Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (15 page)

How do you feel about
The River
now that it’s finished? Are you 100 percent satisfied with it?

Oh, you’re never like that, you’re never 100 percent satisfied, because
you’re thinking about all the wrong stuff you did. You always think you could’ve played that one other song, like tonight. When we started this tour, we said, “OK. We’re not gonna play ‘Quarter to Three.’ We played that the whole last tour and we’re not gonna play it this tour.” And sure enough, we get backstage [tonight] and this is the first time we had to come out again one more time, and it’s like, “What are we gonna play? ‘Quarter to Three’!” So that was probably the swan song of that.

You have to admit that as high as expectations were when you produced
Darkness
, the expectations for this new album were considerably higher. Do you think you were a little sensitive or paranoid about the final version of this LP?

No, because nobody’s expectations are higher than your own. You do what you can do and that’s the way it stands. People have their expectations and I try to live up to a certain thing I feel myself. And I know I have strict ideals about the way we do things, the way the band does things, so outside forces, they play a secondary role. Like, I know when I’ve done all I can do after a show and I know when I’ve done all I can do when I make a record. And you know when it could be better—like there was something wrong with the stage or you couldn’t quite say what you wanted to say. But, you know, people’s expectations are gonna be what they’re gonna be; in the end, you’re gonna disappoint everybody anyway [
laughs
].

OK, but if I were you, I know I’d have been scared. With
No Nukes
, the talk about you as the highlight, the viable screen commodity, all building up to the long-awaited LP. All I know is I’d be happy as hell to be out on the road and not have to deal with all that
.

Yeah, well that’s the reality, like you’re hit with the reality every night. All the outer stuff, it’s like, what’s to be frightened of? That somebody’s not gonna like it? That’s just not that much, you know?

On opening night in Ann Arbor you had to stop on occasion because the band hadn’t learned the new songs completely
.

Well Ann Arbor, that was a wild show, because I came out and we started playing and we went into “Born to Run,” which I’d just listened to in the dressing room like ten times.

To try and remember the words?

Yeah, and I went up to the mike and I couldn’t remember the words, and I was up there and said, “Oh shit. I don’t know these words.” And I thought, “Not only do I not know these, I don’t know any of the others.” This was all taking place within about five seconds. “What the hell am I gonna do?” I mean, you can’t stop. And then out in the audience I hear “In the day we sweat it …” and it was GREAT. And then it was fine. That was an amazing audience.

But how do you feel about that? You seem to be one of the only performers that the audience truly loves. Not to flatter you, but it seems like you probably haven’t been up against an audience that wasn’t totally familiar with you and hadn’t memorized the lyrics of all your songs. Do you ever wish you were facing an audience as a complete unknown?

I opened for Black Oak Arkansas. I opened for Brownsville Station and I opened for Sha Na Na. I’m 31 and I’ve been playing in bars since I was 15, and I’ve faced a lot of audiences that don’t give a shit that you’re onstage. And if you’re calling percentages, we’ve had only 2 to 5 percent nights like tonight against 95 percent in the 10 to 15 years we’ve been playing when, let me tell you, that did not happen. That does not happen, and it keeps you from ever getting spoiled, because you know what it’s like when nobody gives a damn when you come out there. It keeps you in certain places, it stays with you. There are no free rides. When we first started playing, I’d go to every show expecting nobody to come, and I’d go onstage expecting nobody to give me anything for free. And that’s the way you have to play. If you don’t play like that, pack your guitar up, throw it in the trashcan, go home, fix televisions, do some other line of work, you know? Do something where that’s the way you feel about it. And the night I stop thinking that way, that’s the night I won’t do it no more, because that’s just the bottom line. I don’t gauge the show by the audience reaction; I don’t gauge the show by the review in the paper the next day. I know what I did when I’m done, I know how I feel, and I know if I’m comfortable when I get on the bus to go to the next town. I know if I feel good and I know if I feel bad. I know if I can go to sleep easy that night. That’s the way that we judge it and that’s the way that we run it. And if we didn’t, that noise that you were hearing, that would not be happening in the first place.

Do you ever worry about that? Do you think that might not happen in the future, that you might not give your all?

No. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t have any fear about that because, I guess, I have other things that are much more frightening that keep me from falling into that.

What’s it like these days getting recognized?

People don’t recognize me that much. They don’t. If you go around humming “Badlands” or something [
laughs
], they might. People just don’t look for you. They recognize you outside the show, but it just doesn’t happen otherwise. I mean, back home, if I go around a bar or something on a Saturday afternoon, forget it.

Do you still do that?

Yeah I do that. I mean that’s what you do when you go home, there’s nothing else to do when you go home. But if you do that in the bars back home, most of the time people do recognize you so they don’t bother you. It depends. It just doesn’t happen to the point where it really bothers you or something. It just doesn’t happen.

Do you get approached frequently to produce other artists or appear on their records? I know you just worked with Gary U.S. Bonds
.

Some bands, yeah. Some people ask me, but I can’t go in there and do things the way I do my own records, I just wouldn’t feel right doing it. I wouldn’t feel right, behind them, you know. And plus, I am not a producer. I’ve always felt that essentially I’m a playing musician, that’s what I’ve done the longest. I’m a playing musician. I go out on the road and play, we do live rock ’n’ roll shows and everybody has a good time. And then on the side, after that, I write the songs and make albums, but I feel most like myself when I’m playing, when we’re doing shows.

Dave Marsh’s book was obviously a great success. What are you feelings about it?

Yeah, that was terrific, that was really exciting. You know, we didn’t put an album out for that whole year and then came the book, and kids would come up with it and say “Hey, sign the book.” It was really just a nice thing for everybody.

The guys in the band, you’ve all been friends for years and all that. When Marsh’s book came out there was a big deal about you, the picture on the cover of you smiling, did the guys come up to you and say “Oh, come on Bruce. We all know you’re just a little shit.”

No [
laughs
]. It’s like you don’t think that much about it. Most of the people I’m with have been my friends for a long time, in my band, and they’re all in the book. I mean, since I was 16 I’ve known Steve. You just sit there and look at the book and there’s all those things happening, but you just accept those things happening.

With your success you’ve created a familiar “Springsteen sound.” When you hear new artists that seem to imitate your sound, do you think about what you’ve created?

No, I never have those particular feelings. Myself, I’ve been influenced by so much music. Even on the new album there’s some Johnny and the Hurricanes kind of stuff. I don’t think about it.

How did your involvement with Gary U.S. Bonds come about?

We met in a bar right by my house and we just started talking. He’s just a great guy with a great voice. He’s just got this voice, and there’s only one of this voice. The stuff on his records didn’t have that sound. That sound was him, that was his voice, and when he sings, that’s what he sounds like. There was a situation because of the nature of the music business where there was so many people. What happened was that the music business changed from where there were writers and singers and producers. Now a kid comes up and he’s got to do everything. Well, that’s no good, because people don’t do everything good. That’s why there are so many bad albums, because people don’t do everything good. Maybe someone’s a hell of a producer, maybe some kid is a hell of a songwriter or a great singer, or maybe some kid ain’t a good singer and songwriter. They’re sort of forced by the way the thing is based now to attempt to do all these things. They think they should. In the ’60s, what happened was you had all these tremendous people out there, these great singers particularly, who were popular back then, who were just stopped, run over, you know. In a flash, 20 years old. Now, they just don’t fit in, they don’t fit the structure of the music business. Who is their audience? Gary was like that. Gary’s a great singer, but it’s hard now. It’s hard to get people to pay attention.

Do you wonder what your records might sound like if you didn’t produce yourself?

Our method now is a very personal way of recording, where somebody coming in from the outside would have a difficult time. We wrote and recorded about 48 songs [for
The River
] and at one time I thought they were all gonna be on [
laughs
]. And somebody sitting there seeing four albums being recorded, well, you gotta be in it for life, you know? To just have the patience and the perseverance. And we recorded that stuff real fast, there was not a lot of overdubbing, not a lot of takes even. We just recorded so much stuff.

What was the major criteria for the completion of the album, the selection of songs?

I’d say the main thing was trying to focus on exactly what I wanted on the album, and what I wanted to do with characters. Like on
Darkness
, that stopped at a certain point. Well, what happens now? I don’t feel different every six months, it takes a while. What I wanted to do, and what I hoped was working out was those little four-song albums they tried to put out for a while, I don’t know if they’re gonna keep doing it or not, those “Nu Disks” [10″ EPs like
Black Market Clash
, circa 1979] or whatever you call ’em. I wanted to, from time to time, release those with all the stuff that’s in the can and all the stuff that for one reason or another didn’t make it on. I wanted to put those out in between albums so that it was a different kind of thing. I don’t think they’re gonna make those anymore.

How did you end up on [Lou Reed’s]
Street Hassle
?

He called me up in the studio, it was funny. We were at the Record Plant; I hadn’t really met him and I liked his stuff, I always really liked it. He called me up and said “I’ve got this part,” and it was related to “Born to Run,” I guess, in some way, and said “Come on upstairs,” and he had these words, and I went upstairs …

And you read them
.

Yeah, and so I did it once, no, I think I did it twice, and he just picked one and I was real happy.

Did you enjoy the No Nukes shows?

That was great. That was one of the favorite shows that we ever did. I liked working with all those different people. What happened was
when we first started, the way we got to playing by ourselves was inadvertent. We never meant to do shows by ourselves. But we couldn’t get on any other tours. People will tell you today, if you’re a new band, you can’t get on other tours, people won’t take you out. And if you’re good, then forget about it. You’re never gonna make it out. So, at the time, we were doing pick-up shows for absolutely anybody that would put us on. But it got to a point where just nobody would put us on, we couldn’t get any shows. So we started playing clubs by ourselves. Then eventually the shows started getting longer and developed into what it is. But the thing about the Nukes show was we only played an hour; and it was fun [
laughs
], because you could go like a runaway train in an hour. We could come off and dance around the block after that, so it was funny. And I wanted to do something with that, and it was just one of the best things. I felt real good about it.

I was told you plan to be on tour until next summer
.

Because I want to play in the summertime this year. I just miss doing that, I miss travelling around and playing in the summertime. We haven’t done that in a while. We’re gonna do this tour, and then it stops for Christmas a little while, and then we go to Canada, and then the South and then overseas. I want to do that because we’ve never been overseas, we’ve only been overseas for four shows, and that was in 1975. We’ve only done two shows in England and that was the kind of shows that, well, one was the kind of show that, when I think back upon it, was the kind of show that I don’t want our shows to go. That was the worst, and that was when I was real down.

Talking about moods, I thought that the
Wild, the Innocent
LP had a real happy mood to it across the whole record.
Born to Run
was a mixed bag, but one of the reasons I especially liked
Darkness
was its consistency of mood. It ultimately seemed very depressing, especially “Racing in the Street.” Are there any kind of moods on the new LP that you can put your finger on?

Well, it’s different. When I did
Darkness
, I was very focused on one particular idea, one particular feeling that I wanted to do. In the show there are all sorts of things, there’s a wide range of emotion.

But when I listen to
Darkness
, I wanna go slit my wrists
.

Yeah. Like you say, that’s my favorite record,
Darkness
, so this time one of the things that I felt was on
Darkness
, I didn’t make room for certain [
pauses
] things, you know. Because I just couldn’t understand how you could feel so good and so bad at the same time. And it was very confusing to me. “Sherry Darling” was gonna be on
Darkness
, “Independence Day” was a song that was gonna be on
Darkness
, and the song I wrote right after
Darkness
was “Point Blank” which takes that thing to its furthest. Because at the time, I remember because Jon asked me, and I said “Jon, I just can’t see all this different stuff being on it because it’s gonna be too confusing for people,” and he said “No, it’s not gonna be too confusing for people,” and I said, “Well, I guess it’s gonna be too confusing for me.” It just is that way for me right now, for some reason.