Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  NS: Before you ever got married, you wrote a number of songs about characters that had wives and kids.

  BS: Yeah, I was probably testing it out.

  NS: Do you feel that you portrayed those relationships accurately before you had even experienced them?

  BS: Well, there were a lot of different types of portrayals. I guess the songs that come to mind would probably be “The River,” “I Wanna Marry You,” which is just a guy standing on the corner fantasizing, and “Stolen Car.”

  I stayed away from that subject for a long time. I didn’t write about relationships, probably because I didn’t know much about ’em and I wasn’t very good at ’em, and also it was a subject that had been written about so much in pop music and I wasn’t interested in writing just your classic sort of love songs. Later on, when I did write about them, I tended to write about them with all the real complications that they involve. I tried to write a more realistic sort of love song, like “Brilliant Disguise” or any of the stuff from Tunnel of Love or Lucky Town. I just wanted something that felt grounded in the kind of tension and compromise that these things really involve.

  NS: What kind of advice would you give the young Bruce Springsteen now?

  BS: I would tell him to approach his job like, on one hand, it’s the most serious thing in the world and, on the other hand, as if it’s only rock and roll. You have to keep both of those things in your head at the same time. I still believe you have the possibility of influencing people’s lives in some fashion, and at the same time it’s only entertainment and you want to get people up and dancing. I took it very seriously, and while I don’t regret doing so, I think that I would have been a bit easier and less self-punishing on myself at different times if I’d remembered that it was only rock and roll. Being a little bit worried about it can be dangerous. It’s a minefield; it’s dangerous for your inner self and also whatever your ideas and values are that you want to sing about.

  You drift down your different self-destructive roads at different times and hopefully you have the type of bonds that pull you back out of the abyss and say, “Hey, wait a minute.” When I was twenty-five, I was in London and there were posters of me everywhere in this theater that were making me want to puke. I was disgusted at what I’d become, and then someone in the band said, “Hey, do you believe we’re in London, England, and we’re going to play tonight and somebody’s going to pay us for it?”

  So I was lucky. I had good friends and a good support network that assisted me along the way. In retrospect, I look back on those times now and they just seem funny, you know. But there was good cause for worry because I’d read the maps of the people that came before me and I was interested in being something different, and accomplishing something slightly different.

  NS: And what advice would the young Bruce Springsteen give you?

  BS: Louder guitars.

  [The following interview excerpts did not appear in the original article and are being published for the first time here. —Ed.]

  NS: Listening to the Greatest Hits album, did you learn anything new about your songs or see the evolution of the characters that tie them together in any new way?

  BS: I do think, if you lay out your work from end to end, automatically a story occurs, particularly in my stuff, where I was interested in sustaining a thread of some sort, and following people through different parts of their lives. I did feel like I could see myself way back when at the beginning of the record, and then towards the end of the record I felt just very in the present. I learned a lot of things.

  NS: I hadn’t planned to ask this, but have you ever been in therapy?

  BS: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I found it to be one of the most healthy experiences of my life. I grew up in a working-class family, where that was very, very frowned upon. So it was very difficult for me to ever get to a place where I said I needed some help. You know, I stumbled into some different, very dark times where I simply had no other idea of what to do. It’s not necessarily for everybody, but all I can say is, I’ve lived a much fuller life. I’ve accomplished things personally that felt simply impossible previously. It’s a sign of strength to put your hand out and ask for help, whether it’s a friend or a professional or whatever.

  NS: So do you still go regularly?

  BS: Long periods of time will go by when I’m not [in therapy], but it’s a resource to call on if I need to. It helps you center yourself emotionally and be the man you want to be. I mean, it’s funny because I simply never knew anyone who’d had that experience, so initially you go through a lot of different feelings about it. But all I can say is when you go from playing in your garage to playing in front of five thousand people—or when you experience any kind of success at all—it demands a leap of consciousness. And that can be very, very demanding.

  NS: You recently performed a hilarious song at the Rainforest Benefit about how you were turning into Elvis Presley.

  BS: What happened was that [Sting’s wife] Trudie [Styler], who produced the show, called me up and said, “We’re going to do a tribute to Elvis,” and I said, “Oh no.” Because when you sing Elvis, you lose. You’re not going to sing those songs better than he sang them. Somehow along the way I thought of “I’m Turning into Elvis.” I thought it would be a funny way to contextualize the entire event.

  I remember I sat down one afternoon in my house and just started writing, “I’m turning into Elvis, there’s nothing I can do.” It was very easy to write. I can’t really remember the words, but they’re sort of, “My closet was filled with uncounted jewels and a suit of gold lame. I put on a belt the size of Memphis. It was inscribed: Love, Priscilla, yours always.” You could have a competition where everyone could send in their own verses. It’s like a talking blues.

  NS: When you write a song, how do you know whether it’s an E Street Band song or a solo song?

  BS: The band is a connection to a broader subject matter. I think I write differently for them than when I write for myself. It’s very internal, psychological, my solo writing. So one of my interests in reconnecting [with the band] was writing slightly broader subject matter with them once again. For some reason, and I don’t know why, their presence moves me in that direction.

  When I was working on my last bunch of material, I realized there is something I tend not to do without the band’s presence. And I was wondering what that was. I think that the band was a symbolic bridge between me and my audience. When you lead a musician’s transient life, the community that you imagined and wrote about, you don’t really become a part of. The band was sort of the physical manifestation of those things—your neighbors and your friends and the people you’ve got to live with. When I go to write for myself, it’s very internal and psychological. So one of my interests in reconnecting with the band was writing slightly broader subject matter with them once again.

  NS: The word “reunion” implies nostalgia, a return to the past. How can you keep that from happening?

  BS: My interest in the band would be what I’m about to do with them, not what we’ve done. That [older material] always comes into it at some point. When you’ve had a long history, you carry a lot of baggage, and everyone has their favorite song, or their favorite time, like the early eighties or the seventies. And hopefully I think what circumvents nostalgia is depth. You’ve got to carry the baggage that you’ve traveled with over the years. At the same time, I wouldn’t be interested in working with a band as an exercise in nostalgia.

  NS: How did you meet Soul Asylum?

  BS: They opened up for Keith Richards and I went backstage and we briefly spoke, and I think they said they had seen us years ago in Minneapolis. We just said hello and met the guys in the band. I was familiar with the band mostly just from Grave Dancers Union. I hadn’t heard their earlier stuff. Then I went back and got some of that. I just went down to see them play. They did a great version of “Rhinestone Cowboy” when they opened for Keith Richards. And they said, “Just come up and play,” and I ca
me up and sat in a little bit. They’re just a real good band. [Dave Pirner] is a good songwriter.

  NS: How have you felt at times when critics or fans have charged you with “selling out”?

  BS: At some point, you just go fuck it. You’re never completely unconcerned about it, but you’ve been through so much that you’re just less sensitive about it and you realize that there’s a hard-core group of very ideologically concerned fans, but there are many, many people out there across the country and the world who experience music rather casually. I like that song, I don’t like that song, you know. This means something to me, this doesn’t mean anything to me. And so you sort of do a dance between the two, but at some point, I realize, I went in a particular direction, and those were the choices that I made. If the work you’re doing is good and you try to make it consistently good, you’re not consigned to any particular genre.

  I can go off and make any kind of record I’d like to make at this point, but it’s always a tricky game. I think if you’re a young musician—particularly if you came from a quote unalternative scene where you were defined by your outsiderness—that the threat and the fear of the mainstream can feel [like] a threat to your whole identity and you’ve got to make a decision where you wanna work, and the right decision for every musician is different.

  I was interested in seeing what happens when you throw yourself in there, you know. And I didn’t want to be rocking on my porch when I was seventy years old going, “Oh man, I should have taken a shot at this.”

  NS: What do you think your fans want from you?

  BS: It varies. You have all different types of fans. You have very ideological fans who are concerned with your purity in some fashion and which is some sort of transference of their own stuff. You can’t allow yourself to be paralyzed by [that] … you’re not going to be all things to all people. That’s just not going to happen. So you’ve got to choose your own road, take your chances, and go with it.

  It happens to anybody who steps into the pop arena. And I think that the pop world is a world of symbolism. It is not the real world, and I think it makes life difficult. But if you’ve had a long history of work, you’ll meet people who are very attached to different parts of you at different points in your life and feel you went wrong after your first record, after your second record, then you found it again here, then you lost it…. I mean, there’s so many different opinions about what you should be and who you should be that you had better have a strong one of your own.

  In “My Hometown,” there was no electric guitar and all I heard was, “What happened to the electric guitar?” So it started right then. So I think that you’ve got to have a strong opinion of your own, and you can’t get into a game of attempting to satisfy different segments of your audience, or your entire audience. It’s a loser’s game. You’ve just got to play it as it lays and move on. That’s the only chance I think you have of remaining vital and alive and grounded.

  NS: How has fame affected your friendships?

  BS: It’s tricky. There’s people who assume since this happened and that happened, you’ve changed. You do change in some ways, but not necessarily in some fundamental ways. It depends on who you are and what you want.

  There are certain friends that I believe are changed by your success. I’m lucky. I have a handful of relationships I’ve had since I was very young, and that I maintain, and that mean a great, great deal to me. Both within the band and a few outside of the band. There are these three brothers particularly that I spend time with when I’m back home. We take these trips into the desert on motorcycles once a year. We have a great time.

  NS: Why doesn’t Greatest Hits include any material from your first two LPs?

  BS: Jon [Landau]’s idea was that the record start out with “Born to Run.” My previous records were very eclectic. He just thought the record started out nicely with that particular song, and it did. There was a discussion about whether to include “Blinded by the Light,” which might have been another single. But there was a limited amount of space. We wanted only one CD so that it would be really affordable. The basic idea was that it be a sampler.

  NS: Do the characters in any of your songs come from your dreams?

  BS: Usually when you’re dreaming and you wake up and think you’ve written a great song, you realize it was only great in your dream. Sometimes I’ve woken up and thought, “Oh, I’ve got to put this down,” but I’ve never had anything that’s [worthwhile from a dream]. The place where you intersect with those people, they’re the stuff of your dreams. It’s always a grey area. If you talk with Patti, she might have a different idea than I might about how much of my characters I am. I usually cop to like, there’s a certain amount [of intersection], but there’s a place where it stops. But who knows? I guess I’ve had dreams like my songs, but I haven’t had any specific or literal situations.

  NS: Are there interview questions you hate being asked?

  BS: Not really. Actually, I don’t do that many interviews. I don’t just grind them out. If I have some work that I’ve done and want to talk about it, that’s why I end up doing interviews. I think the main thing is the quality. You reach a point where you feel like you’re churning it out and that’s when to stop.

  BRUCE BIT

  On His Musical Influences

  “My late twenties, all of a sudden country music became really important and particularly Hank Williams because his writing was so great, the imagery was so stark, dramatic—just raw. And I wanted to use classic American images. Great rock music was the cars, the girls, Saturday night. I wanted to address all those things in my own way, but I also wanted to include the country references and a sense of geography of the country, a sense of location, a sense of place that the characters would grow out of.

  “Somebody asked me the difference between rock and roll and country music. Well, rock and roll was Saturday night; country music was Sunday morning. Rock and roll was the freedom and come Sunday you’re left with the consequences—freedom always has its consequences and the price you’re gonna pay for it. So I wanted my music to be the Saturday night—that exhilaration, that freedom of spirit—but I wanted the consequences, too. I wanted to address that these things all have a price. And I also wanted Monday through Friday, the workweek, because that’s where people spend so much of their time. I wanted to try and develop a vocabulary and a body of work that would address the whole thing.”

  —unaired TV interview with Ian “Molly” Meldrum, April 1995

  DON’T YELL BROOOCE

  At Least Not During the Songs on the Boss’s Haunting Tom Joad Tour

  GARY GRAFF | January 12, 1996, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

  When Springsteen told Neil Strauss that he was going to “see if I can finish up this solo record I’ve been working on,” he was referring to The Ghost of Tom Joad, a collection of personal yet political ballads that Columbia released on November 25, 1995. The record—which contained echoes of Woody Guthrie and of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath—was as stunning and off the beaten path in its way as Nebraska had been, and it went on to win a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

  In the wake of the album’s release, Springsteen embarked on what for him was a very different sort of tour. There was no new band, no old band, no wild guitars or screaming sax—just the artist, who encouraged audiences to listen quietly while he performed haunting folk tunes from the new release.

  When the tour hit Chicago on December 3, 1995, journalist Gary Graff was there. After the show, he talked with Springsteen in the singer’s dressing room. —Ed.

  Flitting around his backstage dressing room, Bruce Springsteen is trying to be a good host. But there’s a problem; the folks at the newly constructed Rosemont Theatre seem to have figured that since this was a solo show, Springsteen wouldn’t need a full array of rock-and-roll accoutrements.

  “Is there any beer or anything?” the ponytailed performer asks as he looks around. “What … t
hey didn’t give us any beer? Well, you’re welcome to some of that Jack Daniel’s,” he says, pointing toward a mostly empty bottle on the counter.

  He may not have much to offer in the way of refreshments, but Springsteen is in high spirits as he entertains a steady stream of visitors—including the Kansas City artist Eric Dinyer, whose painting adorns the cover of Springsteen’s new album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a pal from Los Angeles who’s in from Chicago, where he’s working on a sequel to To Sir with Love with Sidney Poitier.

  The backstage bonhomie is in marked contrast to what transpired before an audience of 4,400 earlier in the evening. There, Springsteen—accompanying himself with just guitars and harmonicas—presented a stark, two-hour show that showcased the somber material from Tom Joad along with like-minded material from his other albums, including revamped versions of “Adam Raised a Cain,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Nebraska,” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” the latter cast as a harrowing blues.

  Often gloomy, the concert was a different creature from the buoyant, take-no-prisoners spectacles that staked Springsteen’s reputation as one of rock’s best live performers. Tonight he actually asked the crowd not to even clap or sing along—though there was little he could do to stop the ritual bellows of “Brooooooce!” between songs.

  Still, by the time he finished, Springsteen was grinning and thanking the fans for being “good collaborators. The music means a lot to me, and tonight you’ve shown me that love, and I appreciate it.”

  Back in the dressing room, Springsteen leans back on a couch and clasps his hands behind his head as he explains what he’s after. “It’s different than anything I’ve done before. I don’t know what kind of show we have. It’s not quite a folk show; it’s something else. I didn’t know myself how different it was until I did it in front of an audience.