Bruce Springsteen Is Less ‘Obsessive’ About This One Element of His Career Than He Was 40 Years Ago

The Boss still puts on a great show — but it comes together a little differently these days.

In the new documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which premiered Oct. 25, Bruce Springsteen and his storied band give viewers a look inside their first tour since 2016. During the film, the members of the band and Springsteen’s crew reflect on how this tour was different from his last — and how the 75-year-old has become less “obsessive” with time.

Springsteen’s manager and producer Jon Landau shares in the doc that rehearsals for the tour were “on the short side,” which surprised him. After about two hours of work, Springsteen would call it, but, in Landau’s opinion, “the band needed rehearsal.”

So, Steven Van Zandt — E Street Band guitarist and The Sopranos star — took an “active hand.” Landau explains, “The band started something I don’t think they’ve ever done, which is rehearse without Bruce.”

“In the ‘70s, Bruce, the band and myself were obsessive,” Landau, 77, says. He speaks about Springsteen’s old process for soundchecks before a show. “He would have the band play continuously as if it was a loop, and he and the late Bruce Jackson would walk every row,” Landau remembers. Director Thom Zimny uses archival footage from the 1980s to show Springsteen and Jackson walking through all the seats as Landau describes. 

Garry Tallent, the E Street band’s bass player, agrees with Landau’s assessment of how Springsteen used to be. “Totally obsessive,” Tallent, 74, says. “I understand he, you know, cares and that’s good. But playing for four hours, the same eight bars? It’s insane.”

Now, Landau says, the soundchecks are a more typical “two-and-a-half minutes.” He attributes it to how much Springsteen believes in his band. “Bruce has tremendous confidence. He knows that these guys, they care,” he says. “I think he’s [thinking], ‘Well, I got the greatest band in the world, they’ll figure it out.’ ”

Van Zandt, meanwhile, helped the band “tighten up” before tour began. “What I don’t want to happen is the critics or the audience to look at us and say, ‘Well, yeah, it’s nice, but these old men are just going through the motions,’ ” the musician, 73, says in the doc. “I want to come out and blow their f—— minds.” Springsteen ended up making him the official music director for the tour. Van Zandt jokes, “You know, 40 years late, but fine.”

Director Zimny recently opened up to PEOPLE about how the intimate look at the tour came together. He first started working with Springsteen 24 years ago. 

“The conversation with Bruce has always been the same with the start of a project. It’s either Bruce or Jon [Landau] calling my cell and saying, you know, ‘Next Thursday, Friday and the following Monday, the band is gonna be rehearsing. We thought it’d be a good idea if you dropped by,’ ” he explained. “And I’ll say, ‘Okay, for filming?’ And they’ll say, ‘Yeah.’ ”

“It’s a fantastic gig, but what comes with that freedom and that trust is that I’m going to be invisible,” he explained of how he captures so many candid moments. “There’s no pre-planned discussion … It was all spontaneous and I just got a lot of time to talk about the band so they could flesh out some of the things that I shot and explain them.”

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is streaming now on Hulu and Disney+.