Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (13 page)

Oh yeah, yeah, I guess that’s their job.

Anyway, he came up to you and said, “I wrote the article.”

And I said, hey how you doing, come in. Sat down and we played, and then I didn’t see him, and he was sick for a while, and he went in the hospital. And we made
Born to Run
, me and Mike Appel and produced it. And I sent him a tape when he was in the hospital and I called him. I think I called him on the phone and he said, “Gee whiz, first time I heard you, it just sounded like a bunch of noise, but after I listened to it for a while, I could hear what was going on there.” So we came back to New York and we got together and I was having problems creatively in the studio. I was just having a hard time making records. It was a long time between
The Wild, the Innocent
and
Born to Run
. I don’t know if people remember it was like two years, I think. So I was having a hard time making records. We were all a bunch of amateurs, you know, basically. Even still, there’s not that much experience between us. And we came across some problems that we couldn’t solve and I talked to Jon and he had some answers. And he was just … I saw him as being another key to me being able to go on and do what I want to do. And eventually he came in and co-produced
Born to Run
. He was a big open, he opened a lot of doors for me. Because he was different than me and he was someone who had been exposed to different things than I had. When I grew up, it was like we used to joke around—say when my school was put down, I was like what are you, some kind of smart guy? And his school was put down, it was like what are you some kind of hick, some kind of dummy? So he exposed me to things that I hadn’t, that I hadn’t been exposed to before.

So you started hanging around a lot together, going to the movies, just hanging out
.

Oh yeah, sure. I spent a lot of time with him. Well then we made the record and I spent a lot of time with him, I don’t know, I guess for six, seven, eight months. Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time then. And
then he came in and broke down a lot of the barriers to some of the problems we were having.

Could you be more specific, like, what, like a problem …

There was a million little things. Like the right piano, the right, the right studio.

And arrangements, and sound, and getting the sound that you wanted
.

Sound: I knew what sound I wanted, I was having some difficulty getting it. Trying to get something that is a non-physical thing, you’re trying to make it physical. You’re trying to make it real.

You’ve got something in your head and you’re trying to get it to vinyl
.

So I knew what I wanted and that was how I knew I wasn’t getting it. I knew I was having a problem. And he just said, well, we could use a better studio, we could use a better this, we could use different things, certain technical problems. And then, and then also he’d just have different perceptions of things, like, try this tone on the guitar. Various small things that when it all came together was a big contribution to put the thing over the hill.

Is that one of the reasons why it took so much time?

Born to Run
, it didn’t take that long, actually.
Born to Run
, the album was recorded in about four months.

I think the first release date on
Darkness on the Edge of Town
was somewhere around …

Around two years ago.

October ’77, I think. Columbia wanted it out for Christmas I think and we finally got it a year and a half later or something like that
.

Yeah, it all was … well, I had an idea and I was just going after it and I don’t think there’s a … if you can go in and do it in two weeks, great. And if you go in and it takes a year, it takes six months, it’s your own shirt. So you might as well do what you want to do.

And you feel real good about the way this one has come out, I take it
.

Yeah, I like it. I like it, which is always a hard thing to do. It’s hard to … I mean, there’s a lot of things that I’d do differently and I hear differently now, but in general, I think it’s an honest record and that’s basically what I was trying to make.

I think it’s a great record, for whatever that’s worth
.

Well, that’s good.

But part of the reason that it took so long, I’m told, and cost so much money is that you did a lot more songs than you needed for an album. There are ten songs on
Darkness
, ten?

Yeah, there was about 30 songs we did.

You did about 30
.

We did not finish, but we, like, started. Some we have, some of them are finished. And some of them found their ways to other places. “Fire,” Robert Gordon did; “Because the Night,” Patti [Smith] did. And there was about, it was about 30 songs or 30 ideas that we recorded in the studio.

So which track was the hardest one to get down on the album?

Um, let me think.

What about “Badlands”?

I guess, maybe, maybe so. Maybe so. It was hard to sing.

It was hard to what?

It was hard to sing.

To sing?

Yeah because what happens is that I sit down when I write, I play the music because I usually write the music first and then I think, oh brother, now I got to write words to go with this.

The melody you just kind of start hearing
.

Like with “Badlands,” I had the word. I had “Badlands.” And then I had chord changes and we got in the studio and we laid the track down. And I had a vague outline and I’d go home, I’d play the tape and I’d write the words. But I wouldn’t do it out loud, I’d write them in my
head. So I go in the studio and I’d try to sing it. And I’d realize that what I had written was, like … it was hard to breathe and sing it all at once. So that was hard to sing. Some of the new songs were physically harder to play than some of the other ones. “Born to Run” was like that too though, because that’s sort of the way that I do it.

I gotta talk to you about the band. Find out how you met these guys and your relationship with them. And all because, the E Street Band is so much a part of Bruce Springsteen and the whole record and the show, it’s such a great rock ’n’ roll band. We’ll talk about Danny first. Danny Federici is now the oldest member of the band, right? How did you guys get together?

Yeah. How did I meet him? I met him, I remember I was in a place called the Upstage in Asbury Park. He was in a band that was, I believe they were pretty hot at the time, I believe that the name of the band was the Moment of Truth, him and Vini “Mad Dog” [Lopez]. And I met Mad Dog, he came up to me, his head shaved bald. He’d been in jail or something, and he said, listen, I just got out of jail but I got this band and we need a guitar player and you want to play? And at the time, I said sure.

What were you doing at the time?

I was freelancing on the guitar, sort of. I’d quit school and I was just, just playing. And I was making money at this club Upstage, called Upstage. I’d make anywhere from five to 25 dollars a night by just jammin’.

They wanted you to join their band, I mean, Danny and Mad Dog?

Yeah. I met Danny, I remember he’s in a leather jacket, had his hair slicked back and I think he had his wife with him. And I met him and I didn’t remember because she had on a blonde wig and the next time I met them both I guess she had dark hair. And that was at the first rehearsal. And it was me, and it was Danny and it was Vini and who played the bass, this fella called Little Vinnie [Roslin]. Fella was a smaller version of Vini.

Were you the singer in the band?

Yeah, at the time I was singing and playing.

And when did Garry show up?

Garry was funny, because like the first night I walked into this club, I was from 20 miles inland. I was from Freehold. And this place, this place was on the shore. And very strict town lines and county lines. It was very strict, very different lifestyles every 10 or 20 miles.

I know, I’ve lived in Asbury Park for 10 years so I know if like you’re from Neptune, it means you’re not from Asbury Park and if you’re inland you’re from another country
.

Exactly, exactly. And I was, I had played north more on the coast like up around Red Bank and Sea Bright where there was the beach clubs and there was more jobs there, it was tough to break in. And if you were from Freehold, Freehold was like, I don’t know what they thought …

Farmers
.

Yeah, it was like that. And Asbury, that was funny. Asbury was the only beach greaser town, it was not like a collegiate beach town at all. It was like Newark by the Sea.

Working-class people … Newark by the Sea, that’s great
.

That’s sort of was what it was like. And I went up to this club and I started to play the first night, and this guy pulls a chair out, sits it right in the middle of the dance floor, sits down on it and started giving me what I perceived as dirty looks. And it was Garry. I didn’t talk to him for quite a while after that. I assumed for one reason or another we weren’t going to get along. And eventually, we got together, not for quite a while later. Garry didn’t start playing with me ’til nineteen sixty … no, maybe, 1971 or ’70, somewhere in there. And ’cause Steve, Miami Steve played bass before then. He played bass. I was in a four-piece band. It was me, Danny, Mad Dog and when this fella Little Vinnie left, Steve played bass guitar.

Wait a minute, now, I thought you got together with Miami Steve around ’75. I thought that when you did the Bottom Line, you introduced him as a new member of the band
.

See, the thing is all these people have gone in and out.

Alright, the revolving door
.

What happened was we had a band, like, Steve, Steve was in my band, but it was a ways before the record when I had no band. I
was just at home writing songs. We toured down south and stuff. So at the time of
Greetings from Asbury Park
there was no formal band.

Is Miami Steve on
Greetings from Asbury Park
?

He is. I can’t tell, I shouldn’t tell you where.

Why not?

He might be mad at me.

You know where though
.

It’s funny. But like, see, we had a band. Steve was a bass player. We split up and Steve played with the Dovells and the Belmonts. I mean, Dion. It wasn’t the Belmonts at the time. And he worked construction for a couple of years. But he actually didn’t get in to the E Street Band I guess until after the
Born to Run
album …

Was completed?

Right.

How ’bout Roy? Now, when’d you get together with Roy? Roy Bittan, piano, god I mean the way he’s playing on this tour and the sound of that piano, it’s really beautiful. It’s gorgeous
.

I put an ad in
The Village Voice
for a drummer and piano player and I auditioned 60 guys—thirty drummers and 30 piano players up at Studio Instrument Rentals in New York—and that’s where I got Roy and Max. That’s where I found Roy and Max.

Max said he showed up with one little snare drum and a little … Max just told me this this afternoon, he said guys came before him and they had big drum kits and he said, gee … He said he was playing in the Broadway, in the pit of
Godspell
, I think, and he said he came up and he had two or three little drums with him and other guys were showing up with these big drum kits. And you worked him out on his little drums there and then you said to him—this is what he told me just at the pool this afternoon—he said, “I never thought I’d get the job but Bruce finally said, listen if you want the job you can have it, it pays 75 dollars a week.”

Oh, oh, oh, god.

And he said, I’ll take it
.

It’s true. What happened is we, at the time, that’s what we were all making. And when was this, this was right before
Born to Run
at the time.

Just a struggling band
.

Seventy-five dollars a week. And he came up, he just had the right feel. And there was a lot of guys coming in with the bigger drum sets and I knew.

And what about C. C. Clarence. Where’d you find the Big Man?

I was playing in Asbury Park, in another club called the Student Prince. And it was me and Steven and Garry and Davey Sancious and Vini Lopez and one night, this guy walked in and I’d heard about him. I’d heard about him in the area because I’d been looking for a saxophone player.

He had a rep
.

For a long time. And everyone was always talking about Clarence Clemons. And he walked in and he said, can I sit in? And we said sure, nobody’s going to say no and they got up. And we played this one song and I said this is the guy who I’ve been looking’ for all my life. This is the guy I’ve been looking for all my life. And ever since then we stuck together.

And that’s the E Street Band
.

Yeah, that’s everybody.

Seeing the guys in the band today and being with you now and all, it all seems to me that you’re having a terrific time, I mean working. That you’re all just up and together and there seems to be even on stage a lot of really … a lot of
fun
, that’s what I’m saying. It looks like as if you’re all having a lot of fun, which is of course the best way for it to look. Is the tour really going that well, are you having a lot of fun or …

Yeah, it has been real good. It’s been the best tour we’ve ever done.

You had quite a show in Phoenix the other night. I wasn’t there but I heard about some real craziness. What happened?

It was pretty wild. Some little girl, actually it was three, front row there was about I guess 10- or 15-year-old girls and the place was going
pretty crazy. There was just a lot going on. And this little girl jumped up on stage and kissed me so hard it almost knocked out my front tooth. I thought she was going to … it’s like we fell back, fell back on the stage and everybody started screaming and running around and kids got up on stage and danced. It was just a lot of, it was funny.