When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band reunited in a New Jersey music room in 2023, Little Stevie said the atmosphere was a little different.

“It took an extra minute because we normally don’t rehearse at all,” guitarist Steven Van Zandt said during a conversation with Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau.

“We come together for two or three days to say hello to each other again.”

But this time it had been more than six years since the group last toured.

And during that unusually long break from the road, Bruce, 75, went deep with his hit bio show “Springsteen on Broadway” at the St. James and Barrymore Theater, a pandemic had come to a standstill and new faces joined the fray .

“So we really had to rehearse,” says Van Zandt (73). “I don’t know exactly what it was. Maximum two weeks.”

As the E Street Band worked out the kinks, they were joined by veteran documentary director Thom Zimny ​​and his cameras to capture the thrilling journey.

Landau, 77, remembers conversations about what form the doctor should take: “Bruce just said, ‘Well, OK, so what’s our story?'”

But the story immediately became clear: a beloved five-decade-old band with multiple members in their 70s making a triumphant return and showing the world they’ve still got it. The glory days are now here.

“We were gone for six or seven years and people didn’t know what to expect from us,” Stevie said.

‘Everyone gets a little older, you know. And it was up to us to go out and say, ‘Hey, we’re not just getting older – we’re getting better, okay? And yes, we are closer to the end than the beginning, but we are still very productive here.”

That early exercise would kick off another world tour — 130 shows that will last until the summer of 2025 — an experience chronicled in the excellent new film “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” out Oct. 25 can be seen on Hulu.

I saw the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last month and didn’t expect to get as emotional as, gulp, I did. But that’s where Zimny ​​surfaces as he explores the E Street band’s storied past and future.

“He made a number of films that focused on Bruce,” Landau said of their long-standing film collaboration. “But he wanted this to really tell the story of the band in a way that he hadn’t told yet.”

A unique part of the current tour is a more fixed set list than usual, chosen by Bruce around the album ‘Letter To You’, a move that Van Zandt supported from the start.

“I gave it 100 percent,” he said.

“(Bruce) came in with that set, I swear to you, almost immediately, on the first day of rehearsal, he just came in with it. And I don’t think we’ve changed much.”

Stevie says that this tour, like “Springsteen on Broadway,” revolves around the theme of “mortality” – offset by “vitality” – and that fans “have responded with the extra bit of focused emotion in this show.”

“I think the intensity of it surprised people in a good way.”

Landau says Bruce has the power to spiritually grab people off the stage.

“He does that every night,” he said. “That’s what he wants to do. And he may not change everyone’s life, but I guarantee you there are five, ten, twenty, thirty people.

All those diehards, who had been robbed for six years, have been particularly rabid this time – especially in Western Europe.

“When you get to Italy and Spain, their emotions are a little more on their sleeves,” Van Zandt said.

“And they want your sleeves and the jacket that goes with them!”