Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (6 page)

Could you talk a little bit, from an autobiographical standpoint, about your background?

A screw-up, in a small town. I ran away a mess of times, and to New York all the time and stayed there, and played in the Café Wha? down
in the West Village, banged around down there for a few years. Met some people and my parents moved away and I stayed around here and I just kept playing. I just played and hung around. Went to school, to high school, that’s about it. That’s the capsule version.

What do you think about getting so much coverage right now? Critics really respond to your music
.

I don’t know. I guess it’s good. It’s nice—okay, it’s dynamite. But I don’t get hooked up in it or involved in it, because papers are just papers. I don’t know how much they influence people; we get a lot of coverage, we get a lot of reviews, but all I know is I still make $115 a week, I still live in New Jersey. The main thing is I’m glad I’ve got a good band, and I can have jobs to play and some things to do, and I get to travel around. I don’t know anything about the press, and what’s going on with them.

But, I mean, suddenly you are recognized
.

Well, I don’t know if it’s real sudden. Two years ago when I recorded my first album it was a big deal, then it cooled out and the record company cooled out on us and didn’t want to promote our second album. Then they decided they
did
want to promote the second album. Then we played in New York, and I hadn’t played in New York in a while, and the band had changed a lot. I don’t know, it’s like I’m getting better.

Why didn’t they want to promote the second album?

A million reasons, a million reasons that were like no reason at all. I guess somebody didn’t believe in it, didn’t think it was right. It was business. See, in the end, it doesn’t matter. That’s the funny thing people don’t realize, is that, all right, so you don’t get promoted, and this doesn’t happen and that doesn’t happen, but in the end it doesn’t matter. If you’ve got the music and you’ve got
something
—the music
and
—then that’s it. If you’re going to win, you’re going to win. No matter what. Say the second album didn’t get promoted, which it didn’t at first. But it came out, and it got a lot of good reviews in the press, so they couldn’t keep it down. There weren’t any ads, but it was written about all the time. So I don’t necessarily even believe in ads. I hate all those ads—I haven’t seen an ad of mine that I like. It’s unnecessary. They hype you, and they don’t have to. When they’re dealing with a certain type of artist, there shouldn’t be any need for that whole hype
attitude. If you’re dealing with certain people who can’t play [
laughs
], you
better
hype ’em because they ain’t gonna make it! But if you’re just dealing with people who are in control, who are good, then it’s not necessary because the music speaks for itself. That’s why it’s unnecessary even for me to talk about any of this stuff, because the music speaks for itself. There’s nothing I can possibly say that could add or give any insight to it.

Where did you learn to write songs and lyrics?

I never learned. You don’t learn any of that stuff. I don’t know about learnin’. I don’t believe in learnin’ [
laughs
]. You just do it, that’s all. I can do it. I mean, I learned how to write in first grade, but besides that … I can do it. I woke up one day and started to write some songs when I was, I don’t know, 13 or 14 years old. At first they were pretty lousy. And I just kept writing and writing. It’s not something you can learn, you just do it.

How much personal experience went into your songs?

I don’t know, it’s all based on that. There ain’t a word or a note played that didn’t come from something that happened to me somewhere long the line. It depends on how literally you want to take the whole situation, but it’s all based on personal experience directly or indirectly. You change it around—you change the names to protect the innocent [
laughs
], stuff like that.

Can you give me any examples? I like “4th of July, Asbury Park.” What kind of personal experience inspired that?

Well, I live in Asbury Park! I’ve lived there for a while now. I live like a block from the boardwalk. Before I was doing anything—okay, the past two years I’ve been busy, the past year and a half. But before that, I wasn’t doing anything. I scraped up gigs here and there, and I had a lot of free time. At night that’s what you do: you hang out down there. And you meet people, and you see things, and that was it. I don’t want to say “there was this girl, there was this and that,” you know.

Let’s put it this way: what does Asbury Park mean for people who were growing up in New Jersey or in the neighborhood where you grew up?

Doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just a dumpy town. It doesn’t mean anything.

But it’s probably a meeting-place for people, isn’t it?

There’s the boardwalk, people are always attracted to the bright lights, and the rides, the games and, yeah, a lot of people down there. It’s where the kids go, it’s where we all go at night. I used to go there a lot more than I do now; I’ve hardly been there this summer at all.

How about New York City? You’ve written a lot about it, how do you see the difference between the two?

New York City, for me, was a place where I could be myself. It was real tough down in Asbury; being like 16 or 15, you come to the city, step out of the bus, and you’re somebody else. Or you’re who you are. It was escape, a good escape. From my parents, and the kids and everything, from the whole scene. And I come to New York and it’s overwhelming. When you’re there, without a thing to do, no money but a few bucks, and you step out of that bus, it’s just an overwhelming thing. I just dug the feeling of it.

And you put that into your music, like “Does That Bus Stop on 82nd Street?”

I wrote that on the bus!

And “New York City Serenade.” How did you come to that song?

Part of it had been sitting around for about a year, a verse or two, and then that song just came together pretty quick, in a day or so. A lot of the songs did like that. These are things that just mean a lot to me. This is my life, and the songs are usually parts of my life that I want to remember. Even though they’re born, probably, out of the parts of my life that I’d most like to forget. The moments I write down are the ones that I want to remember. That’s confusing, maybe.

So growing up in Asbury Park, but near the city …

You’ve got a little more room. That was one thing I was fortunate to have, when I was a kid, there was always the option of splitting to the city, I could come into New York, and when it got too much for me I could go back. There were a lot of cats that just didn’t have that particular option. So I sort of was able to choose the best of both worlds. Which is why I can write optimistically about a lot of tough subjects. I can write about how good it is to be in the city in the summer, while a lot of people get trapped in there. I always had the option: I could run
there to get away from here, and I could run here to get away from there.

You’re going to prepare another album now, what’s that going to be like?

I write a lot during recording, I get those blasts of energy. Some new songs. We’ve been performing one or two of them, but I change my mind in the course of recording so much and I write so much new stuff that I couldn’t even say. Some new musicians, so it should be good, should be interesting.

Let’s talk more about the songs. Tell me about “Kitty’s Back.”

It’s a strip-tease number, that’s what that is. A follow-up to the David Rose Orchestra [
laughs
]. It’s a strange song. Sort of big band-y. I like it because it communicates the heat. You get the heat. That’s why I want to add a trumpet player to the band, because a trumpet communicates incredible heat. And that’s what I want. Different instruments have different temperatures. Depending on the guy that’s playing it, too, but a trumpet has just got that great Latin heat that I like. And “Kitty’s Back” does that too.

Do you use different instruments to express certain feelings? I think that’s done very well in “New York City Serenade,” which starts very slowly and becomes more and more …

Every time I do that number we do it a little differently. I like to do that number when we play. That’s like,
forever
. It gets that beat, it gets that groove going. It just goes on forever, it’s one of those songs that hooks up with a rhythm and goes on and on into the night. That song’s really special to me. I don’t know why—it’s hard to talk about. I really can’t explain it. You have to see us perform it.

I saw you at Central Park
.

I don’t think we did that number at Central Park.

You did “Jungleland.”

Yeah, that’s a new song. But you have to see us perform “New York City” to really know. Because the whole rhythm of the whole street thing runs right through that song. And there are so many little battles going on inside it, yet it all works together.

What about “Rosalita”?

Just wrote it in one day. It’s a rocker. It’s a dance song. It’s all there in the song, there’s really nothing I could say. I could relate it to my own personal experience but I don’t really want to.

Could you at least explain what’s in the song? The content?

It’s just about a guy. Like when I was a kid, I had this one girl, and her mother—it’s the same old thing, it happens every day: the hassles with the parents and stuff. And I had a court injunction put against me when I was 17 or 16 or something. That I couldn’t go near this girl because I was—I don’t know what the hell I was, but they did that. It was a thing where her mother disliked me a lot and went to the trouble of calling the cops on me if I came around. Had a court thing go down where I couldn’t see her. So I guess that’s what “Rosie” is about. At night you walk by the house but you wouldn’t go up to it, or you’d run up the driveway and stand under the window, and say, “Hey!”

What about “E Street Shuffle”?

That’s what it’s about, it’s just about people, kids I know. It’s just a place. Our piano player lives there, lives on that street. It’s just a place. “Incident on 57th Street” is the same thing. They’re all about the same thing: decisions, escapes, the way various people cope with them. There’s never any solutions, there’s never any answers, because there’s never any in real life.

Are you pessimistic?

I don’t think so, I think I’m real optimistic. There just aren’t any real solutions. There’s a lot of false answers and false solutions, but there’s not any real ones. That’s why the songs, they go on forever. They don’t begin and they don’t end, because that’s the way life is. It’s just day-to-day, moments, incidents. It’s not like, “
and then he died
.” There’s not stuff like that. It always goes on. Goes on and on and on. All the songs should just fade out, as a matter of fact—should never end.

How are you coping, and what’s your idea of coping, with mass media?

What do you mean, like interviews and stuff?

Interviews, radio, television. In my opinion there are two ways: you either try to stay somewhat of a mysterious personality, or you go out and be on the Mike Douglas show or anything
.

Well, I’m not doing any TV, and I don’t want to do any TV. We get all these TV offers, but what do you want to go on TV for? It’s too easy. Radio, I don’t go on the radio too much. I try not to do anything like that too much. For me, I don’t think it’s necessary. All that’s necessary is to go out on stage and do what I do. I do interviews once in a while, usually only if I have to. Only sometimes you’re in the mood, you get somebody you like, and it’s like, okay, let’s talk. Because I never really have anything in particular to add to the album. That’s about how I’m coping with it.

So when Johnny Carson calls you tomorrow? A lot of people would say, “I’m glad that you called me—I’ve been waiting for your call.”

It depends. If you’re trying to break into that area of the market or something, then it’s important. But I was never into this big, quick I’m-gonna-do-everything-I-can-to-get-out-there routine, because I don’t think it’s important. I don’t think the matter of time it takes is important. People say it won’t last, if it looks like things are going good. It’s funny, because we didn’t do things in the most expedient way, or the fastest way; but the only way for me to do it was the way I wanted to do it, and in the end it’s worked out best. All them kids came down there last night, and it’s a good thing—it’s a thing between me and them, and that’s what it is. And that’s weird. It’s a thing between me and the kids with no particular channels, just direct. That’s the way we’ve been running it.

And you are strongly addressing yourself to kids. All the other people try and sell to the older market, too, to sell as much as they can. Without denying that you are trying to sell as much as you can, you set out for giving it to the kids specifically
.

That depends on what you think kids are. It’s just that when I think of an audience, that’s what I think of. I guess there’s older people, I don’t know, I guess there’s some people in their 30s or 30 years old there, but it’s not like I’m thinking of the whole age situation. People come to see you—it’s “the kids.” “The kids” come to see you. I don’t play to any particular crowd.

I was wondering, maybe you are arousing this very involved reaction of an audience not alone by your music, which is a great part of it of course, but also by the fact you’re a man of your own. You’re not out there in these shells where all these other fuckers are, you are in the theater. So you’re not so much related to people they don’t like too much, with dollar signs in your eyes. Your integrity is there, and people are aware of that and like you for that
.