“We were young, we were kids,” Springsteen said at a public screening last week in New Jersey. Zimny described how Springsteen, now 72, was juiced when he was first shown the concert footage, and quickly sang along with his 30-year-old self on the screen. The film won't be available on streaming services until next year audio is available for streaming on Friday. The “No Nukes” film is on sale as a DVD or Blu-Ray disc, in separate packages with audio CDs of the music. With Clemons and organist Danny Federici now dead, the band's not the same.
Springsteen leans on him, literally and figuratively. The film also illustrates how vital Clarence Clemons was to the show: catch how he and Springsteen make eye contact during “Rosalita,” launching an extended choreography. It was still a relatively new song in 1979, and the band attacks it on “No Nukes” with a double-time ferocity. That's evident when they play “Born to Run.” Decades into the song's existence, its appearance in concert is now a karaoke-like ritual - the lights go up, everyone sings along. “It's an amazing thing, with tempos that are off the charts.” “After waiting 40 years for this, it does not disappoint,” he said. Its emergence is a treat for the Backstreets editor, too: He didn't see Springsteen live until the “Born in the USA” tour five years later. Rabid fans were always aware this footage had to exist, somewhere, Phillips said. Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. The shows included sneak peeks of “Sherry Darling” from “The River” and the upcoming album's title cut, and a duet with Browne on “Stay.” Zimny kept to the running list of the shows, held on back-to-back nights (including Springsteen's 30th birthday), and including some different encores - the “Detroit medley” of covers one night, a performance of Buddy Holly's “Rave On” another. Still, there are imperfections: images of Steve Van Zandt's solo on “Jungleland” are missing, perhaps because they were reloading cameras. Unlike much of the surviving footage of Springsteen from those days, Zimny was working with quality film, shot by a crew that could provide multiple angles. “It was something that I did because I missed the band so much,” Zimny said. He turned it into the film that is being released now partly as a pandemic project. Mostly, the footage remained locked away in a vault until Zimny was given access. So does a recording Springsteen's first show in London, at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975.Ī couple of Springsteen's performances appeared on the “No Nukes” documentary and album. Portions of a Houston show, taken for an arena's in-house use, survive. One show in Phoenix turns up on YouTube, recorded by his record company for a commercial to promote Springsteen in parts of the country where he wasn't well known yet.
There actually wasn't much incentive for filming shows in the pre-MTV, pre-YouTube days, said Chris Phillips, editor and publisher of Backstreets, the website for Springsteen news, With no real outlet on television or the movies, “you were just playing rock ‘n’ roll,” he said.Īs a result, footage of more than snippets of Springsteen onstage then are relatively rare, he said. Back in 1979, the “No Nukes” concert escaped the film phobia because a crew was on hand to make a documentary on the benefit for alternatives to nuclear energy. It's different now all of Springsteen's shows are filmed. “I don't want to see what I'm doing, because it might change what I'm doing,” he said recently, “and what I'm doing is working for me and it's working for the audience.” Springsteen explains that superstition led him to keep cameras away in those days, something about a musician not wanting to look too closely at his bag of tricks. “The sheer force of E Street at this point was amazing to see.” “You see them explode onscreen,” he said. When filmmaker Thom Zimny first reviewed the footage, it was without sound, and he could still tell something special was happening. Little wonder, then, to see them burst onto the stage with a roaring version of “Prove it All Night.” That's exactly what they intended to do. Sharing a bill with artists like Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and Bonnie Raitt, they burned to show peers what they could do. Their typical four-hour show was condensed into 90 minutes. They'd been off the road in 1979, recording “The River,” and are thrilled to be before an audience again. It's found money.īefore a friendly crowd at New York's Madison Square Garden, Springsteen and his gang of Jersey toughs crackle with pent-up energy. That makes this week's release of a 90-minute film that shows them performing at the “No Nukes” benefit concerts in September 1979 significant for fans and music historians.
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