Bruce Springsteen on His New Concert Film: 'Our Purpose Was to Reclaim the Flag'

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At the start of this year, Bruce Springsteen had no immediate plans to take the E Street Band back on the road. They'd been touring heavily for the past three years, and it was time for an extended break. But seven days into the year, Renée Good was killed by an ICE agent while protesting in Minneapolis. Just 17 days later, Alex Pretti was fatally shot during a confrontation with two United States Customs and Border Protection officers.

Springsteen responded with the protest song " Streets of Minneapolis ," where he honored both Good and Pretti by name and pinned the blame for their deaths on "King Trump." But it didn't feel like enough. He knew he had to take his message across America.

The Land of Hope and Dreams Tour kicked off March 31 in Minneapolis. And if the "No Kings" banner slapped across the tour poster wasn't blunt enough, Springsteen made his stance clear before he played a note of music that first night. "The America that I love," he roared, "the America that I've written about for 50 years, that's been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration."

He delivered that speech verbatim and played a set of politically charged songs, including "Born in the U.S.A.," "Death to My Hometown," "Long Walk Home," and "Youngstown," at 20 shows over the next two months. And he bookended the set with two covers: Edwin Starr's "War" and Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom."

In-Depth Developments & Factual Context

When the tour wrapped May 30 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, directors Chris Hilson and Thom Zimny had cameras rolling for a concert film that Springsteen is releasing in increments on YouTube. The first seven songs ("War," "Born in the U.S.A.," "Death to My Hometown," "Clampdown," "No Surrender," "Darkness on the Edge of Town," and "Streets of Minneapolis") are available right now, titled Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour (Philadelphia Freedom Cut).

The day before it went live, Springsteen called up Rolling Stone to talk about the tour, the concert film, the political moment we're still living through, his next album, future concert runs, his thoughts on the midterms, and much more.

Where am I catching you? I'm in New Jersey. I just stepped out of the ocean.

Sounds great. Now, most big rock tours are planned about a year in advance. That wasn't the case with this one. Well, we had done something similar, though not quite as focused, in Europe the previous spring and early summer. And because of the content of the material and what the show was, I said, "I've got to do this in America at some point." And so we quickly booked 20 shows and decided to bring it to the States. That's basically what happened.

Industry Impact & Strategic Analysis

What were your goals going into these shows? Are you trying to change minds? Bring like-minded people together? Channel your indignation? I don't have any strict goals. Basically, I'm out there to perform that music and to provide its message. Minneapolis occurred, so I wrote "Streets of Minneapolis," and that fired the whole project, really, into being. So, OK, "We should go out and play this song then." And then I structured a set that basically took material I'd been writing over the past 50 years and, because of the structure of the set, it contemporized it all. That was the idea. It was the state of the nation for 2026.

During that little window of time between the announcement and the start of the tour, the war started in Iran. How did that change the tone of the show for you? Well, first I wondered how I was going to address that because I felt that was going to need to be addressed. And I sat around and … generally the country goes to war and people fall on the side of the home team. But I was trying to think, "Well, what's a way to address this that feels even-handed?" I remembered we did a version of "War" in 1985.

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And so I had this speech that you see at the top of the [film] where I recite a litany of things and then "peace over …" boom, "war!" And once we hit that, we knew that's how the show opens. I thought it was one of the greatest show openings we ever had.

"War" transitioned right into "Born in the U.S.A.," which was pretty incredible. It reclaimed "Born in the U.S.A.," recontextualized it so we could be clearly understood. There was no doubt about what it was about when it came after "War" and before "Death to My Hometown."

You've played "Born in the U.S.A." at so many shows in Europe over the past few years, but almost never in America. Did you avoid it here because even after all these years, a lot of Americans still don't get it? Yeah. It was a little dubious for me in the States, and I could never really sing it with the confidence that you need to sing something like that. While in Europe, for some reason…. we have a huge audience in Europe that is very, very interested in America, American ideas. They're deeply invested in the band. And it just always felt more natural over there and more understood.

But this time, and I forget how it exactly came to be placed in that spot, but I had it originally at the top of the set. It was the show opener because that said, "OK, this is the show where we cover ourselves in the flag. Our purpose is to reclaim the flag." And so it started the show until "War" came along, and then obviously they worked together pretty well.

You've played "Darkness on the Edge of Town" a lot over the years, but the words felt very different when they came after the Clash's "Clampdown" and "No Surrender." Yeah. And that's what should have happened to basically almost every song we played during the set. It was just slightly realigned, redefined, recontextualized into the moment. If we had a goal, that was the goal. And at the end of the night, you heard some sort of state of the nation. When you hear "Darkness" in that context, it had just a lot of different overtones. It's simply one of my greatest songs. It's apocalyptic, it's personally apocalyptic in nature. It was just powerful there.

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