Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  Because of the personal nature of the new music, however, it’s Springsteen’s show more than a band concert; a song such as “Human Touch” becomes almost a private discussion between Springsteen and Scialfa, who also joins him onstage for “Brilliant Disguise,” rather than a performance to a crowd. And his social-political commentaries—well-composed song packages during both parts of the show—are less theoretical and pack more intimate sting of a parent concerned about the world his children will live in.

  “Whenever you imagine things,” he explains, “it’s never exactly right. I think the [new] songs … are sort of about those things that have actually happened to me, and I just think some of those are my best songs.”

  That doesn’t mean Springsteen has lost his sense of shtick. There’s plenty of party atmosphere to this particular Jersey show. Springsteen is the jolly, affable ringmaster, whether he’s staging a mock craps game during “Roll of the Dice” or leading the singers in a conga line through the front row during “Glory Days.”

  During the raucous “Light of Day,” he really pours it on, tossing in a couple of applause-milking false stops, swiveling his gaze to different parts of the crowd to prompt more noise and playing Clint Eastwood—“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he fire five bullets or six?’ Are you feeling lucky today?”

  By the time the house lights come up for a crashing rendition of “Born to Run,” Springsteen has won the night and has everyone singing the words to his nomadic anthem. “My Beautiful Reward” and “Jersey Girl” are simply sweet endings to a fully realized concert.

  “It’s a lot of fun, and I’ve just been enjoying it quite a bit,” Springsteen says backstage, his eyes glancing at the next set’s song list. “The whole idea once you start touring is to keep it present and living every night, not to let it get embalmed somewhere along the way on your fifteenth show or your twentieth show. It’s challenging and it’s more work, but a lot of nights … it can force you to be creative.”

  [In the following sidebar to his article, Graff talked about how Springsteen likes to inject surprise elements into every show. —Ed.]

  One of the things Bruce Springsteen fans like best about his concerts is that he eschews rigid set lists in favor of inserting different songs each night. His shows have become more regimented since the mideighties, but he still enjoys tossing something different into the mix.

  “You can’t keep cranking out the exact same thing every night,” he explains backstage during the intermission of a recent show in his native New Jersey. “What I’ve been doing is just pulling something out of the hat and working it up in the afternoon … picking up a song or two every day.

  “I just try to do some surprise every night. It’s been nice because it’s opened up the repertoire a lot and it’s fun for the fans who come back more than once. Plus it keeps everybody [in the band] on their toes.”

  BRUCE BIT

  On Morality

  “If I was trying to capture anything on those records, it was a sense of a less morally certain universe. Perhaps in some of my earlier music—though those ideas are in ‘Prove It All Night’—people may have felt a greater degree of moral certainty. I think it might have been one of the things that attracted people to my music. That’s obviously not the way the real world is. I guess on these records I was interested in trying to paint it as I saw it. With your own weaknesses and the places where you fail and get caught up in the Big Muddy. I was interested in taking a less heroic stance. I think that, despite my protestations over the years in some of my lyrics, there was a heroic posture to a lot of the music I created. You try to do the right thing, and as you get older you realize how hard it is to do the right thing.”

  —interview with Bill Flanagan, Musician, November 1992

  RADIO INTERVIEW

  IAN DEMPSEY | May 14, 1993, RTE 2FM (Ireland)

  When Irish disc jockey Ian Dempsey talked with Springsteen in Berlin in the spring of 1993, the singer was still in an upbeat and introspective mood. According to Ireland’s RTE broadcasting company, the biggest thrill of Dempsey’s career was conducting this interview “while [Springsteen’s] tour manager looked on, horrified that he had obtained the interview without her consent.” —Ed.

  Ian Dempsey: Until early ’92, we had not heard anything from Springsteen for four and a half years. Then there were two albums out and this year we’ve got the plugged album [In Concert: MTV Plugged] as well. What was going on in between?

  Bruce Springsteen: I was just getting my life together. I got married again. My wife and I had a couple of kids. You want to set down some roots and let the kids get past that little “sprout” stage and so we stayed home a lot and I concentrated on getting that part of my life together.

  ID: The more fanatical Bruce Springsteen fans would regard Lucky Town as the better album. It apparently took just eight weeks to write and record. Was this just an instant burst of enthusiasm?

  BS: Actually, I wrote and recorded the whole thing in about three weeks. It’s just one of those records that comes pouring out of you and they always tend to be more direct [when that happens]. Maybe the songwriting was a little better on it, maybe I was fishing around less to see what I wanted to see and I think I had focused in real well on it by that time and knew what I wanted to communicate. And then it finally just kind of came out and it happened real fast.

  That’s always the best way. I’ve done it both ways. I’ve taken forever and I’ve taken just days or weeks to make a record, and it’s always better if it goes fast.

  ID: Why did you pull the plug on [MTV] Unplugged in favor of the plugged-in version of the concert?

  BS: That was my manager Jon [Landau]’s, idea. He said, “Gee, everybody’s playing acoustically on the show.” Of course, that’s why they call it Unplugged [laughs]. He said we better play with the whole band ’cause we’ve never played on television in a live setting like that. It seemed like a good idea, so that’s what we did.

  ID: Well, it’s now 1993. Are these better days?

  BS: I’ve worked a long time on my music, and now I’ve been working on my own everyday real life as much and things are very good right now.

  ID: What about the mideighties? Born in the U.S.A. and all that. Was that the peak for Bruce Springsteen?

  BS: Not for me. There was a lot of excitement and that’s when we sold our most records, but I don’t feel like I’ve peaked yet. I feel like that was just an interesting time in my work. I don’t miss it and I’m glad I had it—both. I tend to enjoy … a little lower profile is a little better every day. Also, the whole thing becomes so iconic that it doesn’t leave room for enough humanness, maybe frailty or something. I would hope that the fans that come and see me now have been involved in my work way before that particular time.

  ID: You’re out now touring with a brand-new band. What happened to the E Street Band?

  BS: I’d played with most of those fellows almost exclusively since I was eighteen, and I reached forty and said, well, there’s a lot of other musicians out there. I want to expose myself and my music to other influences, to people who came up at different times.

  ID: What do you think of U2’s trend-setting show, which travels like a TV station on wheels? Is that your scene?

  BS: I thought it was great. I saw it in both L.A. and New York and had a great time. I’ve always kept my thing the same over the years. It takes a lot of creativity to reinvent yourself like that. It’s not easy to do.

  ID: There’s no truth in the rumor that “57 Channels” was written for Bono, was there?

  BS: I don’t think so, no. I wrote it as a joke one night sitting in front of the TV.

  ID: There’s the by-now-legendary story of Bruce Springsteen jumping over the wall at Graceland. Did that really happen?

  BS: Yeah, unfortunately, it did and now I got to fess up to every kid that comes leaping across my lawn [laughs] cause they always say, “Well, you did it, you know …,” and I say, “Yeah, I know, but it was a bad ide
a.” It was ’75. We were in Memphis. I thought Elvis was home and I saw the light and I ran up to the house and the guards caught me and threw me out. I told them I was on the cover of Time and Newsweek at the time but they didn’t believe me [laughs]. But anyway it’s come back to haunt me many a time thereafter.

  ID: You once said little babies change the way you look at everything. Have they influenced your music at all?

  BS: I guess I’ve written some songs about that, and I think it gives you a broader sense of things. It gives you a tangible investment in wherever your world is going, makes you want to live up to the things you talk about and sing about. Kids do what you do, they don’t do what you say, and it makes you think a little bit more about what you’re doing rather than what you’re saying, but it’s tough. Everybody says it’s one of those great blessings, but it’s a workout too.

  ID: Are Jessica Rae and Evan James old enough to appreciate your rendition of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”?

  BS: They think everybody plays and sings. They know what my job is. They don’t know that much more about it except that they don’t like it when I’m gone.

  ID: What about Patti’s solo project?

  BS: She’s a songwriter, writing since she was nineteen. She’s lived in New York City and sang on the streets with her girlfriends and she sang with Southside [Johnny] on his tour and on some Rolling Stones records. She’s a real good songwriter and I think people are going to enjoy her records. [Tom Petty guitarist] Mike Campbell produced her record and she wrote all the songs herself, and I think I played guitar on a cut or two. When someone wasn’t around and she needed somebody to fill in, she’d come into the kitchen and say “come on” and I’d come go over and I’d strum a guitar on a song or two. I play a little lead on one song.

  ID: Many artists have recorded a whole album of covers. Any plans in that direction?

  BS: I thought about it. The Band’s Moondog Matinee I enjoyed. If I was going to do covers, I would probably do some offbeat stuff, some country gospel thing, and it’d be something I’d do in like a month or so just for fun and if the stuff was good enough. Maybe sometime.

  ID: You said anyone who writes a song has an audience in his head, whether it’s real or imaginary. Who do you see as your audience?

  BS: A lot of it is yourself but I can go out tonight and play as hard as I maybe ever play but if the audience isn’t with you, I can only take it so high on my own. We just came out of Spain where there are really good and very committed audiences. They come to surrender in some fashion. I think I probably am more like the traditional blues, country, and soul artists in that I was always interested in what the song was saying. Now we’ve got an enormous amount of young kids [listening to us] in Europe, and that’s exciting for me because I know some of those kids weren’t even born when I made my first album. It’s exciting to be able to bring my music to a new audience.

  ID: Irish audiences are often told by visiting rock stars that they’re the best in the world. How do you like Ireland? You’ve been here twice at the RDS [Arena in Dublin] and, of course, Slane [Castle] as well.

  BS: Well, I remember that very, very vividly because it [Slane] was one of the first outside shows I ever did and it really scared me at the time. It’s always soulful, passionate people. That’s what I look for as a player when I go out at night.

  ID: One final question, Bruce. “Music could give you anything,” that’s what you once said …

  BS: I was incorrect when I said that [laughs]. It can give you a lot, that’s for sure. It’s given me a lot. A sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment. But you gotta make some real connections with some real people and try to sustain them, which is very difficult to do for anybody. You try to sustain your commitments, your love, your faith. And it’s always under attack from both yourself and outer elements in the world, you know. So I struggle to do that as best as I can and that’s something that the guitar can’t do for you. It can inspire you and move you along and give you strength, but you have to turn to somebody. You gotta look in somebody’s eyes and they gotta look into your eyes and you gotta find the rest of it there.

  PART IV

  “ROCKAWAY THE DAYS”

  Springsteen issues The Ghost of Tom Joad and looks back with Greatest Hits and Tracks.

  “I was trying to find a fundamental purpose for my own existence. And basically trying to enter people’s lives in that fashion and hopefully maintain that relationship over a lifetime, or at least as long as I felt I had something useful to say.”

  —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 1995

  HUMAN TOUCH

  Bruce Springsteen Reflects on His Music, Life Without the E Street Band, and the Glory of Rock and Roll

  NEIL STRAUSS | September 1995, Guitar World (US)

  While the early nineties marked the beginning of “Better Days” (a Lucky Town song title) for Springsteen on a personal level, they arguably also represented a low point musically. But things started to turn around in 1994, when Bruce won an Oscar for the poignant “Streets of Philadelphia,” a song written for the film Philadelphia, about the AIDS epidemic. The following March, the tune also earned three Grammys—Song of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song.

  Then, that same month, along came Greatest Hits. Hits compilations aren’t usually cause for much discussion or excitement, but this one climbed to the top of the charts partly on the strength of its bonus material: four terrific new tracks that Springsteen had recorded not with his current ensemble but rather with the E Street Band.

  Several months after this album appeared, the singer met in New York with journalist Neil Strauss. They talked about a wide range of subjects, including marriage and children. Springsteen also shared a lot of thoughts about the E Street Band, and you didn’t have to read much between the lines to sense that a reunion might be in the works. The conversation began at Sony Studios and continued at a nearby bar. Springsteen’s last words, Strauss told me, were, “Well, damn, we’ve had a good time. I’m stoned. Let’s not stop now.” —Ed.

  You can tell a lot about a musician by how he or she arrives at an interview. Some come with a manager, others with a publicist. Some come with bodyguards, others with a retinue of hangers-on. Bruce Springsteen came to this interview alone. He drove himself from his home in Rumson, New Jersey, to the Sony Studios in Manhattan in his black Ford Explorer, and he arrived early. Sitting in solitude with his back to the door in a darkened conference room, a mass of flannel and denim with a glinting silver cross earring, he didn’t need much prodding to be talked into heading to a nearby bar for drinks and atmosphere.

  Springsteen entered the 1990s on shaky ground. He fired his longtime backup group, the E Street Band, bought a fourteen-million-dollar spread in Beverly Hills, divorced his first wife, model Julianne Phillips, and married a member of his backing band, Patti Scialfa. Since then, his career has been the subject of hot debate. What is his relevance in the nineties? Does his solo work hold up to his recordings with the E Street Band? Is he losing touch with his audience?

  But in the past year, Springsteen ended the debate. He recorded his most successful solo song ever, “Streets of Philadelphia,” earning himself a shelf full of Grammys and an Academy Award, and reformed the E Street Band to record new songs for his Greatest Hits album, which debuted at number one on the charts. On Labor Day weekend, he will perform at the opening ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, an institution he will no doubt be inducted into when he is eligible in two years. [He was inducted in 1999. See page 283. —Ed.]

  In a rough cut of a documentary now being put together from twenty-three hours of film that were shot while the revived E Street Band was recording the new songs last winter, the reunion seemed like an easy one. Three days after Springsteen called the band, they were in the studio, stretching what was supposed to be a two-day process into one that took a full week. In one scene that doesn’t seem created for the camera, the band gives its saxophonist, C
larence Clemons, a cake on his birthday and he gushes, “This is the best present a person could have for his birthday, being among you guys.”

  The documentary also shows the recording of “Secret Garden,” a song that Springsteen originally wrote for his upcoming solo album. Here, he demonstrates the E Street Band’s democratic approach when he hands out torn-up pieces of paper so that the group can anonymously vote for or against the inclusion of string arrangements. (The strings lost.)

  Springsteen takes his interviews as seriously as he takes his music. During the two-hour discussion, he stared intently across the table, face still except for batting eyes, body solid and immobile except for constantly fidgeting hands, and set about answering each question as meaningfully as he could. Giving the waitress a 200 percent tip for his beer and a shot of tequila, he pulled up a chair at a table next to the jukebox in a dark corner of the bar and began.

  Neil Strauss: Unlike most musicians I’ve interviewed, you’ve managed to avoid letting success cause you to lose your perspective and grounding.

  Bruce Springsteen: It’s interesting because when I started out making music, I wasn’t fundamentally interested in having a big hit right away. I was into writing music that was going to thread its way into people’s lives. I was interested in becoming a part of people’s lives, and having some usefulness—that would be the best word. I would imagine that a lot of people who end up going into the arts or film or music were at some point told by somebody that they were useless.

  Everyone has felt that. So I know that one of the main motivations for me was to try to be useful, and then, of course, there were all those other pop dreams of the Cadillac or the girls. All the stuff that comes with it was there, but sort of on the periphery. In some way I was trying to find a fundamental purpose for my own existence. And basically trying to enter people’s lives in that fashion and hopefully maintain that relationship over a lifetime, or at least as long as I felt I had something useful to say. That was why we took so long between records. We made a lot of music. There are albums and albums worth of stuff sitting in the can. But I just didn’t feel they were that useful. That was the way that I measured the records I put out.