Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (63 page)

The guy who produced this record is a fellow named Ron Aniello. I assisted him, and Jon [Landau] executive produced. Ron had worked on a few of Patti [Scialfa]’s records previously, and I was actually working on another record before this record. I spent on-and-off about a year on that one before I threw it out, which is something I do every once in a
while. He came in to help me finish that one, and as we went along, a few of the songs started to come up for this record; he had a lot of fresh ideas about the way the music could sound, and he had a large library of sounds—alternative and hip-hop elements—and we used quite a bit of different looping techniques. It was just a very different experience, really, with the two of us in the studio when we started out.

You were in your hometown in New Jersey for these recording sessions?

Yeah, we were in our own studio, and each one of the songs started off as kind of a folk song, with just me and the acoustic guitar. And then everything else got slipped on.

And you had special guests, like Tom Morello …

Tommy Morello from Rage Against the Machine, he came in and played the guitar on “This Depression” and on “Jack of All Trades.” Patti and Soozie sang; Max plays on a cut; Clarence is on “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

As we have all heard, it’s a very powerful record that could have been written by both a wise old dog and a very young, brilliant man. Would you say you write more strongly when you’re pissed off?

You can never go wrong pissed off in rock ’n’ roll. The first half of it, particularly, is very angry. The genesis of the record was after 2008, when we had the huge financial crisis in the States, and there was really no accountability for years and years. People lost their homes, and I had friends who were losing their homes, and nobody went to jail. Nobody was responsible. People lost enormous amounts of their net worth. Previous to Occupy Wall Street, there was no pushback: there was no movement, there was no voice that was saying just how outrageous—that a basic theft had occurred that struck at the heart of what the entire American idea was about. It was a complete disregard of history, of context, of community; it was all about “what can I get today.” It was just an enormous fault line that cracked the American system wide open. And I think its repercussions are just beginning to really, really be felt.

So I think I wrote “We Take Care of Our Own” somewhere around 2009 or 2010, and I put it away in my book. And the idea behind that song was that’s what’s
supposed
to happen, but was not happening. My work has always been about judging the distance between American
reality and the American dream—how far is that at any given moment. If you go back to the work that I did beginning certainly in the late ’70s, I’m always measuring that distance: how close are we, how far are we, how close are we? Everything from
Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River
, to
Nebraska, Born in the U.S.A., The Ghost of Tom Joad
, those are all records that were always taking the measure of that distance.

That song, “We Take Care of Our Own,” it asks the question that the rest of the record tries to answer. Which is, of course: Do we? Do we take care of our own? And we often don’t. We don’t provide an equal playing field for all our citizens. And at the same time, it doesn’t cede what would be patriotism or images like the flag to just the right. I claim those, as I’ve done in a lot of my work throughout the years. The rest of the record tries to answer the questions that come up in the last verse of that song: Where are the merciful hearts? Where is the work that I need? Where is the spirit that reigns over me? Where are the eyes that see? Those are the questions the rest of the record tries to answer and that are embedded in the
question
that the title of that song is, “We Take Care of Our Own.”

Concerning patriotism, aren’t you afraid that a song like this, “We Take Care of Our Own,” might be misunderstood like “Born in the U.S.A.”?

You can’t be afraid of those images. I mean, I write carefully and precisely, and I believe clearly. And then you put it out there, and people hear it, and then it’s up to them. And if you’re missing it, you’re not quite thinking hard enough; you know, you need to go back and take a second look sometimes. But I don’t want to cede those feelings to just the right side of the street. I don’t like to do that. Which is why my work is often claimed by different political groups, because there is a feeling of patriotism underneath. That’s something I’ve had in “Land of Hope and Dreams,” and in my best music. But at the same time, it’s a very critical, questioning, often angry sort of patriotism. That’s not something I’m prepared to give up for fear that somebody might simplify what I’m saying.

I have many questions, but I’m not supposed to be the only one to ask
.

Okay. I know: how did I get this good looking? I can’t tell you. All right, next? [
Laughs
] Genes. Next?

[Moderator opens questions to the floor]

On this record, you include songs that aren’t exactly new, with “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Wrecking Ball” having been performed before. But they fit in the moment, right?

“Wrecking Ball” seemed like a metaphor for what had occurred—it’s an image where something is destroyed to build something new, and it was also an image [suggesting] just the flat destruction of some fundamental American values and ideas that occurred over the past 30 years. It was a 30-year process of deregulation and different things that added up to the inequality that we’re experiencing in the States right now. So, it seemed like a good metaphor.

With “Land of Hope and Dreams,” I needed a song that was very spiritual, because the record moves from guys who are really very angry to guys who are angry but constructive. To me there’s always a spiritual element in that, and a religious element to some degree. Maybe that’s just my Catholic upbringing, but that’s how I write about it. So that song was
big
enough.

The trouble with a record, if you write a really big song at the beginning, the record demands to gain size as it goes along—or else you blew your wad at the top, my friend [
laughs
]. That’s why, how many records do you put on where it’s like, hey, that first song! … That second song’s good … [
snores
]. You’re out by number seven or eight.

But on our records, I try to build them so there’s a question asked, and there are scenarios where those questions are played out. If you look at this record, there’s a question asked:
Do we
take care of our own? I don’t think so, a lot of times. So then there are scenarios where you meet the characters who have been impacted by the failure of those ideas and values. You get to the guy on “Easy Money,” he’s going out for a robbing spree—which is really just what’s occurred at the top of the pyramid. He’s imitating your guys on Wall Street the only way he knows how: I’m going out tonight for easy money.

If you trace it along, every song introduces you to a slightly different character. Then at the end, I’ve got to find some way to meld their stories together so it all makes sense to you. I’ve got to try to find some way not necessarily to
answer
the question that I asked, but to move the question forward, to move the ideas forward, to move forward in the search for a new day. “A new day” comes up a lot in the record, which is really just, okay, how do you move forward? I’m interested in that.

So the record has to build, and it has to expand emotionally and spiritually, and it’s also supposed to be throwing you a good time in the
mix. You know, it’s got to sound good and play great. That’s always a challenge, but “Land of Hope and Dreams” was a song of such size and spiritual dimension that by the time the end of the record came around, it fit really well.

Also, those are voices from history and other sides of the grave. If you listen to the record, I use a lot of folk music. There’s some Civil War music. There’s gospel music. There are ’30s horns in “Jack of All Trades.” That’s the way I used the music—the idea was that the music was going to contextualize historically that this has happened before: it happened in the 1970s, it happened in the ’30s, it happened in the 1800s … it’s cyclical. Over, and over, and over, and over again. So I try to pick up some of the continuity and the historical resonance through the music.

In the past, you’ve committed yourself to play for presidential candidates, and of course the presidential election is coming up this year in the U.S. Are you planning to sing or do some concerts for Barack Obama?

I got into that sort of by accident. What it was, the Bush years were so horrific that you couldn’t just sit around. I never campaigned for a politician previous to John Kerry. But at that moment it was such a blatant disaster occurring at the top of government that you felt if you had any cachet whatsoever, you had to cash it in, because you couldn’t sit around and watch it. So I campaigned for John Kerry, and Obama last time—and I’m glad that I did—but I’m not a professional campaigner, and every four years I don’t think I’m gonna pick a guy and go out for him. I’d prefer to stay on the sidelines. I generally believe an artist is supposed to be the canary in the coalmine, and you’re better off with a certain distance from the seat of power.

In 2008, you came out very strongly for President Obama. Are you still in the same mood today?

I think he did a lot of good things: he kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit, Michigan. He got the healthcare law passed, though I wish there had been a public option and that it didn’t leave citizens the victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden, which I think was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government.

He’s more friendly to corporations than I thought he would be, and
there aren’t as many middle class or working class voices heard in the administration as I thought there would be. I would have liked to see more active job creation sooner than it came, and I’d like to have seen some of these foreclosures stopped or somehow mitigated. The banks have had some kind of a settlement, a partial settlement, but really, there’s a lot of people it’s not going to assist. I still support the president, but there are plenty of things—I thought Guantanamo would have been closed by now. On the other hand, we’re out of Iraq, and hopefully we’ll be out of Afghanistan soon.

So many people after 9/11, and so many people these past couple years, look to you for your interpretation of events. Does that make you feel any kind of a burden? That so many people care? Look at us: when we were waiting for you earlier, so many people care about what you think, and what you feel about what is happening in the world
.

Actually, I’m terribly burdened, and at night when I’m sleeping in my big house, it’s killing me [
laughs
]. It’s a rough life, it’s a
brutal
life! The rock music business: brutal, brutal, brutal. Don’t believe what anybody tells you.

No, it’s a
blessed
life. And these are just things I’m interested in, and things I’ve been interested in having a conversation with my audience about.

I enjoyed artists when I was young who tried to, one way or another, take on the world—for better or for worse—and who were involved in the events of the day as well as just entertaining people. I have a big audience: I have Democrats, I have plenty of Republicans, I have people who just come to dance and enjoy themselves, and people who are interested in the social aspects of what I’m writing about. And I’ve really just enjoyed it all.

So I just enjoy having that conversation. If I have something to say or if I can write a song about it at a given time, I do. And if I don’t, then I don’t. I write to process my own experiences. I always figured that if I do that for me, then I do that for you. You write for yourself initially, just trying to understand the world you live in. And if you do that well enough, then it projects to your audience. But I’m not in elective office where I have to come up with a plan every day. I don’t experience it as a burden. It’s not like that. It’s pretty much a charmed life, I would say, if you’re a musician. That’s why they call it
playing
.

On this record, more than ever, we have spiritual references, biblical quotes, things like that. Is it because you feel your own mortality now?

No, I think I just got completely brainwashed as a child with Catholicism. Once you’re in … it’s like that Al Pacino line,
I keep trying to get out, they keep pulling me back!
Once you’re a Catholic, you’re always a Catholic. You get involved in these things in your very, very formative years. I took religious education for the first eight years of school; I lived next to a church, a convent, a rectory, and the Catholic school. I saw every wedding, every funeral, every Mass. Your life was filled with the smell of incense and priests and nuns coming and going, so it’s given me a very active sense of spiritual life, and made it very difficult sexually, but that’s all right [
laughs
].

On another subject, could you say a few words about the transition from Clarence Clemons to Jake? There’s a great portion of your eulogy where you say, “Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when
he
dies. He leaves when
we
die.”

I met Clarence when I was 22. That’s my son’s age. I look at my son, and he’s still a child, you know? Twenty-two is … you’re just a kid. And I guess Clarence might have been 30 at the time, so it goes back to the beginning of my adult life. And we had a relationship that was, I would say,
elemental
, from the very beginning. It wasn’t about anything we necessarily said to one another, it was just about what happened when we got close. Something happened. It fired people’s imaginations; it fired my own imagination and my own dreams. It made me want to write songs for that saxophone sound.

Losing Clarence is like losing something elemental. It’s like losing the rain, or air. And that’s a part of life. The currents of life affect even the dream world of popular music; there’s no escape. And so that is just something that’s going to be missing.