Last week's late-September surprise from Thom Zimny and the Springsteen Center
October 6, 2026
Last Tuesday night, Thom Zimny delivered his first "From The Vault" presentation at The Bruce Springsteen Center For American Music's intimate, state-of-the-art 250-seat Powell Soundstage theater. While he's previously delivered many such presentations at Monmouth University's Pollak Theatre, this was his first one inside the Center's own on-site, Dolby Atmos-equipped theater, designed and built with much input from him, as well. Not surprisingly, Zimny delivered another evening of great, rare film/video clips from various phases of Springsteen's career, looking and sounding better than ever before.
"The Vault," as Zimny explained in response to an audience member's question early in the evening, actually refers to not just a single stockpile of goodies housed in a single vault somewhere, but instead the vast and still-growing collection of archival footage to be found and explored in various physical locations, including Bruce's private archival-storage facilities, Sony's archives, etc. At this point, it is also a very well-organized and cataloged collection, and as Springsteen's longtime film/video archivist and collaborator, Thom Zimny is able to access upon request anything that he might need or want for any upcoming projects or presentations.
Here's a breakdown of what those lucky enough to be in attendance last Tuesday night got to see and hear:
"Janey Needs A Shooter" (November 2019; Stone Hill Studio; Colts Neck, NJ) - ...simply an awesome, beautiful outtake from Zimny's Bruce Springsteen's Letter To You documentary film about the recording of the Letter To You album. This great complete performance of "Janey..." made the album, of course, but Zimny's entire filmed and edited sequence of Springsteen recording the track with the E Street Band ended up on the cutting-room floor. Getting to see it last week was quite a treat indeed, and a perfect way to begin this special presentation.
"Born in the U.S.A." (August 18, 1985; Giants Stadium; East Rutherford, NJ) - Bruce and the band opening one of their homecoming shows at the height of Bossmania, with a searing, powerful version of one of his most misinterpreted songs. How anyone could continue unintentionally missing (as opposed to willfully ignoring) the biting, bitter sarcasm in "Born in the U.S.A."'s chorus after seeing this archival clip on the Powell Soundstage's giant screen, with its booming house-soundboard-mix (but still more than clear enough) sound, as well as Bruce's face while singing both the verses and the chorus, is beyond me. This was pulled from the original pro-shot NFL Films video-footage (also serving as in-house video-feed at the time,) and then re-edited by Zimny. Jaw-dropping.
"Purple Rain" (April 23, 2016; Barclays Center; Brooklyn, NY) - This is the first time that Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band performed this song, in the wake of Prince's shocking, untimely death just two days earlier. At the time, Zimny quickly edited pro-shot footage of the performance, and it was released on Springsteen's official website, YouTube channel, etc., where it maintained a solid internet presence for quite some time. Nevertheless, I don't care how many times you've seen it previously, on whatever platform or home-viewing system to which you had access. There is nothing like seeing this performance on a big screen with Dolby Atmos sound. Prince forever... God bless.
"It's My Life" (December 31, 1975; Tower Theater; Upper Darby, PA) - ...single-camera, color footage from Barry Rebo. As relatively primitive as this stuff is, it also is our most reliable visual "time machine," as Zimny frequently puts it, to such a great show from the Born to Run period. And again, while I've seen it before, I've never seen it look and sound as good as last week.
"War" (June 28, 1988; Stadion Feijenoord; Rotterdam, The Netherlands) - This obviously got included to connect/compare/contrast to the version of "War" that opened every night of this year's Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour. Zimny himself said as much in presenting it, and correctly noted the extra level of power contained in this version, with Clarence Clemons so forcefully combined with The Horns of Love. As in this year's tour, "War" was immediately followed by "Born in the U.S.A.," but we didn't get to hear the second half of that particular one-two punch last week.
"Song For Orphans" (November 21, 2005; Sovereign Bank Arena [now CURE Insurance Arena;] Trenton, NJ) - ...one of Springsteen's earliest and best songs alluding to feelings of parental distance and alienation. This film-clip captures his first public performance of the song in over two decades, after playing it publicly just a handful of times in the early 1970s. Unlike the beautiful E Street Band version released on Letter To You, this is an equally beautiful minimalist version with just Bruce on guitar and harmonica, accompanied onstage for the first time ever by his usually-offstage keyboardist for the Devils & Dust Tour, the great and mysterious Alan Fitzgerald (who also previously performed similar offstage-keyboard duties for Van Halen, in addition to being an onstage keyboardist/bassist for Montrose, Night Ranger, and Sammy Hagar.) As someone who's long related to Springsteen's core theme of troubled father-son relationships, I find it particularly moving how much this song can relate simultaneously to the both the young son's perspective and the older, surviving son's perspective after the father's death. If anything, "Song For Orphans" feels even more powerful and moving to hear it as an older "orphaned" man when sung by another older "orphaned" man. So glad that this got included last week. Thanks, Thom!
"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" (October 11, 1975; Monmouth Arts Center [Count Basie Center for the Arts;] Red Bank, NJ) - another great single-camera "time machine" moment from Barry Rebo, this time in grainy black and white, capturing young James Brown/Sam and Dave acolyte Bruce Springsteen and his backing band demonstrating just how much they already had learned from their masters.
"Born to Run" (July 23, 1975; The Music Inn; Stockbridge, MA) - Talk about a Barry Rebo time-capsule! "Born to Run" performed in the middle of a relatively rare (for the period) outdoor show, as just another one of the new numbers from the upcoming album. In other words, a vintage baby-photo - in single-camera-color-video form - of "Born to Run." Good thing it was shot in color, too, to capture Bruce's mid-1970s shirt in all of its glory.
"The Detroit Medley" (December 31, 1975; Tower Theater; Upper Darby, PA) - At last week's presentation, Zimny mistakenly identified this joyfully delirious clip - another great color one-camera one courtesy of Barry Rebo - as having been filmed at The Roxy out in L.A. But Philly-area-based fans like yours truly (and my homegirl in the front row last week, Audrey Hunn) knew right away that it just had to be from that legendary Tower Theater show (just announced as Springsteen's official vinyl release for Record Store Day Black Friday 2026, BTW) with those E Street Band tuxes and that "Happy New Year 1976" countdown.
"Walking The Dog" (December 15, 1973; Nassau Community College; Garden City, NY) - More Barry Rebo gold, in grainy black-and-white again but this time shot with more than one camera (two, maybe?) and with what appeared to be a very primitive, possibly in-camera edit, to boot. It was rather amusing to hear master editor Thom Zimny stress to his audience that he had absolutely no involvement with the editing of this clip. The oldest clip of the evening, giving us Bruce and the original E Street Band lineup delivering a Rufus Thomas cover, accompanied by a young man - sporting some rather nerdy-looking spectacles, no less - guesting on blues harp: one John Lyon, aka "Southside Johnny."
"Twist and Shout"/"La Bamba"/"Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance?)" (August 18, 1985; Giants Stadium; East Rutherford, NJ) - Zimny chose to end this special evening with how those summer of '85 Born in the U.S.A. Tour shows usually drew to their respective ends. Drawing upon and re-editing more NFL Films video-footage from the first of six Giants Stadium shows, Zimny also wove in crowd-reaction shots found on videotape left inside an old, stored camera. The end result enhanced an already over-the-top celebratory encore moment from the ultimate summer of Bossmania. Sitting inside the Springsteen Center's Powell Soundstage with 249 fellow fans, and experiencing the sheer joy of all of those big images and exultant sounds - as well as witnessing onscreen a lot of our fellow fans' big '80s hair, clothes, etc. - was quite a blast from the past indeed, and the perfect ending to another great night with Thom Zimny.
Finally, some more good news for all of my fellow fans of special Zimny screenings like this one... In case you haven't heard already, he'll be returning to Monmouth University this weekend for another special "From The Vault" presentation, this time Chuck Berry-themed and featured as part of Saturday's Chuck Berry at 100 symposium/concert event, for which some tickets remain available. And next month he'll be teaming up again with Max Weinberg to screen and discuss more selections from "The Vault." Stay tuned for more info coming soon. (Oh, and Springsteen Center Director Eileen Chapman also wants us to know that moving forward, she expects such Zimny events to be announced a bit more in advance. Some unforeseen behind-the-scenes circumstances led to last Tuesday's event being announced with less notice than originally intended, but Chapman and her team are already hard at work to prevent anything like that from happening again.)
