Bruce Springsteen Ended Up on Broadway Thanks to ‘Accidental’ Obama Performance
Bruce Springsteen is considered one of the greatest rock stars of all time with a decades-long career. In 2017, the rocker tried something new, opening a one-man Broadway show. And though his time on the great white way may be over, Springsteen is opening up about what caused him to pursue the development of this show in the first place. And surprisingly, the rocker says former President Obama was a big part of it.
Bruce Springsteen’s hugely popular Broadway show ‘Springsteen on Broadway’
In 2017, Springsteen began performances of Springsteen on Broadway, a one-man show that featured stripped-back versions of his songs alongside spoken word passages. The shows were a huge success and the demand for tickets was huge.
Springsteen on Broadway was originally supposed to close on November 26, 2017, but the high demand for tickets led Springsteen to extend the show’s run through June of 2018. It was extended a second time into December of that year. In 2021, Springsteen announced another 31-performance run of the show.
The ‘presidential advice’ that led Bruce Springsteen to create ‘Springsteen on Broadway’
A lowkey Broadway show seems like an unlikely project for the rock and roll star, but Springsteen recently revealed how Springsteen on Broadway got its start. During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, the artist shared that a White House performance inspired the show.
“It wasn’t something I thought I’d do,” Springsteen said. “Two weeks before President Obama was leaving the White House, he asked me to come down and play. So, I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to bring the band. Too much noise.’”
Instead, Springsteen opted to do a stripped-back acoustic set of some of his favorite songs. He also read a few passages from his book, Born to Run.
“I spent a couple hours in my studio and I worked up about 90 minutes of something,” Springsteen continued. “I went down, and I played in the East Room to just a couple hundred people, but it was basically 90 minutes of the Broadway play.”
After his performance, Springsteen said that Obama came up to him and said, “That should be a show,” to which the rocker replied, “[That’s] good presidential advice!”
Critics praised ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ for its ‘complexity’
It’s a good thing Springsteen took Obama’s advice — Springsteen on Broadway went on to win a Special Tony Award, as well as an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special. Critics also praised the show, with the New York Times calling it “real” and “beautiful,” and Variety stating that the show was “a self-made monument to its master’s vision.”
In 2018, a recording of Springsteen on Broadway dropped on Netflix, with a soundtrack album soon following. Reviews for the recording and album were also positive. Vice’s critic wrote the Netflix show “impressed” him and that it reached “a truer level of complexity.”
