Bruce Springsteen Plots 2022 Tour, Collaborations With John Mellencamp, the Killers
Tickets for the revival of Bruce Springsteen’s Tony Award-winning Broadway show went on sale Thursday, and the singer called into Sirius XM’s E Street Radio to talk about his return to the stage, his 2022 tour plans, and upcoming collaborations with John Mellencamp and the Killers. He also dropped hints about unreleased material that may be coming soon.
As he told hosts Jim Rotolo and Dave Marsh, the idea of reviving Springsteen on Broadway came together very organically. “I knew we were going to tour with the band next year,” he said, casually confirming a much-anticipated E Street Band tour, “so I said [to manager Jon Landau], ‘Maybe I’ll take the time off.’ [But] I had a friend who got so enthusiastic about it to me that he talked me into it sitting on my couch one night. The next day I said, ‘OK, we’ll do some shows.’ It really came around kind of casually. It will be just nice to be back there again [and] lend a hand.”
Springsteen on Broadway was staged 236 times between October 2017 and December 2018. And even though it’s moving from the tiny Walter Kerr Theater to the much larger St. James Theater, the script will likely stay the same. “I am going to start freshening up the script and going through it again and see if I am going to make some small changes or not,” he said. “It’s pretty much going to be the same show that it was because I think it’s what people expect and that is what I have.”
“There will be some small [changes], but I don’t think too much,” he continued. “I would like to tighten it up a bit if anything. I would like to get it a little closer to what it was when I initially debuted it on Broadway than toward the end a little bit.”
The 2022 E Street Band tour was only mentioned in passing, but he did confirm reports that he recently spent time in Indiana with John Mellencamp. “I worked on three songs on John’s album and I spent some time in Indiana with him,” he said. “I love John a lot. He’s a great songwriter and I have become very close [with him] and had a lot of fun with him. I sang a little bit on his record.”
There’s also an upcoming collaboration with the Killers in the works, who have long cited Springsteen as one of their favorite artists. “It’s [Brandon Flowers] and I with the band, we have done something that is going to come out soon, in a week or so,” he said. “I’ve been staying busy.”
Springsteen was less specific when it came to plans for his own releases, but he did say that “fans will have fun” with unreleased archival material he plans on releasing this year. “There are various things we are working on,” he said. “We have something that is going to come out in the fall. I have got projects I have been working on… We worked on a lot of things from the vault. I will let it be a surprise.”
If all of that isn’t enough, Springsteen spoke last month about another upcoming album when he received the Woody Guthrie Prize. “California was an enormous influence on some of my most topical writing through my Nineties, 2000s and even now,” he said. “We have a record coming out soon that’s set largely in the West.”
