" ...High School pictures, paper flowers
Ribbon, red as the blood
Yeah, as the blood you spilled
In the Central Highlands mud
..."
Entertainment Weekly Magazine
BYLINE: Ken Tucker; Bruce Springsteen
Driving to talk with Bruce Springsteen, one passes small businesses that
might pop up in one of his songs: Two Men and a Truck: Movers Who Care, and
the Cree Mee Freeze ice-cream stand. This is rural Monmouth County, N. J.,
where the Boss lives surrounded by vast cornfields cleared for the winter,
and a short distance from his seminal Asbury Park. On a cold day in early
February, the living room of his converted farmhouse is warmed by a glowing
fireplace; three guitar cases and a keyboard sit in the hallway.
Springsteen, dressed in Johnny Cash black (quilted jacket, shirt, pants,
boots), has just come from his home recording studio, where his wife, Patti
Scialfa, is completing her second solo album--a decade after her first.
"Yeah, a bit of a gap between, but"--Springsteen pauses--"that's the way we
do things in this family!" he says, laughing. Springsteen went seven years
between his last two studio albums--1995's spare Ghost of Tom Joad and last
year's 9/11-themed The Rising--and 18 years between collaborations with a
fully constituted E Street Band. He seems at peace with that pace. After 30
years of hard work and harder playing, he's got a realistically skeptical
view: While grateful for The Rising's Grammy nominations, he scorns a music
industry that seems focused solely on quick, hit-single careers; his kinship
with the bedrock beliefs of his fans has grown, but he thinks the Bush
administration is headed in the dead-wrong direction; and out of this
troublesome world he's done his best to carve a haven for his family--wife
and E Street Band member Scialfa, and their three children, Evan, 12,
Jessica, 11, and Sam, 9. With all the accolades, and sales of just under 2
million copies, The Rising has revived his career while maturing the man. As
became clear during our interview, Springsteen has worked strenuously to
find a strategy for survival, and almost welcomes the notion that even if he
has peaked as a mass-culture phenomenon, he can still passionately connect
to an audience with shared values and concerns.
Readying himself for his first in-depth interview since last August's media
blitz in support of The Rising, he plops into a rocking chair and vigorously
musses his already-mussed hair. He's eager to hear what Secretary of State
Colin Powell has said earlier that morning to the U.N. about possible war
with Iraq. Foreign travel, among much more pressing things, is on his mind.
(A new album, in case you're wondering, is not.) After the Feb. 28 airing of
a CBS concert special taped recently in Barcelona, Springsteen will resume
his "barnstorming tour"--the first leg of which took him and the E Street
Band across America through the fall and early winter--with U.S. dates in
March. Then, at least through June, he and the band head overseas, to
everywhere from Australia and New Zealand to Germany. Rocker, reader, and
peace-seeking road warrior, Springsteen refuses to be pinned down. He holds
within him all the surprises and contradictions of an artist not just born
in the USA, but now set loose in the world.
EW: By the time most readers see this, The Rising may have won a Grammy for
Album of the Year and Song of the Year. Are you excited to have been
nominated?
SPRINGSTEEN: I don't put a whole lot on it, 'cause I've been around a long
time, and I made some pretty good records [that didn't get] an Album
nomination: Darkness [on the Edge of Town], Born to Run, The River, Nebraska
But this is nice. It probably means a little more to me now than it would
have back then, y'know?
EW: Why?
SPRINGSTEEN: Because maybe I would have said, "Wait a minute, maybe I'm
doing something wrong." That kind of acceptance might not have fit my idea
back then about whether a rock & roll rebel, or whatever I thought I was,
should be winning awards. [He laughs.] But [The Rising] is an important
record to me. It's the first record in such a long time with the band, and I
wanted to make it really good, a record that could stand shoulder to
shoulder with all our others. The whole idea with the band was to get back
together but move very consciously forward [If you] saw the band on this
tour, your older brother or dad couldn't say, "Oh man, I saw them back when
they were really good." The band's playing as good--as committed and
intense--as at any time in its history, and making a record that carried on
those values and ideals was very important. So the [Grammy] recognition is
nice, it's enjoyable.
EW: Are you familiar with your Grammy competition?
SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, I've heard probably just about everybody. Norah Jones is
terrific. Eminem, he's good: intense--intense--and committed. He's got a lot
to say and says it. Vehemently.
EW: You did a ton of publicity for The Rising, appearing on TV everywhere
from the Today show to David Letterman.
SPRINGSTEEN: Current reality is that you can't count on radio [to play your
music] when you're my age; that's just the way it rolls. This was a record I
felt very strongly about and I wanted it to be heard; I wanted people to
know that it was out there So we immediately said, there are some things
I would be comfortable doing. [But] Letterman threw me a little. They said,
"Ya wanna come over and sit on the couch?" I said, "Ahhh, ya sit on the
couch ya gotta be funny. That's too much pressure." But he's funny, so you
don't have to be too funny yourself.
EW: You really thought a Springsteen album with songs about the aftermath of
September 11 wouldn't sell or attract attention?
SPRINGSTEEN: Hey, it's a big tent out there [in pop culture]. I take my kids
and we buy popcorn and see the big movies. The problem is that [the
marketplace] pushes to the margins things that may not be immediately
accessible It's like, you're either in the mall or the little tiny
theater downtown The hegemony of a certain type of movie or a certain
type of music at any given time isn't a good thing.
That's the way the game is played, I understand that. But you have to fight
for your place--the audience is not brought to you or given to you, it's
something that you fight for. You can forget that, especially if you've had
some success: Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard.
It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long
period of time You have to be willing to roll the dice, you have to be
willing to risk, to step up and enter your particular arena and stake your
claim to a piece of it. That's part of what The Rising meant to me.
EW: You recently toured Europe and are going back there again soon. How do
you think America is perceived now?
SPRINGSTEEN: For the best part of a decade, we've had a bigger audience
overseas than in the States. Two thirds of my audience has been there; they
were very connected to the Tom Joad record, very connected to music that was
explicitly American, [so] there must be a tremendous commonality felt about
the values of those songs. People continue to be very taken with America,
with its bigness and its history and its drama, its myths and its values.
There's a lot of dissent about America [now], about this administration's
policies. But I think those things are specific, I don't think they're
something as general as a blanket anti-Americanism. Bob Herbert said in a
column in The [New York] Times a few weeks ago that [Europeans] respond to a
country that uses its power wisely abroad and dispenses its benefits fairly
at home. Those are the things that are very debatable right now--the
direction we're going in.
EW: Do you think we'll go to war with Iraq?
SPRINGSTEEN: I think we [already] are; I think the administration is just
set on it. A month ago I wasn't so sure, but now I am. Those drums are being
beaten really hard. I think the administration took September 11 and used it
as a blank check. And like most Americans, I'm not sure the case has been
made to put our sons and our daughters and innocent citizens at risk at this
particular moment. But I don't think that's gonna matter, unfortunately
The actual war against terrorism is extremely complicated. You try not to be
cynical, but without the distraction of Iraq, [people would notice] that the
economy is doing poorly, and the old-fashioned Republican tax cuts for the
folks that are doin' well will seriously curtail services for people who are
struggling out there. I don't think that's the kind of country that
Americans really want. All the cutbacks in the environmental
restrictions--it's just a game of shadows and mirrors at the moment.
EW: Shifting gears a little: Bobbie Ann Mason, a writer I know you admire,
just published a biography of someone else you admire, Elvis Presley. In the
book, she theorizes that Presley, brought up poor and ill-educated, had a
lifelong urge to please people, whether it was his father or Colonel Parker,
and he ultimately just gave up. He said, "Okay, I'll go do this next crap
movie and Vegas show."
SPRINGSTEEN: The key to survival in the line of work he...invented is the
replenishment of ideas. You can't really remain physically or mentally
healthy without a leap of consciousness and a continuing, deeper
investigation into who you are and what you're doing. Those are the things
that will make sense of the many silly and weird things [he laughs] that
will happen to you [when you're a star]! [But] what keeps you from
maintaining that replenishment of ideas is an insecurity about who you let
in close to you. To have new ideas you usually need to have new people
around, people willing to challenge your ideas in some fashion, or to simply
assist you in broadening them. Which means you have to be open to the fact
that your thinking isn't everything, y'know?
The performers who suffer through their success have a difficult time making
those connections, because they come from a different environment. The
culture of ideas is usually over here [gestures to his left] and you've
grown up over here [gestures to his right]. In between is this tremendous
void that, when Elvis started, was rarely bridged. Bridging that void is
your ace in the hole, but to do it you've gotta be aware of the limitations
of where you come from and be willing to say, "Well, I've gotta go out and
seek new things."
EW: You seem to identify with Elvis in this way.
SPRINGSTEEN: For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do
very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in; my
intelligence was elsewhere. I found I could apply my intelligence when I
started to play [music], but once you get to that point There was a
moment during the [recording of] The Wild & the Innocent when the band was
having a kind of breakdown--we couldn't make the record, the sessions
weren't going well. I happened to bump into Jon Landau [then a rock critic
for Boston's Real Paper, and Springsteen's manager since 1977] outside a
club I was playing in Boston. I was reading his review, which was pasted up
outside the club in a feeble attempt to lure some paying customers inside
[laughs], and he said, "Whattya think?" I said, "It's pretty good," not
realizing he had written it, and we just struck up a conversation about our
love of music. I thought, This is an interesting guy and I don't know any
guys like this. That was my take on him: "I don't know any guys like this."
So he came in, he had ideas about how the band should sound, about how the
band should be arranged. We listened to records together and we said we like
this drum sound, that guitar sound. And it became clear to me that what he
was doing was assisting me in doing what I wanted to do. So the security for
a young guy like me was suddenly there. I was like, "Hey, I'm steerin' the
boat, I got some help here." And I felt comfortable. My own tolerance for
outside help was limited for all the same reasons [as Presley's]--I went to
just a year of college and you're self-conscious about those things, believe
me. But my artistic survival at that moment depended on some fresh ideas.
EW: So how did you spark some of those fresh ideas?
SPRINGSTEEN: I began to look at movies differently and I began to read more
intensely. It led me on my own journey through the world of ideas, which I
feel has sustained the vitality of what we've done for 30 years: It is at
the essential core of everything that happened next. I was lucky to come
along when I'd seen the mistakes that my predecessors had made and I
instinctively understood some of those mistakes before I was able to
articulate them. [As a popular entertainer] you can culturally feel very,
very isolated. No matter how revolutionary an artist Elvis Presley was, the
flip side of that is that you are singular, you are alone, and so you seek
the comforts of home and of personalities that you utterly dominate. You
effectively isolate yourself from the world that keeps you alive.
As you get older, the price you pay for not sorting through your [emotional]
baggage increases. At 22, you can get away with a lotta slippin' and
slidin', and you can get away with a good deal of that at 32, but by your
early 40s, you're skiddin' all over the place. The pressure on you increases
and I think that leads you to release this pressure, whether it's with
drugs, or whatever it may be for you. Because you can't figure it out, you
anesthetize yourself against it to go on livin'. And some people get dug in
so deep that if the person [who could help him] was standing right in front
of him it wouldn't matter. I've seen that plenty of times. It's a real
tragedy because [an artist] who gave so much couldn't get it in return: the
things that really matter, the things that would have brought him
fulfillment and meaning and understanding of the beautiful and vital role
that he played in so many people's lives You need to make that leap of
consciousness. It's a self-protective mechanism that protects your gifts.
Otherwise, you'll get totally spent and trashed. It's a job you can only do
by yourself, assisted by--if you are very lucky--a trustworthy companion and
some close friends. I've been very lucky that way. I drift, but not too
far--so far. [He laughs.] There's always tomorrow!
EW: This was how you felt even at the height of your popularity?
SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, sure. We were doing good, makin' a lotta dough, but when
you're in the spotlight, it makes you hyperaware of what you're doing, and
that can make you more self-conscious than you need be. I wrestled through
all those things, and I found my own way of alleviating those pressures,
partly by making an [experimental] record like Nebraska--that helped me feel
very balanced
At the heights of success you're a little extra cautious because the level
of exposure becomes wearisome. I truly don't know how some big stars do it.
I could make a commitment to it for a certain amount of time, but after that
I just had to get my feet back into what felt like real life. I always come
back to the same thing: It's about work--the work, working, working. Write
that next song and put that next record out; speak to my audience and
continue to have that conversation that's been going on for so long. After a
while you build up a large body of work that serves as a foundation. It's
not like when you get your first record out and you wonder, Am I gonna get a
chance to put another record out? Are people gonna care six months from now?
I have a lotta sympathy for some young musicians who are trying to crack it.
We've gone back to the pre-FM [hit-driven days of] Top 40. It's a very
different environment for young, thoughtful musicians. If I was just coming
up, I wouldn't want to be stuck playing by the particular rules of the music
business right now.
EW: So you're unimpressed by the opportunities to be found for young talent
on American Idol?
SPRINGSTEEN: Ah, the great, terrible Darwinian spectacle! I haven't seen it,
but it's the theater of cruelty that has everybody fascinated at the moment.
EW: Speaking of embarrassment, do you ever hear one of your old songs and
wonder, Where the hell did that come from?
SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, and it's a feeling of, I wouldn't write that now but I'm
glad I wrote it then! [Laughs] Those first two records [1973's Greetings
From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle]
were very freeing because I didn't have an audience and I wasn't reacting to
something I'd done previously. I just had this explosion of youthful
creativity and exuberance. Those records were filled with exuberance and
enormous energy I had heroes I was emulating, but I also had my own
little world that I was trying to give life to. Those records always bring
me back to the street life of my early 20s and the boardwalk.
EW: Then came Born to Run.
SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, with that one I was shootin' for the moon. I said, "I
don't wanna make a good record, I wanna make The Greatest Record Somebody's
Ever Heard." I was filled with arrogance and thought, I can do that, y'know?
It was fun, it was a great time, but if I had to measure it all up I don't
think I've ever been as satisfied as I am right now. The combination of this
particular record coming at this particular time, and the band being present
and everybody being alive and accounted for--only a few bands can say that.
We go to Europe and the front of the stage is filled with 15-, 16-,
17-year-olds--they see [the E Street Band], who stood there 30 years ago.
And not only are my guys still there, they still mean it.
EW: Born in the U.S.A. was by far your most commercially successful record.
I have a friend who, remembering the album's cover, wanted to know what it
was like to have had, for a time, the most famous ass in America.
SPRINGSTEEN: [Laughs heartily and turns red] That's funny because Annie
Leibovitz would tell you she shot hundreds of pictures. [But] I kept looking
at that one picture and said, "Well, I dunno, there's something about this."
It had a certain laconic iconography that I liked. And I remember Annie
yelling, "Oh no! It's out of focus!" It was just a kind of instinctive
thing, what can I say?
EW: Got a current cultural hero, someone whose work continues to evolve in a
way you'd like yours to?
SPRINGSTEEN: I tell ya, those three [recent] books by Philip Roth--American
Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain--just knocked me on my ass.
To be [in his 60s] making work that strong and so full of revelations about
love and emotional pain--man, that's the way to live your artistic life:
Sustain, sustain, sustain.
EW: You once said that part of entertainment is to provide food for thought.
For you, that seems to be very much about resisting complacency; the battle
to not become cynical.
SPRINGSTEEN: A certain amount of skepticism is necessary to survive in
today's environment. You don't want to be taking everything at face value.
But for that [questioning] to be worth something it has to be connected to
an element of energy and creative thought--that's the thing that's gonna
have some impact So that's my approach: Try to be wise about the way the
world works. But at the same time, you need to find some way to turn those
insights about what's real and what's true into some creative process,
creative action. That's what we try to pass on to our audience so [they]
don't feel powerless Tommy Morello, the guitarist from Rage Against the
Machine, said in an interview that history is made in people's kitchens, in
living rooms, at night; it's made by people talking and thinking things
through. That, I think, is true: You should throw your two cents in as best
you can.
EW: So much information comes from the top down. What do you say to people
who feel like they don't have much say in what goes on in the world?
SPRINGSTEEN: I'm always fighting against that feeling of helplessness. I can
be overwhelmed by ambivalence, by the despair of the day. [But] that's what
people use music and film and art for; that's its purpose. Its purpose is to
pull you up out of that despair, to shine a light on new possibilities. And
I think if you look at it pretty hard-eyed, it helps. That's where the
living is, that's where life is. Regardless of what's going on externally,
those are the powers that you find within yourself to keep going and change
things. To try to make some place for yourself in the world.
"If I had to measure it all up, I don't think I've ever been as satisfied as
I am right now The band being present and everybody alive and accounted
for--only a few bands can say that."
