"I saw rock 'n' roll future. Its name is Springsteen."

Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town is the subject of a documentary that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last week. The Promise mixes interviews with Springsteen and his band with scenes of the recording sessions for Darkness on the Edge of Town. When it was released in 1978, Rolling Stone wrote that it was "an album that would change the way people listened to rock."

After the enormous success of Born to Run three years earlier, Springsteen had been kept out of the studio because of a legal dispute with his former manager. When he finally began recording again, a flood of songs poured out, stories of despair and doubt in an America experiencing hard times and disillusioned after the Vietnam War.

The Promise will be shown on the HBO cable television network in the US next week and will be included in a CD-and-DVD release of Darkness on the Edge of Town that goes on sale on 16 November.