Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Bruce Springsteen

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Bruce Springsteen · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin Describing Bruce Springstein as a great American singer songwriter
0:24
Speaker 1: is a massive understatement. He's the boss, and at this point,
0:28
Speaker 1: five decades into his remarkable career, Bruce Springsteen is also
0:33
Speaker 1: a national treasure. His voice is unmistakable. Classic anthems like
0:38
Speaker 1: Born to Run, Hungry Heart, and jungle Land defined to
0:42
Speaker 1: the American working class psyche in the seventies and eighties. Today,
0:47
Speaker 1: Bruce has reached rarefied air. He sold more than one
0:50
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million albums worldwide, and he's won twenty Grammys,
0:55
Speaker 1: and at seventy one years old, there's still no stopping.
1:00
Speaker 1: He recorded his latest album, Letter to You, with the
1:02
Speaker 1: E Street Band in just four days. The album dives
1:06
Speaker 1: deep into the theme of loss and also includes three
1:09
Speaker 1: songs that Bruce wrote fifty years ago. In this interview
1:12
Speaker 1: with Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin, Bruce Springsteen talks about
1:16
Speaker 1: how his Irish and Italian sides have physically manifested into
1:19
Speaker 1: songs over the years. He also describes the moment when
1:23
Speaker 1: Barack Obama gave him the idea for his intimate Broadway show,
1:26
Speaker 1: and how listening to Born to Run forty five years
1:28
Speaker 1: after it was released, made Bruce realise just how good
1:32
Speaker 1: he really is. This is broken record liner notes for
1:38
Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Malcolm Gladwell, Rick
1:42
Speaker 1: Rubin and Bruce Springsteen. Congratulations on the new album. Thank you,
1:48
Speaker 1: my friend. It's really good. Thank you, Thank you very much.
1:54
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Is it the first time that you
1:57
Speaker 1: recorded live with the band in this way? We have
2:00
Speaker 1: had instances where it was not uncommon for us to
2:05
Speaker 1: get the band and track in the studio and then
2:10
Speaker 1: overdub instruments, replace instruments, and over re sing vocals, and
2:16
Speaker 1: that was a pretty common way for us to record
2:19
Speaker 1: in the seventies, and we would occasionally hit something where
2:24
Speaker 1: it was completely live. The record Darkness on the Edge
2:27
Speaker 1: of Town is completely live born in the USA. That
2:31
Speaker 1: one cut is completely live, but it would it was
2:34
Speaker 1: a bit of an exception, and so we've never had
2:38
Speaker 1: a situation where we've brought the entire band in, restricted
2:42
Speaker 1: ourselves to simply the instruments that are in the band,
2:46
Speaker 1: and then cut everything live, including the lead vocal at
2:50
Speaker 1: one time, and we did three hours a song, two
2:54
Speaker 1: songs a day. Amazing, amazing, and both Darkness and Born
3:00
Speaker 1: to Run took a year more to record. Yeah, they
3:04
Speaker 1: Born to Run was a good six or no, probably
3:08
Speaker 1: a year. Born in the USA was a year. Darkness
3:10
Speaker 1: on the Edge of Town was a year. They were
3:12
Speaker 1: all long records because I was searching for the record.
3:16
Speaker 1: That wasn't the recording that took a long time. It
3:19
Speaker 1: was the fact that I was searching for my album
3:23
Speaker 1: in the midst of say twenty thirty forty songs and
3:29
Speaker 1: trying to find out what I had to say, so
3:33
Speaker 1: that in this case I had basically I think I
3:37
Speaker 1: might have one outtake from this record or something, but
3:41
Speaker 1: it's all bay. These were the songs that I had.
3:44
Speaker 1: They all congealed because I wrote them within about ten days. Wow,
3:49
Speaker 1: is that unusual for that to happen a big group
3:52
Speaker 1: of songs in a short period of time. Had a
3:55
Speaker 1: record Nebraska where I did that about three weeks. I
3:59
Speaker 1: had a record Tunnel of Love, where I wrote most
4:02
Speaker 1: of the songs in about three weeks. But it's also
4:05
Speaker 1: not in common to spend a year and a half
4:09
Speaker 1: trying to find an album. So when the when the
4:12
Speaker 1: when the stars are aligned, those songs come in a
4:17
Speaker 1: conceptual package and you know, the gods are with you
4:21
Speaker 1: and it doesn't take long. Do the lyrics typically come
4:25
Speaker 1: first or did the chords come first? Is there any
4:29
Speaker 1: rule in the way that songs come to you? No? No.
4:34
Speaker 1: When I was younger, I would write the lyrics as poetry.
4:39
Speaker 1: All my first album, almost all of the lyrics came
4:42
Speaker 1: first because I had in my mind that I was
4:45
Speaker 1: that kind of a writer and so, and the lyrics
4:48
Speaker 1: were much more dense and a lot more imagery. And
4:54
Speaker 1: that was the only record where really I would say
4:56
Speaker 1: I wrote lyrics first everything else. Sometimes I start with
5:01
Speaker 1: music sometimes that you know, more often you have a line,
5:05
Speaker 1: or if you pick the guitar up and you know
5:09
Speaker 1: you're lucky. If if you get a title, if you
5:11
Speaker 1: get a good title, you're on your way. But sometimes
5:15
Speaker 1: you just pick the guitar up and it comes out
5:19
Speaker 1: of your mouth. You know that that moment is a
5:22
Speaker 1: moment that I have never heard anyone able to explain.
5:27
Speaker 1: I don't believe it's explainable, you know, And that's why
5:31
Speaker 1: it's creative. That's why it's magic. You know. You take
5:34
Speaker 1: at that moment something that is totally not physical, that
5:39
Speaker 1: is simply emotional, spiritual, somewhat intellectual and in the air
5:47
Speaker 1: becomes physical. It manifests itself as a physical piece of music.
5:52
Speaker 1: But what happens at that moment I've never heard anybody describe. Yeah,
5:57
Speaker 1: it's a miracle. It's unbelievable when you get to witness
6:00
Speaker 1: it happening. And do you experience it? I mean when
6:04
Speaker 1: we hear your words often were moved to tears when
6:09
Speaker 1: they come to you, do they hit you in that
6:11
Speaker 1: emotional way or do you hear them more? As these
6:15
Speaker 1: are good lyrics, this makes sense, I like the story.
6:18
Speaker 1: Do you feel it the way the listener feels it?
6:20
Speaker 1: Or is it even possible for you to know? Now
6:23
Speaker 1: I have one leg being the creator, and I have
6:27
Speaker 1: another one that's the audience, and they're there simultaneously. And
6:32
Speaker 1: if I come up with something that's moving, I think
6:35
Speaker 1: I feel the same response even while I'm creating it,
6:39
Speaker 1: that the audience is going to feel. You know, So
6:42
Speaker 1: you're both you're both creator and audience simultaneously, and partially
6:48
Speaker 1: by being the audience, it's assisting you in judging the
6:52
Speaker 1: quality of what you've done. Yeah, it's a great feeling,
6:55
Speaker 1: that feeling of I guess that's the reason we do it.
6:58
Speaker 1: It's the best feeling in the world. There's nothing like
7:01
Speaker 1: that moment when you go there, it is goddamn. I
7:05
Speaker 1: knew I had one more in me, you know. It's
7:08
Speaker 1: one of those moments. And leading up to this album,
7:12
Speaker 1: how much was planned before the songs came in? Other words,
7:15
Speaker 1: did the songs lead the charge or were you thinking,
7:18
Speaker 1: I really want to make an album. It's been a while.
7:20
Speaker 1: What do you feel like? Well, I may feel like
7:23
Speaker 1: I may go My work with the E Street Band
7:27
Speaker 1: is cyclical, so I'll work on some solo projects, but
7:31
Speaker 1: I will cycle my way back around to feeling like, Okay,
7:35
Speaker 1: I want to work with my band, I want to
7:37
Speaker 1: make an album. For lack of a better word, rock
7:40
Speaker 1: music and timing, you know, so you start to get hungry.
7:46
Speaker 1: It's like getting hungry for a steak, you know. It's like, Okay,
7:49
Speaker 1: I think I'm hungry for a steak tonight, you know.
7:52
Speaker 1: And it's a similar thing. You get hungry to work
7:54
Speaker 1: with the guys. You get hungry to make a certain
7:57
Speaker 1: kind of music, to reach a certain type of audience.
8:01
Speaker 1: And it's more of an inner drive that that that's
8:06
Speaker 1: the first thing that you experience and then if you're lucky,
8:10
Speaker 1: you know you'll catch a metaphor you'll catch a title,
8:13
Speaker 1: You'll catch the lines, and songs start to lead the way.
8:16
Speaker 1: Is there a difference between the way you write for
8:19
Speaker 1: the EA Street Band and the way you do solo things?
8:22
Speaker 1: If you take say my last two records, I made
8:26
Speaker 1: a record called Western Stars, and if you if you
8:29
Speaker 1: looked at the characters on that record, there's a very
8:33
Speaker 1: isolated sort of American persona that I wrote from. And
8:37
Speaker 1: if you, if you judge it, with this record, I'm
8:39
Speaker 1: in the middle of a community on this record. So
8:43
Speaker 1: when I work with the band, very often, I'll be
8:47
Speaker 1: writing from the inside of a community. Outward, when I
8:51
Speaker 1: work on my own, I'm studying that sort of isolated
8:55
Speaker 1: American part of the American character, so it will thematically,
9:02
Speaker 1: I'll move in different places. Can you describe the sort
9:05
Speaker 1: of a little more about the emotional feeling of those
9:08
Speaker 1: two I mean, is writing a song in E Street mode?
9:12
Speaker 1: When you say when you're writing inside a community, is
9:14
Speaker 1: that satisfying in a different way? Does it feel differently
9:17
Speaker 1: in the moment. It's funny because I'm sitting there by myself,
9:21
Speaker 1: but I'm imagining this entire sort of community around me,
9:28
Speaker 1: and I'm imagining a different world than the world that
9:32
Speaker 1: I imagine when I'm writing for a solo project. It's
9:37
Speaker 1: just a different place you put your head, you know.
9:39
Speaker 1: You just travel to a different sort of emotional geography,
9:45
Speaker 1: you know, and you place yourself in that world, and
9:50
Speaker 1: you're relating to everything differently. You're relating to the people
9:53
Speaker 1: in the songs differently, And I know that eventually I'm
9:56
Speaker 1: going to actually physically be in the center of that world,
10:00
Speaker 1: which is when I'm at the center of my band
10:02
Speaker 1: and we're about to perform or about to record this music.
10:07
Speaker 1: And so it's a bit of a preparation for actually
10:14
Speaker 1: initially being in that world within the band and then
10:17
Speaker 1: going out and playing that music and being within that
10:20
Speaker 1: world within your audience. Whereas when I'm performing or writing
10:25
Speaker 1: for a solo project, I may or may not tour.
10:29
Speaker 1: I'm really character driven and writing from a more another
10:37
Speaker 1: part of my personality. I guess the way I would
10:39
Speaker 1: describe it as I'm writing from the Irish side of
10:42
Speaker 1: my personality, which is moodier and darker and gloomier. And
10:47
Speaker 1: when I'm writing for the band, I'm writing from the
10:49
Speaker 1: Italian side of my personality, which is Hale brother. Well
10:54
Speaker 1: you know, well met you know, so uh so useful
10:59
Speaker 1: to have those two sides, it is. I was very lucky,
11:03
Speaker 1: you know. My father was very Irish in personality and
11:06
Speaker 1: my mother was totally Italian, and I sort of absorbed
11:10
Speaker 1: both of their approaches towards life, and when I became creative,
11:16
Speaker 1: I really drew on both of their sort of all
11:22
Speaker 1: of our ethnic background. There. You've talked about your dad's depression, yeah,
11:26
Speaker 1: and that you've you have some of those seeds in you,
11:30
Speaker 1: oh yeah. And what are the things that have helped
11:34
Speaker 1: you to move through those And when was your first
11:36
Speaker 1: experience of recognizing, oh, I have this too. I hit
11:40
Speaker 1: a wall when I was thirty two years old. I
11:45
Speaker 1: wrote Nebraska, And after Nebraska, I traveled across the country
11:50
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine and it was on that
11:53
Speaker 1: trip that I realized something was amiss. I was always
11:59
Speaker 1: able to count on the miles, the music to a suage,
12:03
Speaker 1: whatever my demons were, but on that trip it was
12:07
Speaker 1: the first time for some reason where it felt like
12:10
Speaker 1: it's just not doing the job. And when I got
12:13
Speaker 1: to La I was completely an anxious mess and I
12:20
Speaker 1: had no idea what to do with myself next, and
12:24
Speaker 1: all I knew was I need help. I've hit the wall.
12:27
Speaker 1: I don't know where to go with this. My usual
12:30
Speaker 1: remedies that worked in my twenties, music, this, that, touring,
12:35
Speaker 1: traveling are not working for me anymore. I've got to
12:39
Speaker 1: find another answer. And I began analysis when I was
12:42
Speaker 1: thirty two. I did it for thirty years. Change your life, Yes, absolutely,
12:47
Speaker 1: it gave me the rest of my life, you know,
12:51
Speaker 1: the fulfillment of family, of love and being able to
12:56
Speaker 1: be loved, of delving deeper into your own history and
13:01
Speaker 1: your own essence, and that affecting your creativity. It gave
13:07
Speaker 1: me another The way that I would describe it as
13:11
Speaker 1: you sort of you're standing in front of a brick
13:15
Speaker 1: wall and you think you're seeing all that the world is,
13:19
Speaker 1: and then suddenly you start pushing and suddenly a brick
13:23
Speaker 1: drops out and you look through into this complete other
13:27
Speaker 1: experience and existence and you go, fuck, you know WHOA
13:33
Speaker 1: I've been living on such a limited level and it
13:38
Speaker 1: just expands your expanded my vision. It also helped it
13:43
Speaker 1: helped rid me of my depression. That and also pharmacology
13:47
Speaker 1: has played a big part in giving me my life back,
13:51
Speaker 1: and that's been very important. Also, it affect your writing,
13:54
Speaker 1: I imagine. No, I have never noticed that my depression
14:00
Speaker 1: ever affected my writing, or that any medications I've ever
14:03
Speaker 1: taken affected my writing. When I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed,
14:08
Speaker 1: I could always still work and write. For some reason,
14:12
Speaker 1: it never affected that part of my creative life or personality.
14:17
Speaker 1: I'm almost asking the other way around, like, do you
14:19
Speaker 1: look at the songs you wrote pre therapy as written
14:23
Speaker 1: by a smaller aspect of who you are, and that
14:28
Speaker 1: through therapy you've expanded your vision. I don't know if
14:31
Speaker 1: that's I'm leading. That's a leading question. Yeah it is,
14:35
Speaker 1: and I can tell you that no, I don't because
14:37
Speaker 1: I look back and I The forty fifth anniversary of
14:41
Speaker 1: Born to Run was about a week or two ago,
14:45
Speaker 1: and so I was with a buddy of mine and
14:46
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, I'm going to do an anniversary cruise.
14:48
Speaker 1: I'm play Born to Run start to finish. I was like, okay.
14:51
Speaker 1: So Sunday morning, we got in a car, put it on,
14:54
Speaker 1: and I realized, that's one of the best records I've
14:56
Speaker 1: ever made. You know, Yeah, if I listened to Nebraska,
15:00
Speaker 1: I go, that's one of the best records I ever made,
15:03
Speaker 1: so the dealing with my own personal depression. The material
15:10
Speaker 1: I wrote previous to that really was unscathed and untouched
15:16
Speaker 1: and did and it did not limit the scope of
15:19
Speaker 1: my writing in any way, in any real way, I wrote.
15:23
Speaker 1: I look back and say, some of my best records
15:25
Speaker 1: were pre pre analysis and post analysis. Has music inspired
15:31
Speaker 1: your writing more than anything else? Or has literature played
15:34
Speaker 1: a role in lyrics and song structure for you? Everything
15:39
Speaker 1: I learned musically I probably learned between nineteen sixty five
15:45
Speaker 1: and nineteen sixty eight, between when I was fifteen and eighteen,
15:50
Speaker 1: I was a student, an astute student of Top forty radio,
15:55
Speaker 1: where the masters of songwriting and record making were existed
16:00
Speaker 1: at that moment in time. I studied that like it
16:04
Speaker 1: was for my master's degree, and I would say that
16:09
Speaker 1: baby into the early seventies, but shortly thereafter I stopped
16:14
Speaker 1: looking towards music for specific information, and I began in
16:20
Speaker 1: the late seventies to get more inspiration from reading a
16:25
Speaker 1: lot of film, a lot of noir, James M. Kin,
16:29
Speaker 1: Flannery O'Connor, Jim Thompson, and from watching films john Ford
16:35
Speaker 1: and Howard Hawks, and a lot of film noir. So
16:42
Speaker 1: I began to get a lot more inspiration from literature
16:46
Speaker 1: and film the older that I got. Just talk a
16:49
Speaker 1: little bit about more about this album. Many things fascinating
16:52
Speaker 1: about it, but one was that you include a number
16:55
Speaker 1: of songs from way back when. Yeah, First of all,
17:01
Speaker 1: what was behind that decision? Start with that, why? Why?
17:04
Speaker 1: Why did you? Why did you want to put these?
17:06
Speaker 1: Particularly if I was the priest. As most creative things,
17:11
Speaker 1: it's a non decision. I don't operate from deciding first.
17:17
Speaker 1: I operate from an internal hunger and my decisions come
17:23
Speaker 1: from there. So in this case, I happened to record
17:27
Speaker 1: a song that's on the record called Janey Needs a Shooter,
17:30
Speaker 1: and I recorded it. I said, I'm going to record
17:32
Speaker 1: this for a record day in the United States. You
17:34
Speaker 1: put one song out, but I recorded it with the
17:37
Speaker 1: band the way that we cut darkness on the Edge
17:39
Speaker 1: of Town, and it sounded like darkness on the Edge
17:42
Speaker 1: of Town, and I said, Wow, that's how the band
17:45
Speaker 1: really sounds when we play live. And I haven't caught
17:49
Speaker 1: that in the studio in a long time. And so
17:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep this for some future album, and
17:55
Speaker 1: so having one song that was forty five years old.
17:59
Speaker 1: I then was working on a box set of outtakes,
18:05
Speaker 1: the first of which was an entire album of songs
18:09
Speaker 1: I cut for John Hammond when he asked me to
18:12
Speaker 1: make a demo. He produced a demo for me when
18:15
Speaker 1: I first went to Columbia. These songs were amongst those songs,
18:19
Speaker 1: and I said, well, a couple of these might be
18:21
Speaker 1: fun for the band to play. So it just kind
18:24
Speaker 1: of fell into place, and when we played them, they
18:27
Speaker 1: were a lot of fun to play, and the band
18:30
Speaker 1: came up with great arrangements for them, and and that's
18:33
Speaker 1: how they ended up on the record. Why didn't these
18:35
Speaker 1: songs make it onto earlier records just by chance or no?
18:39
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you're you're so fickle as an
18:42
Speaker 1: artists are so fickle, you know they you know you
18:45
Speaker 1: have this music and then you write something new and boom,
18:49
Speaker 1: you forget about that and you're onto the next thing.
18:51
Speaker 1: By the time I had a chance to record my
18:55
Speaker 1: first album, i'd already made an album that but I
19:00
Speaker 1: put that one aside because I had new music and
19:03
Speaker 1: I wanted to put what was what I had newest
19:05
Speaker 1: out and so there was an album was pre Greetings
19:10
Speaker 1: from Asbury Park that was all of this acoustic music
19:13
Speaker 1: with this type of lyric writing, and more than an album,
19:16
Speaker 1: almost two albums and an album and a half that
19:19
Speaker 1: never got released. How does it feel, too, for the
19:23
Speaker 1: first time release song that you wrote years ago? Yeah,
19:27
Speaker 1: the song, the two songs if I were the priest
19:29
Speaker 1: and song for obums fifty years old, and it felt
19:33
Speaker 1: like I wrote them yesterday, except except I wouldn't write
19:36
Speaker 1: in that style now. You know that very verbose, heavy
19:39
Speaker 1: amount of images. I just don't write that way anymore.
19:42
Speaker 1: I write more colloquially, and so it was kind of
19:48
Speaker 1: fun to wrap my head around, you know, singing all
19:51
Speaker 1: those words again. I realized, gee, this was really a
19:54
Speaker 1: great part of my writing, my writing life, and I
19:58
Speaker 1: kind of left it too soon because of the new
20:00
Speaker 1: Dylan comparisons. I got sensitive about it, and I put
20:04
Speaker 1: it away a little too soon, because really I kind
20:07
Speaker 1: of had my own style of writing in that style,
20:11
Speaker 1: and looking back, I said, I wouldn't have mind making
20:15
Speaker 1: another record or two in that style. But I was
20:18
Speaker 1: very sensitive to I was young, sensitive about creating my
20:22
Speaker 1: own identity, and so I left that style of writing
20:24
Speaker 1: behind rather quickly. You hear it on the first three albums,
20:29
Speaker 1: and you hear it less each album, you know, and
20:32
Speaker 1: by the time I get the darkness, I'm done with it.
20:35
Speaker 1: There's still time to make those albums, you know. I
20:38
Speaker 1: know I got all the materials sitting there. I may
20:40
Speaker 1: do that. So you played if I was a priest
20:43
Speaker 1: for Hammond. You were auditioning for Hammond. Yes, one of
20:47
Speaker 1: the most legendary figures in rock and roll history. Could
20:51
Speaker 1: you take us back to that moment? Were you scared?
20:53
Speaker 1: I was on the elevator going up to what might
20:56
Speaker 1: have been the thirtieth floor in Black Rock, which was
21:01
Speaker 1: with my manager and he John Hammond, to give you
21:05
Speaker 1: an idea what the record business was like. We're seeing
21:08
Speaker 1: no buddies who he did not know at all off
21:12
Speaker 1: the streets of New York City, who simply talked their
21:15
Speaker 1: way through. His secretary Michapelle was very good at that
21:19
Speaker 1: and he did it. So here we have. We've got
21:23
Speaker 1: a thirty minute audition with John Hammond. We go up.
21:27
Speaker 1: On the way up, I'm going, well, it's like this,
21:30
Speaker 1: I have nothing. When I come back, I'm not going
21:33
Speaker 1: to have any less than I have right now, so
21:37
Speaker 1: I'm trying to talk myself into not being nervous. It
21:41
Speaker 1: almost worked, but not quite. What else did you play
21:45
Speaker 1: for him? Do you remember I played? If I were
21:48
Speaker 1: the priest? I played The first song I played for
21:51
Speaker 1: him was It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City,
21:53
Speaker 1: which ended up on my first record, and I believe
21:56
Speaker 1: I played a song for him called Growing Up. I
21:59
Speaker 1: only played about three songs and he and after I
22:01
Speaker 1: played I played one song, and he said, you gotta
22:04
Speaker 1: be on Columbia Records. Wow, oh wow, it was that.
22:08
Speaker 1: It was that sudden. He didn't wait to hear the
22:11
Speaker 1: second one. I played the first, So you gotta be
22:13
Speaker 1: on Columbia Records. I said, okay. We always invite the
22:18
Speaker 1: people we interview on broken record to play little bits
22:23
Speaker 1: of songs that they want to I would love I'd
22:26
Speaker 1: love to hear a piece of whatever you want. But
22:27
Speaker 1: I was going to suggest, if I was a priest,
22:30
Speaker 1: can we recreate the John Hammond audition here? Oh man,
22:33
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I don't know if I
22:35
Speaker 1: even know those words. I know, because there's a yeah wait.
22:41
Speaker 1: John Hammond apparently said the minute he heard that song,
22:44
Speaker 1: he knew you were a Catholic. Oh yeah, yeah, he
22:47
Speaker 1: was really excited about it. That's what he loved. He
22:50
Speaker 1: loved the screwed up Catholicism in it. Wait, it was
22:55
Speaker 1: he Catholic? I don't know. I don't know. I don't
22:58
Speaker 1: think so it's funny that he could spot it right away. Yeah,
23:03
Speaker 1: but you're a You're a double cat, like you're a
23:05
Speaker 1: special breed with Italian one side, Irish on the other.
23:08
Speaker 1: You're like a You're like the most powerful kind of
23:11
Speaker 1: Catholic hybrid. Yeah. We're steep steeped, steeped, steeped in it.
23:15
Speaker 1: So it's my lot in life. We'll be back with
23:19
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen after a quick break. We're back with Rick Rubin,
23:27
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Springsteen. How is your spiritual life now?
23:31
Speaker 1: What's your spiritual life like? Uh? I don't think about
23:35
Speaker 1: it very much. I guess if if I look at it,
23:37
Speaker 1: i'd say it comes through in my music, you know.
23:39
Speaker 1: And and then and just the general your general behavior
23:43
Speaker 1: during the day. Uh, and what you see reflected in
23:47
Speaker 1: your children as to how well you've done and how
23:50
Speaker 1: well you've lived over the years. You know. I got
23:54
Speaker 1: some solid citizens that we've raised and makes Patty and
23:58
Speaker 1: I proud, And they got good inner their inner core
24:02
Speaker 1: is strong and and and righteous, and uh so we go, well,
24:08
Speaker 1: we must have something right, you know, we must be.
24:10
Speaker 1: We didn't. We had no dogma or religion, but we
24:15
Speaker 1: just had a way of living that I hope passed
24:17
Speaker 1: on a little bit of righteousness for them. And so
24:21
Speaker 1: uh if I if I observe it in any way,
24:24
Speaker 1: it's purely through listening and looking back at my songs
24:27
Speaker 1: and seeing where they were influenced by my Catholic faith
24:32
Speaker 1: and and or by a spirituality in general. I basically
24:37
Speaker 1: consider myself a spiritual songwriter in that primarily I want
24:42
Speaker 1: you to dance. I want to entertain you. I want
24:44
Speaker 1: you to listen to my music and wash your clothes
24:47
Speaker 1: and and and vacuum your floor. And I'm also trying
24:51
Speaker 1: to address your soul. So beautiful and this album, I mean,
24:56
Speaker 1: it's a powerful steam of loss in this album. Yeah
25:01
Speaker 1: you talk, I mean you you have lost a lot
25:03
Speaker 1: of people close to you over the last few years. Well,
25:06
Speaker 1: you know, death is funny because when you're Italian and Irish,
25:12
Speaker 1: you get very used to death. When you're very young
25:15
Speaker 1: because of the wakes, you know, I was too many
25:20
Speaker 1: wakes when I was six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old,
25:23
Speaker 1: where the body is just in the room for days
25:26
Speaker 1: at a time and people are drinking and laughing and
25:29
Speaker 1: visiting and everyone's excited to be together. And I went
25:34
Speaker 1: through a lot of that as a child. And then
25:37
Speaker 1: you leave home, you reach your twenties, and for a
25:40
Speaker 1: long time, unless there's something unusually tragic, death is not
25:43
Speaker 1: a big part of your life twenties, thirties, even forties.
25:47
Speaker 1: But once you get into your fifties, sixties and seventies,
25:50
Speaker 1: it rears its head again and people begin to die
25:53
Speaker 1: from natural causes and from illnesses, and it becomes once
25:58
Speaker 1: again at a part of your life. And so it's
26:01
Speaker 1: become a natural part of my writing life. Also, is
26:05
Speaker 1: there a song? Do you have a favorite on this album?
26:07
Speaker 1: I like the House of a Thousand To Tell Ours
26:10
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites. How do you choose a
26:12
Speaker 1: favorite song? Like? What is it that? What are the
26:14
Speaker 1: criteria that in your own mind makes something a song special?
26:18
Speaker 1: I knew when I was writing it. I knew that, uh,
26:22
Speaker 1: there was just something to it that spoke to me,
26:25
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, and while I was writing, I said, oh,
26:29
Speaker 1: that's a great title. Yeah, I just said, House of
26:38
Speaker 1: a Thousand Guitars is a great title. If I can
26:40
Speaker 1: write a song and make that title work, I'm good,
26:44
Speaker 1: you know. So so I got very excited about it
26:48
Speaker 1: and finished the song. You know, it addresses the world
26:52
Speaker 1: that I've attempted to create with my fans and audience
26:56
Speaker 1: and amongst my band and and uh and and and
27:01
Speaker 1: just the world at large, you know. And so it
27:05
Speaker 1: was it's just my it's it's just one of my
27:08
Speaker 1: favorite songs. Record as your relationship to any of the
27:13
Speaker 1: songs changed over time, like you said, you did ah
27:17
Speaker 1: listen to Born to Run recently for the forty fifth anniversary,
27:21
Speaker 1: and when you listen back, I know you liked it.
27:23
Speaker 1: Did it did anything strike you as surprising or did
27:27
Speaker 1: any of the meanings change? What was the experience like?
27:30
Speaker 1: The experience was like, damn, I was good when I
27:33
Speaker 1: was twenty four years old, you know, it was like
27:37
Speaker 1: and sort of being surprised. One thing I was surprised
27:40
Speaker 1: at is how well it was recorded. It really, when
27:43
Speaker 1: I played it back, it sounded quite modern. And then
27:46
Speaker 1: I was a little shocked at the depth and detail
27:51
Speaker 1: of the music that I was writing at that age,
27:54
Speaker 1: because I didn't really play that well. I mean I
27:56
Speaker 1: had a little Aolian Spinnett piano that was half out
28:01
Speaker 1: of tune, and I wrote all of those introductions to
28:04
Speaker 1: jungle Land to Backstreets, Meeting across the River. Born to
28:09
Speaker 1: was written largely on piano, which is why Roy Bitten
28:13
Speaker 1: plays such a stellar role on the record, because I
28:16
Speaker 1: wrote most of the songs on the piano, and so
28:20
Speaker 1: I think I went back and it was it was
28:22
Speaker 1: just fun to realize, Wow, I was really, I was really.
28:26
Speaker 1: My musical tastes and abilities were quite sophisticated for when
28:31
Speaker 1: I was so young, because I probably wrote most of
28:34
Speaker 1: Born to Run when I was just twenty four, and
28:36
Speaker 1: we recorded it and released it when I was twenty five.
28:39
Speaker 1: And you play those songs, you play many of those
28:41
Speaker 1: songs live over the years, but you probably don't have
28:44
Speaker 1: much opportunity or reason to go back and listen to
28:47
Speaker 1: the album. No, I probably I didn't listen to the record.
28:51
Speaker 1: I think I listened to it on its fortieth anniversary,
28:54
Speaker 1: but before that probably not in twenty years was there
28:58
Speaker 1: any moment in listening to it where you were taken
29:00
Speaker 1: it back, where you heard something that you don't remember
29:03
Speaker 1: it was there, or something it took you by surprise. No,
29:07
Speaker 1: I think it was just when I listened to the thing,
29:10
Speaker 1: to listen to it and its entirety, how complete and
29:13
Speaker 1: full it was, and how well conceived it was, given
29:19
Speaker 1: how young I was. You know, if I hear one
29:22
Speaker 1: of the cuts, I go, yeah, it's pretty good. But
29:24
Speaker 1: if I hear the album and its entirety, I go,
29:27
Speaker 1: it's a little better than that. Do you do you
29:29
Speaker 1: ever realize anything about yourself looking back on the songs? Yeah,
29:34
Speaker 1: your songs are generally out in front of your personal development.
29:38
Speaker 1: They're like a divining rod. You know. What you write
29:42
Speaker 1: about is something you sort of you're the self realization
29:47
Speaker 1: can come a year or six months or two years.
29:50
Speaker 1: Oh fuck, look I knew this back two years ago,
29:53
Speaker 1: but it was in this song, and I didn't really
29:56
Speaker 1: realize that about myself, you know, for that period of time.
29:59
Speaker 1: So your inner life, you're subconscious, tends to be out
30:04
Speaker 1: in front of your self awareness, which is pretty much
30:07
Speaker 1: the same with everybody. In my case, I record it,
30:10
Speaker 1: I actually record that subconscious and then have a chance
30:14
Speaker 1: to go back and and and literally look at it
30:18
Speaker 1: and realize that it took me a while to get
30:21
Speaker 1: there personally. Would you say most songs start from the
30:24
Speaker 1: subconscious and then work their way up or or do
30:28
Speaker 1: some songs just start intellectually for you? Uh? Anything that
30:32
Speaker 1: starts intellectually usually sucks. Uh. You know, I almost I
30:37
Speaker 1: almost always depend on uh some on some inner life
30:43
Speaker 1: sending a message to my brain to get active and
30:47
Speaker 1: to employ the mechanics that I've learned over and the
30:50
Speaker 1: craft I've learned over the years. But it always comes
30:53
Speaker 1: out of the heart and soul first. So Uh, that's
30:58
Speaker 1: that's that's generally the process of my writing. Have you
31:01
Speaker 1: ever kept a dream journal? Um? I never kept a journal,
31:05
Speaker 1: But I'm an active and dreamer, and I dream and
31:11
Speaker 1: remember what I dream easily four nights a week or so.
31:15
Speaker 1: You know. Always been a very active dreamer. And the
31:18
Speaker 1: only time I kept a bit of a journal was
31:20
Speaker 1: when I was doing some dream work with my therapist.
31:24
Speaker 1: Would you say that a song comes up like a
31:26
Speaker 1: dream comes up? Is there a relationship? No. All the
31:31
Speaker 1: years that I've followed my dreams, I've written one song
31:34
Speaker 1: out of a dream that was worth anything, and it's
31:36
Speaker 1: just a little sleeper on a record called working on
31:39
Speaker 1: a Dream as a matter of fact, called Surprise Surprise.
31:42
Speaker 1: It's a nice little song, and I actually came up
31:46
Speaker 1: with it. Usually when you're dreaming, if you write something,
31:49
Speaker 1: you think it's phenomenal, and then you wake up and
31:52
Speaker 1: you actually play it and it's not very good at all.
31:55
Speaker 1: You know the dream, and the dream enhances your experience
31:58
Speaker 1: of it. There was literally just one song where it
32:01
Speaker 1: paid off in the end. How much of who you
32:05
Speaker 1: are came from what you've learned versus inborn, that's probably
32:14
Speaker 1: a fifty fifty. I'd say you know nurture and nature,
32:18
Speaker 1: I would I would say that you come out with
32:21
Speaker 1: a certain personality, and that personality infects everything you do,
32:29
Speaker 1: your behavior, and what you create for the rest of
32:32
Speaker 1: your life. Then you learn your craft, and you process
32:38
Speaker 1: who you are through your craft and through the mechanics
32:43
Speaker 1: of what you've learned. But I think the essence of
32:46
Speaker 1: who you are comes is with you at birth. I
32:50
Speaker 1: think it can be distorted. You can irreparably harm that
32:55
Speaker 1: person and you can do great destruction to it, and
32:59
Speaker 1: in which case your life will take different paths. But
33:03
Speaker 1: if it's even remotely nurtured. I believe that there's such
33:07
Speaker 1: a it's such a strong force that it's going to
33:09
Speaker 1: push through and you're going to find some expression for
33:13
Speaker 1: it in some form as as as life goes as
33:16
Speaker 1: your life goes by, you know. But I kind of
33:19
Speaker 1: go half and half with that because I got into,
33:23
Speaker 1: say a lot of noir writing and film noir, and
33:26
Speaker 1: there you get Nebraska and goes to Tom Jod and
33:30
Speaker 1: Devils and Dust where I write a lot of noir
33:33
Speaker 1: stories in my in my narrative writing and the kind
33:36
Speaker 1: of narrative writing that I do, So uh, that comes
33:41
Speaker 1: from just what I was attracted to. But but also
33:45
Speaker 1: then I'd have to say, but that really came out
33:48
Speaker 1: of the Irish part of my personality. That that that
33:51
Speaker 1: I was was given from my father, So you can
33:54
Speaker 1: trace it immediately back to your your birth. Also, what
33:58
Speaker 1: was the music playing around your house when you were
34:00
Speaker 1: growing up? No music, real music, No no music, no books,
34:04
Speaker 1: no films. It was strictly television and Top forty radio.
34:09
Speaker 1: When did you first start playing piano? I was really young.
34:12
Speaker 1: My my aunt had a piano in her fourier and
34:16
Speaker 1: we would visit my Italian grandmother who lived to be
34:20
Speaker 1: a hundred years old, every Sunday. And so when my
34:23
Speaker 1: mother was upstairs with her mother, because they only spoke Italian,
34:27
Speaker 1: I was downstairs in the fourier tinkling around on my
34:31
Speaker 1: aunt's piano and I started to make some noise out
34:35
Speaker 1: of it, and so she said, here, I'm going to
34:36
Speaker 1: give you a key to the house, and when you
34:38
Speaker 1: leave school, if you want, you can come into the
34:41
Speaker 1: house and play the piano. And so I started to
34:43
Speaker 1: come home from school and I go to my aunt's house.
34:46
Speaker 1: Nobody was there, and I would just start practicing the piano.
34:50
Speaker 1: I was in my teens, and I became a relatively
34:55
Speaker 1: proficient accompanyist. You know, nothing special, but I can accompany
34:58
Speaker 1: myself relatively well. You said you wrote the songs were
35:02
Speaker 1: born to run on the piano. Is that typical for
35:06
Speaker 1: you or is that unusual to write a whole album
35:08
Speaker 1: on piano. I haven't done it in a long time.
35:12
Speaker 1: This record, A Letter to You was primarily on guitar.
35:15
Speaker 1: Back in that time, I wrote Racing in the Street.
35:17
Speaker 1: A song called Racing in the Street was on piano.
35:20
Speaker 1: I probably that was That was a bit of a
35:22
Speaker 1: unique record in that I wrote a lot of but
35:24
Speaker 1: if you go back and hear all the musical introductions
35:27
Speaker 1: and things, you'll see how it was piano based. How
35:31
Speaker 1: many songs have you written that you haven't released. Oh,
35:35
Speaker 1: at least a hundred. Wow, you know, and we already
35:38
Speaker 1: put out a big six to seventy box set of
35:42
Speaker 1: stuff from the vault, you know, ten years ago. But
35:45
Speaker 1: I still have tons of stuff left. Are you writing
35:48
Speaker 1: all the time? No? I write very rarely, and I
35:54
Speaker 1: didn't write a rock song in seven years before I
35:56
Speaker 1: wrote this batch in ten days. So I write when
36:00
Speaker 1: the writing is there and when I'm sort of inspired,
36:03
Speaker 1: and I don't worry about not writing. You never had
36:06
Speaker 1: that kind of crisis moment, panic moment you think the
36:10
Speaker 1: well is dry. Of course you have that all the time.
36:13
Speaker 1: But you said you never worry about not writing. You
36:17
Speaker 1: manage your anxiety. Well. Is that it? Yeah, I've I
36:20
Speaker 1: have that all the time, and I'm used to that feeling,
36:23
Speaker 1: you know, so so in a sense when I feel
36:27
Speaker 1: like that, and you always feel like that, after you've
36:30
Speaker 1: written a good song, you go, oh, I hope that's
36:32
Speaker 1: not the last one, you know, But I've kind of
36:35
Speaker 1: gotten used to that being part of the natural state
36:38
Speaker 1: of writer's consciousness, you know in that Uh, it's such
36:43
Speaker 1: a magic trick and you and you and you are
36:45
Speaker 1: it's so out of your control, even after all the
36:48
Speaker 1: craft that you've learned, that you know, you just don't
36:52
Speaker 1: know how you do it. And so, uh, you know,
36:55
Speaker 1: I can sit here and say, gee, I'd like to
36:56
Speaker 1: write another album, you know, but uh, I know it'll
37:02
Speaker 1: come along at some point. I don't know how or when,
37:05
Speaker 1: So I'm both. I guess the best way to explain
37:08
Speaker 1: it was, I'm comfortable with the anxiety. Does it usually
37:13
Speaker 1: come with one song? Is that? Is that how it starts?
37:16
Speaker 1: If you haven't written for a while, will a song come?
37:20
Speaker 1: It'll come with a song, and if it's a good song,
37:23
Speaker 1: and if it's if it's working around a theme you
37:26
Speaker 1: haven't worked before. Like what I did on this record,
37:29
Speaker 1: I took as my subject music itself and rock and
37:32
Speaker 1: roll itself as an idea, and uh, the ideas of
37:36
Speaker 1: bands themselves as an idea. And I've never written about
37:39
Speaker 1: that subject before. So when I locked onto that first thing,
37:44
Speaker 1: I realized there was a small but deep well of
37:48
Speaker 1: other songs that I that I had and things I
37:50
Speaker 1: had to say about that idea and about the passing
37:53
Speaker 1: of time and losing band members and losing old friends,
37:57
Speaker 1: and what it's like at this age to be doing
37:59
Speaker 1: in my line of work. So uh yeah, if you're lucky,
38:04
Speaker 1: you know you'll you'll lock onto something and more than
38:08
Speaker 1: you will tap a little vein and more than one
38:12
Speaker 1: song will come out. Did the subject matter come before
38:15
Speaker 1: the first song or did the song come and give
38:18
Speaker 1: you the subject matter? The circumstances came before the song.
38:22
Speaker 1: I had a very close friend who passed away who
38:24
Speaker 1: was the last besides me, was the last member of
38:28
Speaker 1: my first band, so that left me as the only
38:30
Speaker 1: surviving member. And I thought about that a lot. I
38:36
Speaker 1: didn't think about it in the sense okay, now I'm
38:38
Speaker 1: going to write some music about this. But I thought
38:40
Speaker 1: about it a lot, and then a song came out.
38:44
Speaker 1: You know, little strange things happened. I had a kid
38:48
Speaker 1: give me a guitar outside of the Broadway Theater and
38:52
Speaker 1: an Italian kid was standing there one night and he
38:55
Speaker 1: had a guitar in his stand and I thought he
38:56
Speaker 1: wanted me to sign it. So they said no, no, no,
38:59
Speaker 1: no, no no, no blues blues, this is for you. We
39:01
Speaker 1: had a made for you, and I took it and
39:05
Speaker 1: on the way home I looked at it and it
39:07
Speaker 1: was made from beautiful wood. It played gorgeously and sounded wonderful,
39:12
Speaker 1: and I left it in my living room. And that
39:16
Speaker 1: was the guitar that most of the songs came out of. So, uh,
39:20
Speaker 1: you know, it was another bit of lucky happenstance, you know.
39:25
Speaker 1: Would you say most of the albums had a triggering moment,
39:29
Speaker 1: like either some life experience that starts the first song
39:35
Speaker 1: that leads to the journey of the album. Yeah, I
39:39
Speaker 1: would say that perhaps, you know, But also it's sort
39:42
Speaker 1: of like there's car. You start your car and it runs,
39:46
Speaker 1: Oh great, an album comes out. You start your car,
39:49
Speaker 1: it runs for half an hour, breaks down, doesn't run
39:53
Speaker 1: for two weeks, started again, written nothing again. Nothing. Records
40:00
Speaker 1: have made like that, you know, where I've written a song,
40:04
Speaker 1: I've written six songs that I think are really record worthy,
40:08
Speaker 1: and then I spent a year trying to write six more.
40:12
Speaker 1: You know. So it's simply not predictable, and you have
40:17
Speaker 1: to get used to withstanding that anxiety, and you have
40:21
Speaker 1: to get comfortable with it. Because born in the USA,
40:24
Speaker 1: I think I wrote eight or nine of those songs,
40:27
Speaker 1: and then and then spent a year waiting for Dancing
40:31
Speaker 1: in the Dark, Bobby Jean and No Surrender, and Wow,
40:36
Speaker 1: that was just the way it went. I didn't have
40:38
Speaker 1: an album until I had that music, even if I
40:41
Speaker 1: had nine good songs sitting there. We'll be back with
40:43
Speaker 1: more from Bruce Springsteen. After a quick break, We're back
40:51
Speaker 1: with the rest of Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell's conversation
40:54
Speaker 1: with Bruce Springstein. How many people were in the original
40:57
Speaker 1: E Street Band? The original E Street Band was a
41:01
Speaker 1: five piece band. There was one keyboard, No, yeah, one keyboard,
41:05
Speaker 1: and then I played keyboards. Sometimes there was a keyboard,
41:08
Speaker 1: a guitar, a bass player, a drummer, and a saxophonist.
41:12
Speaker 1: It was a little club rock and soul band. And
41:16
Speaker 1: when did it start expanding? The last time I saw
41:19
Speaker 1: you play, I think there were It felt like there
41:21
Speaker 1: were more people on stage than I could count. The
41:23
Speaker 1: last time. We might have carried horns, horns and singers
41:27
Speaker 1: on that tour. Generally, the band, the stable membership of
41:32
Speaker 1: the band is myself, Steve van Zette on the guitar,
41:37
Speaker 1: Nils Lofgren on the guitar, Gary Tallon on the bass,
41:40
Speaker 1: Max Weinberg on the drums, Charlie Jordano on the organ,
41:44
Speaker 1: Roy Bitten on the piano, and Jake Clemens on the saxophone.
41:47
Speaker 1: I think that's nine people, and that's the hardcore of
41:51
Speaker 1: the E Street Band. Now do you recall what was
41:53
Speaker 1: going on the first time you decided not to make
41:56
Speaker 1: an album with the East Street Band. Let me think
41:59
Speaker 1: that would have been Nebraska, I guess. And I was
42:03
Speaker 1: planning to make Nebraska with the East Street Band, but
42:06
Speaker 1: what I ended up with came about us being such
42:09
Speaker 1: an accident. I ended up with a cassette that I
42:12
Speaker 1: had in my back pocket that I carried around for
42:14
Speaker 1: several months while trying to rerecord that music with the
42:18
Speaker 1: E Street Band in the studio, and everything we record
42:22
Speaker 1: it sounded too slick, it sounded too bright, you know,
42:26
Speaker 1: and and I lost all the mystery that came out
42:29
Speaker 1: of the happy accidents that occurred in my little bedroom.
42:32
Speaker 1: So eventually, after trying for quite a while, I just
42:36
Speaker 1: pulled the tape out and said, this is it. This
42:38
Speaker 1: is the record. It's either going to come out on
42:40
Speaker 1: cassette or on vinyl. And that's and and that's the
42:45
Speaker 1: way it was. And then after that, solo records came up,
42:49
Speaker 1: just to get some relief from working with the band. Initially,
42:52
Speaker 1: the next solo record I made was Tunnel of Love,
42:54
Speaker 1: which I made in my garage with me and another guy,
42:57
Speaker 1: and I played all the instruments, but it was just
42:59
Speaker 1: the relief to sort of get away from the pressure
43:02
Speaker 1: of having to record with the band and having to
43:05
Speaker 1: just use this these particular musicians, this set of instrumentation.
43:10
Speaker 1: I needed to have more freedom than that, and so
43:13
Speaker 1: it just came around very naturally. Is Nebraska the only
43:16
Speaker 1: album that you ever made that you didn't know you
43:19
Speaker 1: were making the album while you were making it? Uh? Yeah, yeah,
43:23
Speaker 1: I've I've made other There's a record called Devils and
43:26
Speaker 1: Dust that but no I knew I was recording for
43:30
Speaker 1: something then. But Nebraska was really where I was just
43:34
Speaker 1: trying to make a demo to see if the songs
43:36
Speaker 1: were any good, and I ended up making an album amazing.
43:39
Speaker 1: I remember, as a fan of yours, the album that
43:42
Speaker 1: took me by surprise was Nebraska because it was the
43:45
Speaker 1: first time I had seen the Irish side of you
43:50
Speaker 1: and the adoption of this quintessentially America. I mean I
43:53
Speaker 1: thought of you as you know, ethnic New Jersey, immigrant
43:57
Speaker 1: kind of America, and then all of a sudden you
43:59
Speaker 1: were playing Heartland character. Yeah, and that took me by
44:04
Speaker 1: I mean, I was blown away by the album, but
44:06
Speaker 1: it took me by surprise. I'm curious did it take
44:09
Speaker 1: lots of people by surprise? Did you? Was that in retrospect?
44:12
Speaker 1: Was Nebraska a hugely important kind of transition album? It
44:16
Speaker 1: was for me because I studied a whole I came
44:19
Speaker 1: upon a whole type of writing that really began on
44:22
Speaker 1: the River album. With the River and with a song
44:26
Speaker 1: called Stolen Car, there was a narrative type of writing,
44:29
Speaker 1: a storytelling type of writing that that maybe would go
44:33
Speaker 1: back to Woody Guthrie or or Talking Blues or but
44:38
Speaker 1: basically it was it was inspired by by books and
44:43
Speaker 1: cinema that I was interested in at that moment, and
44:47
Speaker 1: also of creating a character that was wider than just
44:51
Speaker 1: the character that came out of New Jersey, that was
44:54
Speaker 1: just a broader American voice I was interested in at
45:00
Speaker 1: that time. So, yeah, the record came out, people didn't
45:03
Speaker 1: know what to make of it. It got a little
45:05
Speaker 1: bit of airplay. It got a lot of nice reviews,
45:08
Speaker 1: and I didn't tour on it, and it disappeared rather shortly.
45:12
Speaker 1: I'm very surprised to how you say it disappeared, because
45:15
Speaker 1: I feel like it's one of the records that has
45:16
Speaker 1: had the greatest long term Yeah, I'm just me sort
45:19
Speaker 1: of commercially, you know, uh, but but it has. If
45:23
Speaker 1: I meet young a lot of young people, that's their
45:25
Speaker 1: record for one reason or another. Maybe because it came
45:29
Speaker 1: up shortly after the punk revolution, and I've seen it
45:32
Speaker 1: described as one of the first punk acoustic albums. You know,
45:36
Speaker 1: so's it sort of is in a funny way, and
45:39
Speaker 1: that it was completely done at home. Do it yourself
45:43
Speaker 1: cost a thousand bucks little four track tape player mixed
45:46
Speaker 1: onto a beatbox through a Gibson guitar. Ecoplex that was
45:51
Speaker 1: that was running slow, and just this mysterious creation came
45:55
Speaker 1: out of it. You know, do you think that the
45:57
Speaker 1: kinds of people who are were attracted to that record
46:00
Speaker 1: and to the subsequent iversh side, if you want to
46:03
Speaker 1: use that paradigm, are different kind of fan for that
46:07
Speaker 1: music than you are for your for the other kinds
46:09
Speaker 1: of music. Yeah. Yeah, When I play I have a
46:12
Speaker 1: lot of different types of audiences, you know, And I
46:16
Speaker 1: believe I have an audience that's probably interested in that
46:18
Speaker 1: sort of what I do and maybe a little less
46:21
Speaker 1: of the electric side of what I do. Though, I
46:25
Speaker 1: think I've an audience that pretty much follows me through
46:28
Speaker 1: through both iterations of my creative life. But but I'm
46:33
Speaker 1: very conscious at night, when we come out in the
46:34
Speaker 1: stadium or in an arena of the fact that i'm playing.
46:38
Speaker 1: I'm playing to casual listeners, I'm playing to hardcore listeners,
46:45
Speaker 1: and so I try to build a show that sort
46:48
Speaker 1: of addresses those things, you know, but I play to
46:53
Speaker 1: I have to be aware that I'm playing to a
46:54
Speaker 1: lot of different audiences at once. Do you remember what
46:58
Speaker 1: the first song you wrote for Nebraska was? I believe
47:01
Speaker 1: it was Nebraska itself. This is an a side, but
47:05
Speaker 1: I love I love Nebraska so completely, and it was
47:08
Speaker 1: my moment when I came for the Italian and stayed
47:11
Speaker 1: for the for the irishman um and but with Nebraska,
47:16
Speaker 1: the Frankie and Johnny song redeems the whole album. Oh
47:22
Speaker 1: it's I always it was always the one that stuck
47:24
Speaker 1: up a hit because it's the one where the guy
47:26
Speaker 1: does the he does the moral he's the he does
47:29
Speaker 1: the morally right thing. Man stick like man gives up
47:32
Speaker 1: on his family, he ain't no good whatever the whatever
47:34
Speaker 1: that line is. The rest is about these people who
47:37
Speaker 1: have somehow kind of fallen away or and then and
47:40
Speaker 1: then in the middle of it you have the sheriff
47:42
Speaker 1: who understands it is his connection to his brought up
47:45
Speaker 1: is more important than his badge. And it's just I
47:48
Speaker 1: just thought that was suddenly this like this ray of
47:50
Speaker 1: sunshine comes through in that and it just put that
47:54
Speaker 1: album on a different level for me. Well, the the
47:57
Speaker 1: whole record is about a fallen world. You know, we
48:01
Speaker 1: all have to live in that song. You're right, there's
48:06
Speaker 1: a little bit of redemption in it, and it's one
48:09
Speaker 1: of my favorite songs on the record, Highway Patrolman. More
48:13
Speaker 1: than a little bit, wait, Bruce, more than a little bit.
48:16
Speaker 1: A lot of it it is. There's a whole lot
48:18
Speaker 1: of redemption that's Jesus on the Cross in that album.
48:21
Speaker 1: That's like, yeah, yeah, I hear you on the subject
48:27
Speaker 1: of Catholicism. Since we're s dancing around it, you said
48:31
Speaker 1: in a conversation with Martin Chris scrase. Last year you
48:34
Speaker 1: were talking about how much of your work is informed
48:36
Speaker 1: by having gone to Catholic school, and then we have
48:40
Speaker 1: that John Hammond comment about I knew you were a Catholic.
48:43
Speaker 1: Can you put your can we can you put your
48:45
Speaker 1: finger on what is the what is the Catholic part
48:49
Speaker 1: of of your music? Well, you know, I guess if
48:53
Speaker 1: I look back, it was great fear of a spiritual
48:57
Speaker 1: darkness is impressed upon you when you're very, very young.
49:02
Speaker 1: That's one thing. Perhaps the ability to work towards a
49:06
Speaker 1: spiritual light is also impressed rest upon you. So these
49:11
Speaker 1: those are very high stakes. And if you live your
49:16
Speaker 1: life with with with those stakes on the table, it'll
49:20
Speaker 1: be an interesting experience, you know, And that may be
49:25
Speaker 1: at the center of what my Catholic upbringing does for
49:30
Speaker 1: my music and perhaps for me also, you know, that
49:35
Speaker 1: might explain some of it. I was gonna I was
49:37
Speaker 1: gonna ask Bruce if you if you wanted to play
49:40
Speaker 1: another song off this Thist album and give us a
49:43
Speaker 1: little bit of the of the backstory. Okay, let me
49:47
Speaker 1: let me see what I can find here. This was
49:54
Speaker 1: the song that kicked off the writing for the entire
50:00
Speaker 1: record because it was most directly about my friend George
50:03
Speaker 1: who passed away, and about those particular time in my
50:08
Speaker 1: in my playing life. Everything everything came out of that song.
50:14
Speaker 1: All the rest of the songs came out of the
50:16
Speaker 1: world that I began to create in that song. You
50:19
Speaker 1: talked earlier about writing for the band, and you imagine
50:24
Speaker 1: the song in your head before you record it with
50:26
Speaker 1: the band, is the mission to get it to sound
50:29
Speaker 1: like what you hear in your head or you sometimes
50:31
Speaker 1: surprised by what the band contributes in the process of
50:35
Speaker 1: making the record. Well, I try to get it to
50:38
Speaker 1: sound like I hear it in my head, but I
50:40
Speaker 1: don't limit it to what I'm hearing in my head.
50:42
Speaker 1: Usually you don't get it to sound like you hear
50:45
Speaker 1: it in your head. You know. It's sort of a guide,
50:48
Speaker 1: you know, But when it works, as it worked on
50:50
Speaker 1: this record, all I knew is like, yeah, these are
50:53
Speaker 1: rock songs. I want them to sound kind of glorious.
50:56
Speaker 1: And so when the band came in and performed them,
51:02
Speaker 1: this was a case where I got more out of
51:05
Speaker 1: you know, we have I have a good producer, we
51:07
Speaker 1: have good recording technique right now, and the sound of
51:10
Speaker 1: the record is really quite lovely, and so I got.
51:14
Speaker 1: I got a little more out of it than I
51:16
Speaker 1: might have been imagining when I came in, and that's
51:18
Speaker 1: always a sweet surprise. I think it's it's the best
51:22
Speaker 1: band record I've made with my band in a in
51:25
Speaker 1: a very long time, you know. So I'm I'm very,
51:28
Speaker 1: very excited about it, and I can't wait to get
51:31
Speaker 1: out in one of these days and actually play it
51:34
Speaker 1: for my fans. Once knock on Wood COVID passes, it
51:38
Speaker 1: will be how many years since you and the band
51:41
Speaker 1: have been touring. I believe we haven't toured now in
51:45
Speaker 1: two going on three, so I think the last time
51:50
Speaker 1: we toured was twenty seventeen, perhaps, you know, counting our
51:55
Speaker 1: lucky stars. I'm looking towards twenty twenty two. I can't
51:59
Speaker 1: imagine there's really going to be anything going on this
52:01
Speaker 1: next year, and I'm hoping if I think, if things
52:05
Speaker 1: work out ideally, twenty twenty two is would be the
52:08
Speaker 1: earth earliest that you could expect people are going to
52:11
Speaker 1: feel comfortable going shoulder to shoulder again anywhere. Yeah, and
52:15
Speaker 1: you've you've never gotten tired of touring? No, I love
52:18
Speaker 1: to travel. I like staying in hotels I like being
52:22
Speaker 1: in strange in different towns, and I still like it
52:27
Speaker 1: as much as I did when I was young, though
52:30
Speaker 1: I'm very happy now to actually have a real home
52:32
Speaker 1: to come back to. Yeah, beautiful. You mentioned in the
52:37
Speaker 1: I think it was in the Broadway piece you talked
52:39
Speaker 1: about blank pages and the feeling of having nothing when
52:44
Speaker 1: you were young, the sense of not having anything to do,
52:47
Speaker 1: and feeling this freedom going forward even though there was
52:51
Speaker 1: there was nothing really to look forward too, but you
52:53
Speaker 1: just had a sense of freedom. So sure, do you
52:55
Speaker 1: ever want to re embrace with that and stop working
53:00
Speaker 1: and create a new blank page and imagine a life
53:06
Speaker 1: of just whatever that would be freedom. I would have
53:10
Speaker 1: to ruin my entire existence to do that, which I'm
53:14
Speaker 1: sort of not exactly willing to do at this late date,
53:19
Speaker 1: you know. But but I still have that sense of
53:24
Speaker 1: my life makes room for those blank pages within a
53:29
Speaker 1: certain set of limitations, and that satisfies me. You know
53:35
Speaker 1: that this whole album and experience with the band was
53:38
Speaker 1: an entirely blank page that we got to fill from
53:41
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing, So I'm satisfied with that. It's kind of
53:47
Speaker 1: this kind of a personal question. I love the Broadway Show.
53:50
Speaker 1: I really love the Broadway show, and I want to
53:52
Speaker 1: talk about how that came about, what gave you the idea.
53:54
Speaker 1: But the personal part of it is you talk a
53:56
Speaker 1: lot about being a con man of sorts or a
54:00
Speaker 1: phony in you start. You start the show that way,
54:03
Speaker 1: and you talk about how the songs are not necessarily
54:07
Speaker 1: representative of your life, but more maybe if your dad,
54:10
Speaker 1: or of things that you've seen, the situate, your situation
54:12
Speaker 1: growing up. With the stories, the news stories that you
54:16
Speaker 1: told in the play, are they all really your experiences
54:21
Speaker 1: or are those also embellished? Well, I would say that
54:28
Speaker 1: I have a funny job, and that when you write
54:30
Speaker 1: and sing something and you do it really well, it's
54:35
Speaker 1: so credible that people simply believe it's you. Of the time.
54:41
Speaker 1: There is an emotional truth, a spiritual truth that you
54:47
Speaker 1: have to draw up from inside of your essence for
54:51
Speaker 1: that piece of work to be credible. But how you
54:54
Speaker 1: said it, the incidences, the details, the story itself can
55:00
Speaker 1: be something a complete work of imagination, you know, So
55:04
Speaker 1: you have to be able to draw on your own
55:07
Speaker 1: inner truth. But at the same time you can dress
55:10
Speaker 1: it up in any monkey suit that you want. And
55:13
Speaker 1: I often do you know and So writing is largely
55:19
Speaker 1: an act of the imagination, but which is where you
55:24
Speaker 1: get your your your geography or your detail of character.
55:30
Speaker 1: But for that character in geography to come to life
55:33
Speaker 1: into a real, breathing world, you've got to tap into
55:37
Speaker 1: your own true inner life. So if you when you're
55:41
Speaker 1: doing both of those things, you're writing well, beautiful, beautiful.
55:45
Speaker 1: So tell me about how the Broadway Show came about.
55:48
Speaker 1: Broadway Show came about by accident. I was invited to
55:51
Speaker 1: the White House by Barack Obama to perform in his
55:55
Speaker 1: last two weeks that he was at the White House.
55:59
Speaker 1: And so I said, I don't want to bring the
56:01
Speaker 1: bands too big a hassle. I'll play some acoustic songs.
56:04
Speaker 1: And then I said, well, what am I gonna do.
56:06
Speaker 1: I'll read from my book and I'll play some acoustics songs.
56:10
Speaker 1: And so I came into the studio here and I
56:12
Speaker 1: spent about two hours picking out segments of the book
56:16
Speaker 1: and then a song to go with it. And then
56:19
Speaker 1: I realized I had to slightly rewrite the book so
56:22
Speaker 1: it sounded colloquial. Prose writing and speaking are not the
56:27
Speaker 1: same thing. So I rewrote the pieces a little bit,
56:31
Speaker 1: so it sounded just like I was speaking off the
56:33
Speaker 1: top of my head. I went and I performed it
56:36
Speaker 1: at the White House, about ninety minutes of the play,
56:38
Speaker 1: which I put together in about four hours here in
56:41
Speaker 1: the studio, and at the end of the play, Barack
56:45
Speaker 1: Obama got on The President got on stage and he says, hey,
56:47
Speaker 1: I know you did that just for us, but that
56:50
Speaker 1: should be a show, you know. And so on the
56:54
Speaker 1: way back from Washington, I was with my manager, John
56:56
Speaker 1: Landau and my wife Patty, and we said, yeah, that
57:00
Speaker 1: should be a show. So well, and we started talking
57:03
Speaker 1: about a venue, and I realized if it was going
57:06
Speaker 1: to be a show, I played the two hundred people
57:07
Speaker 1: in the East Room, but if it was going to
57:09
Speaker 1: be a show, I needed a very small audience that
57:12
Speaker 1: was very controllable or I could get an enormous amount
57:15
Speaker 1: of cooperation and silence. And it had to be a
57:18
Speaker 1: very intimate environment. And those jewel Box theaters are on Broadway.
57:23
Speaker 1: So that's how I ended up there. Was it a
57:25
Speaker 1: fun experience, best experience of my life, one of the greatest. Wow. Wow,
57:29
Speaker 1: was it difficult doing the same material day after day.
57:35
Speaker 1: I loved it because I always first of all, it
57:38
Speaker 1: was a world that I loved entering. It really got
57:42
Speaker 1: me in touch with my past, and it was sort
57:46
Speaker 1: of summational as sort of this is a little bit
57:49
Speaker 1: of what I've learned up to now. And I enjoyed
57:53
Speaker 1: inhabiting those characters every night, and I found something in
57:59
Speaker 1: it every night, and right up to the very last night,
58:02
Speaker 1: I was having the time of my life. Were the
58:04
Speaker 1: audiences consistently reacting in the same spots or might depending
58:11
Speaker 1: on the night? Did different things move people differently? Yeah,
58:16
Speaker 1: the audiences would vary night to night. You know, some
58:20
Speaker 1: nights a little roundy, or some nights you know a
58:22
Speaker 1: little more expressive, other nights listening a little deeper. There
58:27
Speaker 1: was a level, a general level of consistency that I
58:30
Speaker 1: found comforting and good to play too. But there's no
58:35
Speaker 1: I've never played the two audiences that are alike, not
58:37
Speaker 1: on any night of any night of my work life.
58:40
Speaker 1: I've never seen two audiences that are the same or
58:43
Speaker 1: where the alchemy is the same two nights in a row.
58:46
Speaker 1: It just doesn't. It's impossible to happen. Did you feel
58:49
Speaker 1: more of a sense of direct communication with the audience
58:52
Speaker 1: than you would in a concert set up? No, not necessarily.
58:57
Speaker 1: The mechanics are very, very different, but you still have
59:02
Speaker 1: to connect your mind. You have to meet mind to
59:05
Speaker 1: mind and heart to heart and soul to soul. Whether
59:09
Speaker 1: you're at Giants Stadium or whether you're in a nine
59:13
Speaker 1: hundred seat theater on Broadway, the mechanics of connection are
59:18
Speaker 1: the same. You know, you've got to draw on your
59:22
Speaker 1: emotional life, your spiritual life, your intellectual self, your physical
59:26
Speaker 1: self when you play with the band, and you know
59:30
Speaker 1: you've just got to meet that audience face to face
59:34
Speaker 1: as intensely as you can. So even though the situations
59:38
Speaker 1: are very different, the fundamental act is very similar. I'm
59:42
Speaker 1: so happy that you made it. I really am. It's like,
59:45
Speaker 1: thank you. It feels good. Thank you. What's your favorite
59:49
Speaker 1: and least favorite part of your job. I suppose the
59:52
Speaker 1: least favorite would be the prying into your private life,
59:57
Speaker 1: which I don't experience much anymore because I'm pretty much
1:00:00
Speaker 1: old and people are in and people are a lot
1:00:04
Speaker 1: less interested in you, you know. But when I was younger,
1:00:07
Speaker 1: I really raise the level of my anxiety, and I uh,
1:00:14
Speaker 1: I resented that a little bit, but I learned to
1:00:17
Speaker 1: live with it because that's that this as they say
1:00:20
Speaker 1: in the Godfather, this is the life we've chosen, And
1:00:23
Speaker 1: uh so that would be my least favorite. My most
1:00:27
Speaker 1: favorite is simply getting on stage and playing. That's that's
1:00:30
Speaker 1: the you know, and having that moment with the audience
1:00:33
Speaker 1: and with my band and or with or with the
1:00:36
Speaker 1: on on Broadway, with the situation like that. That's that's
1:00:40
Speaker 1: the thing I love to do best. Beautiful, Well, how
1:00:43
Speaker 1: do we do, guys? I think we did great. I
1:00:46
Speaker 1: can't tell you how how much fun this has been
1:00:48
Speaker 1: and an honor great man. I I'm a fan of
1:00:52
Speaker 1: both you guys, and I had a great time doing it.
1:00:58
Speaker 1: Thanks to the Boss for taking us deep into his
1:01:00
Speaker 1: writing process and for planes and music. You can hear
1:01:03
Speaker 1: his new album Letter to You, along with all of
1:01:05
Speaker 1: our favorite Springsteen songs on my playlist at broken podcast
1:01:09
Speaker 1: dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube
1:01:12
Speaker 1: channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcasts. There
1:01:16
Speaker 1: you can find extended cuts of new and old episodes.
1:01:19
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel,
1:01:23
Speaker 1: Artine Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and his executive Produced by Melobell.
1:01:29
Speaker 1: Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and If
1:01:32
Speaker 1: you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and
1:01:34
Speaker 1: review our show on your podcast staff. I'm Justin Richmond
1:01:38
Speaker 1: bass