The Rolling Stone interviews

by edited by Jann S. Wenner

  This was in Rumson?

  Yeah. When I was sixteen or seventeen my band, from Freehold, was booked in a beach club. And we engendered some real hostile reaction. I guess we looked kind of—we had on phony snakeskin vests and had long hair. There’s a picture of me in the Castiles, that’s what it was. And I can remember being onstage, with guys literally spitting on it. This was before it was fashionable, when it kind of meant what it really meant.

  So it was a funny decision, but I bought this house, and at first I really began to enjoy it, but then along came the Born in the U.S.A. tour, and I was off down the road again.

  It was during this time that you met Julianne [Phillips, Springsteen’s first wife]?

  Yeah, we met about halfway through that tour. And we got married. And it was tough. I didn’t really know how to be a husband. She was a terrific person, but I just didn’t know how to do it.

  Was the marriage part of your whole effort to make connections, to deal with that part of your life?

  Yeah, yeah. I really needed something, and I was giving it a shot. Anybody who’s been through a divorce can tell you what that’s about. It’s difficult, hard and painful for everybody involved. But I sort of went on.

  Then Patti and I got together, on the Tunnel of Love tour, and I began to find my way around again. But after we came off the road in 1988, I had a bad year right away. I got home, and I wasn’t very helpful to anyone.

  Some of your fans seem to think along the same lines, that by moving to L.A. and buying a $14 million house, you’ve let them down or betrayed them.

  I kept my promises. I didn’t get burned out. I didn’t waste myself. I didn’t die. I didn’t throw away my musical values. Hey, I’ve dug in my heels on all those things. And my music has been, for the most part, a positive, liberating, living, uplifting thing. And along the way I’ve made a lot of money, and I bought a big house. And I love it. Love it. It’s great. It’s beautiful, really beautiful. And in some ways, it’s my first real home. I have pictures of my family there. And there’s a place where I make music, and a place for babies, and it’s like a dream.

  I still love New Jersey. We go back all the time. I’ve been looking at a farm there that I might buy. I’d like my kids to have that, too. But I came out here, and I just felt like the guy who was born in the U.S.A. had left the bandanna behind, you know?

  I’ve struggled with a lot of things over the past two, three years, and it’s been real rewarding. I’ve been very, very happy, truly the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life. And it’s not that one-dimensional idea of “happy.” It’s accepting a lot of death and sorrow and mortality. It’s putting the script down and letting the chips fall where they may.

  What’s been the toughest thing about being a father?

  Engagement. Engagement. Engagement. You’re afraid to love something so much, you’re afraid to be that in love. Because a world of fear leaps upon you, particularly in the world that we live in. But then you realize: “Oh, I see, to love something so much, as much as I love Patti and my kids, you’ve got to be able to accept and live with that world of fear, that world of doubt, of the future. And you’ve got to give it all today and not hold back.” And that was my specialty; my specialty was keeping my distance so that if I lost something, it wouldn’t hurt that much. And you can do that, but you’re never going to have anything.

  It’s funny, because the night my little boy was born, it was amazing. I’ve played onstage for hundreds of thousands of people, and I’ve felt my own spirit really rise some nights. But when he came out, I had this feeling of a kind of love that I hadn’t experienced before. And the minute I felt it, it was terrifying. It was like, “Wow, I see. This love is here to be had and to be felt and experienced? To everybody, on a daily basis?” And I knew why you run, because it’s very frightening. But it’s also a window into another world. And it’s the world that I want to live in right now.

  DAVID LETTERMAN

  by Bill Zehme

  February 18, 1993

  How are you sleeping at night during these heady times? [Letterman had just signed a $14 million deal to host CBS’s The Late Show]

  By and large, I sleep fitfully. And when I wake up, the sheets are drenched in perspiration. But the experts believe it’s just a lack of amino acids. So we’re trying to correct that with the cigars.

  Has all the pressure driven you back to smoking?

  For Christmas, somebody gave me a perfectly humidored twenty-five-year-old cigar, and it was so pleasant, I just thought, well, I’ll try these again for a bit.

  Aren’t those Cuban contraband?

  [Cups cigar away from view] Uh, these are White Owls! You can get these anywhere!

  I heard you only smoked Cubans.

  You got the wrong guy. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Call the IRS. I pay my taxes.

  By the way, now that you’re getting the big dough, do you have any plans to acquire a better hairpiece?

  [Laughs] By God, when they build a better hairpiece, I’ll buy it!

  Have you spoken to Johnny Carson lately?

  Not too long ago, Peter Lassally, who came to our show as an executive producer after doing the same for Johnny, told a newspaper that Carson used to come in to work at two each afternoon and that I was coming in at ten. And so Carson read this and started calling my office at ten o’clock that day. I didn’t get in till like eleven-thirty, and as soon as I got on the phone with him, he was screaming and howling: “Oh, get in at ten, huh? Where ya been? Car trouble?” The last time I saw him, at the Emmy dinner, he just seemed great and happy. He’s really getting a kick out of everybody else’s troubles.

  Are you more comfortable in your relationship with him?

  I’m more comfortable now that he doesn’t have a show. I can maybe relax a little bit and try to have a more honest human exchange with him. For a whole generation, he kind of established the model of how cool guys behaved. I just had so much respect for him that, right or wrong, it was an inhibitor for me.

  On the air, he was always inviting you to come over to play tennis with him. Ever go?

  Yeah, I finally said to myself, “This is a living legend—you’re stupid if you don’t screw up the courage to go!”

  And?

  He beat me. He’s very good. He can stand in one place, never break a sweat and run your pants off. But in my defense, how can you just go to Johnny’s house? First of all, his house is like a goddamn Olympic venue. Johnny’s court is like a stadium where they have the Davis Cup trials. He’s got this state-of-the-art tennis surface—something NASA developed when they went to Neptune. The whole experience was unnerving. And his wife was very nice to me. But there wasn’t a second I didn’t fully expect to just kind of turn abruptly and destroy a $6,000 lamp or vase. I just felt, something’s going to go wrong, like I’m going to kill Johnny’s wife with the ball machine. “How could you have killed his wife with the ball machine!” It’s just like I’m too big, I’m too dumb, I’m too clumsy.

  Is it true that for years you wouldn’t watch his show?

  It was too depressing for me. I know what it takes to just get something on tape. Hosting this show, I always feel like, “Man, I’m struggling, I’m like a drowning man in quicksand!” And then you turn on Johnny’s show and say [daunted], “Oh, it’s fuckin’ Johnny!” He’s just easy, cool, funny. He looks good, he’s got babes hanging on him, he’s saying witty things and making fun of Ed. It so intimidated me that I couldn’t watch it. But I guess like everybody else I watched him pretty much every night during the last month or so.

  How did your own Johnny grief manifest itself?

  I can remember watching that last show and just being woefully depressed. I couldn’t sleep, I was up the whole night—which maybe tells you more about me than I would like. I know it sounds like I’m a complete ninny, but I felt a sadness for weeks after. It was sort of like a doctor telling you, “Well, we’ve looked at the X-rays, and your legs are p
erfectly healthy, but we’re still going to amputate them.” You think, “Whaaa? Why is he going?”

  But as with most aspects of his career, he did this retiring thing at the right time, the right way. And I look at the mess I’m in now, and I think [as Dumb Guy], “What the hell am I gonna do now?” I have no clue. But Carson just figures it out and carries it off with great skill, grace and aplomb.

  One week before he retired, you went on ‘The Tonight Show.’ At the end of the program, you said to him, “Thanks for my career.”

  I knew at the time it might have sounded flip, but it’s certainly the case. He’s the only reason I’m here. There have been a lot of people in my life who have been very helpful to me and have really done me favors and helped me in ways I’ll never be able to repay. But if there’s one person to whom I owe the most, it has to be him.

  If you’d gotten ‘The Tonight Show,’ would you have dared—as did Leno—to go on the Monday following Carson’s final Friday? Isn’t that a no-win scenario?

  No, if the circumstances had been different—by which I mean, if they’d given me the job! [laughs]—sure, I would have done it. This is not to demean what Jay accomplished, but were it I that night, it would have been handled much differently. Because you can’t just turn off over one weekend that six-month period of genuine emotion and interest and care and concern. You have to address that, and I would have done it. Now you could be criticized for trying to make yourself look good by kissing up to Johnny. But there was so much positive feeling about this man that it would have been hard to make too big a mistake there. I’m confident that we would have done a really nice job for that first show. Now, I’m not saying the rest of the week would have been anything. It would have sped downhill immediately.

  Some of your former writers are working on ‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ a great neurotic satire of talk-show life. Does this suggest that you are the real Larry Sanders?

  Every time I watch that show I think: “Hey, wait a minute! That’s me!” But I don’t know if it really is me or if they have the talk-show machine so well assessed that it looks like me. During almost every episode I think, “Boy, didn’t that happen here once?” They’ve all had an eerie effect on me.

  You’re famously brutal about your own performance. For instance, your recent session with Walter Cronkite—while genial to the naked eye—left you greatly unhinged.

  I really felt like I had screwed that up, because I was just overwhelmed by the guy. He sits down and you think, “Oh, my God, it’s Walter Cronkite!” So I just yammered all over him and just fumbled it.

  Your post-show drill, then, is to come back to your office and review the tape, dwelling on the mishaps?

  I have my own little ritual, yeah. But I should. If you’ve got men on base and you can’t drive them in, how come you’re getting major-league money? That’s the point. At this stage, I ought to be able to do a better job. I just felt that not only did I let the show down, I let Walter Cronkite down and I let myself down.

  But do you recognize you’re being hard on yourself —

  No! No! Why let yourself off the hook? If I fucked it up, I fucked it up. So obviously you come back the next day and try it again. Fortunately, we had Marv Albert on and got right to his blooper reel. Smooth sailing!

  Do you buy the notion that awkward TV is good TV?

  Yeah, if it doesn’t involve you—absolutely.

  To a certain degree, if a guest brings out visible discomfort in you, it’s actually kind of entertaining.

  I’ve heard people tell me that many, many, many times. And I guess if you provide yourself the luxury of some distance and a little objectivity, that couldn’t be more accurate. But at the time, you just think the studio is filling up with room-temperature saliva.

  Pee-wee Herman was that type of catalyst. You introduced him to the mainstream, but then he disappeared from the show.

  Something about a Florida movie theater, I think. Did you hear anything about that?

  Before all that. Was he banished?

  No, Pee-wee Herman was always great for us. There was a very small falling-out—I think it had something to do with The Arsenio Hall Show. I don’t know whether it was him or us or both of us.

  Would you have him back?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know who I really miss? There’s a song on the new R.E.M. CD that I listened to like six times before I finally realized, “Holy shit, this is about Andy Kaufman!” Andy would orchestrate and rehearse each of his appearances for maximum impact. And when the impact worked, good or bad, he would savor it. If we could have one guest like Andy—to me that’s worth six months of new material. Steve Martin also does it for us. He comes on and actually performs. There’s nobody else like that now.

  The night Sonny and Cher reunited on your show, you spoke of the futility of mixing business and romantic partnerships. You were alluding, I guess, to your relationship with Merrill Markoe, with whom you created this show.

  Right, right. One night I think maybe Merrill and I will get back together on the show and do a couple of songs. I’m still very fond of her, and she’s one of these people to whom I owe a great debt. Sadly, I haven’t talked to her in years. This is so silly, but in the time that has elapsed, Merrill’s mother died, and I never knew about it. Two more years go by and her dog Stan dies. So I sent her a note of condolence over the death of Stan—completely ignorant of the fact that her mother had passed away. I somberly wrote, “I now take pen in hand . . .” and she must have thought: “Yeah, but what about my mother? She’s been dead for a year and a half, and you never said anything!” But with Stan, word came to us that he’d somehow eaten an entire ham. Oh, God. [Chuckles] And it just killed him. Too much ham.

  As I recall, your dog Bob was on the West Coast with Merrill when he died. That must have been a tough night for you to get through the show.

  Yep, yep. At the time, Merrill and I were estranged. It turned out Bob was ridden with cancer. He had eaten a Presto log, and as a result, his lungs were covered with tumors. But they give off a nicely colored flame if burned—very festive for the holidays. So she called and said the vet thought we should put him to sleep. I said I’d be off the following week and would come out. But the vet said we couldn’t wait. So they put him to sleep right there, which was—it was sad . . . But I can’t—I’m not sure I would have been much good had I been there.

  Merrill recently published a tell-all book about life with Bob and Stan, didn’t she?

  We wanted her to be on the show to promote it, but the only request we made—because of her relationship with me and the show—was that we wanted her to do our show first. It made a difference to me. But because of scheduling, it couldn’t happen. She did every other show: Howard Stern, Arsenio Hall, Jay. Which is fine. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known in my life. I mean, we haven’t had a good idea since she left.

  Is there a downside to being in a relationship with you?

  Do the words “moody drunk” mean anything to you?

  Many would imagine you’re every gal’s dream.

  Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I’m no day at the beach, let’s just say that.

  Does fatherhood beckon?

  Well, I get very excited about kids. A while back, all of my friends started having kids, and I was spending more time with infants than I had ever spent since I was an infant. And I found them just a wonder. It was something that I hadn’t really thought about until the last two or three years. So I’ve decided that as soon as I get everything in my life just perfect, then I’ll start having kids. I’m looking at maybe six, eight months of fine-tuning, and then we’re on to the family.

  Are you feeling pressure to get yourself hitched?

  Well, you know, I’ve had that kind of pressure for as long as I can remember. In fact, the only one who didn’t pressure me was the woman I was actually married to. And I think she was greatly relieved when we were no longer married.

  I don’t k
now, it seems like I’ve spent way too much time in my life concentrating on just one thing—the work. And the older I get, it now seems like maybe that was not necessarily the thing to spend all my time on. Because after almost eleven years, it’s not like we’ve got it figured out. I think to myself, “We’re doing something wrong, we’ve misplaced part of the instructions,” because after all this time, it’s still hard, and you would think at this stage of things it would be easier. I don’t think Carson ever went home with his stomach in knots because Sharon Stone was in tears.