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Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band Announce 2023 U.S. Tour Dates

The outing is slated to kick off in Florida in February.

By Gil Kaufman

Gil Kaufman

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band announced the dates for their 2023 U.S. tour on Tuesday (July 12). The 31-show swing is slated to kick off on Feb. 1 in Tampa, Florida and is currently slated to keep the hard-charging group on the road through a homecoming gig in Newark, New Jersey on April 14.

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Along the way the veteran rockers will hit Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, New York, Cleveland and Baltimore. The shows will be The Boss’ first North American dates with his long-running band since Sept 2016.

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Springsteen announced the dates for his 2023 European tour in May, explaining on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio that after nearly five years off the road it was time for him to get the band back together. “It’s kind of mind boggling to be honest with you… IT doesn’t feel that long, but,  you know, we stayed busy over that time, but still it’s, I’m really, I’ve got the Jones to play live very badly at this point,” Springsteen said of getting back at it with the band for the first time since they recorded 2020’s  Letter to You  album. “So, I’m deeply looking forward to getting out there in front of our fans.”

The group is gearing up to hit the road for the first time since the conclusion of their 14-month global River Tour, which kicked off in 2016. According to a release announcing the new dates, since the 2023 European dates were announced in May more than 1.2 million tickets have already been sold. After the end of the European run — scheduled for April-July 2023 — the band will begin a second as-yet-unannounced string of North American shows in August; tour dates in the UK are also slated for next year, with the details to be announced soon.

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Tickets for the 2023 U.S. arena shows will go on sale over the next two weeks, with the first ones available beginning July 20 at 10 a.m. local time; click here for more information.

Check out the E Street Band’s 2023 North American tour dates below.

Feb. 1 — Tampa FL @ Amalie Arena

Feb. 3 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena

Feb. 5 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center

Feb. 7  — Hollywood, FL @ Hard Rock Live

Feb. 10 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center

Feb. 14 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center

Feb. 16 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center

Feb. 18 — Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center

Feb. 21 — Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center

Feb. 25 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center

Feb. 27 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena

March 2 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena

March 5 — St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center

March 7 — Milwaukee, WI @ Fisery Forum

March 9 — Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena

March 12 — Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun

March 14 — Albany, NY @ MVP Arena

March 16 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center

March 18 — State College, PA @ Bryce Jordan Center

March 20 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden

March 23 — Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Center

March 25 — Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum

March 27 — Washington, D.C. @ Capitol One Arena

March 29 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena

April 1 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden

April 3 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center

April 5 — Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse

April 7 — Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Arena

April 9 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena

April 11 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena

April 14 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band announce 2023 tour

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will return to the road in early 2023, launching a series of to-be-announced U.S. arena dates in February, followed by European stadium shows kicking off on April 28 in Barcelona, with a second North American tour leg starting in August.

"After six years, I’m looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year. And I’m looking forward to once again sharing the stage with the legendary E Street Band. See you out there, next year -- and beyond," Springsteen said.

The planned European stops are Barcelona, Dublin, Paris, Ferrara, Rome, Amsterdam, Landgraaf, Zurich, Dusseldorf, Gothenburg, Oslo, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Vienna, Munich and Monza. Additional cities and shows in the U.K. and Belgium will be announced at a later date.

The 2023 dates will mark the first live shows for Springsteen and the E Street Band since the conclusion of their 14-month, worldwide “The River” tour in Australia in February of 2017. The group last played publicly on “Saturday Night Live” in December 2020, where they performed two songs from their most recent studio album, “Letter to You.”

Last year, Springsteen, who will be 73 when the tour launches, released the group’s “The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts” film, collaborated with former President Barack Obama on the book “Renegades: Born in the USA” and reprised his “Springsteen on Broadway” show to help reopen New York City’s theaters last summer.

The E Street Band’s members are: Roy Bittan — piano, synthesizer; Nils Lofgren — guitar, vocals; Patti Scialfa — guitar, vocals; Garry Tallent — bass guitar; Stevie Van Zandt — guitar, vocals; and Max Weinberg — drums; with Soozie Tyrell — violin, guitar, vocals; Jake Clemons — saxophone; and Charlie Giordano — keyboards.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band announce 33-date US arena tour

Hello, America!  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have announced a 33-date U.S. arena tour. Shows begin Feb. 1 in Tampa, Fla. and end April 14 at the Prudential Center in Newark.

Concert dates include Madison Square Garden in New York City on April 1, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on April 3, two at the new USB Arena in Belmont Park, N.Y. on April 9 and 11; and one at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on March 16.

The tour spans just about the entire country with the exception of California.

Tickets for the arena shows go on sale over the next two weeks, with the first on sale beginning 10 a.m. Wednesday, July 20 at 10 a.m. EDT.

More: Paul McCartney shuts down Glastonbury Festival with special guests Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen

The tour will be using Ticketmaster's Verified Fan platform for tickets sold via Ticketmaster. Fans can register for Ticketmaster Verified Fan starting now through Sunday, July 17 for the chance to buy tickets. All registrants who are verified will be equally eligible to receive an access code. Registering does not guarantee you will receive a code, or have the ability to purchase tickets.

If tickets remain to a show after a Verified Fan onsale, they'll go on sale to fans with no code required.

Shows at the Toyota Center in Houston, Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland will go on sale with no Verified Fan code required. Visit verifiedfan.ticketmaster.com/springsteen to register as a Verified Fan.

A second North American tour leg starts in August 2023 after stadium shows in Europe in the summer of '23. More than 1.2 million tickets to the European shows have been sold so far.

Ticket prices have not been revealed, but prices for the European shows range from approximately $65 to $165, when the European currency is converted to U.S. dollars.

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“After six years, I’m looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year,” said Springsteen previously in a statement. “And I’m looking forward to once again sharing the stage with the legendary E Street Band. See you out there, next year — and beyond.”

Bruce Springsteen’s Tour Resumption Is Its Own Kind of Promised Land: Concert Review

An early tour stop in San Diego, on the way to his rescheduled L.A. dates in April, shows that for Springsteen, singing about the souls of the departed and throwing a party for the living are easily balanced twin tasks.

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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Most of the really essential rituals of American life — religious observances; Halloween and New Year’s Eve; opening day in baseball — are cyclical, endlessly repeatable experiences, independent from individuals or cults of personality. But to that list, a lot of us would add the ritual, stretching past 50 years now, of Bruce Springsteen in concert. And as the world found out last year, that guy can take a sick day. So, as if Springsteen tours weren’t already irregular enough, the fresh resumption of this U.S. tour, after a six-month timeout, has an extra resonance.

At San Diego’s Pechanga Arena Monday night, Springsteen and the E Street Band were three gigs into a restart of the tour that was so rudely interrupted by his peptic ulcer last September, after an opening (or reopening) night March 19 in Phoenix, followed by a show in Las Vegas March 22. Some of these audiences have felt the paucity of Springsteen concerts in the past, not future uncertainty. Springsteen hadn’t played Vegas since 2002 when he finally returned last week. In San Diego, the gap had been mysteriously far longer: He had last been in the city to do a show with the E Street Band in 1981, and last performed in San Diego in any capacity — as a solo artist — in ’96.

Springsteen didn’t directly bring up his illness or the postponement of the last leg of the tour when he talked to the audience at the Pechanga Arena, but he did address the absence that’d been on so many local fans’ minds over the last four decades.

Why hadn’t he gotten back to San Diego sooner? Maybe because he felt it’d be too on-the-nose, having name-checked the city so famously in “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”? Naturally, when that nearly eight-minute rouser did come up as an encore number Sunday, it got some special treatment for the occasion. Standing on the ramp that extended into the GA section with members of his band, Springsteen halted the song for a 21-second pause following the line “I know a pretty little place in Southern California, down San Diego way,” which, as a prompt for 13,500 people to go wild, probably could been extended a couple of minutes longer.

It’s a little bit surprising that Springsteen had not been back sooner just in that his last SD gig back in 1981 had also been at this same facility, then known as the San Diego Sports Arena. And the place maintains just a little bit of the old-school feel of his former favorite locale further north, the L.A. Sports Arena, which he had dubbed “The Dump That Jumps” before closing it down with a series of final concerts there in 2016. Speaking of things that will all seem funny, it may seem odd to point out the artist’s nostalgia for something as unsentimental as arenas, but he will tend to play the older of those venues when he’s coming to a city with more than one, as he did in San Diego and will when he shortly hits Inglewood’s Forum (his distaste for Staples/Crypto.com Arena being legendary). He’s got a thing for things that have escaped the wrecking ball; the Pechanga Arena has been upgraded above dump status, but on a night like this, it did jump, too.

The faithful haven’t been sure whether to call his 2024 tour (which has a lot of rescheduled North American shows bookending a long summer trip to Europe) a continuation of the aborted 2023 U.S. tour, or something that counts as a new one. It does affect how songs are counted or not counted as “tour premieres” in the inevitable collation of setlists — which really boils it down to an especially first-world problem. The artist himself had a point of view on that when asked about it on the E Street Radio satelite channel earlier this month, saying, “There will be some things from last year’s tour that will hold over; some of my basic themes of mortality and life and those things, you know, I’m going to keep set… (But) I think I’m gonna move around the other parts of the set a lot more, so there’ll be a much wider song selection going on. So we’re looking at it like it’s a little bit of the old tour, but we’re looking at it like a new tour.”

Looking at what’s gone from last year, “Kitty’s Back” is no longer back, and “Glory Days” and “Out in the Street” are also out, along with semi-regular staples like “The E Street Shuffle,” “Candy’s Room” and “Johnny 99.” But since the show still clocks in at a very healthy 27 songs, spread out over about two hours and 40 minutes, additions are in place, like his 1973 debut album’s “Spirit in the Night,” which has been played at all three shows so far, after only getting two plays total in all of 2022. His cover of the Ben E. King/Aretha Franklin classic “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)” (as heard on his soul covers abum two years ago) also looks like it may be a nighty regular now, after having been bumped out of the set after a handful of appearances in February 2022. The change-ups distinct to San Diego in the fresh run of shows included his first performance of “My City of Ruins” since 2017, plus the revival of his “Detroit Medley,” which was performed only three times last year. “Death to My Hometown” and, in the encore, “Bobby Jean” also made what have recently counted as rare appearances.

What remains rock-solid from last year are the vast majority of songs a casual fan might be coming to hear, mostly from the 1973-84 era, although service is also paid to the “Rising” and “Wrecking Ball” albums and the two most recent releases that he is ostensibly touring behind, “Letter to You” and “Only the Strong Survive.” Songs that would be set-closers for anyone else are thrown in almost in random spots, until it becomes a sheer onslaught of classics. Rest assured that the show’s final stretch will allow everyone to resume ongoing internal debate over whether “Born to Run” is the quintessential rock song of all time, or whether that honor is rightly reserved by “Thunder Road.” (Team “Thunder,” here, after 49 years of consideration.)

It counts as a thunderously upbeat best-of show, in other words. But it’s an exhilarating greatest-hits show sandwiched within momentarily sobering ruminatings about death, and death’s effect on the living. Which is quite a hoagie.

Also still a staple of the show from last year is another one of those recent songs about remembering missing loved ones, “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” as a final benediction after the celebratory encore material.

On top of this, Springsteen has made some other additions to the show, whether for the entirety of the remaining tour or as recurring one-offs, that further reinforce this theme. For instance, the show no longer begins every night with “No Surrender” (which is still in the set, pushed back a bit); he’s replaced it with the brooding “Lonesome Day,” one of the 9/11-prompted songs from “The Rising.” As he thought about what kind of messaging to start these new concerts with, maybe Springsteen’s bout with illness made him realize that we all have to succumb to some surrendering now and again. More likely, it has something to do with providing an opening bookend to “I’ll See You in My Dreams” at the beginning — starting the show with an anxious response to death at the outset, so that his calming thoughts about it at the end feel like the conclusion to some kind of story.

In adding “My City of Ruins” to the set for the first time in seven years, Springsteen also used that as a bed for more of these thoughts, on top of full-band intros, extending that gospel-like ballad to 11 minutes in length — less than a third of the way into the running time. “I plan on sending you home with your feet hurting, your ass hurting, your sexual organs stimulated,” Springsteen promised during the “Ruins” spoken interlude, before getting down to business about having “a story to tell. It’s a story about yesterday and about tonight and hopefully tomorrow. It’s about hellos and goodbyes. It’s about the things that leave us and the things that remain.” After introducing the extended band (E Street Horns and E Street Choir included), he asked, “Are we missing anybody?” The crowd roared with implicit Clarence Clemons/Danny Federici appreciation. “Everybody’s missing somebody at this point,” he affirmed. “I don’t know where we go when this is all over, but I know where we remain. The only thing I can guarantee tonight is, if you’re here and we’re here, then they’re here.”

Spaced out over the better part of three hours, these reflections aren’t going to hit anyone in the crowd as heavy-handed; if anything, they’re just barely enough in making the obvious point that everyone present who’s been with him for the long haul has probably been spending more time in hospital rooms or at funerals than revving up hemi-powered drones. Fortunately, there’s a timelessness to most of the classics that transcends youth, even if some of the aspirational dreams in the early material are long since in rear-view mirrors for much of the audience. “Let the broken hearts stand as the price you’ve gotta pay”: some things can sung along with at 18 or 88.

The stage for this tour is almost hilariously basic, if you’ve been to any major superstar outings lately, and witnessed the bizarre shapes of the ramps that extend into SRO floors and practically twist around each other. Springsteen’s ramp doesn’t look to extend much more more than 15 feet into the audience, as if to dare the incoming audience to imagine how much he can do with just a minimum of thrust staging. (Honestly, we’re trying to keep this as clean as we can here.) He spent plenty of time on that modest extension, which allows plenty of room for camera angles catching the surrounding crowd, and for occasional visits from mobile band members and backup singers, without having to go so far out into the crowd that it looks like he’s, you know, overcompensating.

As is tradition, he and some of his traveling accompanists occasionally visited the rear riser, which now holds a five-man horn section, to provide eye candy for the audience watching from behind the stage. Everyone turning around to give the folks in the so-called cheap seats a thrill is especially nice when it’s timed to one of his great key changes, as it was in the instrumental bridge of the Pogues-like “Death to My Hometown.”

Memorable moments stand out almost randomly: Nils Lofgren going crazy on “Because the Night,” making up for the lack of solo time he gets as one of three guitarists by doing a whole night’s worth of shredding in one tune… Saxophonist Jake Clemons leaning on Springsteen’s shoulder during “Prove It All Night,” in what has to be a subtle but intentional inverse of his late uncle Clarence’s famous “Born to Run” cover pose… A moment when backup vocalist Curtis King joins Springsteen on the ramp during “Nightshift” for a few modest steps in unison. (Guaranteed, the only actual dance choreography of the night.)… Springsteen taking a sign from the audience and saving it for much later so that he could dedicate “Last Man Standing” to a specific fallen serviceman.

Meanwhile, here’s an advisory for anyone coming to the tour down the road: plan for traffic and invest in a watch. The tickets say 7:30 p.m., and so far on this leg, that is exactly the minute the band walks on stage. The ultra-prompt start allows Springsteen and company to prove it for what still feels like all night, yet get everyone home before the witching hour. It’s true: a benevolent boss is always looking out for everyone’s health.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band setlist, Pechanga Arena, San Diego, March 25, 2024:

Lonesome Day

Prove It All Night

No Surrender

Death to My Hometown

Letter to You

The Promised Land

My City of Ruins

Spirit in the Night

Don’t Play That Song (Ben E. King cover)

Nightshift (Commodores coer)

Mary’s Place

Last Man Standing

Backstreets

Because the Night

She’s the One

Wrecking Ball

Thunder Road

Detroit Medley

Born to Run

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

I’ll See You in My Dreams

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Bruce Springsteen Jokes About Tour Postponement and Getting COVID from Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm

Springsteen returned to the stage earlier this month after undergoing treatment for peptic ulcer disease

John Johnson/HBO

After returning to the stage earlier this month, Bruce Springsteen is putting a funny spin on his decision to postpone some tour dates.

In the latest episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm , Springsteen, 74, joined Larry David , 76, to talk about his activism in Atlanta. During a conversation at a kitchen table over restaurant health inspection grades, the pair breaks into an argument about whose water glass is whose — which leads to a hilarious fictional reason behind the tour postponement.

Later in the episode, David test positive for COVID — and so does Springsteen, forcing him to postpone shows on his world tour. After the water glass incident, Springsteen publicly blames David on social media.

Once David tests negative, he manages to break into Springsteen's home and finds him, sick, watching in a back house.

"They think I'm dying from the COVID I got from you," Springsteen said of his fans, blaming his illness on the water incident.

"I'm almost 99.9% sure that was my glass, Bruce," David responds.

Springsteen then advises David to leave. As the comedian drives out of the Boss' home, he's met with angry fans protesting for Springsteen to get back on the road.

The tour storyline puts a fun spin on Springsteen postponing several of his 2023 tour dates due to  peptic ulcer disease . He resumed performing with the E Street Band earlier this month in Phoenix, Arizona.

Ahead of his 29-song set, he addressed the illness before starting his final track, "I'll See You in My Dreams."

"Phoenix, first I want to apologize if there was any discomfort because we had to move the show last time," he told the crowd, according to Associated Press . "I hope we didn’t inconvenience you too much."

Just a month after the tour began in February 2023, Springsteen postponed three shows in a week "due to illness." Then, he and his wife tested positive for COVID at the end of the first leg of his tour in April 2023.

In August, Springsteen had to  postpone two of his Philadelphia shows due to having “taken ill." The following month, he revealed the peptic ulcer disease diagnosis and said he was advised by media professionals to postpone the remainder of his September shows.

“Over here on E Street, we’re heartbroken to have to postpone these shows. First, apologies to our fabulous Philly fans who we missed a few weeks ago. We’ll be back to pick these shows up and then some," he wrote in a personal message to fans at the time.

The message continued: "Thank you for your understanding and support. We’ve been having a blast at our US shows and we’re looking forward to more great times. We’ll be back soon."

Later in the month, the remainder of dates for Springsteen's 2023 shows  were canceled , and a statement was posted to his  social media explaining he was recovering from peptic ulcer disease.

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Playing hooky for Bruce Springsteen? The Boss signs a kid’s absence note at S.F. show

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“Skipping school sign my note?”

Those five words, written in large black letters on a white poster, prompted Bruce Springsteen to help a young fan skip a day of school after his San Francisco concert on Sunday.

Facebook images and video shared by a fan who attended the singer’s Chase Center concert shows the “Born in the U.S.A” and “Dancing in the Dark” singer 74, holding the poster and kneeling to sign what seems to be an absence slip. In the background, members of his E Street Band are seen cheering Springsteen on before he hands back the poster and absence slip and blows a kiss to the crowd.

According to Karen Pitcher Scovell, who captured the moment, the Boss “knelt down directly in front of me to sign a school excuse for the little girl behind me,” who was not featured in the video.

Bruce Springsteen’s rock ’n’ roll church is back in session with the E Street Band

In San Diego on Monday night, the Boss performed one of his first gigs — complete with a guest appearance by a dog — since resuming his world tour postponed last year.

March 26, 2024

“No words!!!!!,” Pitcher Scovell also said in her post. “To be in such close proximity to greatness was more than I had ever expected.”

Sunday’s show wasn’t the first time the Boss personally signed off on his fans playing hooky. While promoting his memoir in 2016 , the “I’m on Fire” hitmaker signed a similar note for a then-10-year-old student in Philadelphia.

Springsteen played two shows in San Francisco after bringing his music back to San Diego last month. At his March 25 concert at the Pechanga Arena , the singer-songwriter delivered a “rousing” three-hour show for his Southern California audience, Times music critic Mikael Wood wrote in his review .

Bruce Springsteen postpones remainder of 2023 tour dates because of peptic ulcer disease

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have postponed the remainder of their 2023 tour dates, citing Springsteen’s ongoing treatment for peptic ulcer disease.

Sept. 27, 2023

“Here his voice was in strong shape in both the roaring uptempo numbers and the stately ballads,” Wood said of the San Diego show.

Springsteen returned to the road this January, months after postponing a handful of U.S. shows last year to deal with a peptic ulcer . Among the postponed shows were the 20-time Grammy winner’s concerts in Los Angeles, initially set for early December.

The “Born to Run” singer will make his L.A. return starting Thursday at the Forum. After that, he will take the same stage again on Sunday before heading to the East Coast.

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Bruce Springsteen Jokes About His Postponed Tour on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

By Tomás Mier

Bruce Springsteen is in his acting era. The Boss joined Larry David on Sunday’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm . In the episode, Springsteen blames the cancelation of one of his “farewell” shows on David giving him Covid.

During the episode, Springsteen meets with David to talk about the cranky comedian’s activism in Atlanta. (This season, David is awaiting trial in Georgia for offering water to a voter outside of a polling place.) After a brief discussion about restaurant health inspection grades over breakfast, the singer and David find themselves in a back-and-forth about whose water glass is whose. Springsteen later tests positive for Covid, forcing the singer to cancel his farewell show. Naturally, Springsteen blames David (and the water glass incident) for the show’s cancelation on social media, causing his fans to attack the comedian.

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Springsteen then later postponed numerous tour dates due to his treatment (and recovery) for peptic ulcer disease. He eventually began his rescheduled tour on March 19 and has shows planned through the summer.

The new episode with Springsteen marks the HBO series’ second-to-last episode ever. Springsteen also made a cameo in an earlier episode this season, titled “The Lawn Jockey.”

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How ‘curb your enthusiasm’ manifested bruce springsteen’s postponed tour — and expect series finale “boomerangs”.

The penultimate episode of the HBO series saw Larry David giving the Boss COVID and endangering his health — which preceded similar real-life events. Executive producer Jeff Schaffer reveals that story and more in a weekly episode chat heading into the series finale.

By Jackie Strause

Jackie Strause

Managing Editor, East Coast

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[This story contains spoilers from season 12, episode nine of Curb Your Enthusiasm , “Ken/Kendra.”]

Life imitated art again with the latest Curb Your Enthusiasm . Or, if you ask show boss Jeff Schaffer , “life imitated silly art.”

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“That’s Larry David’s middle name: Larry ‘Involvement’ David,” said Springsteen on CNN when making his first Curb cameo.

Now, in the ninth episode of season 12 — the penultimate episode before the Emmy-winning HBO comedy’s series finale this weekend — Springsteen returns. In the show, the Boss is so impressed with Larry’s political stance that he wants to meet the Seinfeld creator in real life.

But when they sit down at a table together in the home of the Greenes (Susie Essman and Jeff Garlin ), several things go awry. First, Springsteen’s manager Ken (played by trans comedian Ian Harvie) identifies himself as being formerly Kendra Morris and recalls how they used to have sex (and always on the floor). This prompts one of the episode’s best lines when Springsteen is aghast at Larry being a “floor fucker,” and Schaffer says that line was all the Boss.

“Bruce telling Larry, ‘I never took you for a floor fucker,’ is one of my favorite moments ever — like, in life,” recalls Schaffer when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the episode. “We knew we were going to be talking about floor fucking, but that was all Bruce. That was Bruce chiming in, which was amazing. We were like, ‘What! He’s so funny.'”

Schaffer adds, “If the music thing doesn’t work out, he definitely has a future in comedy.”

This, of course, will not bode well for Larry’s reputation for his upcoming trial, where he faces up to one year in prison and a fine of $10,000 for obstructing the election process in the state of Georgia. He also was threatened in this episode with being “Me Too-ed” after he offended his masseuse.

The COVID Curb plotline was written in 2022, and they filmed the scene with Springsteen in one day in December 2022, on the improv comedy’s final day of shooting that year. “It was a long time to keep that one secret,” says Schaffer.

Then, flash-forward to February 2023, when Schaffer and David were editing the season, and Springsteen in real life ended up postponing three of his shows in one week “due to illness.” Then, in April 2023, Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa came down with COVID. And in August 2023, the Boss ended up postponing more shows after having “taken ill.” In September, it was then revealed he had been diagnosed with peptic ulcer disease, and he ended up canceling all remaining 2023 dates so he could recover.

Schaffer says when they initially reached out to Springsteen’s manager, they never thought the guest role would materialize. But quickly after the pitch, the Boss said yes; he was a fan of the show. After they wrapped, they sent Springsteen his scenes, because the Curb team was so happy with the final result.

“He loved them, which was great. He was putting a lot of faith in us,” says Schaffer. “He’d seen the show, but a lot of people haven’t worked the way we do, where it’s not all scripted. Lots of things get said. And we kept telling him, ‘We’ll use the best stuff,’ so he could try everything. And he played around. He knew the basic beats, but he was in there adding and slugging around. We showed him the scenes because we were so happy with how they turned out.”

The plot around how Larry likes to have sex ends up circling around when his ex-wife Cheryl ( played by Cheryl Hines ) calls him out for lying to her about why he wanted to have sex on the floor. (“It’s hot, like in the movies,” she says he told her.)

Schaffer still marvels that they got Springsteen to do such a big role and coyly teases that the Boss might make some sort of return in next week’s finale.

“Everyone was so excited that Bruce had that brief cameo in episode two, and Larry and I were sitting there thinking, ‘If you guys only knew that he’s doing all these scenes in show nine.’ We were able to shoot a lot of stuff with Bruce in the one day we had him.”

He adds, “Things come back to haunt Larry every week. His life is a comedy haunted mansion, everything boomerangs.”

Below, with only one episode remaining before Curb signs off for good (maybe, hopefully not), Schaffer takes THR through some more highlights from the penultimate episode in season 12, “Ken/Kendra.”

• Another tidbit on Springsteen: The Don Henley comparison was written by the Curb writers, but the Boss knew the Eagles frontman would “be cool with it.” Schaffer says, “We wrote that as a rock icon kind of mad lib.”
• J.B. Smoove’s Leon “didn’t want to get COVID because he didn’t know what it was going to do to his dick,” says Schaffer of the hilarity that ensues when Larry’s housemate desperately tries to avoid getting sick. “We often like to surprise Larry. I didn’t tell him that J.B. was going to come through the house in a gas mask with an arm full of toilet paper,” says Schaffer, revealing that they often try to catch their star and creator off guard to get his most honest reaction. “Larry interacts with the world, and the world’s against him. So I create the world against him, for maximum surprise. His reactions are so good.”
• A great example of one of those reactions comes in the epic staircase war of words between Larry and his oft-nemesis, Susie Greene (Essman): “That Larry-Susie fight in the stairwell is one for the ages. Them arguing that each other is a virus, capped off by Susie saying, ‘Larry, you cold-hearted, COVID-carrying cocksucker,’ is one of my favorite Larry-Susie arguments of all time.” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was actually on set that day of filming. “He got a giant earful of raw Curb ,” says Schaffer, adding that the virus insults were all hurled in one take. But, “You’re seeing on Larry’s side every frame before he laughs. Larry’s reaction to Susie calling him that was taken from a different reaction because he was laughing so hard. Larry is always going to blink first with Susie. Susie screaming at him is his kryptonite.”
• A restaurant being downgraded from an A to a C rating mid-meal is a plot plucked from real life, when Schaffer, David, former writers Alec Berg and David Mandel, and other Curb writers were out for lunch in Palisades Village when filming season six. “We watched them change the letter right in front of us and no one could believe it. They just changed the letter in front of Larry David and the Curb writers, what do they think is going to happen? Talk about low-hanging, probably unwashed fruit. We always wanted to do it. I know it seems impossible, but it really is true.”
• The name of the book written by Young Larry director Les McCrabb (played by Matt Berry), “To Hang a Lantern on It,” originates from Schaffer’s pre- Seinfeld job at Witt/Thomas Productions where he worked on “a show starring an unknown comic named Jeff Garlin and then on Herman’s Head .” Schaffer says the show was filled with idioms that end up showing up in the fictional Curb script, like, “America doesn’t want to see that” and “hang a lantern on it.” Really “hacky sitcom stuff,” he says. “We would do that jokingly when writing, and so when we needed a title for this book written by this sort of journeyman director, I was like, it has to be ‘Hang a Lantern on It.’ I wrote a solid two pages and worked out some feelings of what it’s like working out at a schmaltzy place. ( Laughing .) The exact stuff that Seinfeld and Curb is the antidote for.”
• The fictional “Vonderdonk” cheese from last week’s episode is now actually being sold at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills (available during store hours). “I’m sure the cheese is excellent, just don’t leave it in your car,” quips Schaffer.
• In other real-life news, Felicity Huffman booked her first TV gig following her role in the college admissions scandal and after Lori Loughlin parodied herself with a Curb cameo earlier this season. “I can’t imagine that anyone is looking to us for hourlong trends, but I’m very happy that Lori got to be the first to come back triumphantly,” says Schaffer.
• With one week left before the finale, Schaffer responds to Garlin recently sharing how emotional he got when the executive producer-director called cut on the final scene. “I remember doing a few extra takes to make sure we got it because it was important,” says Schaffer of next week’s ending. “Once we did, we were done. And, who wants it to be done? Then I realized, someone has to say something! So I looked at Larry, because village was right next to the set, and said, ‘Are you good?’ He said ‘Yeah, I’m good.’ So I said, ‘That’s a wrap on the greatest sitcom ever.’ Everyone applauded and hugged. Then I turned around and Jeff was yeah, just sitting quietly off to the side crying. Very sweet.”
• How will Curb tie it all together in the series finale? “It’s definitely longer than our usual episodes. We have a lot to say,” says Schaffer, always tight-lipped about any spoilers. “I can’t believe that we’ve arrived at this moment. But I think it’s been a really lively season and the finale is a very funny, fitting end to it all.”

Curb Your Enthusiasm  releases its series finale Sunday at 10 p.m. on  HBO  and Max.   Read  THR’ s chats with Schaffer from the season here .

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Curb Your Enthusiasm producer jokes that Larry David ‘manifested’ postponed Bruce Springsteen tour

The producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm has joked that Larry David appeared to “manifest” Bruce Springsteen’s postponed tour after the US rock star appeared in an episode of the hit comedy series.

In the “Lawn Jockey” episode, which aired on 11 February, David is praised by the Boss for becoming a liberal hero after he unknowingly opposes a Georgia 2021 voting law that makes it illegal to provide food or water to voters waiting in line at the polls.

Springsteen is so impressed by Larry’s (David) stance that he asks to meet the Seinfield creator in real life. However, when they sit down for a meeting, things quickly go wrong. Just before Larry cuts the conversation short, he accidentally mixes up his and Springsteen’s water glasses.

The following day, he falls ill with Covid-19, and learns via a TV announcement that Springsteen also has the illness, and is blaming him for the cancellation of several shows on his tour. With the revelation that one of the world’s most popular musicians is now in danger, Larry is suddenly very unpopular.

In a classic case of life imitating art, Springsteen ended up postponing three of his shows in one week “due to illness” less than a year after shooting the episode. In April 2023, he and his wife, Patti Scialfa then came down with Covid; he was forced to postpone further shows in August after being “taken ill”.

“Bruce got sick and had to cancel his tour, and I just turned to Larry and said, ‘You have an amazing ability to manifest negative things,’” Curb’s executive producer Jeff Schaffer told The Hollywood Reporter .

“I remember going, ‘Oh my God, it’s exactly what we did.’ In the show, we say he had complications so his health was really at risk. It played out just like we said, which I feel terrible about!”

He added: “The good news is [Springsteen] got better, and he was hilarious. Happy ending.”

Schaffer teased that the Boss could return for the last ever episode of the show, which will air this week on 7 April.

Springsteen told fans in September that he had been forced to postpone his remaining 2023 shows while he recovered from peptic ulcer disease , a condition that causes ulcers to form in the stomach or small intestine, which in turn can lead to heartburn, nausea and stomach pain.

He is currently back out on tour after rescheduling his 2023 shows, which are now taking place from mid-March through to mid-April, then mid-August through to mid-September.

“Thanks to all my friends and fans for your good wishes, encouragement, and support,” he said in a statement in December, announcing the new tour dates.

“I’m on the mend and can’t wait to see you all.”

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