Exclusive: Bruce Springsteen to Perform With The Roots

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Call it the Roots Street Band. Tonight Bruce Springsteen will perform on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon with The Roots featuring E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt and E Street keyboardist Roy Bittan, a spokesperson for Late Night tells Rolling Stone.

Springsteen is the only guest booked for the hour, and the appearance will mark his only performance to promote the Darkness On The Edge of Town box set. There's no word on what he's going to perform, but it'll likely be at least two songs — and possibly even more to be posted on Fallon's website.

Listen to 15 exclusive Springsteen songs

Springsteen often brings Bittan (who joined the E Street Band in 1975 during the making of Born To Run) when he plays with other groups. He was the only member of The E Street Band invited to perform on the Human Touch/Lucky Town tour in 1992/93, though Springsteen was reportedly contemplating utilizing Van Zandt on that tour as well.

In 2008 Springsteen brought Bittan along when he played with Billy Joel at an Obama fundraiser in New York. Last year he brought Bittan to the Apollo Theater when he played on Elvis Costello's TV show "Spectacle" and earlier this month he did a three-song set at the Apollo Theater with the Max Weinberg Big Band and Bittan.

Check out our exclusive gallery of vintage Springsteen photos

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

More Song Stories entries »

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