Watch Bruce Springsteen Play His Hits For Howard Stern, Kamala Harris Rally
Bruce Springsteen had a busy day yesterday. Today marks the release of Road Diary, the new documentary about Springsteen’s recent tour with his E Street Band; it’s streaming on Hulu and Disney+ now. To promote that documentary, Springsteen sat for a long interview with Howard Stern yesterday. During his appearance, Springsteen played off-the-cuff versions of some of his biggest hits while talking about those songs.
Bruce Springsteen’s Howard Stern Show appearance featured appearances from his wife Patti Scialfa and with the rest of the E Street Band. As Rolling Stone reports, Springsteen talked a lot about how the songwriting process is “pure torture” and how he eventually figured out how to recognize when he’d written something good. On his own, Springsteen talked a bit about working on his wildly different albums Nebraska and Born In The USA and the same time and how the song “Born In The USA” was originally intended to be a downbeat acoustic number on Nebraska. To illustrate that point, he played bits of both “Atlantic City” and “Born In The USA.”
In another part of that interview, Springsteen and his E Street Band talked about their history and played a few old songs. Here’s “Spirit In The Night,” with Stern getting caught by the false ending:
And here’s “Brilliant Disguise”:
Springsteen has now spent the last 20 years actively campaigning for Democratic presidential candidates. After yesterday’s Howard Stern interview, Springsteen went to Atlanta for a massive Kamala Harris rally. The New York Times reports that 23,000 people came out to the rally, which was held at a high school football stadium and which marked Barack Obama’s first appearance alongside Harris. Tyler Perry, Spike Lee, and Samuel L. Jackson also spoke at the rally. Springsteen played a three-song solo-acoustic set, performing “The Promised Land,” “Land Of Hopes And Dreams,” and “Dancing In The Dark,” and he also accused Donald Trump of “running to be an American tyrant.” Here’s his mini-speech and performance: