Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (66 page)

Your most recent album,
Wrecking Ball
, has been described as one of your angriest. Is that an accurate description?

Yeah, I suppose it is. There’s a lot to be angry about, you know. The distortion and corruption of the American dream and a certain way of life, the loss of the full meaning of community. To me, those things felt
under attack. My concern was that this all added up to a nation in decline. Like other people, I know folks who were affected by the financial crisis, who lost their homes, lost their retirement savings. So it was all very, very real for me. You can have these feelings of frustration and not be able to write about it. That happened to me before. But in this particular case, I was working on another record that wasn’t about those things at all. Then I wrote a song that moved in that direction and the rest came very quickly.

Aside from simply being a concerned American citizen, as an artist how do you negotiate the waters of politically motivated music?

I’d been thinking and reading a lot about what’s been going on in the country in the past 30 years, back to the Carter recession, the Reagan deregulations, and you see this long historical arc that was moving the country in one direction. On
Wrecking Ball
you hear rebel music, gospel music. I wanted both a current and historical sweep, musically speaking. In the end, it was hard to stand by and see what was happening in the last seven or eight years. The record was a response to that.

When I had the privilege to help you with your book,
Songs
, back in the late ’90s, I remember going to your house and being amazed at the books in your study that were about American history, politics, art, and music. You really seemed to be immersing yourself in the American experience
.

Reading those books and listening to that music, to me it was always a tool, a part of seeking out your truest identity. It was all part of trying to find out who I was, where I came from, and I was always interested in writing about what I found. So, yeah, I did become quite a student, and still am.

Speaking of books, this seems to be the era of the music memoir. Everyone from Neil Young and Gregg Allman to Pete Townshend and Clive Davis has written one. I read that you, too, were working on one, and then I read that you’ve given up on it
.

I don’t ever give up on anything, really. I do something for a while and then I put it aside, you know. I’m always returning to what I have, the raw material. A while back, I recorded a country record and put it aside. I returned to it a couple of months ago and thought, “What am I
going to do next?” As for the memoirs, I got some stuff I’ve worked on, but I don’t have anything fixed. I worked on it for a while, then the music came along and the tour came along. There doesn’t seem to be an urgency to return to it at the moment. It’ll present itself and I’ll see what happens. Like you said, there’s plenty of others to read at the moment.

I know you’re a big reader. What have you read lately that has stuck with you?

One of the things I’ve done recently was read all the Western stories of Elmore Leonard. If you’re interested in character study, he’s just the master of nailing someone in a few lines. He’s good for songwriters because that’s about all the time you have. And what else? Let’s see. [
Springsteen goes to his iPad for his book list
.] I’ve also read Christopher Hitchen’s collection of essays, and
Why Does the World Exist?
by Jim Holt to get my existential buzz [
laughs
]. Another book I read was
Matterhorn
[Karl Marlantes’ Vietnam War novel]. That was great along with
Stoned
by Andrew Loog Oldam and the follow-up,
2Stoned
. Very, very good books on the music industry. Then some baseball books. Finally, I have quite a fixation on the Apollo astronauts, so I read a few books on them. Basically, I’ll get on a topic and read two or three books in a row, and then I’ll move on to something else.

At the GRAMMYs last year, you had the opportunity to perform onstage with Paul McCartney. What was that like for you?

When I was 15, back in Freehold, N.J., his music spoke directly to me. This was that man. This was the man that got me to pick up a guitar early in my life and go down a particular road. I think it’s important to maintain your sense of being a fan, even when you’ve experienced success of your own. I go onstage every night as a performer, but I also go onstage as a fan, which is what I was on GRAMMY night.

What was the first real concert you attended as a kid?

It was in Asbury Park at Convention Hall. Here’s the lineup: the Who, the Blues Magoos and Herman’s Hermits. I remember with the Who, people in the audience were semishocked at the destruction of perfectly good instruments [
laughs
]. That was the first concert, outside of my mother taking me to see Chubby Checker and Anita Bryant in Atlantic City [
laughs
].

I’ve seen many of your concerts over the years, but never one in Italy—until this summer. Your show in Trieste was amazing. In fact, it ranks as one of the best I’ve ever seen. How do you explain the Italians’ love of your music, and your ability to so deeply connect to them?

I don’t know. Every night is an opportunity. For me, it’s a pathological opportunity [
laughs
]. You come out onstage and you’re in the presence of some like-minded people, you know. You’re also in the presence of some people that had never seen the band live before. Last night in Vancouver, probably 20 percent of the audience had never seen the band with Clarence Clemons before. Amazing. So, there’s this ongoing … I guess you would call it a conversation with your fans that’s always renewing itself. I’ve been dedicated to that my whole life. Why? We can talk about that all night. There’s good reasons, bad reasons, straight-up reasons, convoluted ones, sane ones, insane ones. I think the best way to look at it is this way: onstage, it’s me and it’s this person in the audience, right now, not later, not tomorrow, right
now
. Our fans are immersed in a world that we’ve created. It’s the one place where people go to forget about their troubles. They let themselves go and trust someone. They come into the arena or concert hall and they feel safe and they reveal by their actions their hopes, their dreams, their fears, what’s hurt them, what’s given them joy. You get an opportunity to witness that on a nightly basis. I have an opportunity—and an honor—to witness that on a nightly basis. And I don’t take that lightly.

In gathering these interviews, we have benefited from the expertise, kindness, and encouragement of Bob Crane, Charles R. Cross, Dave DiMartino, Whitney Ferguson, Erik Flannigan, Mark Hagen, Clinton Heylin, Dave Marsh, Eric Meola, Robert Santelli, Frank Stefanko, Margaret Thresher and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Photographers Barbara Pyle, Lynn Goldsmith, Pam Springsteen, Jim Marchese, and Danny Clinch were also enthusiastic and generous with their images. We are grateful to each of those whose conversations are collected here, as well as journalists (such as Nicholas Dawidoff, Mikal Gilmore, Edna Gundersen, Gary Graff, Peter Knobler, Kurt Loder, the late Paul Nelson, and Steve Pond) who are not represented in these pages but whose interviews have enriched our understanding of Springsteen over the years. Thanks to Danny Breslauer for providing transcriptions of audio interviews. This volume would not have been possible without the assistance of Jon Landau Management (thank you Barbara Carr, Jon Landau, Alison Oscar, and Jan Stabile). At Bloomsbury Press, publisher Peter Ginna enthusiastically supported the project and our editor Pete Beatty never blanched when we asked, “How about just one more interview?” He has been as much our collaborator as our editor. Nate Knaebel was a real champ throughout production. We offer our thanks
as well to our agent Zoe Pagnamenta. And measureless thanks to Bruce Springsteen for the 40 years (and counting) of conversation.

In addition, Christopher Phillips thanks Jonathan Pont, Charley, Erik, Bob, and the extended
Backstreets
family for the warmest of welcomes into the fold 20 years ago, and their friendship and support ever since.
Backstreets
has long been an international effort, with literally hundreds of fellow fans who warrant a hat tip; particular thanks to Rene van Diemen, Todd Draper, Jimmy Guterman, Lisa Iannucci, Josh Jacobson, Phil and Steve Jump, Magnus Lauglo, Shawn Poole, Glenn Radecki, Bernie Ranellone, Caryn Rose, Rich Russo Tony Saddler, John Schlicher, Salvador Trepat, Richard Wolkoff, and Bob Zimmerman, long-time brothers- and sisters-in-arms all. Brandon Herndon, Harrison Howe, and John Howie Jr. provided invaluable support at the Backstreets Towers during the course of this project. Thanks to the E Street Band, Greg Linn, Marilyn Laverty, Thom Zimny, and everyone in the “Springsteen camp” who’ve met us with benevolence while keeping separate church and state. Constant companions of the road from Phillips Central and Phillips West (I’m including you, Ma), I wouldn’t want to do it without you. Especially when you pay for dinner. Thanks most of all to my wife and daughter: Laura, I’d say that two hearts are better than one, but we know that three’s even better than that.

Lou Masur expresses his gratitude to Jim Goodman, Doug Greenberg, Dave Masur, Mark Richman, Jeff Roderman, Bruce Rossky, and Tom Slaughter. Thanks go to his students at Rutgers University, for their work on “Springsteen’s American Vision,” as well as to his colleagues in the American Studies and History Departments. Jani, Ben, and Sophie: once again, thank you for your boundless love, forever wild and forever real.

“The last morning. I had a gig in Providence, Rhode Island, that night; I was singing ‘She’s the One’ at the same time I was mixing ‘Jungleland’ in another studio downstairs; at the same time I was in another studio, rehearsing the band for the gig that night. That’s the truth. I almost died. There’s a picture of it, this girl Barbara took a picture of it, and it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. You have to see the band. It should be on the cover of that album … You ain’t never seen faces like that in your life. She may have it, it’s something to see … we were there for four days, and every single minute is in everybody’s face … and what’s worse is, I can’t even sing! The picture just captures that moment.”—
Bruce Springsteen on the end of the
Born to Run
sessions, 1975

Photographer Barbara Pyle: “It was six a.m. when they went into their only rehearsal for the
Born to Run
tour. After days of windowless recording, the first rays of dawn pierced the tattered curtains of the rehearsal studio, striking the weary bodies of the band on the brink of collapse. Instinctively I grabbed my Leica M3 from my purse, as my heart skipped a beat—I knew, as I had known many nights during these sessions, that I was witnessing rock ’n’ roll history in the making. With
Born to Run
finally finished, they walked out of rehearsal and onto the bus for their ‘one last chance to make it real’ …” The Record Plant, New York, NY, July 20, 1975. © Barbara Pyle

Before soundcheck outside the Houston Music Hall on the
Born to Run
tour. Houston, TX, September 13, 1975. © Barbara Pyle