0:10
Let me start by saying what a thrill it is to finally meet you. Thank you.
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0:11
I wish that we could do it face-to-face, obviously. Jesus. Me, too. Me, too.
0:21
And I've decided the beanie's off. The beanie's off.
0:22
I need to get the beanie off. the I like the real you.
0:28
This year has been so challenging for the for the human spirit, for what it is to be human.
0:33
And I And everyone I know, including myself, has kind of I think struggled with this idea of stillness here while chaos ensues out there.
0:44
And for someone who absorbs and translates and transcribes the human condition so beautifully, I wonder kind of how you have adapted, just to get the ball rolling, at home in the last 8 months.
0:58
All right, let's start with an easy one.
1:02
I'm like everybody else, man.
1:04
So, I'm like everybody else.
1:04
I've been taking it a day at a time.
1:07
And that's that's all you can do, really, you know.
1:11
I I haven't had any uh uh I haven't had any particular secret as how to deal with the whole thing, you know.
1:18
We just, you know, Patti and I, we were we literally just been taking it a day at a time, doing what we can, you know.
1:24
We were lucky in that we uh uh made our record and and and shot the film of it uh a few months before the virus hit, so I had something to do. Yeah.
1:38
And I could do it with I could do it with a relatively small group of people.
1:42
You know, so that that helped a lot.
1:42
So, I've been able to stay busy, which helped which has helped, but it's it's just been it's just been a day at a time, like everybody else.
1:50
I don't have any I don't have any great wisdom as how to get through get through the what we whatever this is that we've been going through, you know.
1:58
What a gift this album is.
2:00
I'm so grateful and I think everyone will be very grateful to receive this album this year.
2:04
You know, when I think about it, when I listen to it for the first time, I was immediately transported to a place that I know and love that I wanted to hear again, which is this idea of you and the band coming together and just getting out of your own way and just allowing that chemistry and what is special about you as a band and as friends come to be.
2:28
it's a It was It was a great project for us because I don't think we've ever played live together in the studio and then kept everything that we did on the full take.
2:39
All the singing, all the playing.
2:44
It's really It's the E Street Band really completely live and I overdubbed a few solos and things, but it's it's really It's really the band uh uh in one shot.
2:55
So, that's We've played live in the studio before, but never kept everything.
3:00
Always gone back in and overdubbed a vocal or overdubbed, you know, put other things on.
3:04
So, it was uh uh It It was a a great experience for the guys and was a testament to how good the band has gotten and how better it continues to get over the years both in the studio and out, you know.
3:19
So, it was it was a lot of a lot of fun and of course seeing the guys is always great and it was just a great experience for everybody that was involved, you know.
3:29
Why do you think it's taken you this long uh to to get to that point in your process, to get to get with the band in the room and feel like you can capture that live recording and it's good enough for us to hear?
3:41
I don't know, you know, you get involved with all different kinds of projects that happen in a lot of different kinds of ways.
3:46
For quite a while, I simply began to demo all my music because I got tired of going into the studio and writing 30 songs and having, you know, five of them be okay and and uh so, I started to demo everything.
4:01
But once I started to demo everything, I realized I really got locked into those demos.
4:06
And so, then I was kind of working in in either the records became sort of solo records or different types of projects.
4:16
And so, uh this was the first thing where when I I came up with a group of songs relatively very quickly and I said, "Well, smart thing to do is to not demo them and let the band come in and just wash straight into them, you know."
4:30
And uh And I also knew I wanted to do a a band project.
4:36
Uh it'd been really quite a while since we'd done uh since I'd really put the put the band together and and let them play in the studio.
4:47
And so, uh It was just It's all just timing and and what happens and where you are in different places in your life and uh everything comes along in its time.
4:57
So, uh it was just a uh a good moment for it. Is it a gut feeling?
5:04
Do you sit there when you're listening to these songs and go, "I need to hear the band fire these up.
5:08
I need to hear what they can do around these."
5:13
Or is it like to some degree, "It's time for for us to get together because if I don't, then the nature of this relationship may start to change if I don't continue to keep the wheel turning."
5:24
There is some of that, you know, you you you do need to You've got to touch base creatively every so often just to keep everything alive and and humming and the relationships up and good and uh uh so, there is there is some of that going and it's also, like I say, what what happens with the nature of the material and the project you're doing, you know.
5:45
This material The songs came very quickly in about 7 to 10 days.
5:51
We made the record Really, we made the record in 4 days and and on the 5th day we kind of listened to everything.
5:55
And uh it was it was just um But you do have to You do have everything has to be nurtured and and even though the E Street Band's been together for a long time, still it's it's still the same, you know.
6:10
You got to get back together. You've got to uh Yeah.
6:15
nurture those relationships and you've got to play together.
6:17
Yeah, and you've got to, you know, the the playing together ultimately is what we're what we're there for and and what, you know, is the foundation of who we are together.
6:27
And so, uh you've got to touch base with that every every so often.
6:31
clear when you listen to this album or any of the music that you've made with the E Street Band or any of the shows that you've played live, countless shows with the band, that the musical shorthand you have is second to none, that there's an you know, an unspoken communication that exists between you musically through the spirit of how you play.
6:47
Um but that's only one side of the work.
6:49
There also and I am obsessed with your dynamic with the E Street Band because the joy it's given me as a fan and the fact that it comes and goes in these stages and most people hold on to things and they never let it go and you had the courage to let it go so it comes home.
7:03
So, I wonder when it comes home whether or not there has to be moments where things are addressed on a normal communication level, like, "Man, I wish I played on that record."
7:11
Or, you know what I mean?
7:13
And you have to face those things down because these are real human beings and they love to play with you.
7:18
Well, I always know the guys like to work, so uh that's sort of unspoken.
7:19
But they also know I I I do work on my own and and on certain projects and it's just the the natural ebb and flow of of of our lives together.
7:33
Did it take a while to establish that ebb and flow, though?
7:36
I mean, like going back and not only to go back briefly at this point in in context of the question, but that decision after one of your most successful records and your first taste of success with the band where everybody just wanted that back in Born Born to Run, to have the bravery to turn around and say, "Look, I need to flow. The album come later."
7:56
You know, did it take a while for the band to understand cuz I would imagine the normal human reaction would have been, "This is working.
8:02
Why can't we just keep going?"
8:04
Well, in truth, if if I had had some very creative ideas that involved continuing sort of working with the band as as I had been doing, I would have done something.
8:15
But I got to a place where it was really after Born in the USA where we had our greatest success and the first thing I did was, "I don't want to chase that horse, you know."
8:23
The guys, you see, that end up trying to Okay, the next record's got to be bigger or or uh it's it's it's not the healthiest way to go, you know.
8:33
You're you're better off following your muse.
8:35
And uh immediately after Born in the USA, I wanted to make a smaller record.
8:40
I made it over the top of my garage, me and one other guy, and uh I played all the instruments myself and it was a record called Tunnel of Love.
8:49
And so, I immediately wanted to reintroduce myself as a singer and a songwriter and I wasn't interested in in sort of bettering, you know, what we'd done with Born in the USA or anything else.
9:01
You you It's a losing game whenever you get into that that particular uh that particular approach.
9:07
So, after that, we the band took quite a long break, uh 10 years.
9:11
We really didn't play together for 10 years.
9:12
And I was just having I had my family and raising my children when they were very young and uh you know, trying some other things and just just sorting just looking around to see who I was going to be, you know, after we had that big success.
9:29
And so, uh uh But then, the relationships proved themselves both creatively and emotionally by just, you know, the came a point in time where I said, "Well, I miss the guys.
9:43
See if the guys miss me."
9:47
And we eventually started to work together again and then it's been the best last last 20 years, which is what we've It's been now.
9:53
It's been 20 years since the band really got back together It has have been the greatest of our performing and lives, you know, so it's it's been a blessing.
10:03
I mean, this album is is a triumph, you know, and as I said before, and I hope you take this as a as a compliment.
10:08
I'm such a fan of of everything that you've gone on throughout your life and applied yourself to creatively and the way that you've balanced what we love about you and what we insatiably want from you versus what you're willing to give, which is when I show up, I'm committed, when I'm not, I'm out the picture.
10:24
Understand that, and you've mastered that, I think.
10:26
Um but this album feels like all of that restlessness that has been wrapped up in your journey has just come home for a brief moment, has just come home to this thing that people know and love so well, and I wonder if you loved that once you gave once you gave into that and knew it was going to feel like something we love and feel familiar, whether you loved it given that your history suggests that you reject elements of that.
10:48
Well, yeah, you go through different phases and and you know, I went through long periods of phase where I I just whatever it was I just did, I don't want to sound like that.
10:59
that. But we kind of came to a place where I said, well, gee, this is material that that I want to sound like for the E Street Band, what it what, you know, or my I my idea of it, you know, I wanted the pianos and I wanted we've got
11:12
a little glockenspiels in there and And even structurally like the big pauses where it stops and you think it's going to end and I in my mind when it when you finally get to play live, it's just going TO BE LIKE, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, back in, you know what I mean? You
11:22
You just know it's going to come back.
11:23
This is great material to play live, so it's it's very painful to not be able to go out and play right now because this is material that'll play incredible on stage.
11:33
And so uh I was really just all in on want wanting the record to to I wanted to go back to a style probably closest you'd have to go back to maybe Born to Run, you know, where where I let I gave Roy free rein on the piano and uh the arrangements were the songs fit those kinds of arrangements.
11:53
And so it was a a lovely modern revisitation of that style, you know. Yeah, big.
12:01
Just big and heartfelt and spiritually alive and words are beautiful and you know, reference points to things that we've heard you pull from before from you know, your palette, your mood board of of images and characters it all just really ties together into what I think is a is is one big story.
12:20
And one of the things that I wondered before we moved into the album specific is in pulling the E Street Band back together and to some degree getting back to that space of what you sound like or what you sounded like when you instinctively began.
12:36
It's the natural place that you fit into, right?
12:37
This is what we really sound like at the heart of it before we decide to change or move. Right.
12:43
Whether whether playing together over those four days to some degree allowed you to begin to cross a bridge together and fill in the spaces emotionally that had been hard to address because two of your brothers, three friends, and I'm sure maybe others, but in particular two of your brothers from the E Street Band aren't playing on this particular record, and whether or not you acknowledge that this was an important part of that process.
13:04
Well, you know, you still experience the loss of of the of Clarence and Danny, you know, that's just like I say, they're they're members in absentia, they'll never not be members of the band, and and so uh it's always corny to say, but they are always there in spirit and uh you know, they they they revisit your process in in in their own in their own mysterious ways that that that that those of our friends who've passed stay with us and do.
13:39
with us and do. And the record is got quite a bit to do with you know, there there's part of its subtext is there's some aging and and and loss of of of people as time goes by, and that's that's a uh that's the part of what the record is, and and uh and then at the same time, you
14:00
know, you're sort of celebrating the fact that the band goes on and we carry their spirits with us, and uh the the the impetus for a lot of the material was the loss of my good friend George Theiss, who was the last him and I were the last members of my very first band. So when he passed
14:17
So when he passed away it left me as the only remaining living member of the first band that I had, which was a very strange and uh uh thought, and it it it gave rise to most of the material that's on Letter to You, you know.
14:36
Uh it's sort of a a reflection and a meditation on time passing and loss of friends and and uh and and how that affects you as you as you grow older.
14:50
And it begins with a song called One Minute You're Here, which is just a beautiful opening to the album and also in terms of arrangement and musicality is so what lovingly nurtured by the band as you're finding this thought.
15:02
It's almost like you're being surrounded by them in this moment, and they're just they're just there with you whilst you're capturing this thought and sharing it.
15:10
The idea of mortality is not really something that rock and roll was built to address.
15:18
Rock and roll is to be timeless and to run and chase and experience and stare down and fight love and all of those things, and yet you've made a stirring rock and roll record that addresses these ideas and I wonder sort of how it felt as these songs were pouring out of you and you were getting out of the way of them because it doesn't sound like there was a lot of over-analysis going on here, that it felt it was really coming from the heart.
15:41
Yeah, I mean, the songs were written very quickly, so uh I didn't spend a lot of time on them.
15:47
They were all written each one was written in, you know, a day or two.
15:49
And they came quite naturally, so that was that's always nice when that happens.
15:55
One Minute You're Here is it's a little bit of a preface to the record, you know, it's it's unusual to start a record with its quietest song.
16:00
And uh but it felt like, okay, the record really starts with Letter to You, but there's this little preface about that lets you know what the record is going to uh uh encompass, you know, the emotional field that it's going to to deal in.
16:18
And the record starts with with One Minute You're Here and then ends with I'll See You in My Dreams, which are both song songs about mortality and uh and death.
16:26
It was just sort of a a little a little tip of the hat to where where uh where the record was going to go, and and a a little it's a slightly connected to Western Stars, so it was a tran little transitional piece of music.
16:42
At what point in your life as you were going from family to album to tour and and that's those are the kind of the three points, right?
16:50
That that that if you could look at it in terms of as a shape defined the musical life.
16:54
At what point did you realize that life is actually short?
16:59
Life is is is short but long, you know.
17:08
So obviously the older you get, the shorter it seems, you know, so you know, I feel, hey, I'm I'm just in the middle of it, you know, I'm I'm feeling good and and the band is is ripping and and uh you know, we're going through this crazy
17:24
time period, but we're keeping our spirit and given the circumstances of the day, we're we're getting along, you know, so that triumph of family fam that family work dynamic is always the trickiest thing to suss suss out. It took me a long time
17:42
It took me a long time for me to get that straight, and that's and that's even with my family are mixed directly in with the band as Patti is a band member, you know.
17:51
If you can balance those two things it leads for a pretty satisfying satisfying life, and and I've been lucky enough to sort that through as I've gotten older.
18:00
I think it's inspiring to see how you've been able to build such a strong, what seems at least for me as a fan, as someone who observes and isn't part of the dynamic, such a strong balance over time between the two because so much of your music, and I think music steeped in great rock and roll is is is built on the chase.
18:17
I think of a song like Last Man Standing, you know, and I and I think about that idea, and maybe I'm missing the nuance of the song, but the title itself says to me like I'm running things down, you know?
18:28
It's almost like I'm afraid of what I'm not going to experience when it's all said and done.
18:34
I think that uh that record was that's that particular song was directly due to George's passing and me finding out that, well, okay, I'm uh out of that group of people, I'm I'm kind of here on my own, you know, and um it was a small honoring of the guys that I learned my craft with, you know, between the ages of 14 and 17 or 18.
19:03
You know, those were some of the deepest learning years of my life learning how to be on stage, learning how to write, learning how to how to front the band, learning how to sing in front of the a band, uh learning how to put together a show, learning how to play for all
19:20
different kinds of audiences at firemen's fairs, at union halls, at CYO dances, at uh uh and and just really honing your craft, you know, so it was the tip of the hat to sort of that period of learning with those with that with that group of people. You know, and we were always we always
19:38
You know, and we were always we always wanted to make music that followed our lives along.
19:42
I said, I didn't want to find myself as 40 years old on stage sort of feeling funny about singing a song that I wrote when I was 20, uh where I was trying to hold on to some ephemeral sense of youth, you know.
19:53
I always wanted to write music that that felt like it it Was life being lived at the time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
20:02
That's that's that's been that's been a concern of mine.
20:07
In fact, I was talking to Rick Rubin about this the other day.
20:08
We were discussing Tom Petty's album Wildflowers.
20:12
Because it's it's it's coming out in its sort of original 25 song format that that I think Tom always wanted to put it out in. Not the 15 single album.
20:20
Although I laughed at it's like that's the single album.
20:23
15 songs nowadays is a marathon for kids. But anyway. It is.
20:28
I mean back in the day there's you didn't you didn't have room for more than 10 or 12 songs, you know.
20:32
If you were most of my my early my early records have seven songs on them, eight songs on them.
20:38
That's all you could fit.
20:40
You had 40 minutes, you know.
20:40
So They were nine minute songs though, Bruce, to be fair.
20:43
You know, I'm just kidding. That's true. You know.
20:47
No, um we were talking about this and I was saying that that that album is so remarkable in many respects because it it it it does what what you just said.
20:55
It tells the story of a man at 44 who's going through it and wanted to make a timeless document of that moment.
21:04
Rather than try to chase something down.
21:06
And I feel like the last five or maybe six years of your life you have achieved something incredible.
21:13
You have found a way it's a magic act really.
21:18
You found a way to reflect generously and tell your life story through through the written word, through Broadway, and now through this gift of an album, and not sound like you're closing your life story.
21:34
It sounds like you're making room for something else.
21:36
Yeah, that's a that's an excellent way to put it because really it's kind of packing your bags from a certain period of time in your life, putting them away, and then giving yourself room to do whatever you're going to do next, you know.
21:48
It was all those projects were summational.
21:51
The book was, the play was.
21:53
This record is sort of it's kind of a combination of summational and the beginning of something new, you know, with the band.
22:01
But yeah, that's exactly that's how I feel.
22:03
I mean, I feel like I feel like the book was the garage sale, Broadway was the reckoning, and the album is the gift. Maybe that's it.
22:13
What did you learn from the Broadway experience?
22:14
I want to I talk a little bit about that specific because it was something that was so unique.
22:17
I don't live with many regrets, Bruce.
22:20
I've got the tools to get past those, but that one is really on the line for me never getting a chance to see the show.
22:24
But I've watched it on TV.
22:25
And it struck me that that every night you were going through this process again for fans in the audience.
22:35
And maybe I'm looking too deeply into this, but I've I've watched just to make it personal for a sec.
22:38
I've watched my mom who is currently suffering from um you know, a a disease based on in in age and memory loss.
22:47
Um and I'm watching her making memories.
22:50
Like trying to store memories.
22:50
So as they start to go away, she keeps the important ones.
22:56
And I know that that's something that's close to your to your family as well.
22:59
And I wonder in some respects whether there's something subliminal going on where you're like, I just got to make sure these are in order.
23:03
These make sense before I can move on to the next thing.
23:07
Well, the Broadway show was a lot of these projects amazingly happened by accident, you know.
23:12
Like the book came out of us playing at the Super Bowl, believe it or not, back in 2008 where I wrote a small essay for online about that experience.
23:23
And I So I said, "Oh, I found a voice that I like enjoyed writing in."
23:28
And so I ended up writing the book.
23:29
Uh the Broadway play came out of we were invited to play at the White House by President Obama in the last two weeks that he was in the White House.
23:38
So I said, "Well, I don't want to bring the whole band down there.
23:41
I'll go down and play a few acoustic songs myself."
23:43
And maybe just to change it up, I'll read a little from the book and I'll play a song.
23:50
So I came in the studio and I spent a couple hours for two days and I put together 90% of what was the Broadway show.
23:57
And I went down and I I played it in the East Room in the White House.
24:02
And after it, the president came on stage and he said, "You know, that was really good. That should be a show." This is this is true.
24:11
He said, "That ought to be that ought to be a show that you can play for other people, you know."
24:17
And so on the way back, I said, "Yeah, I think that's right.
24:19
That I that should be something that I should be able to take out and play and play for some folks."
24:24
And so I said, "Well, I I need a really intimate environment cuz I only played for 200 people at the White House, like no more than 1,000 seats, 900 seats."
24:32
And all those beautiful theaters were on Broadway.
24:34
So that's where we ended up.
24:36
And but the whole thing once again came about very organically.
24:40
And uh uh then it was just I followed the tract of the book, which follows basically the development of my creative and recorded life.
24:53
And and and so that it was a very natural structure.
24:58
And once again, I said it ended up being sort of a summational performance.
25:02
And and but that was one of the greatest experiences of my life, you know, the 100 and I'm not sure how many shows I did, 126 or something.
25:10
Were some of the loveliest nights of my life.
25:13
Every night was challenging.
25:15
Every night was a blessing.
25:17
The audiences were absolutely incredible.
25:20
And uh just one of the loveliest experiences I ever had.
25:24
On this album there is a real sense of um freedom that I think came from the speed at which you seem to write these songs.
25:35
And I know that the instrument that you wrote them on drew you to it.
25:36
I'm obsessed with this part of making music.
25:42
That instruments speak to their players.
25:45
Um that it's not just a tool, that it's a relationship.
25:48
And it sounds like you built a very strong and quick relationship with this guitar that was gifted to you, right? By a fan. It's a funny story.
25:56
I was coming out of the Broadway uh the Broadway show and you know, there's a little stretch where the fans are there and I sign a few things and I, you know, say hello and I hear a few stories.
26:07
And there was a kid right before I got in the car and he's standing there with his guitar.
26:12
And he was from I I think he was from Italy, you know.
26:16
And and he said, you know, "Bruce, Bruce, this is uh we we brought this for you."
26:20
And and he had the guitar.
26:23
There was no case or anything.
26:25
And he and he told me literally it was a minute, you know.
26:29
And he gave me the guitar and I said, "Thank you."
26:31
And it I got in the car with it and I said, "Gee, this is a really this is a really beautifully made made guitar." And it was.
26:41
And it was from a the company it's a Clavis or something.
26:44
Was it the I've never company I'd never heard before.
26:45
But it was the wood was gorgeous and so I brought it home and I put it in my living room.
26:51
I set it up in my living room.
26:52
And it just sat there and and I didn't play it and uh right around the time I started to feel uh something coming with the songs, I picked it up.
27:04
And then most of the songs came out of it, you know.
27:07
It was just like it was a beautiful guitar to play, beautiful sounding guitar.
27:12
And the songs came pouring out of it.
27:14
So it was it was a lovely sort of uh uh little piece of magic that I and I have no idea who the kid was or what their or where he is now, but I have to I have to send him some thanks. So How do you know?
27:28
I've I've got to go back.
27:29
There's a moment that really that I I need to just kind of get take you back to in that answer where you you sort of threw it away, but to me it was really important, which is I I kind of felt the start the song starting to come.
27:39
And and I know that it's I spent too long asking questions to musicians to know that analysis is is like dancing for architecture.
27:47
But I do have to ask you like if you could put it into words, how do you know that something is just circling you that needs to be captured or connected to?
28:00
Closest thing I can connect it to it's it's like, you know, there's this long intubation period.
28:06
It's like a garden, you know.
28:06
You seed it at seed it with experience and time. And then you wait. All right?
28:15
And you don't know how long you're going to have to wait.
28:17
Uh unfortunately, creativity does not uh work as like the seasons do, you know.
28:25
If I knew I was going to get a batch of songs every winter, I'd be a lot happier. Or every summer.
28:30
Uh but you seed it and then eventually something uh there's an incident or an event or some something in life just sort of sets it off and they come.
28:43
And when you're lucky, as I was on this project, they come all at once. They come fast.
28:51
The recordings come fast. Fast is good.
28:55
Uh and uh but but that exact moment is is is a moment that I've never known or read anyone who's been able to describe it what happens between that moment of uh of of when things are ready to sprout and then when they're there.
29:12
That's the moment that can't be described.
29:15
That's why it's magic, you know. Is it spiritual?
29:19
Yeah, I would say that it absolutely is.
29:23
You know, it absolutely is.
29:23
And it's it's that moment before uh that moment before you take something that is just in the air and suddenly you make it physical. It's a song.
29:36
It's it's it turns into a piece of recording.
29:38
You know, that that exact moment is quite indescribable, you know.
29:44
But it when it happens, it's funny cuz it it's it's it's kind of it's such a wonderful thing, you know?
29:49
I wish everyone could experience it, you know?
29:54
I mean the week that I spent writing writing the record was so easy.
29:57
And then and I hadn't written a song for the E Street Band in probably 6 or 7 years.
30:05
So, the week that I spent writing that music when it was just kind of coming every day this one song, Letter to You, See You in My Dreams Ghosts, you know, just every day something else came.
30:16
What a what a lovely experience that is, you know?
30:21
It's it's it's one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.
30:22
And then when the band came in and just fell into that music and and and and we spent only 3 hours a song and I could get in the booth come around to the front of the recording and hear the record finished in front of me.
30:39
You know, it was just wonderful.
30:41
Yeah, just an incredible incredible experiences that still remain some of the loveliest of my life of my life when they happened, you know?
30:51
Do you sleep better when that's happening or are you too excited and you sleep worse?
30:55
Uh yeah, I keep a guitar in the bedroom because you will wake up at night and continue working on something you had going.
31:03
And uh so you tend to your your uh your whole metabolism speeds up. Yeah.
31:10
So for a week you're you're you're very active and and your system is very on high.
31:15
I want to get back to that relationship with instruments.
31:17
I'm fascinated by the idea that that Fender that you played on Born to Run, that famous cover, it had to be that guitar.
31:25
That That perhaps you had a relationship with the guitar that you made Nebraska on because it sounds to me like you did.
31:30
That's one of the most intimate records I've ever heard in my life.
31:31
And that idea of instruments and you having these moments in time you know, did it have to be that guitar for Born to Run to get made?
31:39
Do you look back on it now if it had been a different instrument it would have been a different record?
31:42
Well, your instruments blend in with the records that you made.
31:46
So, that guitar, which is you know, that's my that's like my arm, you know? I put that on.
31:52
I don't even feel like I have an instrument on.
31:53
It feels just like a piece of me.
31:56
You know, um uh and Born to Run was funny because I actually wrote a lot of it on piano, which is why if you go to Born to Run there's all those piano intros. Mhm.
32:06
I had a little Aeolian spinet piano in my little tiny shotgun house and I went in and I that's how the beginning of Jungle Land and Backstreets and all that's how the the record became piano-centric.
32:18
A lot of it was written on the piano.
32:23
Uh and then and then I play played on that Fender guitar, you know?
32:26
And uh the guitar I uh from Nebraska, which is wait a minute.
32:32
Can somebody get me I'll get it. Hold on. There it is.
32:44
This is the guitar that uh this is the guitar Nebraska came out of. Wow. Can you see it? Oh my god. You know?
32:59
I was standing in her front lawn just twirling her baton me and her waiting for our turn waiting some people die. That was it. So, it came out of this.
33:25
So, and all the songs came out of this guitar, you know?
33:27
So, those are yeah, these are they become sacred pieces for you, you know?
33:31
Any anything that brought you all that that music.
33:33
So, I've got a I've got a few instruments that are sacred to me.
33:38
I wish I still had that Aeolian piano that I wrote Born to Run on.
33:42
I don't know what I did with it.
33:42
I gave it away to somebody when I gave it away to somebody when I was moving because I couldn't carry it. You know?
33:51
So, uh Well, you know, that's all part of that's all part of the story, too.
33:57
That's all part of the story, too.
33:57
Let me ask you, have you written have you have you written any other notable moments or anything on that guitar since Nebraska?
34:03
Or is that kind of hold its place now for you?
34:06
No, you know, you use it and and then you don't you don't go back to those instruments for some reason. They did their job.
34:11
I I leave them semi-retired.
34:15
I may play it on something if that I'm recording in the studio, but uh uh no, I haven't gone back.
34:23
But you did go back on this album and and you know, you found three songs that appear on on um and they're amazing songs and and they fit beautifully in the context of this album because as you said, you've created a modern you know,
34:37
a a version of what the E Street Band sounds like, but my question is like on a song like Janie Needs a Shooter, like how do you even find that and what prompts you to go back so far to find something you feel is going to fit into this narrative? That would suggest that
34:50
That would suggest that you archive in your head like no one I've ever met in my life.
34:56
That was funny, you know, because we're working on a lot of stuff that I have in the vault to put out at some again at some time.
35:02
And I went through a whole almost record of pre-Greetings from Asbury Park music that was all acoustic.
35:09
And these songs were inside them and I said, "Wow, these were these were good songs that I at one point or another sometimes try to arrange with the band."
35:17
I said, "It'd be fun to hear the band on this one, that one, and this one, you know?"
35:23
And just I just picked them by random and and the guys came in and I said, "Okay, today we're going to record songs that are 50 years old."
35:34
And so and we're going to see what happens, you know?
35:36
So, we went in and they came out great.
35:39
You know, the the the the modern band playing playing those ideas that I had as a 22-year-old, right?
35:48
Talk about uh I was 22 when I wrote all those songs and it was it was great and for some reason it just fit on the record and and because the record is, you know, skips through time, you know?
36:00
And and it it it starts with me thinking about when I was 14 and 15 and then just slow it moves into the present, you know?
36:07
So, those songs added a little touchstone for that certain period of time and uh but a lot of fun, you know?
36:15
And and the band played them great and and I went back and I sort of found a voice that that really fit them and and they're they're a nice addition to the record.
36:24
I mean, the voice that you found on this record, there are moments that I I feel you found a tone and an emotion and a feeling to to go along with these songs that um I I've heard very rarely if ever from you.
36:36
Um a chance for you to kind of I suppose put yourself inside the song in a different way.
36:42
I I feel sometimes what I guess what I'm trying to say is it feels sometimes musicians bend the song to their own tone or their own talent.
36:53
And I feel like you you go the other way.
36:54
You find a place where you know what the song needs and you're willing to go there.
36:59
Like on a song like House of a Thousand Guitars, your voice on that is unbelievable. Thank you. Thank you.
37:04
Yeah, you got to meet the song halfway, you know?
37:06
Every piece of music has its demands.
37:08
I just try to find out what that is what tone in my voice is going to feel right for this particular piece of music and and you try to you try to meet it in the middle.
37:19
And that's that's one of my favorite songs on the record.
37:22
I I'm not exactly sure why yet.
37:24
Oh, I am cuz it's stealth, the whole point.
37:27
That song That song feels to me like it's the whole point of it all.
37:31
It's the whole show in one song. It is.
37:34
That's very that's well put because that's exactly what it is.
37:36
You know, it it's at the center of the record and it sort of speaks to this world that the band and I have attempted to create uh with its values, its ideas, its codes since we started and it kind of collects all of that into one piece of music into this imaginary House of a Thousand Guitars. It's not imaginary.
37:59
You're sitting in it right now.
38:00
I can see the guitars behind you.
38:04
This is the House of a Thousand Guitars, that's for sure.
38:10
I mean, is it in the set now?
38:10
And I don't want to obviously box you into something that you will immediately rip up and do whatever you want on the night, but I don't see how there isn't a moment where House of a Thousand Guitars doesn't close the show. It could.
38:19
Yeah, it's one of those it's it's it's it's going to it'll come in there somewhere, you know?
38:25
It's uh it's it's it is lovely and summation and speaks to that world that I've created with my with my fans and with my band.
38:35
So, it's that's a really little blessed piece of music for me.
38:37
You know, I would say it should it should have ended the album as a fan, but I but but it shouldn't have cuz I'll See You in My Dreams is just the perfect way for the album to end.
38:46
And you've spoken honestly and openly about the way that dreams you relate to your dreams. And and it's weird.
38:52
I have friends who very very rarely recall their dreams.
38:56
I don't often recall my dreams.
38:58
But you seem to be able to and I wonder kind of what without getting too personal, since you've gone through this process of of recollecting and sharing whether or not your dreams have been different lately.
39:10
I remember a lot of my dreams and I always have, you know?
39:13
I'm a vivid dreamer and I've always remembered you know, when I wake in the morning I will very often remember extensively what I dreamt night before.
39:25
But that base that song was basically about that those that those that pass away don't ever really leave us, you know?
39:33
I they visit me and they do visit me in my dreams several times a year, you know?
39:40
I'll see I'll see, you know, Clarence will come up a couple of times in a year.
39:42
My you know, my the fellow that traveled with me on the road for 25 years, I'll see him or I'll see Danny.
39:52
They just show up in in very absurd, sometimes in abstract ways, you know, in the middle of strange stories and but but they're there and it's it's actually a lovely thing to revisit with them in that way.
40:04
So, uh the song was a little concrete in the fact that that does happen to me, but uh it's also about how they walk alongside of this forever, you know, the people that we love don't ever truly leave us.
40:21
Pain slips away, the love remains.
40:21
And they live in that love and walk alongside you as your ancestors and your life companions as a part of your spirit, you know.
40:31
So, that song is basically about that.
40:34
Hey, you know, I'm not going to see you at the next session, but I'll see you in my dreams.
40:41
Have you ever gotten songs from dreams?
40:44
Has anything come to you in a dream that said that's made it into a Bruce Springsteen record? Only once.
40:48
Only once did I ever dream Usually what happens is you dream a song you're writing and you think it's fantastic and you wake up and it's always not.
41:00
You know, there's something there's something in the dream that feels great while you're doing but when you wake up it's just like, oh, this isn't that The only song I ever got out of a dream is a song and nobody's nobody's really going to know what it is.
41:12
It's a song called Surprise, Surprise from my Working on a Dream record.
41:16
For some reason, I dreamt that song, woke up, wrote it. Came out pretty good.
41:21
But that's the only song I've ever grabbed out of a dream that that that ended up being anything.
41:27
So, And it's funny because in preparation for this conversation, I went on the most beautiful deep dive.
41:34
I just started somewhere, I don't even know where.
41:38
Um and I just ended up going very deep into footages and and randomly and I found these old performance videos of you playing with the band in the early days.
41:46
Just just the most glorious chaos.
41:50
Just women running on stage and grabbing you and kissing you and the band just It's just unbelievable. Those were the days. Those were the days. Those were the days.
42:02
And I think and I think about all that old footage and I wonder whether or not you ever come across it.
42:04
Even just by accident you stumble on something and and you just and you just allow yourself just to indulge bit in it and reflect a little bit through through what has been captured on video.
42:16
Yeah, yeah, that was fun.
42:16
That was you know, we didn't we didn't allow ourselves to be shot very often when we were young.
42:22
I was superstitious about it as far as the magician not wanting to see too closely how he does his magic trick.
42:29
And so I'm so glad for the footage that exists now as I've gotten older and I really wish I'd allowed and we film a lot now, but I really wish I'd allowed us to film much more when I was younger.
42:42
But that particular piece of footage which I'm I'm very familiar with was us playing Rosalita in Phoenix, Arizona. That's right.
42:51
And I think I was 27 or 28 and it was just this this the end of the night and there was just a that fabulous chaotic moment where the stage is besieged and it's a great little piece of rock and roll footage, you know, rock and roll film.
43:06
There's a moment after they finally remove the women from the stage and everything else where I think you turn around to someone in the band and you're just like, what the just happened? Oh, yeah.
43:18
And then the veneer just falls away and all of a sudden you're not the boss anymore.
43:22
You're just this 27-year-old normal kid who's like, what just happened? And it was amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great time. Great night.
43:30
We had a lot of great shows in Arizona Phoenix, Arizona was a big big city for us when we very started and great audiences there.
43:38
So, that was a lovely a lovely moment.
43:40
One thing I've learned from talking to musicians over what has now become a majority of my life is that um this this beautiful experience that you go through and that we all go through together by loving what you do, I would say almost inevitably begins with the desire to get past something, fill some hole, Well, of course, yeah.
44:02
to resolve issues of fracture in your life, motivation, something as simple as I'll show you.
44:10
Well, you're you know, you're you're a repairman.
44:14
And first thing you're trying to do is repair yourself, you know, the places that you've been wounded or hurt or feel empty.
44:23
And then through doing that you you you sort of you come up with a gift where you can help people repair themselves through your music and through uh you know, so that's that's that's the way I look at part of my job is I'm a repairman.
44:36
You know, it's also it's you're into an identity search. Uh who am I? Uh what do I believe in?
44:42
Uh what how am I going to comb my hair, wear my clothes, walk down the street?
44:49
You know, it's a huge it's a huge search for popular music is a place where a lot of people go to find their different pieces of their identity.
45:00
And so I pulled all of this together into this guy thing, Bruce Springsteen, whoever that might be, you know.
45:10
It it comes both out of a place of great joy and great pain.
45:16
And it's it's which is why it's so filled with life because that's life.
45:22
Life is great joy, great pain.
45:22
You try to blend them together in a way that makes life bearable to live.
45:31
You know, and uh so that that thing that you've created comes comes out of that ground.
45:35
And uh what makes the joy feel real is the fact that it's it's embedded in this this soil of of of difficulty and struggle and pain that you've lived through and are trying to make sense out of as a repairman, as a musician.
45:54
These characters and these adventures that that you wrote about um that that still crop up here and there, but for the most part as you've continued to grow as an artist and a human, you've been able to let them rest to some degree.
46:10
But they were very alive in in the first phases of your of your journey.
46:16
And and I think I think a lot of times we always felt like A, those characters were real and B, they were trying to escape where they came from, a physical boundary as such. Sure, yeah.
46:28
And yet I I wonder whether or not maybe we got it wrong at times and that that escapism was was that the pain is still there even though you're trying to repair it, the pain is still there and those characters are kind of you and in a way you're trying to escape yourself to some degree and who you actually are as a person versus who the construct of what you want to become. That's right.
46:47
You know, really I thought, you know, when I was young I thought I just want to get out of town, man.
46:52
I you know, I'm stuck in Asbury, I'm stuck in Freehold.
46:54
I'm 20 years old, I'm 22 and uh uh I you know, I just want to go someplace and so uh all my early characters were really based on characters that I sort of knew in in in Asbury Park, all these different little street characters and I used part of it was real and part of it was my imagination and that's where Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle and some of Born to Run comes from.
47:23
But what you find out later is is hey, I live 10 minutes from Freehold right now, you know.
47:32
It it wasn't wasn't so much it wasn't so much the place you were trying to get away from.
47:36
It was some aspect of you that you were unhappy with at the moment and you were trying to sort through and uh and process, you know.
47:46
And as time went by I realized that I like where I live, I like where I was born, I like the people that are here.
47:54
Uh it's been a great life for me here, you know, I've been pretty protected by the community that's here.
47:59
So, I I kept a level head and and and it protected me from sort of the vicissitudes of fame and and fortune, uh which can confuse a lot of people.
48:12
But you're right, it's it's initially it's not so much you want to actually physically get away.
48:17
It's it's that you need to process the things that are painful in your life and the parts of yourself that you want to escape, you got to sort through that stuff.
48:26
And if I could ask you because I've done that, too, and there's a moment that you get there where they could they they they call it a breakthrough.
48:32
And that's really breaking it down to its core element so that you can always refer to it as and when you feel lost. Right.
48:39
Bruce Springsteen, the superstar, the person who has influenced and inspired and given joy to millions and millions of people, the person who makes music, why is Bruce Springsteen here? I have no idea. No breakthrough. No breakthrough.
48:58
We got we got some more work to do, Bruce. We got more work to do.
49:03
Uh that that I don't know the answer to that question, you know.
49:08
You know, this is uh No, I I you know, everybody I think if you're talking about Yeah, why does he exist?
49:15
Not why is he still here, why does he exist? Right.
49:17
If you're searching for a purpose in your life, you know, hey, you know, I was a guy that was born to pick up that guitar and you know, put my band together and travel around the world and and and you know, give people a good night's of a good night of entertainment if I can and and maybe sometimes a little bit more.
49:39
That's a spiritual calling, Bruce, right?
49:40
And it and it and it brings us to a song like The Power of Prayer.
49:44
Which is um and also the idea of faith and the fact that throughout your life and I and I think of an album like The Rising really is a key moment there.
49:55
Because I feel like that was a real moment when you heeded the call.
50:00
That you knew you had something to share and to say that would help to repair in your own words and you heeded the call.
50:07
And you give faith to so many people.
50:07
I wonder where you get your what you put your faith in and where you're able to have a relationship with faith that's personal.
50:16
Yeah, well, you know, I sort of I always I just I I I grew up Catholic and and that was enough to turn me off from religion forever, you know, and I realized as I grew older that you can run away from your religion, but you can't really run away from your faith.
50:35
That's something that is a very uh it's a very different thing.
50:39
And so I carried a lot of I carried a lot of lan- of the language with me of the biblical language, which I use and write with quite often.
50:52
And my work is filled with it, you know, Promised Land, um House of a Thousand Guitars, Power of Prayer on this record, you know, uh I found a meditative uh constructive fulfilling sort of faith through through my work.
51:10
The song Power of Prayer on the record really sort of explains how hey, that was my you know, those little 3-minute records and 180-second character studies that came through pop music were like these little meditations and little prayers for me.
51:29
And that's what I turned them into.
51:31
And my faith came in and filled those songs uh and gave them a spiritual dimension, you know.
51:38
It's an essential part of your life.
51:42
How does music play a role in your life when you're not making it and when you're not writing it?
51:45
And and is it does it always fill that fill the rooms and what do you listen to?
51:49
What do you and Patti enjoy?
51:50
All right, let me think what I've listened to.
51:52
Okay, I have a show I'm working on I'm going to work on today where there's a song called American Muscle by a group called One America.
51:59
I have Naz I have Naz's Car 85 from his new record uh uh I have Chuck Berry's No Particular Place to Go.
52:11
I have a song by the Screaming Blue Messiahs, a group that that was uh 19 from 1983, one of the greatest bands of the '80s that people are not that familiar with.
52:25
Uh I have the song by the Tom Robinson Band called 2-4-6-8 Motorway from the '70s.
52:31
So I'm all over the place, you know, so I'm Right now I'm listening to all those things for the show that I'm going to do today.
52:37
You know, I feel like music this year has really shown up.
52:39
It took a minute for artists to understand how to move in a different way because, you know, no longer family record tour, family record tour. Like, wait a minute.
52:48
And it was our job as fans to give artists the space to find their voice at a time when stillness and creativity aren't act- aren't actually good for don't necessarily get along all the time. Right?
52:59
This Stillness is not always a good friend to the artist, is it, Bruce?
53:04
Well, A, most artists are not good at being still, you know, that if you were good at being still, you wouldn't be running around the world at 1,000 miles an hour, yeah.
53:14
Even when you're in in one physical place, your brain is always off on another adventure, you know, and so I'm even I'm my mind is constantly uh in the wilderness, you know, searching for what what's going to happen next, where am I going, what journey am I on?
53:33
It it And so if you're going to be an artist, you cannot expect a a quiet mind.
53:40
It they just don't go together.
53:43
You know, uh if you as you get older, hopefully you learn to uh reserve some some room for that mind so that you're not constantly running and constantly working and constantly in place.
53:57
That's an important skill to develop, but in general, artists are not creatures of a quiet mind and that's just the way that it goes. Yeah.
54:05
Yeah, and it's not a quiet time.
54:07
I've always felt to some degree like we have wanted you to speak or to show up or to use your voice even more than you've been willing.
54:17
And that we are trying to pull you into a conversation at times where you feel like you have a right and you do to decide how you want to show up and that's really through the power of your music and your ability to heal through your music.
54:30
But does it feel like a bit of a tug-of-war sometimes between the the quiet secret subliminal hope that Bruce is going to put out a record that speaks to the times versus what is really going on inside you?
54:42
Well, I I I take into consideration that I'm in a conversation with an audience and that I because I have established this conversation 45 years ago, I have an obligation to keep hold up my end of it.
54:57
So I try to do that, you know, uh as best as I can and fulfill what I feel is my continuing commitment to the ideas that we've put forth and the audience that we've nurtured.
55:12
So that's So I I don't go quiet intentionally for any long periods of time unless I don't have anything really to add to the conversation at that moment or anything to say, you know.
55:26
I'm interested in as as much as anybody else is in like, well, what's going to happen next? I don't know. I got to wait and see.
55:36
You know, I wouldn't have expected that I'd have this group of song, you know, uh guys were telling me that we cut the record it almost a year ago next month.
55:45
I didn't think, you know, what I thought I'd have those songs and have the band in the studio at that time and things would have just worked it out.
55:50
So uh you know, but I I I believe in holding up sort of my end of the conversation as best as I can.
55:57
I think a lot of people would have thought that this would have been a time when you would have come out and there would have been a moment where there was a a a reckoning of sorts with the way the world sits.
56:06
And I think it's for me personally, I think it's beautiful that you found a space to to to speak personally and honestly rather than speak for everybody else.
56:13
I don't come from concept first, you know, uh and I don't believe the artist has to address the exact moment literally, you know, when they put a piece of work out, you know, the this record sort of it it it addresses it in its own way, you know.
56:32
Can you give us an example about where you see that where you hear that in the music that you made, where you feel like in a way where the consciously or subconsciously you stared into the moment?
56:42
To address yourself simply topically all the time.
56:44
And I I've really I would say the closest I ever came to doing that would have been unintentionally maybe Nebraska during the Reagan years, maybe a little Born in the USA, and The Rising would probably be as close as as I've come to sort of taking on immediately and direct topical issues.
57:08
In general, I don't do that, you know, because very often if you I just can't write the songs that are good enough to uh for the moment, you know, uh uh and so you you you write what comes out of you, you know, and that's the best that you have to offer at a given moment.
57:28
Are you more surprised anybody else that people consider Bruce Springsteen to be this voice of the American narrative, this person who always finds a way to translate, you know, the chaos and the calm and yet to your point you it's never been a conscious or conceptual decision?
57:45
Well, I think if you look at the body of my work and we're and we're trying to if you wanted to find a body of work that that expressed what it was like to be uh an American say from 1970 till to now in the post-industrial period of the United States, yeah, you know, I'm I'd be a place you could go and and and get some information on that.
58:12
And so in that sense, I always try to speak to my times in the way that I best could.
58:17
And so that maybe where that whole that side of my identity comes from.
58:24
Well, you know, this has been an incredible conversation and and this this album is a great conversation between yourself and all of us.
58:29
And so if we could end by me asking you this, um can you recall one of the greatest conversations that you've ever had with somebody that really has stayed with you and not even in the specifics of what they said, but just a conversation that you remember because we have them all the time. Sure.
58:52
But it saddens me that we don't recall enough of them because they subliminally make up the learnings of our life.
58:58
And if you could recall one really impactful conversation.
59:01
Well, I would say that I'm involved in a in the conversation that I've had with Jon Landau, my friend and long-time manager and and record producer.
59:17
I've had some of the most essential conversations of my life with with Jon, with my close friend.
59:24
And uh these are conversations that I would call life-shaping conversations where they were very uh uh at times when I was really in a quest for and stuck for who I where I was going and uh uh John was a great resource and friend and I had just some critical conversations. It's good.
59:51
I wish that everyone has one friend that they can have that conversation with, which is the conversation of your life.
1:00:00
You know, that's that's something I wish on everybody.
1:00:03
And then and then the conversation with my fans, you know, those that's an essential part of who I am.
1:00:12
But uh but I had some very very very intense and continue to have very meaningful conversations with my with my good friend John.
1:00:22
Well, this has been a great one for me and hopefully for everyone who's watched it and listened to it. Thanks, Bruce. You were great, man. I really appreciate it.
1:00:28
You were really terrific. Thanks. So were you, man.
1:00:31
I loved talking with you. It was incredible. I'll never forget it. God bless all. Take care.