shortly after the completion of the Emmy-winning Live in New York City film. Onstage on Saturday night, Max likened Zimny to being another "member of the E Street Band."
It also was great to hear Max give not one but two shout-outs to music writer Dave Marsh for so strongly encouraging and supporting Max in writing The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers, the excellent interview book that Weinberg wrote in collaboration with Santelli back in the 1980s. It's so important, especially to the newer generations of Springsteen fans, to keep from being forgotten the importance and legacy of a figure like Marsh, who's now retired, as well as reminding them to check out books like The Big Beat, which remains essential reading.
As for the video segments presented on the big screen (and dutifully following Zimny's explicit instructions to "play it loud,") once again Thom Zimny (with the collaboration and approval of Bruce Springsteen himself, no doubt) delivered the goods. To his credit, over the years that he's been doing this kind of thing at Monmouth University and other locations, Thom has continued to make each of his various public dives into the vault special and unique. This time around, in addition to the enhanced focus on Max's work with the E Street Band, the "time machine" (to use Thom's own terminology) took us almost exclusively to the mid-1970s, with the lone exception being a magic Cadillac ride to The Emerald Isle in the midst of the "Bossmania" that was the Born in the U.S.A. Tour. Every video segment has been restored/remixed/remastered to the best-possible image and sound quality. That noted, while each of the presented segments are true gems from an archival standpoint, none of them can rival the image and sound quality of Zimny's officially released archival work like Hammersmith Odeon, London '75, The River Tour, Tempe, AZ, 1980, and The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts. But with that noted, who cares when the music's still this good and the footage is still this precious?
Here, then, in closing, is the complete "setlist" of Saturday night's audio-visual treats:
"Then She Kissed Me" - cover of The Crystals' classic from the August 1975 stand at The Bottom Line in New York City (single-camera, color videotape recording)
"Jungleland" - single-camera, black-and-white "fly-on-the-wall" rehearsal/recording video from 914 Sound Studios in 1974 or early 1975 (before Jon Landau joined the Born to Run production team and wisely suggested moving the recording sessions to the superior Record Plant studio in Manhattan) - some absolutely riveting evidence of the stress and strain involved in these recording sessions, especially in the less-than-state-of-the-art environment that was 914, punctuated by Bruce staring straight into the camera and sternly saying to documentarian Barry Rebo, "Barry, you can't do this while I'm doing this," just before Rebo switches off his camera
"When You Dance" - single-camera, color videotape recording from the Summer 1976 rehearsals held at Springsteen's former home in Holmdel, NJ - Some of this rehearsal footage, though none of what was screened on Saturday night, was included in the film/video elements of the box-set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story. Max Weinberg revealed that he gave to Thom Zimny his own personal cassette-recorded audio of these daily summer rehearsal sessions, held during the "lawsuit period" that legally prohibited Springsteen from holding any official recording sessions. He described his cassette recordings as containing "an album's worth" of reggae covers. "When You Dance" also holds a special place in Weinberg's heart, since the dancing young woman who inspired Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Van Zandt to write the song went on to become the woman to whom Max has been married for over forty years.
"Raise Your Hand" - single-camera, color videotape recording, also from the Summer 1976 rehearsals held at Springsteen's former home in Holmdel, NJ - covering the Eddie Floyd classic, which of course became a powerful setlist addition at shows beginning in '76
"Cadillac Ranch" - live in concert at Slane Castle, Ireland on June 1, 1985 - multi-camera, color videotape footage, presumably derived from the same video-feed displayed onscreen at the concert itself; Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band in their Born-in-the-U.S.A.-Tour-period prime; a brief portion of this video footage (without any of its audio, of course) can be seen in the "Born to Run" live music-video released to promote and celebrate the Live/1975-85 box-set.
"Carol" - single-camera black-and-white videotape recording (incomplete, with various video/audio drops and cuts during the performance;) high-energy, rockin' cover of the Chuck Berry classic from an October 11, 1975 concert at what is now the Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, NJ
"Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" - also from the August 1975 stand at The Bottom Line in New York City (single-camera, color videotape recording) - featuring Bruce, during the band intros, playfully "punishing" Max in the aftermath of a recent onstage flub (which Max described in great detail on Saturday night just before this final video was played) by simply introducing The Mighty One with the tag-line, "He's getting there."
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