First he conquered Broadway, now The Boss takes on Netflix

If you didn’t get to pay thousands of dollars to see Bruce Springsteen in action at the Walter Kerr Theatre, at least Netflix is about to broadcast one of those incredible performances, writes Ed Power.

Bruce Springsteen turns 70 next year and up close his features have the quality of carved granite, as if he has just stepped down from rock’n’roll’s own Mount Rushmore.

He has taken eager ownership of the Springsteen myth lately, first with his 2016 autobiography Born To Run and then with its spiritual successor, his one-man Broadway show which concludes its 14 month residency this week.

Springsteen on Broadway is staged in the 975-capacity Walter Kerr Theatre, with tickets for the five night a week run trading hands for upwards of $6,500. Fans who lacked the funds for a trip to Manhattan can now experience the performance in the form of a Netflix concert movie from director Thom Zimny.

At the outset it is important to acknowledge what Springsteen on Broadway is and what it isn’t. It is a stage show – scripted, hand-crafted and delivered in much the same fashion every night. So it isn’t Springsteen pulling up a stool and sharing anecdotes off the cuff. Folksiness is evidently an anathema to American rock’s great storyteller.

But still, he has stories to tell and he does so with practiced dazzle. With Zimny zoomed in tightly on the singer’s face – you hear the audience but mostly don’t see it – Springsteen starts with his childhood in New Jersey, his love affair from age seven with rock ’n roll and his difficult relationship with his barfly father.

Here, the Irish viewer might blanch as Springsteen describes how in North Jersey you could spot the “Irish” straight away because the booze goes “straight to their faces” in a giveaway flush (thanks Bruce).

It get a little navel-gazing and needless to say those who could reel off at most half a dozen Springsteen songs may find their enthusiasm wilting (and still another 90 minutes to go).

Yet to his credit he lightens the soul-baring with self-deprecating asides. Throughout the film, Springsteen comes across as a little puffed up and self-serious. But also in on the joke and able to appreciate the tragicomic aspects of fame.

“I’ve never seen the inside of a factory, and yet it’s all I’ve ever written about,” he says, strumming the guitar.

Standing before you is a man who has become wildly and absurdly successful writing about something of which he has had absolutely no personal experience. I made it all up! That’s how good I am

There are songs too – performed on acoustic guitar and piano. These follow the chronology of his life rather than his career, starting with ‘Growin’ Up’ (from 1972’s Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ) and ‘My Hometown’ (1984’s Born In the USA).

And he gets political introducing ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’, taking aim at “those in the highest offices of our land who want to speak to our darkest angels, who want to call up the ugliest and the most divisive ghosts of America’s past”. Who could he be talking about?

Springsteen is an accomplished spinner of yarns but not much of an actor, and when the evening leans into its scriptedness if can feel as if he’s reciting lines from a teleprompter (which he isn’t). Nonetheless, the story he has to tell his fascinating, tracing his escape from a broken home and his non-ironic pursuit of the rock’n’roll dream.

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One thing Springsteen On Broadway doesn’t accomplish is conjure the sensation of being in the front row of the theatre.

Zimny keeps the focus on Springsteen throughout, and starts with the performance already underway so that you don’t see the singer walk from the wings or hear the crowd’s whoops. Instead the sense is of gazing straight into Springsteen’s soul and glimpsing the turmoil, the ambition and the romantic yearning that has made him one of rock’s icons.

Springsteen on Broadway is available on Netflix from today