Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (16 page)
I was surprised that there weren’t any razor blades attached to the LP
.
Yeah, well it wasn’t meant to be that way. After
Born to Run
and all that stuff, I felt that was just the way it was. And so when I did this album, I tried to accept the fact that, you know, the world is a paradox, and that’s the way it is. And the only thing you can do with a paradox is live with it. I wanted to do that this time out; I wanted to live with particularly conflicting emotions, because I always personally, in a funny kind of way, lean toward the
Darkness
kind of material. When I didn’t put the album out in ’79, it was because I didn’t feel that that was there, I felt that that was missing and I didn’t feel that that was right. And even when the band says “Why isn’t this on it, why isn’t that on it,” what do you say, “Gee. I don’t know”? It was something where I just got a bigger picture of it, I felt, what things are, of the way things work, and I tried to just learn to be able to live with that. I mean, how can you live when sometimes things are so beautiful, and I know it sounds corny but …
So I’m gonna listen to
The River
and I’m gonna feel that paradox you’re talking about?
I think so. In the end, I think that’s the emotion. What I wanted was just the paradox of those things.
Did a lot of the time spent in deciding what tracks went on the LP work to this whole approach of balance? Does the paradox correspond to the way you personally feel?
Well there’s the thing where a lot of stuff just ROCKS, and that was the main thing. There’s a lot of idealistic stuff on there, there’s a lot of stuff that, hey, you can listen to it and laugh at it or whatever, some of it is very idealist, and I wanted that all on there. At first, I wasn’t gonna put it all on there, but sometimes I just feel those things. Sometimes when I’m playing … like life just ain’t this good, you know? And it just ain’t. And it may never ever be. But that doesn’t make those emotions not real. Because they are real and they happen. And that stuff happens onstage a lot, when people sing some of the songs it’s like a community thing that happens that don’t happen in the street. You go out on the street and it’s just a dream. Hey, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And a lot of songs we do now, they’re just dreams, but they’re based on an emotion that’s very real, and they’re always being possibilities. To say no to that stuff is wrong, to say no to it is wrong and to give yourself to it is a lie. To give yourself over is an illusion. On the album I was interested in, I saw it as romantic. It’s a romantic record and to me, romantic is when you see realities and when you understand the realities, but you also see the possibilities. And sometimes you write about things as they are, and sometimes you write about them as they should be, as they could be, maybe, you know? And that’s basically what I wanted to do. And you can’t say no to either thing. If you say no, you’re cheating yourself out of feelings that are important and should be a part of you.
Do you have a girlfriend now? Do you find yourself lacking the time for strong relationships like that and does it affect your material?
That always affects you, and I’ve always had a girlfriend, same one now that I’ve been going out with for a couple of years, and that always affects a lot of things. The band, some of the guys are in their 30s, some are in their early 20s, and I realize that you think different then, you don’t think the same way you did when you were 20, and I try to, stay in tune to that fact. And the music I write has, I think, those extra 10 years in there. And there’s other guys who do other things, younger things, and they say that, you know? And on this record, it was funny, some of the guys got married, some … it was just a sense of the conflict everybody feels; you want to be a part of it. You want to walk down the street and feel that you’re a part of all those people. There’s a
combination with some people where you’re drawn to being with them, while at the same time you’re horrified by them, repulsed by them, scared by them. That was the other thing I hoped I was gonna be able to get in the record, that you have both of those feelings and they’re both real and they’re both honest and that’s the way it is.
I’m sure you agree that while there’s “x” amount of words and “x” amount of melodies, the combination of both is unlimited, as are the effects. One of the strong points of
Darkness
, I thought, was the conflict of moods between both
.
It was different, yeah. At the end of
Darkness
, the guy ends up feeling very isolated.
There are parallels between that character’s feeling and your own life, starting out as a happy guy with happy music that suddenly ends up on the cover of tons of magazines. How much of that music is about a character and how much is about yourself?
Every guy that writes a song is writing about himself, in the most general way I’m talking, like it comes outta you. Why did it come out of you? And all the facts are changed, you think up a lot of stuff and some stuff is real, I don’t know. I had a funny … New Jersey was funny. It was very insulated. I grew up playing in bars since I was 15 and I always liked my job. I liked going down to that club, and if I made $35 a week or whatever, it didn’t matter because I liked the job I was doing and I was enjoying it. I was lucky enough that from when I was very young, I was able to make my living at it. And it went along and, I mean, I never knew anyone who made a record, I never knew anyone who knew anyone who even knew anyone in the professional music business [
laughs
]. We didn’t even brush up against people like that back then, you were away from it. You weren’t there. And that’s the way it was—same bunch of guys, same town. And when I got out more, well, things changed. You get older and things change. I mean, I liked my job.
Do the guys in the band miss going out and playing?
That’s the way it is. People miss it, but, believe it or not, I’m going as fast as I can [
laughs
].
Is that really true?
I was burning up man, let me tell you, I ain’t kidding you [
laughs
]. The
stuff is really … like we didn’t do a whole lot of takes of each song. I don’t think there’s a song on there that went any more than ten takes, and most of them were done under five. The only overdubbing is vocal overdubbing, and that’s not on everything. Most of the stuff we recorded very fast, and when you get a chance to listen to it, we recorded it in a big room and we got a real hard drum sound. Of them all, I think it’s the album that most captures what happens when we play. But it’s the kind of thing where I don’t know if I’ll ever make records fast, because I don’t see the point in making them fast.
Well, there’s a view in the rock world that you should go in and bang them out as it’s more spontaneous that way. Would you say
The River
is spontaneous?
It is very spontaneous. Spontaneity, number one, is not made by fastness. Elvis, I believe, did like 30 takes of “Hound Dog,” and you can put THAT thing on. The idea is to sound spontaneous. I mean it’s to be spontaneous, but it’s like these records come out that were done real fast and they sound like they were done real fast. If I thought I could’ve made a better record in half the time, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. Because, I would’ve rather been out playing. It’s the kinda thing where, I mean, I know what I’m listening to when I hear it played back, and I just had particular guidelines. And one thing, it’s not a musically put together record. I mean, the performances were fast. I think the thing that takes the most time is the thinking, the conceptual thing. It takes a certain amount of time for me to think about exactly what it is I wanna do, and then I gotta wait until I finally realize that I’ve actually done it. You know, we made the Gary U.S. Bonds thing real fast, and a lot of the things on this were made very fast. It’s just the ALBUM that took a long time.
Why did you change your opinion about bootlegs?
I felt that there was a point there where, when it first started, a lot of bootlegs were made by fans, there was more of a connection. But it became, there was a point where there were just so many. Just so many that it was big business. It was made by people who, you know, they didn’t care what the quality was. It just got to the point where I’d walk in and see a price tag of $30 on a record of mine that, to me, really sounded bad, and I just thought it was a rip. I thought I was getting ripped, I wrote the music, the songs—it all came out of me! And I felt it was a rip, and the people who were doing it had warehouses full of
records and were just sitting back, getting fat, rushing and putting out anything and getting 30 fucking dollars for it. And I just got really mad about it at one point.
Are you ever gonna come out with some of this live stuff? I’ve got some that I like just because I’m a fan
.
I don’t know. I have a hard time listening to them, because I always hear the bad things. I guess the main thing is that I just want to make a live record. The plan was to do a live one after this one.
Some of the stuff is great like the CBS take of “Santa Claus” and the Greg Kihn song “Rendezvous.” Why did you give that away? Did it sound too much like a
Born to Run
song?
That song I wrote in about five minutes before a rehearsal one day. We played it on tour and we liked it, and I liked him because I liked the way he did “For You” on that early album, and we just had it around and I told him “Hey, we got this song that we’re not recording now.” That’s mainly how some of those songs got out. I just wrote them fast.
I remember you playing tunes like “Independence Day,” “The Ties That Bind” and “Point Blank” two years ago. Were those written for
Darkness
but just didn’t fit your concept?
The reason they got thrown out was because of this thing I was telling you about, the way I felt about the
Darkness
album. I don’t know, that’s just the way I felt about them at the time.
Are you your own worst critic?
I think you certainly should be. That’s the way you have to be. You have to be most severe with yourself.
Do you anticipate a large critical backlash after being on top for so long?
That stuff happens all the time, besides, that’s happened to me already, I’ve lived that already. And it’s the kind of thing that just happens; people write good things and then they don’t. The first time I went through that it was confusing for me, it was disheartening. I guess I felt that I knew what I wanted to do and what I was about. The same old story when I was 25 when that first happened and I’d been playing for 10 years. Now I’m 31, so I went through that. When you first come up
and people start writing about you, you’re just not used to it. It’s just strange. There were a lot of things that brought me real down at the time, and there were a lot of things that brought me real up. I was very susceptible to being immediately emotionally affected by something like that at the time. But I went through it, I saw it happen, I saw how it happens. I was younger and I was much more insecure. I hadn’t put the time in that we’ve put in since then, and seen some of the things that happened since then happen. I’ve seen all sides of the music thing, and now, whatever happens is only gonna be a shadow of that moment. So if a lot of people wrote a lot of good stuff and then they wrote a lot of bad stuff, whatever happens, it happens. You have a concern about it, because I spent a long time and put a lot into doing a record. Same old story, anybody who says it ain’t a heartbreaker, it ain’t true [
laughs
]. But that’s the way things are, and I’m at a point now where I got a better perspective on a lot of those things.
Any changes in the future?
No, I don’t see changing the particular way that I do that thing right now, because …
You’re happy
.
Yeah. Because if I felt that if I was just sitting there and squeezing the life out of the music, I wouldn’t do it. But that’s not what happens, that’s not what we do. The physical act is not what takes the time, I mean, this was our fifth album. We rented the studio. We knew how to make a record. As fast or slow as we wanted to, you know? The physical thing is not the story, it’s how you feel inside about it, and that don’t run on any clock, just how you feel inside. Just where you are today and what your record is gonna be saying out there, and what the people that buy that record are going to feel and get from it. I had an idea, and I wasn’t going to go half way with it, wasn’t no point in it. Like I said, I don’t trust no tomorrows on that kind of thing. And I’d rather do the time—and the time is no fun to do—because if I didn’t do the time there, I couldn’t walk out there on that stage. We’re going to be playing a lot of shows, and we’re going to be out there for a real long time. And when I go out there at night, I just like to feel like myself, like I’ve done what I have to do. And when I play those songs onstage, I know those songs, I know what went into them and I know where I stand. And people will and people will not like it, but I know that it’s real. I know that it’s there.
Springsteen’s double album
The River
was released in October 1980 and went to number one on the charts. It also generated his first topten single in “Hungry Heart.” No one was better situated to engage Springsteen in a lengthy, revealing conversation than Dave Marsh, Bruce’s biographer.
Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story
, appeared in 1979 and established the genre of serious rock biographies. Marsh conducted the interview at a motel in Arizona, staying up until dawn discussing musical influences and themes in Springsteen’s work, specific tracks on
The River
, as well as the tensions between recording and performing live. “Usually two weeks after we’re out on the road, I cannot listen to my record anymore,” Bruce admits.
The River
was an exception.
