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 Prettiwas 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.”
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,” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town”) 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.
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, okay, “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 and step 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.
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.,” re-contextualized 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, “Okay, 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, re-contextualized 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.
I was at opening night, which was the first time you played “Streets of Minneapolis” with a band. It really made me think of Neil Young’s “Ohio.” In both instances, the government killed its own citizens, and a song came out immediately that called out the President by name, fearlessly.
Yeah, it was very much a child of “Ohio.” And it was a song that I wrote only for that moment. I didn’t know what its future might hold. It was written just for that specific moment. And I got good advice from Tom Morello when I was frightened that I had gotten too high on the soapbox. He gave me that classic line that said, “Subtlety is wonderful, but sometimes you have to kick them in the teeth.” I realized, “Okay, this is that moment.” And that’s what that song does.
Are you releasing the movie in segments now timed to the midterms?
Well, it wasn’t specifically planned to fall into the midterms, but if it does, that’s great. Really, we just had Thom [Zimny] do the first seven songs to see what we had. I didn’t know what the show was like on film. He basically cut, edited, and we got the sound good on the first seven pieces. When I saw it, I said, “This has got to come out now.”
I can’t wait another three, four months for the rest of the concert to be edited and have it finished. The whole thing, the pop-up tour, was about immediacy and being in this moment, providing something that I felt an audience, my audience, could use in this moment.
And so as soon as I saw it, I said, “This comes out now.” Everybody said, “Well, what do we do with the rest?” I said, “Well, we’ll serialize it is what we’ll do.” And basically that’s what we’re going to do. You’ll be getting seven songs or so in four different compartments, and at the end of the day, you’ll have the whole show.
I think it has more impact that way. The first seven songs, to my eye, have a tremendous amount of impact because it’s only 40 minutes. And anybody can spare that 40 minutes to get an idea of what we were trying [to do]. It’s 40 minutes, and it says everything we wanted to say.
The setlist didn’t really change from night to night. Did your experience on Broadway change the way you approached putting a show together?
Nope. It was simply, once we found that setlist, it was not going to be something where I threw in “Darlington County” or something else there. It just wouldn’t have made sense. That setlist was its own novel, for better or for worse. The minute we stumbled on it, with the exception of… I think we added “Clampdown” along the way. But once we found that setlist, we stuck with it the whole way. It was fun because it does get deeper as you go. The Philadelphia show that we were lucky enough to film was just one of the highlights of the tour.
A lot of fans presumed you’d film the big stadium show in D.C. Why did you go with Philadelphia?
Well, we didn’t film D.C. because we wanted to film two nights that could be similar and intercut. So, if I’m correct, we filmed Boston and Philly, and if I’m right, we only use Philly. So that was the reason. D.C. was a one-off and it was a great show outside in that ballpark. We had so many good shows on this tour. And the band was just ripping and roaring at the end, by the time we got towards the end. So when we hit Philly, Philly just exploded. It was wonderful.
I’m sure you realized that by doing a tour like this, despite everything you’ve done and said before, you’d lose some fans who support Trump. Some surely said, “This is the last straw for me. I’m out.” But if the alternative is staying quiet, I’d imagine you feel it’s worth that cost.
Well, I’m old now and I do what I want to do, which I’ve actually always done my entire life. I always made the records I wanted to make and then went out and found the audience for them. So it was the same thing with this show. This was the show I wanted to make, the story I wanted to tell. I went out to find its audience, and I’m sure there were people, and I’ve read things where people were vehement about the content of the show, and that’s just the way the chips fall. And that’s okay with me right now.
You’re playing Tom Morello’s show in D.C. next month. Are you doing anything else before the midterms, or will that be your only appearance?
Only appearance. Tom put it on, asked me if I’d do it after all he’d done for me on this tour, where he was really a significant part of the band. I said, “Yeah, man, I’ll be there.” We’re just going to play a few songs together, and I’ll see what else is going on.
When we spoke last year, you told me you had a new solo album totally finished. What’s your plan for that now?
Well, I’m currently working on a couple of records. I did finish one, and it is done. I’m in the process of working on this other one, which, because of the nature of the material, felt like it should come out first. So that’s the situation I’m in. I’m trying to finish that up, and I’d like to release that first. And then this other record that I made, which is not time-relevant, it can come out at any time and it’ll work.
Is that a solo record or an E Street record?
It’s a surprise. [Laughs.]
Fair enough. Do you know when that will come out, when the surprise will reveal itself?
I do not right now. Hopefully sooner than later, of course.
Do you miss touring? Do you feel the itch to get back out there?
Well, we toured quite a bit, and we toured the previous spring. We toured this spring. And these days that’s what I like to do. I would like to go out and do 20, 30 shows. I don’t imagine a 140-show E Street tour will happen again. It’s just time is too short right now. But I do imagine a good series of simply shorter tours where we touch different places at different times. And the band is playing so well. In my opinion, if you saw this show, you saw one of the best shows we’ve ever done. The band is playing so well that we have a happy life there, and that’ll continue.
There’s a vocal contingent of fans who miss the more freewheeling shows where you took signs and made big changes from night to night. Might you do a tour like that again in the future?
I don’t know. I don’t want to make any promises. I just don’t know what I’m going to do next or what’s going to motivate me to go a certain way. Shows like that might come up, or I might come up with something completely or somewhat different, so I can’t really say.
Getting back to politics to wrap up here, there seems to be a civil war brewing in the Democratic Party between the DSA crowd and the more traditional wing of the party. Do you worry that’ll get ugly and complicate the task of defeating Vance or whoever the Republicans nominate in 2028?
Well, of course that’s a concern. There’s candidates out there that I like. I don’t really have a whole lot to say about it right now. And of course, obviously they want to take back the House and, if God was willing, the Senate, and make the last two years of Trump’s term the most miserable years of his life, if that was possible. And that’s what I’d like to see happen.
I’m feeling optimistic. Trump’s approval rating is at a record low. I think the country is finally sick of this shit.
I believe that’s true.
So you feeling hopeful that maybe in 2028 and beyond, America will turn the corner and get away from all this?
I’m always hopeful.
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