When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band met again in a music room in New Jersey in 2023, the mood was a little different, according to Little Stevie.

“It took an extra minute because we don’t normally rehearse at all,” guitarist Steven Van Zandt told me during a conversation with Springsteen manager Jon Landau.

“We meet for two or three days to say hello to each other again.”

But this time, more than six years had passed since the group’s last tour.

And during that unusually long break from the road, during which the 75-year-old Bruce went deep into history with his hit bio show “Springsteen on Broadway” at the St. James and Barrymore Theater, a pandemic struck that almost ended New faces joined the fight.

“So we actually had to rehearse,” said Van Zandt, 73. “I don’t know what it was overall. Two weeks at most.”

While the E Street Band solved the problems, veteran documentary director Thom Zimny ​​​​and his cameras accompanied them to capture the exciting journey.

Landau, 77, remembers conversations about the form the doctor should take: “Bruce just said, ‘All right, so what’s our story?'”

But the story immediately became clear: A popular, five-decade-old band with several members in their 70s returns triumphantly and shows the world that they’ve still got it. The glory days are right now.

“We were gone for six or seven years and people didn’t know what to expect from us,” Stevie said.

“Everyone gets a little older, you know. And it was up to us to go out and say, ‘Hey, we’re not just getting older – we’re getting better, okay?’ And yeah, we’re closer to the end than the beginning, but we’re still very productive here.”

This early training would mark the start of a new world tour – some 130 shows lasting through the summer of 2025 – an experience chronicled in the excellent new film “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” out on March 25. Coming to Hulu in October.

I saw the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last month and wasn’t expecting to get as emotional as I did, gulp. But that’s exactly what comes to mind as he explores the E Street Band’s legendary past and future.

“He made a number of films in which Bruce was at the forefront,” said Landau about their years-long film collaboration. “But he wanted this to really tell the story of the band in a way he hadn’t told it yet.”

A unique part of the current tour is a tighter-than-usual setlist that Bruce chose around the Letter To You album, a move that Van Zandt has supported from the start.

“I was 100% there,” he said.

“(Bruce) came in with this set, I swear to you, almost immediately, the first day of rehearsal, he just came in with it. And I don’t think we’ve changed much about that.”

Stevie says that, like “Springsteen on Broadway,” this tour revolves around the theme of “mortality” – balanced by “vitality” – and that fans “responded to the extra bit of focused emotion in this show.”

“The intensity, I think, really surprised people in a positive way.”

Landau says Bruce has the power to take people spiritually off the stage.

“He does that every night,” he said. “That is his goal. And it may not change everyone’s life, but I guarantee you it’s five, 10, 20, 30 people.”

All those die-hards who had been disadvantaged for six years were particularly rabid this time – especially in Western Europe.

“When you come to Italy and Spain, the emotions are a little more pronounced,” Van Zandt said.

“And they want your sleeves and the jacket that goes with it!”