Bruce Springsteen Talks ‘The River’ Tour & New Album Plans
The forthcoming record is “more of a solo project,” Springsteen tells E Street Radio.
Bruce Springsteen won’t be retiring anytime soon. As if a box set, Saturday Night Live appearance and full tour weren’t enough to do, the musician announced Wednesday morning (Dec. 9) that he has plans to release a new solo album.
“The project I’ve been working on is more of a solo project,” he told E Street Radio. “It wasn’t a project I was going to probably take the band out on. So I said, ‘Gee, that’s going to push the band playing again until a ways in the future.’ It’ll be nice to get some playing in so you don’t wind up being two or three years between E Street tours. This will give us a chance to get out there and stretch our muscles a little bit.”
Springsteen admitted at first he had no plans to tour after releasing the box set, but “missed playing with the guys” and “playing, period.”
The last time Springsteen played The River from top to bottom was at Madison Square Garden in 2009, and now he’s planning to do it again.
“My recollection was that it was a very good night of music when we played it at the Garden,” he said. “It’s something that we haven’t done, something unique for the fans.”
After giving it some thought, he thought the time was right to hit the road. “Then we felt, ‘Maybe we should do a show just to raise the flag and have some fun and make it a little more exciting,” he said. “I said, ‘OK, maybe we’ll do a show in New York.’ Then that went quick to, ‘Maybe we should do a couple of shows.’ Then it turns into, ‘Maybe we should do a small series of shows, basically one-nighters, with maybe a little bit around the country.'”
Although he concedes that the decision to play The River from beginning to end will take most of the “guessing out of the evening,” he said he will find room to work some other material into the set.
“Maybe we’ll make up for some of that in the encores. We plan on picking out some of the best of our outtakes for the end of the show, and there will obviously be some fan favorites,” he said. “I don’t know myself how it will play out. It should be interesting and a lot of fun for the fans.
“If you were ever curious to hear it played in concert, this is a shot for you to hear it,” he said.