Bruce Springsteen Taking E Street Band On Tour At Age 70

Bruce Springsteen hasn’t toured with the E Street Band in several years, devoting much of his energy to his Springsteen on Broadway show, which was made into a Netflix special, as well as a new solo album that comes out this summer.

But E Street fans got some good news over the holiday weekend when The Boss said in an interview that he’s reconvening the band next year for both a tour and a new album, his first new record with the band since 2012’s Wrecking Ball. Both will follow Springsteen’s 70th birthday this August.

Page Six, which cited an interview Springsteen gave to the Italian newspaper Repubblica, reported that both projects are planned for the next year.

“I’ll record with the E Street Band in the autumn, and when we are done, we’ll go on tour,” Springsteen told the newspaper. He also said that he’s looking forward to touring in Rome with the band.

Springsteen’s new solo album, Western Stars, comes out in June. Springsteen had said in an interview earlier this month that he had written an entire album’s worth of material for a new E Street Band project.

“I wrote almost an album’s worth of material for the band and it came out of just — I know where it came from — but at the same time, it just came out of almost nowhere,” the rock star told director Martin Scorsese in a Netflix interview, per EW. He also hinted that another tour was on the way but didn’t lay out specific plans.

Bruce Springsteen has confirmed a new E Street Band album and tour for next year: https://t.co/UbZ7qKUC2V pic.twitter.com/Idzxo9t6Sg

— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) May 27, 2019

The E Street Band’s core members included Springsteen, guitarist Steven Van Zandt, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, drummer Max Weinberg, bass player Garry W. Talent, keyboardist Roy Bitton, guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Patti Scialfa (Springsteen’s wife), and organist Danny Federici. Clemons died in 2011 and Federici passed in 2008.

The group accompanied Springsteen for most of his early albums, although the group disbanded in 1989, and the band members pursued other things, such as Van Zandt’s acting career and Weinberg’s work as Conan O’Brien’s bandleader. Springsteen reunited with the group for a couple of new songs in 1995, followed by a series of tours, beginning in 1999.

The band also joined Springsteen on several of his albums after the turn of the millennium, including 2002’s The Rising, and they performed with Springsteen at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2009. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. The most recent E Street Band tour took place in 2016-2017.