During the fall we have been looking fo an editor that can help us cut the trailer we are giong to make. We had some problems when the man we had choosen to work with had to take on other assignments, so we’ve spent a lot of time trying to find someone to replace him. Things are looking brighter on that front, so we hope we can finish the trailer in January-February.

Another nice Christmas present was the announcement that the first ever Swedish Springsteen convention is going to take place in RÃ¥gsveds Folkets hus, Stockholm on February 19th 2005.

Read more about the upcoming convention here.
We hope be there to film the event, talk to the fans and enjoy ourselves. But now we take a well deserved Christmas break!

The recent days have been hectic, and much has happened. First, Clarence Clemons came to Sweden on tour with his own band, The Temple of Soul. We saw his show at Nalen, Stockholm on August 2. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get an interview with him for our film, but we hope that there will be other chances. It was a great show and the Big Man gave us a great rockin’ that night.

Today there’s also been official that Bruce Springsteen is going on tour with the E Street band. He is going to perform alongside R.E.M, John Fogarty and Bright Eyes on five US shows in October. The aim for the Vote for Change-tour is to change the administration i Washington at the elections in November. Read more about the tour at Backstreets, and MoveOn Pac.

We are not yet certain if we’re going to America to follow the tour and film, it depends on if we can get financing for the trip. But our work continue, we’re preparing to start editing and there’s a lot of work going on with collecting material and pictures for our documentary.

The sun is shining, and summer is not far away, but instead of enjoying the weather, we’ve been sitting inside watching hours after hours of interview material.

In order to organize the material we’re going through it, carefully writing down what people say. It’s really hard work, it makes your eyes square and your mind too, but it needs to be done. And now there’s only a few tapes left, so we’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

There’s also another nice surprise, Clarence Clemons is coming to town. The Big Man is bringing his band, The Temple of Soul on a swedish tour in July-August. There will be three performances and we plan to see the show in Stockholm. Hopefully we will also get a chance to interview Mr Clemons. Read more at clarenceclemons.com.

Apart from that we’re also making preparations for the 10-minute teaser we’re going to make. We’ll start editing sometime in August or early September.

Yesterday we met journalist Mats Bråstedt at Expressen. He saw his first Springsteen concert in November 1975 and he has seen every show Bruce has played in Sweden except the one at Hovet in 1981.

Mats thinks Bruce has matured as a songwriter, from his early years when the songs were almost overflowing with words. “Today he seems to weigh every word carefully before using it, he is more minimalistic.”

One thing Mats really admire, is the fact that Bruce still, after over 30 years of playing, can find the joy on stage. “It would be easy to say that the best show I’ve seen was the one at Konserthuset in 1975. But something happened at Ullevi in 2003 that was really special. Bruce was so playful, you could really see how he and the band enjoyed themselves. They don’t need to do this for the money, they do it because they love to share the music with an audience”, Mats told us.

He also shared one of his personal memories with us. When he was in Los Angeles in the late nineties he happened to be staying at the same hotel as Springsteen. One day he came across Bruce in the garage, where he was teaching Patti Scialfa to ride a motorbike. “They were both a bit tipsy and very giggly and Patti had some difficulty managing the bike, so it was lucky they were in a fenced off area”, Mats said.

As many other journalists we have talked to Mats didn’t like what Bruce did in the nineties. He thinks that firing the E Street Band was a mistake. The new band couldn’t support Bruce at all. It got a little better with the solo accoustic tour in 1996. But Mats wasn’t entirely thrilled then either. “I actually found myself dozing off a few times during that show”, he admitted. When Bruce received the Polar Prize Award in 1997 and came to the ceremony with princess Lilian, Mats could almost not take it. “Why did he have to do that? Of course it was a long time since Bruce was a rebel and didn’t like to talk to journalists, but to see him sitting and singing snaps songs with princess Lilian was too much. I don’t want to share one of my greatest musical heroes with the royalties.”

When we asked Mats why he thinks Bruce is so popular in Sweden he said people should not analyze too much or exaggerate Springsteen’s greatness. “It’s not a matter of life or death. I think Bruce is just a guy from New Jersey who loves to play rockmusic and we love to see him do it. It’s all about entertainment. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”

We give our thanks to Mats for a nice interview. We have now finished most our filming and we will start the process of watching the material and choose what parts we will use. But we will be back filming in September, when a Springsteen convent is scheduled to take place in Stockholm if all goes as planned. It’s a group of fans from the community springsteen.se that will arrange the convent.

But we will keep you posted about the advance of our project, so don’t forget to look in on us!

Today we went to the fashionable hotel Clarion to interview journalist Håkan Lahger. We had a very interesting conversation about the period 1975-1985, when Bruce was at his peak, according to Håkan.

“A lot has been said about Springsteen’s performance at Konserthuset in 1975, and all is true. It feels almost embarrassing to use a word such as ‘spectacular’ but it really was. In a time when most rock ‘n’ roll bands were either too drunk, too stoned, played too loud, used too many effects, Bruce was totally different. He came on stage, happy as a kid who had gotten all the Christmas presents he wanted and he never wanted to stop playing, he could go on forever”, Håkan said.

During the eighties the E Steet Band machine reached it’s highest moments, according to Håkan. The musicians knew eachother so well, they were playing extremely tight and they had learn to master the great outdoor arenas.

But around 1985 Håkan started to lose interest. “I noticed that I started to wait for certain moments or for him to do certain things on stage, and that made it all predictable. But one thing that also put me off was that the journalists had started to cover everything Bruce did when he came here. And that part of journalism that is concerned about what an artist eat, where they go on a day off, is so far away from what really matters, namely their music. That bored me so I slowly drifted away from it all.”

One of the things that Håkan thinks makes Bruce such an interesting artist is his ability to write about urban life. “Springsteen carrys on the tradition of Woody Guthrie. Guthrie was a singer songwriter who told stories about life on the countryside. In his early albums Bruce told the stories of a young man from New Jersey, who was discovering the big city and all it’s adventures and setbacks. It wasn’t the perfect world of popular songs, he portrayed a darker picture, where unhappiness and failure wasn’t uncommon. But even if Springsteen’s songs are very dark, there’s always a glimpse of hope in them”, he said.

We thank Håkan for a great interview and prepare for our last one this session, with journalist Mats Bråstedt on Saturday.

Today we have met journalist Mia Gerdin. She worked for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter in 1975 and saw her first Springsteen concert in november that year, at Konserthuset.

That was such an mindblowing experience for Mia, that she didn’t see any other show until 1992, because she didn’t want anything to ruin her memories. She also told us a story of how she was chosen with three other journalists to interview Bruce in a restaurant in Gamla Stan (the old town). The four of them waited for hours, with no sign of Bruce. Mia thought about leaving, but the possibility that the other papers could get an interview and she wouldn’t if she left, made her stay. Finally Bruce showed up, he was very slim and shy, wearing a leather jacket and obviously not so sure how to behave with the journalists.

“He had a Hell’s Angels pin in the zipper of his jacket and I remember one of my first questions was if he liked motorbikes. He smiled a bit shyly, but then he opened up and said he did, and so we started talking”, Mia told us.

In 1992 Mia went to see Bruce with his new band, she found him to be as good as ever as an entertainer, but the band couldn’t fully match him, not int the way E Street Band did. “But I really liked the backround vocalists he brought along, that was someting new that I would liked to have seen more of”, she said.

In 1996 Mia saw him again at Cirkus. “He performed in March, at a time when people always get a cold, but you couldn’t hear a single sneeze or cough during the show, and that doesn’t happen often! Going to that show was like attending a mass at church, people sat very silently but attentive. I liked it, but I missed the partyrocking. My body wanted to dance and move, but during this show you weren’t allowed to”, Mia said.

She also told us about how some of her women friends and collegues had found Springsteen’s music macho, dull and out of date during the eighties, but she meant that they had failed to see the tenderness and complexity that also exists in the songs.

Mia thinks that one of the things that makes Bruce such a good live performer is that he really enjoys being on stage and he sets out to deliver something more personal to his audience than just a run through his greatest hits.

We thank Mia for a very interesting conversation, sha also showed us som pictures she took during the show in 1975, pictures that has never been published. Hopefully we can use some of them in our documentary too.

Next we meet journalist Håkan Lahger on Wednesday, so stay with us!

Two days ago Mikael and I went to Jönköping to film the performance of The Hungry Heart Band. They played at the local theatre for two nights, and gave the audience an intense show with some of Springsteen’s best songs.

We filmed the band during soundcheck, and afterwards we made an interview with Hans “Ludde” Ludvigsson, singer in the band and the man behind the tributeshow.

Ludde has a long relationship with Springsteen’s music, he first got in contact with it in his teens, when he heard The River. But it would be some time before he got to see his first concert, although he had tickets to the show at Hovet in 1981. But his father said he was to young to go, so he had to wait until 1985 when he finally managed to see Springsteen live.

Ludde who is a singer in the coverband Fun Club, and he has been dreaming of putting together a show based totally on Springsteen’s material. “I wanted to do this simply because of egoistic reasons. I’ve found a lot of comfort in these songs and I wanted to share my love for this fantastic music with an audience.” The Hungry Heart Band has been rehearsing since December and it hasn’t been easy to find their special touch to Bruce’s music. “The music is very complex. Take a song like Jungleland, it’s like an opera. And each song also vary quite a lot in tempo in itself, which make it difficult to play well”, Ludde told us.

Lasse Strand, bass, Hans Ludvigsson, lead singer, Ingemar Albo, guitarr, harmonica.

But apparently Ludde and his band did well, the comments from the audience after the performance was overwhelming. Funny and touching was his presentations of the songs, small monologues very reminiscent of what Bruce himself used to do during the seventies and early eighties.

Hans Ludvigsson, in close contact with the audience.

Hopefully Ludde can take his dream project out on the road and perform in other cities as well. We give the Hungry Heart Band a big hand and hope they will reach a bigger audience, they have really proved they can play Springsteen’s music with great feeling.

A few days ago we received an e-mail from Jon Landau Management about our request to interview Bruce.
This is what they told us:

Mikael & Johanna,
We are in receipt of your request to interview Bruce. Unfortunately, Bruce
has declined. Bruce is not taking on any projects this year. We would like
to thank you for thinking of Bruce and wish you much success with your
tv-documentary.
Thanks!

Tammy Comstock
Jon Landau Management

We thank the staff att Jon Landau Management for their response and maybe we will have a better chance for an interview next year.

Now we are preparing for our next shooting. We will be in Jönköping on April 24th to film the performance of Hans Ludvigsson & The Hungry Heart Band. A lot of fans will attend the two shows and we will interview the band before we go back to Stockholm for the last interviews with the remaining critics.

Today we took the train to Uppsala to meet Niklas, who saw his first concert at the Globe arena, June 17th 1992. The weather was lovely, spring is in the air and the sun was warm.

Niklas told us about the adrenaline kick when the gates open and you rush to get a good spot as close to the stage as possible. “I want to be in the front row to feel the fellowship of the other fans. Those in front are the most dedicated, those who have spent a lot of time in line to get there. I want to share my experience of the concert with the same people I’ve been talking to outside the arena. Of course it’s fun to get eye contact with Bruce or the band, but being there with other fans is more important to me.”

Niklas is the man behind the swedish fanforum Springsteen.se that started in June 2003. Niklas was lucky to register the domain and then he started developing the site. He knew he wanted to make a site where people could talk about Springsteen. Prior to Springsteen.se there had only been a few mailinglists in swedish and Niklas wanted to make an alternative to the english fanforums.

Today the site have about 600 members aged from 12 years up to almost 70. “First we got a lot of people from the mailinglist Born to Run, but now we have a lot of young people who register. Those who are most active are in their twenties or early thirties”, Niklas said.

There are a lot of work with the site, but Niklas has help from a couple of moderators. And he is planning on developing the site so people could add more to their personal profiles. Even though the discussions are not so intense when Bruce is not on tour, Niklas think the forum will live on. And as soon Springsteen and the E Streeters will go on tour again he thinks that will add new members to the forum.

We thank Niklas for the interview. We will now take a break until April 24th when we will go to Jönköping to film the performance of Hungry Heart – a tribute to the music of Bruce Springsteen. We will join a lot of fans from Springsteen.se for a night with good music. Then we will go back to Stockholm for the last interviews before we start the editing of our documentary.

First we aim to produce a 10-minute showtrailer that will help us promote our idea for SVT, the swedish national television, and we hope they will buy our film.

Today we have met Daniel and Staffan who saw their first Springsteen concert at Konserthuset, Stockholm, November 21st 1975.
They had both listened to Springsteen’s first albums, but still the show was a complete shock to them. “It was great to hear the songs live, but we never expected the band to be so tight. They could start with those partysongs, then Bruce came out for a solo piano performance and then suddenly they could play covers like the Detroit medley. We’d never seen anything like it before”, Staffan said.

Konserthuset, Stockholm.

Daniel has a special memory of the concert. He didn’t get a ticket to the show, and buying one from the scalpers was too expensive. But he managed to sneak in, thanks to a friend standing in the door. As Daniel was waiting for the show to begin he got to hear the soundcheck and he saw Bruce walking around checking that all was OK. But nobody in the band saw him where he was sitting.
“My expectations were huge before the show, and seeing the soundcheck without being noticed just enhanced them”, he said.

Staffan and Daniel also saw the show at Hovet in 1981. Their experience was that much of the spontaneity, the intimacy and the power of Bruce’s monologues were lost because of the bigger arena. “It was more of a staged performance, you knew that the monologues were rehearsed. In ’75 we still had the feeling that it all happened spontaniously”, Staffan said.

“It was difficult to go home after the show in ’75. At first the audience had been a bit quiet, sitting down and listening. By the end of the show everyone was standing and cheering, filled with euphoria. Afterwards we were telling eachother how good it had been and then we just drifted off home”, Daniel remembered.

Daniel who is a celloplayer with the philaharmonic and work at Konserthuset, was very impressed by Bruce’s ability to lead the band. “It was fascinating to see how everything went through him, everybody else in the band was always looking at him to see what would happen next. He’s controlling everything, almost like a conductor.”

Staffan also told us about a private meeting with Bruce. “I shook hands with him during the dinner at Grand Hotel in 1997 when he got the Polar Prize. We didn’t talk much but it was great to hear him perform some acoustic songs that night.” Springsteen shared the prize with famous choire conductor Eric Ericson, Staffans father.

We thank Staffan and Daniel for sharing their great stories with us in the beautiful setting of Konserthuset. Our next interview is tomorrow.