Bruce Springsteen has made a surprise appearance at the London screening of a new documentary.
Released in 1978, ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’ is one of Bruce Springsteen’s most enduring albums. Set for an extensive re-issue this year, the album comes backed with a new documentary.
Containing rare and unseen footage, ‘The Promise: The Making Of ‘The Darkness On The Edge Of Town’ is a wonderful evocation of a particular moment in the career of The Boss.
Given a British premiere at BFI Southbank, fans were left stunned when Bruce Springsteen appeared to take part in a new Q&A. Standing alongside manager Jon Landau and the film’s director Thom Zimny, the singer revealed some secrets about the construction of the influential album.
Asked about the unseen footage, Bruce Springsteen revealed an unlikely source. “The guy who shot all the footage was the kid in the neighbourhood who had the camera. He wanted to be a film maker at some point. It wasn’t going to go anywhere so we weren’t worried about it,” he explained.
“He’d come up the studio with his video camera and he was easy to ignore. Then he sat on it for 30 years. He was good about it he said ‘I don’t know is it mine or yours?’ I paid him for that so I guess we sorted that out, but it was good of him not to do anything for 30 years!”
The initial sessions for ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’ resulted in a batch of some 70 songs. “The lack of process was interesting. We didn’t know how to make records, we were adverse to professionalism… I was so full of doubt that the only way I knew to get to something done was to slog away for hours and hours,” he recalled.
“We did think hard about what we were doing. If we didn’t have something I could smell it in the air. We were making a record of the times… We were sniffing out the times.”
‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’ is due to be released on November 15th.
