Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  BS: Oh God [laughs].

  DH: And he said, “I’ll take it.”

  BS: It’s true. At the time, that’s what we were all making. This was right before Born to Run. And Max came up. He just had the right feel, you know.

  DH: And how about C.C.—Clarence [Clemons]? Where’d you find the Big Man?

  BS: I was playing in Asbury Park in another club called the Student Prince and it was me and Steven and Garry and Davey Sancious and Vini Lopez. And one night this guy walked in and I’d heard about him in the area. Because I’d been looking for a saxophone player for a long time and everybody was always talking about Clarence Clemons. And he walked in and he said, “Can I sit in?” We said, “Sure.” And he got up and played this one song and I said, “This is the guy I’ve been looking for all my life.” And ever since then, we stuck together.

  DH: Seeing the guys in the band today, it seems to me that you’re having a terrific time. Is the tour going that well?

  BS: It has been really good. It’s been the best tour we’ve ever done.

  DH: You did quite a show in Phoenix the other night. I wasn’t there but I heard about it. Some real craziness.

  BS: It was pretty wild. In the front row there was about ten fifteen-year-old girls and the whole place was going pretty crazy. There was just a lot going on and this little girl jumped up onstage and kissed me so hard she almost knocked out my front tooth. I fell back on the stage. Everybody started screaming and running around. Kids got up onstage and danced.

  DH: Does that scare you when that happens, or is it part of the fun and the madness of it all?

  BS: Oh, it’s not scary. You can always feel the situation out when you’re onstage. It should be fun and that was a great show. That was one of the best shows we ever did.

  DH: As long as we’re talking about tour stories, you’ve gotta tell me the one about the sign on the Sunset Strip. In Los Angeles they have gigantic billboards advertising records. There are twenty or thirty of them on Sunset Boulevard.

  BS: It was just really ugly looking.

  DH: But tell ’em what the sign was.

  BS: I guess it was an advertisement. They put up those big advertisements. They paint your face real big and out of shape. I mean, your nose is big enough, but they made it about ten feet long. It was just funny and I saw it and said, “This is the ugliest thing I ever seen.”

  DH: It was just a big picture of you?

  BS: Oh no, there were words, too. So I said, “OK guys, we’re gonna hit the sign. We’re gonna get some paint and we’re gonna hit the sign.” I don’t know if we were a little drunk or what was going on, but we came back home and I said, “Well, tonight’s the night.” It was two or three in the morning and I said, “Whoever wants to go and hit the sign, come on, we’re gonna go now.” So Clarence says he wants to go, and it was me and him and Garry and some of the guys from the crew and the road manager. We had bought all these cans of spray paint and we went down there and the building was wide open. It was vacant and it was real strange. And the elevator was working and everything.

  DH: Oh, you had to get way up to the top where the sign was.

  BS: Like six stories up and then up on a frame. Some of the guys went up the fire escape even though the elevator was working. And we walked up. We figured there was gonna be a locked door or something. The elevator opened up, we went up a flight of stairs, and there we were on the roof. There was a ladder that climbs up to the sign. And we just got out the paint and started to work, and we wrote “Prove It All Night” and I wanted to write “E Street” up there. So Clarence says, “Get on my shoulders.” So I got on his shoulders and we’re like six stories up. I said, “Clarence, are you tired yet?” He said, “No, I got ya, Boss, I got ya.” I’d do a letter. “Are you tired yet?” He said, “No, I got ya, I got ya.” As I looked back, it was nothing but the pavement. But it was fun to do.

  DH: How did the Boss name get started?

  BS: Oh, I don’t know. It started with people that worked for me.

  DH: I thought Clarence might have started it.

  BS: No. See, it was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like, “Boss … where’s my dough this week?” And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it.

  DH: Well, you may not like it but you’re not gonna lose it. It’s just a term of affection by now. Bruce, do you have any kind of life that’s totally divorced from music? Do you have anything when you’re not working, you’re not recording, you’re not on the road? Do you do anything that’s got nothing at all to do with rock and roll?

  BS: No, um, just … [long pause] I don’t think I do. I’m trying to think …

  DH: Your friends are all in the music business?

  BS: Well, there’s girlfriends. I got one friend that’s not really involved in the music business. He owns a motorcycle shop in Westwood—Town & Country Cycle. I guess he’s my only friend that doesn’t work for me or is not involved in some other way. He’s been a real source of inspiration and friendship. He’s interested in playing and I’m interested in his motorcycles and stuff.

  DH: A thing I get from you often is that you really care a great deal about your fans and people who love your music. You really feel close to them.

  BS: [Pauses.] You know, it’s a shame that that seems to be such a big deal.

  DH: I hear you but it is. It’s unusual.

  BS: Like when I’m onstage, I’m always half in the audience and I’m half onstage. It’s really a one-on-one level. I see the crowd as the crowd, but I also see them one on one. If I see somebody getting in any trouble down there, if somebody’s a little too excited, it’s a responsibility, that’s all. It’s no big deal.

  DH: Earlier in the interview, you said that when you were nine and then thirteen or fourteen, you realized it was music you wanted to do. Did you also somewhere along the way think about being a rock-and-roll star?

  BS: I guess you think about it. It depends what that word means to you. Being a star is something that is too associated with the trappings of the music business, and I’d really rather not see the day when I can’t get down in the crowd. I hope that day doesn’t ever come. It means you can hire ten people to kiss your butt ten times a day, but …

  DH: I think what it means is you’re really adored. It means that huge crowds of people just love you for the joy and the music and the entertainment and the pleasure that you bring them. Do you accept that definition?

  BS: They like the music and they like the shows. I guess I have a certain aversion to it, as everybody does. My reaction has always been to reach out and then when I reach out, the next thing I want to do is I want to pull back. I gotta pull back. I gotta keep to myself. And then I say, “Well, wait a minute, what am I doing? I worked hard on this record. I want to reach out. I want to go after a bigger audience.” And I go through periods of reaching out and pulling back and reaching out and pulling back. There’s always a basic conflict there.

  There’s a lot of paradoxes that you have to learn to live with because they’re not gonna go away. Another thing is to cut down on the distance as much as possible, which is something that I’ve been interested in a lot lately. To get as close as possible to your audience. The whole concept of … the people come and they’re at the show. Well, they’re not at the show—they’re in the show. I’m not only in the show—I’m at the show. It’s a cooperative thing.

  DH: I think I know what you mean, that it doesn’t all rest on one person—it’s part of a whole event that happens. But you are the catalyst. You’re the person that’s making it all happen in that theater, in that arena.

  BS: Yeah, like I said, there’s a lot of contradictions and paradoxes that you have to sort out. You know, the more popular you become, the farther people have to sit to see you, but then you’re reaching more people. These are things that go against each other, but they’re both real.

  DH: These are the problems that you’re gonna have to solve for yourself more and more
as time goes on.

  BS: You gotta work it out somehow. And I see myself in a particular way. I think I was lucky to find something that means as much to me as young as I was, and I wish that luck on everybody.

  DH: I tell you, the thing that you found that means so much to you just means a lot to more people than you can imagine. Thanks a lot, Bruce.

  BRUCE BIT

  On Car Imagery

  “During the [recording of the Darkness on the Edge of Town] record, I think Jon [Landau] said, ‘What’s all this about these cars?’ I think we were doing ‘Prove It All Night,’ and it had a different first verse. But it [the car imagery] is just a general thing that forms the action in a particular way. The action is not the imagery, you know. The heart of the action is beneath all that stuff.”

  —interview with Paul Nelson, Rolling Stone, July 13, 1978

  RADIO INTERVIEW

  ED SCIAKY | August 19, 1978, WIOQ-FM (Philadelphia)

  No disc jockey deserves more credit for Bruce Springsteen’s early success than Ed Sciaky, the Philadelphian who championed his music at a time when few people knew his name. After Sciaky died of a heart attack in 2004, Springsteen commented that he was “the kind of DJ whose passion was the lifeblood for artists like myself. His support for my work brought me to an audience in Philadelphia that has remained one of my strongest to this day. Ed was the DJ as true rock-and-roll fan, the very spirit of the music he loved.” This post-midnight interview took place after a show at the Philadelphia Spectrum. An edited version of the conversation aired later in the day on WIOQ-FM. —Ed.

  Ed Sciaky: I’m beat. I have nothing to say.

  Bruce Springsteen: Well, Eddie, you did a hell of a show—that’s why. No wonder you’re tired.

  ES: Well, I was a little far back tonight. I was about seventh row, and I like to be a little closer.

  BS: Must have been murder.

  ES: Tonight was the most high-energy show I can ever remember at the Spectrum. I rate them, you know, and I’d put this in the top five. Do you rate them like that?

  BS: Sometimes. There’s ones that you can say, “Wow, this one’s really up there; that one was, like, way up there; this one was really something.” But this one tonight was pretty wild. It just felt right—it felt good.

  ES: I was just blown away. There were certain highlights and certain changes from the last time you were here, like “Because the Night,” which you didn’t do last time.

  BS: Last time we were here, it was the third show on the tour, and we weren’t doing “Darkness on the Edge of Town”—we didn’t do “Factory,” we didn’t do “Because the Night,” we didn’t do “The Fever.”

  ES: Wait a minute—you didn’t do “Fever” for about five years. Now why is “Fever” back?

  BS: It was just a surprise, you know. We’d done it two or three times and the tape had gotten out through someone’s help whose name I won’t mention. So we did it a few times and we had to do it here. I used to have kids run up onstage and yell in my ear, “BRUCE! ‘FEVER’!” That was always a request.

  ES: You used to say you didn’t like the song, and a lot of people think it’s one of your best.

  BS: I don’t know. It was just something that I wrote so long ago. It was just an older song and never a real favorite of mine. I liked it. I always liked it. But just for myself. I liked [Southside] Johnny’s version—I liked what he did with it a lot. But we wanted to have something extra, so we pulled it out.

  ES: I saw you down in Washington the other night, and I thought you’d do something for Elvis, like “Wear My Ring,” for his anniversary.

  BS: I had a song we were gonna do, but in the end we didn’t learn it in time. I wanted to do—what’s the song from Blue Hawaii? It was his theme song. One which everyone relates to his Las Vegas period: “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Which I think is a great song. But everyone relates to it as being Las Vegas-y, but I don’t think it is. I wanted to do that one. But we just didn’t get a chance to run it down before the show. It was something because when we went down to Memphis, Bruce Jackson, the fellow that does our sound, did sound for Elvis for a long, long time, and I went up to Graceland there.

  ES: This was recently?

  BS: Yeah, it was a couple of weeks ago.

  ES: Is it true what you said in Rolling Stone about the time you tried to sneak in there?

  BS: Oh, that time, yeah, that was two years before then. It was just real late at night and we were looking for something to do. And we got in the cab with this guy and we said—it was me and Miami Steve—and we said, “Listen, we wanna get something to eat.” And this guy says, “I know, I’ll take you to Fridays.” And we said, “We don’t want, like a hangout—we want a place where we can go and eat.”

  So he says, “There’s a place out by Elvis’s house.” We said [snaps his fingers], “You mean there’s a place out by Elvis’s house?” And he said, “Yeah,” and I said, “Take me to Elvis’s right now.” He says, “You guys celebrities?” We say, “Yeah, yeah, we’re celebrities.” So he says, “Oh.” We tell him who we were and he says, “Can I tell my dispatcher that I got some celebrities in the cab?”

  We said, “Sure, sure.” So he gets on the thing and says, “Joe, Joe, I got some celebrities in my cab.” And Joe says, “Yeah, who ya got there?” And into it he says, “I got, I got …” Then he shoves the mike right in my face because he doesn’t know who we are, and I say, “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, we’re from New Jersey, blah, blah, blah.” And the cabdriver says, “Yeah, I got them and we’re going out to Elvis’s.” The dispatcher says, “Damn.” He thinks we’re, like, going out to have coffee with Elvis or something.

  So we get out there and I’m standing up and looking at those gates—he’s got a big, long driveway and I saw a light on. And I say, “I gotta find out if he’s home, Steve.” And I said, “I can’t stand here—I gotta find out if he’s home.” So I jumped over the wall, a stone wall. And the cabdriver is going, “Man, there’s dogs in there. You’re gonna get it. You’re gonna get in trouble.” But I gotta find out, so I ran up the driveway and there was nobody. And I ran up to the front door and I knocked. And I knocked … and then from out of the woods, I see somebody watching me. And I figure I’m just going to go over and I’m going to say hello and tell this guy I just came to see Elvis or whatever.

  So I walk over towards the woods and out comes this security guy. And he says, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I came to see Elvis. I’m in a band. I play the guitar.” “Well,” he says, “Elvis ain’t home. Elvis is in Lake Tahoe.” And I say, “Are you sure?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah.” I said, “Well, if he comes back, tell him Bruce Springsteen …” And he didn’t know me from nobody, you know, from Joe Schmoe. I said, “Listen, I was on Time, I was on Newsweek.” He said, “Ah, sure, buddy. Well, listen, you gotta go outside now.” So he took me on down to the gate and just dumped me out, back onto the street.

  ES: What if he had been home, would you have gone in?

  BS: I tried. That’s why I went up there.

  ES: You saw him at the Spectrum once, remember, and you didn’t try to meet him.

  BS: It was different then. It was a funny kind of thing. I never liked, you know, going backstage and stuff. I just feel uncomfortable when that happens—I don’t know why. But if I could have snuck in and saw him, it would have been different—it woulda just been different.

  ES: So you can dig people that want to break into your house and all?

  BS: [Laughs.] They want to break into my house?

  ES: You know, people that follow you around and all, and people who want to relate to you the way you relate to Elvis.

  BS: It’s hard for me to put it together like that. Sometimes kids come up and say “Hi” or something. It’s hard for me to relate to it the same way. It’s different—it just seems different to me on some level, though I guess maybe it isn’t. I could just never put it together. I still feel like more the fan t
han the other thing—the performer. It’s like I can’t relate. I relate easier from that viewpoint than the other.

  ES: I think I’ve lately seen a change in how you relate to people. You’re dealing a little more with the press and the realities of the record business and all that kind of stuff, sort of getting to be the “rock star.” I mean dealing with all the different aspects rather than just going out and having the fun of playing.

  BS: The Born to Run thing—I just got blown away by that particular side of it. I was just too raw and green about it or stupid. And this time I was a little more prepared for people writing stories about [me] and things like that. Plus I was really interested in, and I believed in, the record a lot. I was interested in it getting out there. I thought it was a more difficult record to get into than Born to Run was. It was something that I spent eleven months doing and I was just glad I did it. I liked it. I loved playing all the songs from it—it’s the most fun of the night.

  So I said to myself, “Hey, I’m going to get on out there and hustle it.” Ya got to get it out to people for people to hear it. I used to think that being on Time and Newsweek was bad—that’s bad for me. It made me feel funny. I just felt funny about it. Then later I looked back on it and thought it was good because maybe somebody read a story and bought the record and it meant something to them and that was good. What was bad was the way I let it get to me on certain levels. And that was my own fault.

  ES: It was an unusual situation. Nobody usually goes through that.

  BS: Yeah, it was unusual. So this time out I was interested. I said, “Hey, I wanna get it out to as many as I can.”