Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (58 page)

The idea of the moral conflict of the characters you’re describing within people, is a lot again about class, a lot about social justice, although not spoken about in any kind of way that could ever be said to be a sermon. It was always about somebody’s predicament that they’re in … moving more and more into that, the territory of writing in character, while really rocking the fuck out as well
.

That really was important to us on that record. We realized you don’t want to be Mr. Glum, either. I said no, that’s sort of our bar band record. I wrote some songs that were, defined the characters I was writing about, the part of me I was writing about … and I wrote a lot of songs that might be songs that they’re listening to in a bar on a Friday or Saturday night. And, because we were a show band and remain a show band, I was trying to write things that would be exciting live.

I call them mobile songs. You can be writing a story and have connections between the songs and even a narrative thread between songs that you want to develop sometimes when you’re writing and then sometimes, like you say, you want to write the song that’s playing on the radio in the corner of the room when those things are happening
.

A lot of the songwriting that I grew up on—and I know you grew up on, too—was music that performed that function. And I was very interested in us sort of as a band also making that kind of music. I wanted to make pop music. When we wrote “Hungry Heart” … it was originally when I met the Ramones in Asbury Park, and I wrote “Hungry Heart.”

For the Ramones?

Yes, and then Jon Landau heard it and said we can’t give that one away.

I would have loved to have heard … did they ever cut it?

No, I don’t think so.

Oh, what a shame
.

I was interested in just writing—“Girls in Their Summer Clothes” or “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” they’re meant to be sparkling pop records.

The flip side of that is … the craft that you have as a writer gives you choices and certain moments you can use those things to make explicit statements, unambiguous statements. I’m thinking in terms of a song like “41 Shots,” the impact of something like that. Have you ever had a sense of any risk in your abilities to say such things when moved to write them?

Nah. “41 Shots” I wrote, I didn’t think a lot about it, just thought it was a part of my body of work like “Promised Land” or anything else. Played it in Atlanta. I could tell it went over well, people listened to it. But then Steve came running into rehearsal and said man, did you see the front page of the newspaper? I said no. We’re on the front page. I said really. And I think I was referred to as both a “dirtbag” and a “floating fag” at the time. “Dirtbag,” I knew what it meant, I had to go to the dictionary for the “floating fag”, though, and it wasn’t in there.

So, that was really drummed up. I was getting letters from people asking me not to play it. We did play it at Madison Square Garden and Amadou Diallo’s parents came … and there was some booing, there was some booing. There was flaunting of the New Jersey state bird [
laughs
]. At one point, I said, hey, this is what our band, this is what we’re built for. This is what we do. But the only thing unusual at the time was I didn’t understand … it’s reported on the news, it’s written in the newspapers, but if a guy writes a song about it, it may show that people take music very personally. There’s something about music, and I think you used the phrase, it puts its fingerprints on your imagination. I’ll sing a little bit of it … [
sings
]

You mentioned when you were in the bars in New Jersey that you had the R&B repertoire, and that the E Street Band is an R&B band. There’s a difference between a R&B band and a rock ’n’ roll band. And a rock band and certainly an R&B band. Like you said, shows came to town, did you see like great guys who came up? Who did you see?

There was a place called the Satellite Lounge at Fort Dix, New Jersey … I know you have not been there. And actually a place called the Fast Lane. I saw Sam and Dave at those places. And this was probably late ’70s and they were incredible. And I stood in the Fast Lane one night with probably a hundred people and maybe half, a third full or something and watched them just blow the roof off the place. But Sam—there was a tradition of great bandleaders, great band leaders came out of soul music. There’s a beauty in watching a guy like Sam
Moore lead his band while he sang. Sam was the heavens. His voice was almost not human in that he had as incredible tenor. And he was gospel … he had a little of the Sam Cooke thing. But Dave rooted their music in the dirt and in the Earth. That’s why Sam and Dave were great because Sam was up here in the clouds and Dave was down here scrapping, scrapping on the Earth. And there was, that’s why it worked, that’s why they were so fabulous. Dave’s voice was so gritty, so earthy, so much pain in it, and so connected to the Earth … while Sam’s was incredibly powerful but it also went up, up, up, up, up. And look, that’s what you aspire to. You try to have your music rooted and at the same time flying. That’s what they had. That’s why they were so great.

We’ve got a decision to make. Who’s going to go to the heavens and who’s going to go to the dirt?

I’m singing the Sam part.

OK that’s sorted out and I’m glad I can tell ya!

We’re back with Bruce Springsteen. Part two. The middle years [
laughs
]
.

I think we’re past that part already [
laughs
].

We shared the stage in the tribute to Joe Strummer after Joe passed. That’s right. You sang the hell out of “London Calling.” At the height of the
Born in the U.S.A
. success, you came out in the greatest way for the
Black & White Night
[Roy Orbison television special] I don’t know about you, I get asked about that show than any single thing I’ve done on TV
.

Me too.

Is it true?

Yah!

Like once a week
.

Somebody comes up and goes … that thing was played constantly. But I think I was asked more about that show than anything that was put on in my life. It’s incredible.

More than even this show. But we’re gonna fix that. But it was so great … one of my favorite memories of that night was coming in the dressing room. And we’d rehearsed and this band is just incredible. We had Elvis Presley’s band, we had the TCB band
.

That was fun.

We had Jerry Scheff, Glen Hardin, James Burton … and the singers, the background singers alone were K.D. Lang, Jackson Browne, J. D. Souther, Bonnie Raitt. And Bruce turns up with his Walkman on, checking out that he’s not going to mess up any Roy Orbison songs, doing his homework to the last minute
.

They were hard. They had a lot of chords in ’em.

I mentioned family, Bruce, and there’s a curious thing that I think happens. As somebody said, the author Philip Roth could be as savage as he was because he didn’t have children. On the other hand, the joy of it in itself and the beauty of it is inspiring and then, they, those children, they grow up and start telling you about records you never heard
.

I have that happen all the time. My kids, they’ll listen to music. My daughter listens to a lot of Top 40, so I hear a lot of current Top 40 music from her. My youngest son, he started out as a total classic rocker. He was big reggae, 12-year-old reggae freak. Bob Marley, you know.

He’s got a big sound system?

Then he got into acoustic Dylan stuff. That was fascinating, he was very young when he got into it. He came in one night and I was watching Dylan at Newport, the DVD. What’s that Dad? That’s cool. I said, yeah, that is cool. I went out and I got him all the records … and it was great, you see your child sort of connecting with something that has meant so much to you. Went to his door one night and I listened, he’s got “Chimes of Freedom” on, and he’s probably about 12 or 13, and I said what do you think? He said epic, Dad, it’s epic. I said, that’s right, that’s what it is, it’s epic. And it was one of those great, sort of, wow, ya know? My older boy he was into a lot of political punk music, Rage Against the Machine, Against Me! … [
laughs
] … he’s against a lot. But and then a lot of, recently he’s gotten into a lot of alternative singer-songwriters, Bright Eyes …

Any names that have really struck you that you’ve heard as a consequence?

Oh yeah, he turned me on to Gaslight Anthem. They’re actually guys from Red Bank. It’s fun to see the kids at a point where, hey, they go out and they find their own heroes. I was happy that my kids sort of found their own home in music because it’s kind of the family business. And so you’re worried, it’s like whoa, that’s something to keep away from. But it’s so essential. I watched them … they found their own way, they weren’t interested in “listen to this and listen to that” … they were interested in “no,
you
listen to
this
, or you check this out or you check that out. And it became a big part of my relationship, particularly with my oldest son.

That’s a wonderful moment. To hear records, it’s like looking through a photograph album and seeing your life through the eyes of your child or when you fall in love and you share those memories … I mean, Patti and you come from the same kind of background, so presumably you have the same kind of jukebox in your head
.

Patti and I, we really came from the same area so there was a lot of cultural similarity. I didn’t have to tell her anything about the Crystals. She was steeped in all that stuff, she was steeped in the great soul music, Dusty Springfield, the great songwriters. And it’s always like a connection like I have … you hear something and you go, oh there that is.

It’s not a nostalgic thing because it’s the moment you’re living in now. You carry the memory of the record as you heard it, you share it and it’s like a language that, as you said, it’s just a look when the record comes on
.

It is a language. I think the nice thing is, the whole thing that songwriting is about is you’re a storyteller, you’re trying to, you hope to become a part of the fabric of someone’s life—beyond the fact that you want to make people dance and laugh and be entertained and have something to vacuum the floor to. I think your grandest aspirations, I know when I was young was wow, I wanted to do something that I felt had been done for me. Music, certain artists, became such an important part of my life experience. I always go, well, Dylan, he’s the father of the country that I recognize. He’s the father of my country in the sense that he was the first
place I went where I heard an America that I felt and believed to be true, that felt unvarnished and real, it felt like what I was experiencing. It was really my first true vision of the country I felt come out of those ’60s records of his, you know
Highway 61
. And it opened up your vision in a way that, for me at the time, the school didn’t do and other things didn’t do. And it allowed you to dream and have possibilities about what you might be able to do with yourself, what you could do you with your life … and just about the intensity of living that was available. And don’t, sort of … it’s just so easy to step back. Those records were so intense.

And they continue to be as well. Obviously, I had the real pleasure and honor really to be on the Bob Dylan show for about five weeks a couple of years ago. I watched the show most nights to hear what he would do, he changed it every night. There was always something fascinating in it. And the really striking thing about it was these younger people—and I suppose some of them are only a little older than your older son—were responding with this same kind of fervor to his newer songs. And there is in the people that inspired me to start, and we’ve spoken about so many of them already, there is this combination of vigor in the writing of words and then there is this transfiguring kind of element of performance. I mean Van Morrison is somebody that I couldn’t sing like if you held several guns to my head, but when I heard his records, I felt as if this is somebody who can abandon himself to something
.

We were both brought up Catholic, I believe, and in my case the Catholic guilt part … I used a lot more of the guilt than the Catholic bit, you know?

You did well with that, though.

Yeah, I worked that angle for a while. I mean, I’ve got to say for a Protestant from East Belfast, Van Morrison has a lot of the Holy Ghost in him [
laughs
]. He can just go. I’ve seen him sing his own songs. I’ve seen him turn into the kind of abandon that you only see in the great R&B singers, the great blues singers
.

There is the religious element of, I need to be transformed—that for some reason you need to be transformed into something other than what you are. Catholicism is good for shooting at you, straight into you. It’s a funny thing … I look back and I’ve got a lot of harsh memories
of my childhood. It was very strict religion at the time and blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, it was an epic canvas and it gave you a sense of revelation, retribution, perdition, bliss, ecstasy. When you think that that was being presented to you as a five- or six-year-old child … I think I’ve been trying to write my way out of it ever since.

I’m completely with you
.

And it ain’t gonna happen.

You’ve written songs with humor and they’re some of the toughest things to do. But are there any kind of—and I mention actors a lot not because I think you are one—but are there any comic actors that have ever been an influence or …

Well Steve and I are high on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Which one is he?

That’s a good question.

I was the guy walking around in 1977 called Elvis … [
Laughs
]

And then Costello … you had to be aware of the comedy team in the States.