by Jeff Burger
“That particular evening was funny because I saw Stardust Memories, the Woody Allen film where he was knocking his fans. The kid sitting next to me said, ‘Hey, is that what you think?’ and I said ‘No.’ … I was by myself—I was in St. Louis and it was 10 PM. He said, ‘Come on home and meet my mother and she’ll make you something to eat.’
“That to me was part of the fun of being me—people asked you to step into their lives out of nowhere. It was always fun, interesting, and fascinating. I just saw this kid’s mother a couple of weeks ago in St. Louis. I still see her—she’s come to every show for fifteen years. She comes backstage, gives you something to eat and a kiss. Her son’s a lawyer now.
“I liked that. Part of what I liked about my job was that I could step out of my hotel, walk down the street, and some nights you could just get lost and you’d meet somebody and they’d take you into their life and it was just sort of … I don’t know, a way of connecting with things.”
In Munich, as with every other show, there’s a polite announcement before the performance, reiterating what Springsteen has already told the local press—silence is an integral part of much of the music he’ll be playing, and audience cooperation is appreciated. Shortly into his set he puts it rather more bluntly: “Yes, folks, this is a community event so if any body near you is making too much noise, why not all band together and politely tell them to shut the f—up!”
The rapt attention and reaction over two nights in Munich and Hamburg suggests that the qualities being appreciated aren’t just the lyrics, but the poetic inflections in Springsteen’s voice, the feel for his characters’ cadences and rhythms of speech; the way each breath, sigh, pant, or moan is heard and made to count.
Years ago, Springsteen told an interviewer he was “a nuts-and-bolts sort of guy” who wouldn’t make his mark in a mercurial flash of brilliance, but gradually over a long “twenty- to twenty-five-year” haul. The Tom Joad tour, allowing him to expand the artistry of his voice and the eloquence of his guitar playing as never before, bears the fruits of this approach. But that’s not to say the new shows are solely a dark ride. The ripe friskiness of a horny, middle-aged male who has become a father three times since his fortieth birthday is well in evidence in introductions to “It’s the Little Things That Count” and “Sell It and They Will Come”—unrecorded songs about his own “squalid little sexual fantasies.”
A compelling blend of good-natured showman and dedicated artist, Springsteen is obviously aware of the value of contrast. So the jocular banter between songs just goes to highlight the depth of torment and heartbreak at the core of the show—be it a wicked Delta-blues reworking of “Born in the U.S.A.,” the lost-tether confession of “Highway 29,” the awesome unreleased Joad outtake, “Brothers Under the Bridge,” or the violated innocence of the kids in “Balboa Park.”
The impression of a man at ease with himself and his new, lowlier rank in the Celebrity Freak Show is apparent when we meet backstage, some fifteen minutes after his final encore in Hamburg. Springsteen is short and stocky, polite and deferential. With his goatee beard and receding hair pulled back into what’s not so much a ponytail as a sparrow’s cock, he looks not unlike a guy who might change your oil or check your tires in any Western town.
Then, when he grins and his face creases, he reminds you of Robert De Niro—another hardworking Italian-American whose art has centered on struggles of the soul and obsessional behavior.
In conversation, Springsteen is given to a lot of self-mocking chuckling, but just as likely he’ll slip into a long, slow, deliberating drawl, restarting and revising his meanings—a painstaking approach not dissimilar to the one that has produced the bulk of his recorded output.
He puts his “limited repertoire” of poses into operation for a short photo session, with the proviso that his socks aren’t showing.
“That’s the only rule I have about photos and I’m very strict about it,” he says with a grin.
The photographer mentions Nick Cave and Springsteen interrupts: “Oh, he probably has great socks—he insists you show his socks, am I right?”
Photo session over, he serves up two glasses of Jack Daniel’s and ice. Undoing the belt around his pleated pants, he attempts—unsuccessfully—to open a bottle of Corona. Then he opens the door and pries off the bottle top using the lock-keep, but the beer froths up over his trousers and shirt.
“That’s the trouble with doing it this way,” he says, navigating a quick detour into the shower room.
Finally, lager-stained but ready, Springsteen sits down, resting his drinks on the coffee table beside a silver billfold, holding some Deutschmarks, an expensive watch, and a biker’s key ring. Ninety minutes later, Bruce—who admits that he used to drink but “only for effect”—still hasn’t touched either his brew or his Jack.
Gavin Martin: Have you been working up to a solo tour for a long time?
Bruce Springsteen: I’ve thought about it since Nebraska, but Nebraska sort of happened by accident. A planned kind of accident, but enough of an accident that I didn’t really think that was something I was going to tour with. I thought about it again when I did Tunnel of Love, but Tunnel of Love was in between a group record and a solo record, and I still couldn’t quite imagine going out onstage by myself at that point.
We did rehearsals where it was just me and a sit-down band and—I hate to use the word—an unplugged-style show. That didn’t feel right. If there’s a band onstage, people are going to want you to go, “One, two, three, four,” y’know? So we ended up putting a big tour together.
So when Tom Joad came about I thought, “This is the chance to do something I’ve been waiting to do for a while.” Also, I wanted an alternative to touring with a band and all that that involves. I’ve done it for a long time and I felt like, at best, if I got out there with a band I’d only have something half new to say, because, if you’re there with a group of people, automatically you’re gonna want to hear A, B, and C.
Really, the bottom line is that, through the nineties, the voice I’ve found, the voice that’s felt the most present and vital for me, has basically been a folk voice. It really hasn’t been my rock voice.
I was originally signed as a folksinger and so it’s a funny sort of thing. John Hammond [the late legendary CBS talent scout who signed Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, and Bruce] would be laughing right now, because he was always saying to me, “You should make an album with just a guitar.”
When Jonathan Demme [director of Philadelphia] asked for the song [“Streets of Philadelphia”], he focused me outward and then working with the band did the same thing because they are the living manifestation of the community I write about.
Musicians are funny. When you’re home, you’re never a real connected part of your own community, so you create one of your own. So I created the band and that was your family and that was the living manifestation of whatever community you imagine and sing about, and I think that’s what they were to my fans. I think that’s what they represented and that’s why the band has power and why it is important and has been important.
That sense of friendship, loyalty … everybody’s different but somehow together. That’s why the whole idea of the band has always been a central idea of rock music; that’s why bands keep coming. Whether it’s the brothers in Oasis or whoever, everybody’s fascinated because it feels like real life. People trying to make it, to get together and do something together. That’s why bands are powerful.
GM: Do you follow young bands?
BS: Not that much. I hear things in passing. Occasionally, I’ll go out and do a lot of curiosity buying. Since the early eighties, my musical influences … they’ve been ultimately more … I sort of fought back in a way. There was Hank Williams and some of the blues guys and folk guys, but films and writers and novels have probably been the primary influences on my work.
GM: On the album sleeve and onstage monologues, you’re quite specific that it’s the John Ford film, rather
than the Steinbeck book of The Grapes of Wrath, that inspired Tom Joad.
BS: That’s the way it happened. That’s what I saw first. Then I read the novel, which is incredible. I recently reread it, and you have that beautiful last scene. The book ends on a singular act of human kindness or compassion—the entire book leads to that point. That had a lot of meaning for me at the moment I reread it because I was searching for a way to go beyond broad platitudes or whatever you want to call them.
I was looking for a way to make whatever light there is in the world feel real now. So I found myself turning at the end of my record to one person making one decision. I think the things I use to bring some light into the show are those types of things. That’s why I play “Spare Parts” and “Galveston Bay.” To me, those things are possible, those are things that … any individual at your show can walk out of the building and can lead the next day with that idea or that possibility.
GM: Did therapy affect your most recent writing?
BS: Nah, that had more effect on my life and the choices that I had; it gave me more control in the way I could live my life. Early on, when I was younger, I could only live my life in one way, it was the only way I knew. I was locked into a very specific and pretty limited mode of behavior. It was basically the road. I had no capability for a home life or an ability to develop anything more than a glancing relationship.
GM: Did you feel something happening to you at the time?
BS: No, you’re twenty-five and you don’t know anything that’s happening to you. All you know is that things are rushing by. At the time I felt like—this is the race.
GM: As a rock-and-roll athlete, you may be unique—there’s never been any account of you having taken a drug, for instance.
BS: No, I never did.
GM: Yet your songs suggest someone well aware of self-destructive urges.
BS: I’ve had many self-destructive urges but they’ve never worked themselves out in the drug area. I’ve had a funny experience in that I didn’t do any drugs; I’ve never done any drugs. It’s not about having any moral point of view about drugs whatsoever—I know nothing about them. I didn’t do them for my own reasons, which were probably … I didn’t trust myself into putting myself that far out of control. I had a fear of my own internal life.
I lived in a house where I experienced out-of-controlness and I didn’t like it. I suppose I had fears that that was going to be me if I do A, B, C, D, or E.
I was ’round very many people who did many drugs and I can’t particularly say I liked any of them when they were stoned or high, for the most part. Either they were being a pain in the ass or incomprehensible. That’s my experience—so it didn’t interest me.
Also, at a very young age, I became very focused on music and experienced a certain sort of ecstasy, actually, through playing. It was just something I loved doing.
GM: But you did take oxygen blasts between sets during your stadium shows?
BS: I suppose so, if necessary [laughs].
Those were the days when he was the Boss. A near-superhuman creation, trailing anything up to a four-hour extravaganza of euphoria, shaggy-dog monologues, stories with a bittersweet twist, clowning, death ballads, and hard-won heroics. The extended victory march by the man who wanted the heart and soul of the music to rage long into the night.
GM: Can you imagine doing it ever again?
BS: I don’t know. I can certainly imagine playing with the band again. I don’t know if I’d play for that particular length of time at this point. I mean, I certainly could, but I believe I might want to create a more focused show if I went out.
But it’s very tricky because I had the same thought the last time I went out, probably the last five times. Then all of a sudden you’re looking at the clock and three hours have gone by. So y’know, I’d have to get there and see.
As far as the other stuff goes, it was really that I had a lot of fuel. I always felt the E Street [Band] powering me. We had a lot of desperate fun; I think that’s what gave the fun—that the band presented an edge, y’know. There were always two sides to that particular band. There was a lot of dark material and yet there was this explosion of actual joy; real, real happiness—whether it was being alive or being with your friends or the audience on a given night. That was real but it was the devil-on-your-heels sort of fun—laughing and running, you know what I mean?
GM: Did things change when Patti Scialfa [longtime New Jersey musician and, since 1991, the second and—he’s sure—last Mrs. Springsteen] joined?
BS: When Patti joined, I wanted the band to be more representative of my audience—I said, “Hey, we need a woman in the band!” I saw the band as representative of myself. We were all in our midthirties and I said, “It’s time to deal with these ideas.” The band as a lost-boys club is a great institution—the level of general misogyny and hostility and the concept of it as always being a place where you can hide from those things. But I wanted to change that, I didn’t want to do it.
GM: What changed you?
BS: Just getting older, you know, and realizing, like the old days—you can run but you can’t hide. At some point, if you’re not trying to resolve these things then you are going to live a limited life. Maybe you’re high as a kite and it doesn’t matter to you, I dunno. But ultimately it is going to be a life of limited experience—at least that’s what it felt like to me.
Not only did I want to experience it all—love, closeness, whatever you want to call it, or just inclusion. To create a band that felt inclusive. Someone would look and say, “Hey, that’s me!” That’s what bands do. That’s why people come and why your power is sustained: because people recognize you, themselves, and the world they live in.
GM: You didn’t really start writing about sex until the Tunnel of Love album. Why had you avoided it until then?
BS: I hadn’t avoided sex, but I’d avoided writing about it. It was just confusing for the first thirty or thirty-five years of my life. Whatever you’re caught up in—you know, you’re traveling ’round with the guys, and women are sort of on the periphery. By the time I was in my midthirties, that wasn’t acceptable anymore. I didn’t want to be some fifty-year-old guy out there with the boys. It seemed like it was going to be boring. Boring and kinda tragic.
GM: On Lucky Town you sang, “It’s a sad, funny ending when you find yourself pretending / A rich man in a poor man’s shirt.” On Tom Joad the metaphor is more explicit: You’re a land-owning Californian millionaire, writing about welfare rejects, illegal immigrant drug-runners, and child prostitutes—people as far removed from you on a socio-economic scale as is possible. Is that what writing is about? Making connections that aren’t supposed to be possible?
BS: The point is, take the children that are in “Balboa Park”—those are your kids. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s like, I’ve got mine, you’ve got yours, and these are kids, too. As a writer, I’ve been drawn to those subjects, for personal reasons, I’m sure. I don’t have some big idea. I don’t feel like I have some enormous political message I’m trying to deliver. I think my work has come from the inside. I don’t start from the outside—“I have a statement I want to make, ladies and gentlemen!” I don’t do that. I don’t like the soapbox thing, so I begin internally with things that matter to me personally and maybe were a part of my life in some fashion.
I lived in a house [during childhood] where there was a lot of struggle to find work, where the results of not being able to find your place in society manifested themselves with the resulting lack of self-worth, with anger, with violence.
And, as I grew up, I said, “Hey, that’s my song,” because, I don’t know, maybe that was my experience at a very important moment in my life. And those ideas, those questions, those issues were things I’ve written about my entire career. I still feel very motivated by them and I still probably do my best work when I’m working inside of those things, which must be because that’s where I’m connected. That’s just the lights I
go by.
GM: Did you do any research to amass the material and detail that feature in Tom Joad?
BS: Things happen from all over the place. I met a guy in Arizona who told me a story about his brother who rode in a teenage motorcycle gang in the San Fernando Valley, called the Verges. I just happened to meet this guy by the side of the road in this little motel. I don’t know, it just stayed with me for a very long time and when I went to write it, I kept hearing his voice.
If you’re in Los Angeles, there’s an enormous amount of border news. Immigration and border life is a big part of the town. That’s part of what I’ve gotten from being in California every year, for half the year, for the last five years. It’s a very, very powerful place, a place where issues that are alive and confronting America are happening at this moment. It represents what the country is turning into, a place where you see the political machinations of how the issue of immigration is being used, and a lot of the bullshit that goes down with it. It’s just the place that, ready or not, America is going to become.
GM: Your reputation has always been of someone who is incredibly prolific and gives away as many good songs as you keep for yourself. Have you ever had a period when you haven’t been able to write?
BS: Well, if I was that prolific I’d have put out more records. I suppose there’s prolific in writing a lot of songs and there’s prolific in writing a lot of good songs! I’ve written plenty of songs, but to me a lot of them didn’t measure up because I wrote with purpose. My idea wasn’t to get the next ten songs and put out an album and get out on the road.
I wrote with purpose in mind, so I edited very intensely the music I was writing. So, when I felt there was a collection of songs that had a point of view, that was when I released a record. For the most part, I didn’t release a record until I felt like it, because I didn’t think my fundamental goal was to have hit records. I had an idea, y’know, and following the thread of that idea, when I thought I had something that would be valuable to my fans, something enjoyable, something entertaining, something that wouldn’t waste their time, [that’s] when I put a record out. I could have put out a whole lot more casual records but, at the time, you’re honing an identity of some sort.