Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  Springsteen disagrees, somewhat vehemently. “Spontaneity, number one, is not made by fastness. Elvis, I believe, did like thirty takes of ‘Hound Dog,’ and ya put that thing on…. The thing is to sound spontaneous; it’s like these records come out that were done real fast and they sound like they were done real fast. If I thought I could’ve made a better record in half the time, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. ’Cause I’d rather be out playing.

  “It’s the kind of thing where … I mean, I know what I’m listening for when I hear it played back, and I just had particular guidelines. I mean, the actual performances were done fast, but I think the thing that takes the most time is the thinking. The conceptual thing. It takes a certain amount of time for me to think about exactly what it is I wanna do and then I’ve gotta wait until I finally realize that I’ve actually done it.”

  A large part of Springsteen fandom, in case you didn’t know, centers on bootleg LPs and tapes. Springsteen is probably the most widely bootlegged performer around these days, and the array of bootlegs—radio performances, rehearsal tapes, and more—is especially interesting because Springsteen, unlike so many artists before him, once seemed to almost actively encourage bootlegging, figuring—quite rightly, for the most part—that nobody was being harmed in the process, himself included. Surprisingly, though, sometime last year he seemed to have changed his mind, actually taking a case or two to court to prevent further bootleg distribution.

  “I remember when I first started out,” he says. “A lot of the bootlegs were made by fans and then there was more of a connection. But there was a point where there were so many that it was just big business, ya know? It was made by people who didn’t care what the quality was. It just got to a point where I’d see a price tag of thirty bucks on a record of mine that to me just sounded really bad, and I just thought it was a rip. I thought I was gettin’ ripped. I wrote this music, the songs—it all came outta me, ya know? And I felt it was a rip. And the people who were doing it had warehouses full of records, and they were just sittin’ back gettin’ fat, rushing and putting out anything and getting thirty fuckin’ dollars for it. And I just got really mad about it.”

  Springsteen adds that the plan is to release a live album now that The River’s finished—which might explain his new bootlegging consciousness, indirectly or otherwise.

  And I guess one of the biggest questions remains: Does Springsteen anticipate any sort of critical or commercial backlash at this point with The River? It’s been two years since he’s last been heard from—time enough for even some of his oldest friends to turn their backs on him.

  Springsteen looks doubtful. “That stuff happens all the time,” he says. “Besides, that’s happened to me already, I’ve lived that already. And it’s the kinda thing that just happens. People write good things and then they don’t. The first time I went through that, it was confusing for me. It was disheartening. And I guess I felt that I knew what I wanted to do, and what I was about. It’s just the same old story—where I was twenty-five when that first happened and I’d already been playing for ten years. Now I’m thirty-one, and I’ve been through that.

  “When you first come up, and people start writing about you, you’re just not used to it. It’s just strange. There were a lot of things that brought me real down at the time, and there were a lot of things that brought me real up. I was very susceptible to being immediately emotionally affected by something like that at the time. But like I went through it, I saw it happen, I saw how it happens. I was younger then, and much more insecure. I hadn’t put the time in that we’ve put in since then. I’ve seen all sides of the music thing and now—whatever happens now is only gonna be a shadow of that moment, ya know?

  “So if a lotta people wrote a lotta good stuff and then they wrote a lotta bad stuff—whatever happens, it happens. You have a concern about it, ’cause I spent a long time and you put a lot into doing a record. It’s the same ol’ story. Anybody who says it ain’t a heartbreaker … it ain’t true, ya know?”

  He laughs.

  “But that’s the way things are, ya know? And I’m at a point where I’ve got a better perspective about a lot of these things.” We’ve already flipped the C-90 over, which means it’s been over forty-five minutes and Springsteen keeps talking, obviously exhausted, but determined to answer all our questions. In all decency, we can’t ask any more without overstaying our welcome; ironically though, the last question we ask might easily have been the first. It’s certainly the most basic. We ask Bruce Springsteen whether he’s happy. Happy with his music, his life, and himself.

  His answer: “Yeah. ’Cause if I felt that I was just sitting there and squeezing the life outta the music, I wouldn’t do it. But that’s not what happens, that’s not what we do. The physical act is not what takes the time—I mean, this was our fifth album, and when we rented the studio we knew how to make a record. As fast or slow as we wanted to, right? The physical thing is not the story. Just how you feel inside about it. And that don’t run on any clock. Just how you feel inside, just where you are today and what your record is gonna be saying out there, and what the people that buy that record are gonna feel and get from it.

  “And I had an idea, and I wasn’t gonna go halfway with it. Wasn’t a point in it. Like I said, I don’t trust no tomorrows or that kind of thing. And I’d rather do the time—and the time is no fun to do—’cause if I didn’t do the time there, I couldn’t walk out there on the stage.

  “We’re gonna be playing a lot of shows, and we’re just gonna be out there for a real long time. And when I go out there at night, I just like to feel … like myself. And like I’ve done what I have to do. And when I play those songs onstage, I know those songs, I know what went into ’em and I know where I stand. And people will like it and people will not like it, but I know that it’s real. I know that it’s there.”

  When we finally leave Cobo Arena, it’s four in the morning and the Springsteen crew is boarding various busses, readying for the five-hour drive to Chicago. As we close the stage door behind us, we see thirty or so fans outside, copies of Born to Run and Darkness in hand, all waiting in this early-morning hour for a glimpse of and maybe a quick conversation with Springsteen. The fans wait, we leave, and it’s a sure bet that much later, when a tired Bruce Springsteen opens the backstage door, he’ll have thirty more conversations waiting for him before he finally makes it to his bus.

  And Springsteen, no doubt, wouldn’t have it any other way.

  [The following comments by Springsteen, all from DiMartino’s 1980 interview, were not included in the article published in Creem. —Ed.]

  On New Jersey: It’s like an hour from New York, but it might as well be ten million miles, because when I was growing up, I think I wasn’t in New York until I was sixteen, except maybe once when my parents took me to see the circus. It’s funny, because when [the E Street Band] first came out, everyone tagged us as being a New York band, which we never were. We were from Jersey, which was very, very different. It was all very, very local. That’s the way those little towns are. You just never get out. Asbury [Park] was where you’d go if you didn’t have the gas to get to Seaside Heights, which was a whole other thing.

  On Performing Live: If a kid buys a ticket, tonight is his night. Tonight is the night for you and him; you and him are not gonna have this night again. And if you don’t take it as seriously as he’s taking it … I mean, this is his dough, he worked for it all week, money’s tough now, and I just think you gotta lay it all on the line when you go out there. That’s the only way I feel right, and it’s the same thing with the record.

  On The River: The only overdubbing is vocal overdubbing, and that’s not on everything. And we recorded in a big room and we got a real hard drum sound. Of them all, I think it’s the album that most captures what happens when we play [live].

  On His Performance in Ann Arbor, Michigan: That was a wild show. We started playing “Born to Run,” which I’d just listened to in th
e dressing room like ten times, and I went up to the mike and I said, “Oh shit. I don’t remember these words.” And I thought, “Not only do I not know these, I don’t know any of the others.” This was all taking place within about five seconds. What the hell am I gonna do? I mean, you can’t stop. And then out in the audience I hear “In the day we sweat it …” and then it was fine. That was an amazing audience.

  On Producing Other Artists: Some people ask me, but I can’t go in there and do things the way I do my own records. I just wouldn’t feel right doing it. And I am not a producer. I’ve always felt that essentially I’m a playing musician. That’s what I’ve done the longest. I go out on the road and play. And then on the side, I write the songs and make albums, but I feel most like myself when I’m playing, when we’re doing shows.

  On How the Music Business Has Changed: Now a kid comes up and he’s got to do everything. Well, that’s no good, because people don’t do everything good. That’s why there are so many bad albums, because people don’t do everything good. Maybe someone’s a hell of a producer, maybe some kid is a hell of a songwriter or a great singer, or maybe some kid ain’t a good singer and songwriter. They’re sort of forced by the way the thing is based now to attempt to do all these things. They think they should. In the sixties, you had all these tremendous people out there, these great singers particularly, who were popular back then, who were just stopped, run over. Gary [“U.S.” Bonds] was like that. Gary’s a great singer, but it’s hard now. It’s hard to get people to pay attention.

  On Material That Doesn’t Fit into His Albums: What I wanted to do was those little four-song albums they tried to put out for a while. I don’t know if they’re gonna keep doing it or not, those NU Disks [ten-inch EPs] or whatever you call ’em. I wanted to, from time to time, release those with all the stuff that’s in the can and all the stuff that for one reason or another didn’t make it onto albums.

  On Performing on Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle”: We were at the Record Plant. I hadn’t really met him and I always really liked his stuff. He called me up and said, “I’ve got this part,” and it was related to “Born to Run” in some way, and he said, “Come on upstairs.” I think I did it twice, and he just picked one [version] and I was real happy with it.

  On His Early Years as a Musician: I grew up playing in bars since I was fifteen. I liked going down to that club, and if I made thirty-five dollars a week or whatever, it didn’t matter because I liked the job I was doing. I was lucky that from when I was very young, I was able to make my living at it. Back then, I never knew anyone who made a record. I never knew anyone who knew anyone who even knew anyone in the professional music business.

  On Giving the Song “Rendezvous” to Greg Kihn: “That song I wrote in about five minutes before a rehearsal one day. We played it on tour and we liked it, and I liked the way he did “For You,” and we just had “Rendezvous” around and I told him, “Hey, we got this song that we’re not recording now.” That’s mainly how some of those songs got out. I just wrote them fast.

  BRUCE BIT

  On His Mood

  “People always say, ‘Gee, it must have been tough for you’ [to go through the legal battle with Mike Appel]. But I always remember bein’ in a good mood, bein’ happy even through the bad stuff and the disappointments, because I knew I was ahead of nine out of ten other people that I’ve seen around me. ’Cause I was doing something that I liked.”

  —interview with Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, February 5, 1981

  BRUCE BIT

  On Fame

  “The sellout doesn’t occur when you take your first limousine ride. It happens in here [thumps his chest]. A lot of good people with something to say have fallen into that trap. It’s when you get fat and lose your hunger. That is when you know the sellout has happened.”

  —interview with Paolo Hewitt, Melody Maker, May 1981

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: A RESPONSIBLE ROCKER

  RICHARD WILLIAMS | May 31, 1981, Sunday Times (London)

  The River and the tour that followed its release proved to be Springsteen’s biggest successes to date, and, as Richard Williams noted in this perceptive piece, the singer was now “the biggest concert attraction in the world.” His popularity was taking a toll, though. He toured North America from October 3, 1980, through March 5, 1981, and was set to begin a European leg of the tour in Brighton, England, on March 17. That show had to be canceled, however, due to Springsteen’s exhaustion.

  He wound up launching the European concert series in Hamburg, Germany, on April 7. He then played several other European countries—including Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway—before arriving in England for a May 11 show in Newcastle. Springsteen finally made it to Brighton for a May 26 performance at the Brighton Centre. Afterward, he strolled along the Brighton seafront with Williams, a former editor of Melody Maker who now writes for the Guardian. —Ed.

  Bob Dylan arrives in Britain next month, hoping to repeat his triumphant series of concerts of three years ago. Many observers feel that his timing is unwise, for his performances will inevitably be compared with those of Bruce Springsteen, the American rock singer who finally opened his long-delayed London season at the Wembley Arena on Friday night. And no one, the feeling goes, can follow Springsteen.

  There is an irony here. When Springsteen erupted into the drab rock scene of the early seventies, delivering sparkling visions of teenage night- life inspired by his apprenticeship in the rundown, shoreline bars and clubs of his native New Jersey, he was dubbed “the new Dylan.” It took him years to live down the tag.

  Nowadays, critics see in his music a synthesis of many of rock’s greatest strengths: Presley’s snarl, the romance of the Drifters, Phil Spector’s grandiose mini-symphonies, the drive of the Rolling Stones, and the social awareness of the punks. He is sometimes called the last great hero of rock and roll. His six-piece E Street Band, most of whom have been with him since the days on the Jersey shore, seem to be able to summon ghosts at will, but they also have their own distinctive and much-imitated sound.

  Springsteen is himself noted for a fanatical interest in early rock. His current bedtime reading is a paperback called Elvis: The Final Years. It is his homework: a case history, he says, of how not to be a rock star.

  Four years ago, finding himself in Memphis, he tried to meet Presley. His method was typically straightforward, avoiding showbiz protocol: He jumped over Presley’s garden fence. Within seconds, a prowling guard, who had never heard of Bruce Springsteen and who certainly did not believe that this disheveled kid could be a star, brusquely informed him that the King was in Las Vegas, and that he had better be on his way.

  Most people who are not rock fans remain, like that guard, unaware of Springsteen’s existence. He is to be found neither on family TV shows nor in the gossip columns (although he appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in a single memorable week back in 1975), and he has never had a hit single in Britain.

  He is, however, indisputably the biggest concert attraction in the world: In Britain, more than 300,000 people applied for 105,000 tickets, bringing him to the attention of the up-market touts who normally trade in Buckingham Palace garden parties and Finals Day at Wimbledon.

  His Wembley shows come in the middle of an eighteen-month world tour, with a total audience approaching two million. The next leg includes the inauguration of a new twenty-thousand-seat stadium in New Jersey, where his song “Born to Run” has been adopted as the state’s official anthem [Actually, the song was named the state’s “Unofficial Youth Rock Anthem” by New Jersey’s legislature in 1979. —Ed.]; on the strength of a single radio announcement, which included snatches of his music but didn’t bother to mention his name, half a million applications [for tickets] were received within a couple of days.

  Harvey Goldsmith, Springsteen’s British promoter, also handles Dylan and the Stones, so his assessment that the singer “ranks up there at the top, which is
amazing for a guy who’s only been here once before,” is perhaps muted by diplomacy. “You have to remember,” Goldsmith continues in a tone of grateful astonishment, “that 99.9 percent of these people have never seen him before.”

  That is not quite accurate. About five thousand people saw Springsteen’s two London concerts in 1975, when his morale was dented by what he saw as overzealous promotion by his record company, which coined the arrogant slogan: “Finally London is ready for Bruce Springsteen!” The singer and his band tore down as many of the posters as they could find, but the campaign became a standing joke in the music business. Springsteen felt that he was losing control of his career and thought about giving it all up.

  “What my band and I are about is a sense of responsibility,” he said last week, strolling along the Brighton seafront several hours after concluding a typically exhausting concert. “If you accept it, that makes you responsible for everything that happens. People tend to blame circumstances, but in the end it’s always your choice.

  “Take Elvis. He lost control. After a while, he even lost control of his own body. Starting in 1975, I had to fight a battle to regain control of what I do.”

  The battle, which cut three years out of his professional life, was fought in a courtroom and ended with his manager being replaced by Jon Landau, a former rock critic who had been giving Springsteen advice since wandering into one of his Boston performances.

  Springsteen returned to the public eye with a strong feeling that even the playing of rock and roll entails hard work and obligations. He responded in his songwriting by abandoning the bright-eyed style of his early music in favor of somber images of small lives eked out in the margins of American society.