He takes the time to personally welcome each member of the film crew before making a joke about a reporter who mistook him for “Springstein” to lighten the mood. He was often introduced as “Bruce Springsprong” by a local radio DJ in Belfast, which makes me think of him.
“Really?” he chuckles. “Well, worse has been said about me.”
We’ve actually been informed beforehand that he dislikes the moniker “The Boss,” which was first used during his early days with The E Street Band, when he was in charge of gathering and allocating the proceeds after it.
He said to Creem magazine in 1980 that he hated being dubbed “Boss.” “I always did, right from the start. Bosses irritate me. Being referred to as the boss bothers me.
Road Diary, a new Disney+ video that follows the process of organizing Springsteen’s first tour since the epidemic, omits the term noticeably. It includes footage of his band “shaking off the cobwebs” after six years apart as well as handwritten notebooks.
Sometimes the preparations are not as rigorous as you might think.
After Springsteen stops rehearsals, his guitarist and longtime buddy Steve Van Zandt laments, “It’s all a little bit casual.”
Springsteen responds, “There’s a certain percentage [of songs] that we’re going to [screw] up anyway.”
