Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  BS: Keep going! Keep going! Don’t stop! [Laughs.]

  MM: All right, I’m not stopping, but you’ve lent your name to a lot of good causes, right?

  BS: From time to time, yeah.

  MM: Vietnam Veterans and also recently Obama. Some people say, “What’s a film star or a rock star got to do with that?”

  BS: You don’t really have to have anything to do with politics if you don’t want. We were products of the sixties. That was when I grew up and it was similar to South America in the eighties and nineties when the politics were so volatile there. I remember going on the Amnesty International Tour. Politics was a part of everyone’s life [in South America]. It had to be, because there were people disappearing off the streets and there was enormous injustice. So the entire culture was permeated with politics and the sixties was sort of like that here.

  A big part of our generation of kids was permeated with political thought, so it became a very natural extension of whatever you were doing to think of its political implications. I never tied my name to any particular candidate. I tied my name rather to places where I thought it might be useful for one reason or another, with this cause or that cause. And to me it was a natural extension of the music we were writing. But in entertainment, I don’t think it has to be. In the end, you’re remembered for the music you made and the songs you wrote. That’s your primary job. And so it’s something that felt natural for me to get involved in, but it’s not mandatory.

  MM: All right, back to the music. Do you like collaborating with people? Writing songs …

  BS: No, I hardly ever write with anyone else. I’ve written with Joe Grushecky, where he sent me some lyrics and I’ve written some music for a few of his records. And I think Roy [Bittan] and I wrote a few songs. That’s about it. I never collaborate, though I’m not against it.

  MM: So you’re not gonna write a song for Lady Gaga or anything like that?

  BS: Oh, writing songs for people? I’ve done that once in a while. You know, I wrote something for Donna Summer [“Protection”] at the height of the disco period.

  MM: Pointer Sisters …

  BS: Well, I didn’t write “Fire” for them. I wrote that for me and then they ended up covering it. The biggest hits I’ve had were really other people covering my songs most of the time.

  MM: How do you see music at the moment? There’s the downloading, iTunes, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe the artists are losing control.

  BS: Well, you sell less records. But I think it has less of an impact on guys like me. We have our live performances and we’ve sold a lot of records in the past. I have some friends that don’t tour that much, that have a small record company of their own, who depended on selling fifty thousand records or twenty-five thousand records at ten bucks apiece to get through the winter or get through the year. I think it’s had enormous impact on someone in that circumstance.

  MM: What advice would you give a young band today?

  BS: Write as well as you can, play as well as you can—find your voice. It’s not rocket science. I guess what’s important now is to learn to play live. If I had one suggestion to young musicians, it would be develop a flame-throwing live show because that’s an important connection. And if you succeed, it’s important to remember that you’re in the catbird seat, you’re in the best seat in the house, you know. And you should acquit yourself with as much fun and as honorably as possible.

  MM: Well, this is the box set and there is a reproduction of your songbook. That’s what young songwriters should do—get a songbook like this and write all the lyrics down and cross them out.

  BS: And most of the writing in here, it’s good to remember, is bad. The songbook is filled with bad writing, bad verses, and bad words and then occasionally a good idea comes along and that’s the one you save.

  MM: “Darkness on the Edge of Town”—

  BS: That was a very important song to me. It was my samurai song. It was about stripping yourself down and finding what was essential, which is what I had to do at the time. And knowing what you had to deliver and its importance to you, personally. Of all the songs that I’ve written, that’s way, way up at the top as one of my favorites.

  MM: Well, the whole album’s a favorite of mine. Congratulations on this [Darkness box set]. You’ve done a whole re-creation of the album itself [a new performance for a video in the box set]. That must have been incredible.

  BS: Yeah, that was enjoyable. We got the band to play it all again in Asbury Park. Played the record from top to bottom, and that’s one of my favorite things.

  MM: You will come down to Australia soon, won’t you?

  BS: We’ve had great times down there, and great shows. I particularly enjoyed when I came down on the Tom Joad tour and I got the chance to play some small places by myself. We’ve been limited time-wise because it’s been the decade where we’re raising our kids and I don’t go off and stay on the road for months at a time. I haven’t done it in ten years. We go out and come back and out and come back—relatively short hops and come back. But yeah, we gotta get back down there.

  My life is pretty simple. I try to write some more good songs and go out and play some more good shows. And we have this big body of work behind us that we can draw on. That’s deeply enjoyable. You know, it’s funny but when I hit fifty, I became very prolific.

  MM: At twenty-seven, you weren’t bad either …

  BS: Yeah, but there was something right around fifty. You know, we’ve made a lot of good records over the past decade. And I think the important thing is we’ve made records that have advanced whatever vision we might have had. They’re not perfunctory. If you’re interested in our band and its history, you’re going to have to see what’s on The Rising and Magic. Those are records that remain an essential part of what we’re doing.

  I’m always interested in what’s going to happen next. The narrative that gripped me as a very young man … I’m still very much held in its sway today. I wake up in the morning and think, “OK, where am I going to take this? Where are we going?” So it’s still a lot of fun.

  MM: Also, if you’re going on tour again, you’ve got so much material, you could go for days.

  BS: Plenty of songs to draw on. I still like to write the new ones, though. It’s still fun.

  MM: What is your favorite song?

  BS: I don’t think I have any single favorite. Sometimes, some of the ones that the fans have loved the most.

  MM: Well, I tell you what, you look amazing and happy. Give my love to Patti. I’m actually relieved I didn’t take four hours to do this interview.

  BS: This man right here dragged me through the longest four hours of my life! [Springsteen is referring to when Meldrum interviewed him in 1995. —Ed.] I think we went over every single song on Tracks. Was that the record?

  MM: That’s it.

  BS: Oh my God. Whenever I think of you, I think of pain, my friend! Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. Thanks a lot.

  EULOGY FOR CLARENCE CLEMONS

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN | June 21, 2011, Palm Beach, Florida

  It all happened so quickly. One minute Springsteen fans were watching Clarence Clemons, seemingly at his musical peak, in concerts worldwide and on the fantastic London Calling: Live in Hyde Park DVD/Blu-ray; the next we heard he’d suffered a stroke and was in the hospital; the next, he was gone at age sixty-nine. For those of us who’d grown up listening to the Big Man, it was as if a piece of our lives had been torn away.

  One can only imagine the impact on Springsteen, who had already lost organist Danny Federici—his bandmate since 1968—to cancer in 2008. Bruce had spent decades performing with Clemons as a cornerstone of his band and introducing him to audiences—always last—as the “king of the world, master of the universe.”

  Springsteen’s affection for his longtime sax player certainly came across when he gave a eulogy at Clemons’s funeral, held at the Royal Poinciana Chapel. The typically candid talk, however, also included hints that the
Big Man could sometimes be big trouble. Afterwards, the singer returned home, went into the studio, and listened to a live recording of his song, “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

  “When the solo section hit, Clarence’s sax filled the room,” he later told The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart in a Rolling Stone interview. “I cried.” —Ed.

  I’ve been sitting here listening to everyone talk about Clarence and staring at that photo of the two of us right there. It’s a picture of Scooter and the Big Man, people who we were sometimes. As you can see in this particular photo, Clarence is admiring his muscles and I’m pretending to be nonchalant while leaning upon him. I leaned on Clarence a lot; I made a career out of it in some ways.

  Those of us who shared Clarence’s life, shared with him his love and his confusion. Though C mellowed with age, he was always a wild and unpredictable ride. Today I see his sons Nicky, Chuck, Christopher, and Jarod sitting here and I see in them the reflection of a lot of C’s qualities. I see his light, his darkness, his sweetness, his roughness, his gentleness, his anger, his brilliance, his handsomeness, and his goodness. But, as you boys know, your pop was a not a day at the beach. C lived a life where he did what he wanted to do and he let the chips, human and otherwise, fall where they may.

  Like a lot of us, your pop was capable of great magic and also of making quite an amazing mess. This was just the nature of your daddy and my beautiful friend. Clarence’s unconditional love, which was very real, came with a lot of conditions. Your pop was a major project and always a work in progress. C never approached anything linearly; life never proceeded in a straight line. He never went A, B, C, D. It was always A, J, C, Z, Q, I! That was the way Clarence lived and made his way through the world. I know that can lead to a lot of confusion and hurt, but your father also carried a lot of love with him, and I know he loved each of you very, very dearly.

  It took a village to take care of Clarence Clemons. Tina, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for taking care of my friend, for loving him. Victoria, you’ve been a loving, kind, and caring wife to Clarence, and you made a huge difference in his life at a time when the going was not always easy. To all of C’s vast support network, names too numerous to mention, you know who you are and we thank you. Your rewards await you at the pearly gates. My pal was a tough act, but he brought things into your life that were unique and when he turned on that love light, it illuminated your world. I was lucky enough to stand in that light for almost forty years, near Clarence’s heart, in the Temple of Soul.

  So a little bit of history: From the early days when Clarence and I traveled together, we’d pull up to the evening’s lodgings and within minutes C would transform his room into a world of his own. Out came the colored scarves to be draped over the lamps, the scented candles, the incense, the patchouli oil, the herbs, the music. The day would be banished, entertainment would come and go, and Clarence the Shaman would reign and work his magic, night after night.

  Clarence’s ability to enjoy Clarence was incredible. By sixty-nine, he’d had a good run, because he’d already lived about ten lives, 690 years in the life of an average man. Every night, in every place, the magic came flying out of C’s suitcase. As soon as success allowed, his dressing room would take on the same trappings as his hotel room until a visit there was like a trip to a sovereign nation that had just struck huge oil reserves. C always knew how to live. Long before Prince was out of his diapers, an air of raunchy mysticism ruled in the Big Man’s world.

  I’d wander in from my dressing room, which contained several fine couches and some athletic lockers, and wonder what I was doing wrong! Somewhere along the way all of this was christened the Temple of Soul; and C presided smilingly over its secrets, and its pleasures. Being allowed admittance to the Temple’s wonders was a lovely thing.

  As a young child, my son Sam became enchanted with the Big Man … no surprise. To a child, Clarence was a towering fairytale figure, out of some very exotic storybook. He was a dreadlocked giant, with great hands and a deep mellifluous voice sugared with kindness and regard. And to Sammy, who was just a little white boy, he was deeply and mysteriously black. In Sammy’s eyes, C must have appeared as all of the African continent, shot through with American cool, rolled into one welcoming and loving figure.

  So … Sammy decided to pass on my work shirts and became fascinated by Clarence’s suits and his royal robes. He declined a seat in dad’s van and opted for C’s stretch limousine, sitting by his side on the slow cruise to the show. He decided dinner in front of the hometown locker just wouldn’t do, and he’d saunter up the hall and disappear into the Temple of Soul.

  Of course, also enchanted was Sam’s dad, from the first time I saw my pal striding out of the shadows of a half-empty bar in Asbury Park, a path opening up before him; here comes my brother, here comes my sax man, my inspiration, my partner, my lifelong friend. Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet.

  You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together you might be able to do. You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you. Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety, and in some funny way we became each other’s protectors; I think perhaps I protected C from a world where it still wasn’t so easy to be big and black. Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it. Clarence’s celebrity and size did not make him immune. I think perhaps C protected me from a world where it wasn’t always so easy to be an insecure, weird, and skinny white boy, either.

  But standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet. We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself. And we were coming to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Together, we told an older, richer story about the possibilities of friendship that transcended those I’d written in my songs and in my music. Clarence carried it in his heart. It was a story where the Scooter and the Big Man not only busted the city in half, but we kicked ass and remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship would not be such an anomaly.

  And that … that’s what I’m gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and double down on that story on a nightly basis, because that is something, that is the thing that we did together … the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel and think and love and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fucking big to die. And that’s just the facts. You can put it on his gravestone, you can tattoo it over your heart. Accept it … it’s the New World.

  Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die. So, I’ll miss my friend, his sax, the force of nature his sound was, his glory, his foolishness, his accomplishments, his face, his hands, his humor, his skin, his noise, his confusion, his power, his peace. But his love and his story, the story that he gave me, that he whispered in my ear, that he allowed me to tell … and that he gave to you … is gonna carry on. I’m no mystic, but the undertow, the mystery and power of Clarence and my friendship leads me to believe we must have stood together in other, older times, along other rivers, in other cities, in other fields, doing our modest version of God’s work … work that’s still unfinished. So I won’t say goodbye to my brother, I’ll simply say, see you in the next life, further on up the road, where we will once again pick up that work, and get it done.

  Big Man, thank you for your kindness, your strength, your dedication, your work, your story. Thanks for the miracle … and for letting a little white boy slip through the side door of the Temple of Soul.

  So ladies and gentleman … Always last, but never least. Let’s hear it for the master of disaster, the big kahuna, the man with a PhD in saxual healing, the duke of paducah, the king of the world, look out Obama! The next black president of the United States, even though he’s dead … You wish you could be like him but you can’t! Ladie
s and gentlemen, the biggest man you’ve ever seen! Give me a C-L-A-R-E-N-C-E. What’s that spell? Clarence! What’s that spell? Clarence! What’s that spell? Clarence! Amen.

  I’m gonna leave you today with a quote from the Big Man himself, which he shared on the plane ride home from Buffalo, the last show of the last tour. As we celebrated in the front cabin, congratulating one another and telling tales of the many epic shows, rocking nights, and good times we’d shared, C sat quietly, taking it all in. Then he raised his glass, smiled, and said to all gathered, “This could be the start of something big.”

  Love you, C.

  KEYNOTE SPEECH

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN | March 15, 2012, South by Southwest Music Festival (Austin, Texas)

  In 2012, the year he turned sixty-three, Bruce Springsteen could look back on an amazing four-decade recording career. “Could” is the operative word, because he probably didn’t very much. He’s never been the looking-back type—at least not in the same way the characters in his song “Glory Days” were. Sure, he has always been fascinated by the ways in which the past shaped him, but he has never lived in the past. He has always been interested in creating something new and in seeing what’s next.

  And judging by 2012, what’s next is plenty. The tour he began early in the year turned into one of his biggest successes to date. As for Wrecking Ball, the album he released on March 5, 2012, it became one of his best-received and bestselling albums to date. The CD—which, like Magic, has been described as a rebuttal to the George W. Bush years—received a rare five-star review from Rolling Stone and debuted at the top of the charts in sixteen countries, including the United States and England. It became the tenth number-one album for a man who had now sold 120 million records worldwide, won twenty Grammy awards, and been repeatedly called one of the greatest and most influential songwriters and performers of the rock era.

  And he still loves the music as much as he ever did, as you can tell from the impassioned keynote speech he gave at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival ten days after Wrecking Ball’s release. —Ed.