Those of you who were hoping for a new Bruce Springsteen album and tour accompanied by The E Street Band on this side of the world next year, sorry - but it looks fairly unlikely.

Although The Boss is taking the band out on the road for a US tour to play his 1980 album 'The River' in full for 24 dates starting next month, his next album will probably be a solo project.

He told Sirius XM's E Street Radio programme that his current batch of new material has been written without the input of the band, and that the upcoming tour was an excuse to play with them in the interim.

"It wasn't a project I was going to probably take the band out on," he said. "So I said, 'Gee, that's going to push the band playing again until a ways in the future. It'll be nice to get some playing in so you don't wind up being two or three years between E Street tours.' This will give us a chance to get out there and stretch our muscles a little bit."

Springsteen's last album was 2014's 'High Hopes'.