Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (24 page)

I try not to get involved in it. It does seem to be out there in the air, for everybody and anybody, but I don’t take it that personally. I mean, if you spend any time in Los Angeles, you see that a lot: “Great, you’re a tremendous success—now
fail
!”

There’s a media game that’s played out there, and I guess it sells newspapers and magazines. But it’s not central to who I am or what I do. You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.

Do you think that a teenager who’s into rap or heavy metal would be interested in your new albums?

I don’t know. And I don’t know if you can generalize like that. I think some yes and some no. All I can do is put my music out there. I can’t contrive something that doesn’t feel honest. I don’t write demographically. I don’t write a song to reach these people or those people.

Of course, I’m interested in having a young audience. I’m interested in whoever’s interested in what I’m doing. And what I have to say is “This is how I’ve grown up. Maybe this will have some value. These are the places I’ve been, and these are the things I’ve learned.”

But I want to sing about who I am now. I want to get up onstage and sing with all of the 42 years that are in me. When I was young, I always said I didn’t want to end up being 45 or 50 and pretending I was 15 or 16 or 20. That just didn’t interest me. I’m a lifetime musician; I’m going to be playing music forever. I don’t foresee a time when I would not be onstage somewhere, playing a guitar and playing it loud, with power and passion. I look forward to being 60 or 65 and doing that.

For the first time in about twenty years you’re embarking on a tour without the E Street Band. What led to your decision to get rid of them?

At the end of the
Born in the U.S.A
. tour and after we made the live album, I felt like it was the end of the first part of my journey. And then, for the
Tunnel of Love
tour, I switched the band around quite a bit. I switched where people had stood for fifteen years, just trying to give it a different twist.

But you can get to a place where you start to replay the ritual, and nostalgia creeps in, and I decided it was time to mix it up. I just had to cut it loose a bit so I could have something new to bring to the table. I wanted to get rid of some of the old expectations. People were coming to my shows expecting to hear “Born to Run” or stuff that I wrote fifteen or twenty years ago. And I wanted to get to a spot where if people came to the show, there’d be a feeling of like, well, it’s not going to be this, it’s going to be something else.

Did you call each of the guys to give them the news?

Oh, sure, yeah. Initially, some people were surprised, some people were not so surprised. I’m sure some people were angry, and other people weren’t angry. But as time passed, everything came around to a really nice place. I mean, I wasn’t the guy writing the check every month. Suddenly, I was just Bruce, and some of the friendships started coming forward a little bit. And it was interesting, because we hadn’t had that kind of relationship. We had all been working together for so long that we didn’t really have a relationship outside of the work environment.

You mentioned the
Born in the U.S.A
. tour as marking the end of one phase of your career. How did the enormousness of that album and tour affect your life?

I really enjoyed the success of
Born in the U.S.A
., but by the end of that whole thing, I just kind of felt “Bruced” out. I was like “Whoa, enough of that.” You end up creating this sort of icon, and eventually it oppresses you.

What specifically are you referring to?

Well, for example, the whole image that had been created—and that I’m sure I promoted—it really always felt like “Hey, that’s not me.” I
mean, the macho thing, that was just never me. It might be a little more of me than I think, but when I was a kid, I was a real gentle child, and I was more in touch with those sorts of things.

It’s funny, you know, what you create, but in the end, I think, the only thing you can do is destroy it. So when I wrote
Tunnel of Love
, I thought I had to reintroduce myself as a songwriter, in a very noniconic role. And it was a relief. And then I got to a place where I had to sit some more of that stuff down, and part of it was coming out here to L.A. and making some music with some different people and seeing what that’s about and living in a different place for a while.

How’s it been out here, compared with New Jersey?

Los Angeles provides a lot of anonymity. You’re not like the big fish in the small pond. People wave to you and say hi, but you’re pretty much left to go your own way. Me in New Jersey, on the other hand, was like Santa Claus at the North Pole [
laughs
].

What do you mean?

Hmm, how can I put it? It’s like you’re a bit of a figment of a lot of other people’s imaginations. And that always takes some sorting out. But it’s even worse when you see yourself as a figment of your own imagination. And in the last three or four years, that’s something I’ve really freed myself from.

I think what happened was that when I was young, I had this idea of playing out my life like it was some movie, writing the script and making all the pieces fit. And I really did that for a long time. But you can get enslaved by your own myth or your own image, for the lack of a better word. And it’s bad enough having other people seeing you that way, but seeing yourself that way is really bad. It’s pathetic. And I got to a place, when Patti and I hooked up, where I said I got to stop writing this story. It doesn’t work.

And that’s when I realized I needed a change, and I like the West. I like the geography. Los Angeles is a funny city. Thirty minutes and you’re in the mountains, where for 100 miles there’s one store. Or you’re in the desert, where for 500 miles there’s five towns.

So Patti and I came out here and put the house together and had the babies and … the thing is, I’d really missed a big part of my life. The only way I could describe it is that being successful in one area is illusory. People think because you’re so good at one particular thing, you’re good
at many things. And that’s almost always not the case. You’re good at that particular thing, and the danger is that that particular thing allows you the indulgence to remove yourself from the rest of your life. And as time passed, I realized that I was using my job well in many ways, but there was a fashion in which I was also abusing it. And—this began in my early thirties—I really knew that something was wrong.

That was about ten years ago?

Yeah, it started after I got back from the
River
tour. I’d had more success than I’d ever thought I’d have. We’d played around the world and I thought, like, “Wow, this is it.” And I decided, “Okay, I want to have a house.” And I started to look for a house.

I looked for two years. Couldn’t find one. I’ve probably been in every house in the state of New Jersey—twice. Never bought a house. Figured I just couldn’t find one that I liked. And then I realized that it ain’t that I can’t
find
one, I couldn’t
buy
one. I can find one, but I can’t buy one. Damn!
Why is that?

And I stared to pursue why that was. Why did I only feel good on the road? Why were all my characters in my songs in cars? I mean, when I was in my early twenties, I was always sort of like “Hey, what I can put in this suitcase, that guitar case, that bus—that’s all I need, now and forever.” And I really believed it. And really lived it. Lived it for a long time.

In a
Rolling Stone
cover story from 1978, Dave Marsh wrote that you were so devoted to music that it was impossible to imagine you being married or having kids or a house …

A lot of people have said that same thing. But then something started ticking. It didn’t feel right. It was depressing. It was like “This is a joke. I’ve come a long way, and there’s some dark joke here at the end.”

I didn’t want to be one of those guys who can write music and tell stories and have an effect on people’s lives, and maybe on society in some fashion, but not be able to get into his own self. But that was pretty much my story.

I tend to be an isolationist by nature. And it’s not about money or where you live or how you live. It’s about psychology. My dad was certainly the same way. You don’t need a ton of dough and walls around your house to be isolated. I know plenty of people who are isolated with a six-pack of beer and a television set. But that was a big part of my nature.

Then music came along, and I latched onto it as a way to combat that part of myself. It was a way that I could talk to people. It provided me with a means of communication, a means of placing myself in a social context—which I had a tendency not to want to do.

And music did those things but in an abstract fashion, ultimately. It did them for the guy with the guitar, but the guy without the guitar was pretty much the same as he had been.

Now I see that two of the best days of my life were the day I picked up the guitar and the day that I learned how to put it down. Somebody said, “Man, how did you play for so long?” I said: “That’s the easy part. It’s the stopping that’s hard.”

When did you learn to put the guitar down?

Pretty recently. I had locked into what was pretty much a hectic obsession, which gave me enormous focus and energy and fire to burn, because it was coming out of pure fear and self-loathing and self-hatred. I’d get onstage and it was hard for me to stop. That’s why my shows were so long. They weren’t long because I had an idea or a plan that they should be that long. I couldn’t stop until I felt burnt, period. Thoroughly burnt.

It’s funny, because the results of the show or the music might have been positive for other people, but there was an element of it that was abusive for me. Basically, it was my drug. And so I started to follow the thread of weaning myself.

For a long time, I had been able to ignore it. When you’re 19 and you’re in a truck and you’re crossing the country back and forth, and then you’re 25 and you’re on tour with the band—that just fit my personality completely. That’s why I was able to be good at it. But then I reached an age where I began to miss my real life—or to even know that there was another life to be lived. I mean, it was almost a surprise. First you think you are living it. You got a variety of different girlfriends, and then, “Gee, sorry, gotta go now.” It was like the Groucho Marx routine—it’s funny, ’cause it runs in my family a little bit, and we get into this: “Hello, I came to say I’d like to stay, but I really must be going.” And that was me.

What was it that woke you up to the fact that you were missing something or had a problem?

Unhappiness. And other things, like my relationships. They always ended poorly; I didn’t really know how to have a relationship with a
woman. Also, I wondered how can I have this much money and not spend it? Up until the ’80s, I really didn’t have any money. When we started the
River
tour, I had about twenty grand, I think. So, really, around 1983 was the first time I had some money in the bank. But I couldn’t spend it, I couldn’t have any fun. So a lot of things started to not feel logical. I realized there was some aberrational behavior going on here. And I didn’t feel that good. Once out of the touring context, and out of the context of my work, I felt lost.

Did you ever go to a therapist or seek help like that?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I got really down. Really bad off for a while. And what happened was, all my rock & roll answers had fizzled out. I realized that my central idea—which, at a young age, was attacking music with a really religious type of intensity—was okay to a point. But there was a point where it turns in on itself. And you start to go down that dark path, and there is a distortion of even the best of things. And I reached a point where I felt my life was distorted. I love my music, and I wanted to just take it for what it was. I didn’t want to try to distort it into being my entire life. Because that’s a lie. It’s not true. It’s not your entire life. It never can be.

And I realized my real life is waiting to be lived. All the love and the hope and the sorrow and sadness—that’s all over there, waiting to be lived. And I could ignore it and push it aside or I could say yes to it. But to say yes to part of it is to say yes to all of it. That’s why people say no to all of it. Whether it’s drugs or whatever. That’s why people say no: I’ll skip the happiness as long as I don’t have to feel the pain.

So I decided to work on it. I worked hard on it. And basically, you have to start to open up to who you are. I certainly wasn’t the person I thought I was. This was around the time of
Born in the U.S.A
. And I bought this big house in New Jersey, which was really quite a thing for me to do. It was a place I used to run by all the time. It was a big house, and I said, “Hey, this is a rich man’s house.” And I think the toughest thing was that it was in a town where I’d been spit on when I was a kid.

This was in Rumson?

Yeah. When I was 16 or 17 my band, from Freehold, was booked in a beach club. And we engendered some real hostile reaction. I guess we looked kind of—we had on phony snakeskin vests and had long hair.
There’s a picture of me in the Castiles, that’s what it was. And I can remember being onstage, with guys literally spitting on it. This was before it was fashionable, when it kind of meant what it really meant.

So it was a funny decision, but I bought this house, and at first I really began to enjoy it, but then along came the
Born in the U.S.A
. tour, and I was off down the road again. I had a good time, and I began to try to figure out things. I was trying to find out how to make some of these connections, but once again it was sort of abstract, like how to integrate the band into some idea of community in the places we passed through.

It was during this time that you met Julianne?