Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (25 page)

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.

You were still living in Rumson?

Yeah, and then we lived in New York for a while. That wasn’t for me, on account of growing up in a small town and being used to having cars and all that stuff.

I’d made a lot of plans, but when we got home, I just kind of spun off for a while. I just got lost. That lasted for about a year.

What kinds of things did you do?

The best way I can say it is that I wasn’t doing what I said I was going to do. Somewhere between realization and actualization, I slipped in between the cracks. I was in a lot of fear. And I was just holding out. I
made life generally unpleasant. And so at some point Patti and I just said, “Hell, let’s go out to L.A.”

I’ve always felt a little lighter out here. I’ve had a house in the Hollywood Hills since the early ’80s, and I’d come out here three, four months out of the year. I always remember feeling just a little lighter, like I was carrying less. So Patti and I came out here, and things started to get better. And then the baby came along, and that was fantastic. That was just the greatest thing.

Had you wanted to have a baby in the past?

I know there were a lot of things in the paper about Juli and me and that the issue of having a baby was what caused us to break up. Well, that just wasn’t true. That’s a lie.

But it was something you wanted to do—have a family—or was it something you were afraid of?

Well, yeah [
pause
], I was
afraid
. But I was afraid of this whole thing. That’s what this was about. I had made my music everything. I was real
good
at music and real
bad
at everything else.

Was Patti the person who really helped you get through all of this?

Yeah. She had a very sure eye for all of my bullshit. She recognized it. She was able to call me on it. I had become a master manipulator. You know, “Oh, I’m going out of the house for a little while, and I’m going down …” I always had a way of moving off, moving away, moving back and creating distance. I avoided closeness, and I wouldn’t lay my cards on the table. I had many ways of doing that particular dance, and I thought they were pretty sophisticated. But maybe they weren’t. I was just doing what came naturally. And then when I hit the stage, it was just the opposite. I would throw myself forward, but it was okay because it was brief. Hey, that’s why they call them one-night stands. It’s like you’re there, then
bang!
You’re gone. I went out in ’85 and talked a lot about community, but I wasn’t a part of any community.

So when I got back to New York after the Amnesty tour in ’88, I was kind of wandering and lost, and it was Patti’s patience and her understanding that got me through. She’s a real friend, and we have a real great friendship. And finally I said I’ve got to start dealing with this, I’ve got to take some baby steps.

What were some of those baby steps?

The best thing I did was I got into therapy. That was really valuable. I crashed into myself and saw a lot of myself as I really was. And I questioned all my motivations. Why am I writing what I’m writing? Why am I saying what I’m saying? Do I mean it? Am I bullshitting? Am I just trying to be the most popular guy in town? Do I need to be liked that much? I questioned everything I’d ever done, and it was good. You should do that. And then you realize there is no single motivation to anything. You’re doing it for all those reasons.

So I went through a real intense period of self-examination. I knew I had to sit in my room for eight hours a day with a guitar to learn how to play it, and now I had to put in that kind of time just to find my place again.

Were you writing any songs during that period?

At first, I had nothing to say. Throughout ’88 and ’89, every time I sat down to write, I was just sort of rehashing. I didn’t have a new song to sing, I just ended up rehashing
Tunnel of Love
, except not as good. And it was all just down and nihilistic. It’s funny, because I think people probably associate my music with a lot of positives. But it’s like I really drift into that other thing—I think there’s been a lot of desperate fun in my songs.

Then I remembered that Roy [Bittan] had some tracks that he’d play to me on occasion. So I called him and said, “Come on over, maybe I’ll try to write to some of your tracks.” So he had the music to “Roll of the Dice,” and I came up with the idea for that, and I went home and wrote the song. It was really about what I was trying to do: I was trying to get up the nerve to take a chance.

And then Roy and I started working together pretty steadily. I had a little studio in my garage, and I came up with “Real World.” What I started to do were little writing exercises. I tried to write something that was soul oriented. Or I’d play around with existing pop structures. And that’s kind of how I did the
Human Touch
record. A lot of it is generic, in a certain sense.

We worked for about a year, and at the end I tried to put it together. Some albums come out full-blown:
Tunnel of Love, Nebraska, Lucky Town
—they just came out all at once.
Human Touch
was definitely something that I struggled to put together. It was like a job. I’d work at it every day. But at the end, I felt like it was good, but it was about me
trying to get to a place. It sort of chronicled the post–
Tunnel of Love
period. So when we finished it, I just sat on it for a couple of months.

Then I wrote the song “Living Proof,” and when I wrote that, I said: “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say. That’s how I feel.” And that was a big moment, because I landed hard in the present, and that was where I wanted to be. I’d spent a lot of my life writing about my past, real and imagined, in some fashion. But with
Lucky Town
, I felt like that’s where I am. This is who I am. This is what I have to say. These are the stories I have to tell. This is what’s important in my life right now. And I wrote and recorded the whole record in three weeks in my house.

Did you ever think about not releasing
Human Touch
?

Yeah, except that every time I listened to it, I liked it. Also, I wanted to put out a lot of music, because I didn’t want to be dependent on my old songs when I went out to tour. I wanted to have a good body of work to draw from when I hit the stage.

And then I realized that the two albums together kind of tell one story. There’s
Tunnel of Love
, then there’s what happened in between, which is
Human Touch
, then there’s
Lucky Town
. And basically I said: Well, hey—Guns n’ Roses! They put out two albums, maybe I’ll try it!

There’s a perception out there—and a couple of the reviews of the albums mentioned it—that you’ve sealed yourself off from reality, living in a big house in L.A. and so forth. Yet based on what you’re saying, I assume you’d say the truth is quite the opposite
.

Those are the clichés, and people have come to buy the clichés in rock music. You know, like it’s somehow much more acceptable to be addicted to heroin than to, say, hang out with jet-setters. But you know, it’s the old story. People don’t know what you’re doing unless they’re walking in your shoes a bit.

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.

Has having kids changed the way you look at your own parents?

It was amazing, actually, how much it did change. I’m closer to my folks now, and I think they feel closer to me. My pa, particularly. There must have been something about my own impending fatherhood that made him feel moved to address our relationship. I was kind of surprised; it came out of the blue.

He was never a big verbalizer, and I kind of talked to him through
my songs. Not the best way to do that, you know. But I knew he heard them. And then, before Evan was born, we ended up talking about a lot of things I wasn’t sure that we’d ever actually address. It was probably one of the nicest gifts of my life. And it made my own impending fatherhood very rich and more resonant. It’s funny, because children are very powerful, they affect everything. And the baby wasn’t even born yet, but he was affecting the way people felt and the way they spoke to each other, the way they treated each other.

You said the song “Pony Boy” was one that your mother used to sing to you
.

My grandmother sang it to me when I was young. I made up a lot of the words for the verses; I’m sure there are real words, but I’m not sure they’re the ones I used. It was the song that I used to sing to my little boy when he was still inside of Patti. And when he came out, he knew it. It’s funny. And it used to work like magic. He’d be crying, and I’d sing it, and he’d stop on a dime. Amazing.

You and Patti had a big wedding, didn’t you?

It wasn’t that big, about 80 or 90 people. It was at the house, and it was a great day. You get to say out loud all the things that bring you to that place. I’m now a believer in all the rituals and things. I think they’re really valuable. And I know that getting married deepened our relationship. For a long time, I didn’t put a lot of faith in those things, but I’ve come to feel that they are important. Like, I miss going to church. I’d like to, but I don’t know where to go. I don’t buy into all the dogmatic aspects, but I like the idea of people coming together for some sort of spiritual enrichment or enlightenment or even just to say hi once a week.

The fact that the country is spiritually bankrupt is something you’ve mentioned in connection with the riots in Los Angeles
.

We’re kind of reaping what’s been sown, in a very sad fashion. I mean, the legacy we’re leaving our kids right now is a legacy of dread. That’s a big part of what growing up in America is about right now: dread, fear, mistrust, blind hatred. We’re being worn down to the point where who you are, what you think, what you believe, where you stand, what you feel in your soul means nothing on a given day. Instead, it’s “What do you look like? Where are you from?” That’s frightening.

I remember in the early ’80s, I went back to the neighborhood where I put together my first band. It was always a mixed neighborhood, and I was with a friend of mine, and we got out of the car and were just walking around for about 20 minutes. And when I got back to the car, there were a bunch of older black men and younger guys, and they got all around the car and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I lived here for about four or five years,” and I just basically said what we were doing there. And they said: “No, what are you doing in our neighborhood? When we go to your neighborhood, we get stopped for just walking down the streets. People want to know what we’re doing in
your
neighborhood. So what are you doing in
our
neighborhood?” And it was pretty tense.