Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  We paid for the food and split for the beach. The conversation continued amid the sea, the wind, and the hovering presence of the Casino Arena.

  “I’m into a little photography myself,” Bruce says as Sorce adjusts his light meter. “I took some pictures of Lynnie [Lynn Goldsmith, photographer and Springsteen’s girlfriend around this time] that were published somewhere.”

  When asked about his other interests, Bruce talks of softball. “Yeah, we used to play hard. We had to stop, though, when Clarence and myself used to get too battered up. We’d go onstage all wracked up and it would hurt. After a while, it got too important and too many people were into it. There’s no softball on this tour. What else do I like? Hmmm, I’ll tell ya … not too much besides music. Right now, music is it. I don’t care about anything else.”

  We get back to talking of copy bands and the difference between making it with your own material and making good money playing copies. I tell Bruce I had to play “Shake Your Booty” to get booked anywhere.

  “‘Shake Your Booty’?” Bruce says with a laugh, falling into the sand. “That’s a great song. K.C., man, he’s great! He always comes out with those repetitive things. Over and over and over, that kind of stuff is great! It’s like the ‘Louie Louie’ of today.”

  Later on, in talking about what is written about him, he says, “I have Glen [Brunman, CBS publicist] mail me everything that’s written about me. Hundreds of things, man. I read them all at once. That way I can get a pretty good perspective on what my press is like, rather than reading one thing at a time.

  “Near the end of Darkness, I wasn’t doing any interviews,” Bruce continues. “Then I did them until I noticed myself saying the same things to different people. There’s only one answer to each question; you don’t want to lie to these people. I really had myself in a spin. And each interview was a multiple-interview situation with two or three people at once. I guess the problem was that I did too many of ’em.”

  Walking off the beach, we talk of the Garden shows and his stretcher routine, whereby he sings himself silly until he has to be taken off the stage in a stretcher, only to break free and grab the microphone again until he’s forcibly restrained from the stage.

  “That’s a great routine,” I say. “Where’d you get that from? I know that professional wrestling has a stretcher routine where the good guy gets beat on so bad they have to carry him off in a stretcher and the bad guy always kicks him off of it as it passes by. It’s a classic.”

  “No,” answers Bruce. “I didn’t even know about that. We got it from James Brown. He used to get himself so worked up that the bassist led him offstage wrapped in a cape. He’d throw the cape off his shoulders and come running back to the mike stand some two or three times. It drove ’em wild. So that’s where we got the idea for the stretcher routine.”

  Sliding into the front seat of a borrowed ’78 burnt-yellow Camaro, Bruce at the wheel, we’re on our way to the neighborhood where he grew up in Freehold. Shoving a cassette into the receptacle, he says, “A fan gave this to me outside a concert once. It’s a real good tape.”

  He turns up the volume, guns the motor, and shifts into second. We take off. He turns up the volume a little more and starts looking for “Hello Mary Lou” by Rick Nelson. “This song has one of the greatest guitar parts ever on it.”

  He can’t find the tune and settles for oldies like “If You Wanna Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life (Never Make a Pretty Woman Your Wife)” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” He shifts into third.

  Now for the first time, we do not talk. The music is loud and damn appealing. The windows are down so the wind is whipping furiously into the car. He shifts into fourth and takes off.

  We’re rolling now. We settle uncomfortably behind a slow driver. He checks his rearview mirror and roars past the driver. Seeing another slow mover right ahead, he stays in the opposite lane and passes two in one fell swoop before settling comfortably back on the right. From the back, Sorce lets out a soft “Whew!”

  It’s a great moment. Chuck Berry is wailing out with “Maybelline.” Bruce is going faster. It’s such a fuckin’ beautiful day. The wind is rushing in and Bruce is feeling good, snapping his fingers, clapping his hands and letting out with a hoarse vocal or two on the last line of each verse. “Hello Mary Lou” finally comes on and suddenly everything is crystallized in one magic moment—the speed, the music, the sun, the wind, the company. Jeezez Christ! We’re rolling down the highway with fuckin’ Bruce Springsteen at the wheel! And he’s driving the way you would think Bruce Springsteen would drive.

  Later, when we reach a light, Bruce impatiently waits on it before saying, “This is what we used to call a ‘quarterback sneak,’” and with that he takes off surreptitiously past the red light.

  We’re in the old neighborhood now. Bruce drives slowly down Institute Street until he reaches the right number. It’s being painted now. “I lived here all through grammar school. There’s a Nestle’s factory near here. Man, when it rained we smelled that stuff all day long.”

  The elder Springsteen would go to work in the morning, come home, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, and wake up and go back to work at the factory. “I guess there was other things he wanted,” Bruce reflects.

  We get back into the car and drive over to the factory. “Both my grandfather and my father worked here. It used to be a rug mill in the old days, but for some reason it ran out of business fairly quick. I was pretty young at the time.”

  When I ask about high school, Bruce clams up. “It wasn’t exactly the best time of my life because I didn’t graduate with any of the others. It was a rough period.” I can see he really doesn’t want to pursue this avenue too long so I drop it. But I wonder what mystery is veiled beneath the wall of secrecy.

  We get back into the car and tear out of there. Ironically enough, the tape Bruce shoves into the machine this time is an old Animals cassette. The first song could be a forerunner to much of the music Bruce writes. As the opening line comes out of the speakers, the dusty factory is just fading from view.

  In this dirty old part of the city

  Where the sun refuses to shine

  People say that there ain’t no use in trying

  The song is, of course, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” and it was a fitting omen as we drove off.

  As we drive, Bruce starts reminiscing. “Yeah, I lived in practically every single town around here, from Atlantic Highlands to Bradley Beach. We used to move quite often.

  “That’s where I had my very first gig.” He laughs as we pass a mobile-home setup. Looking out the window, the ten or twenty mobile homes facing us look worn and old. “The gig wasn’t bad … for our first job.”

  “Hey, Bruce,” I ask, “are you gonna show up at the Capitol again like you did last year on New Year’s Eve?” It was announced earlier in the week that Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes would again party away the year in such grand fashion. Bruce turns ’round and answers, “I don’t know where I’m gonna be on New Year’s Eve.

  “C’mon, I’ll show you where my surfin’ buddies used to live,” he says, changing the subject. We swerve sharply off the highway onto an exit. “This used to be a surfboard factory,” he says. We step out of the car near a small white building.

  “Yeah, me and a fella named Tinker lived here for a year and a half in one room. All the rest of this area used to be nothin’ but sand dunes.” He points to a huge expanse of stores, houses, and construction. “None of this was here.

  “They used to make the surfboards downstairs. Tinker and I, we had a ball. Just one room! Two beds, a fridge, and a TV—the rest of the room was filled with surfboards.

  “Since I was from Freehold, I was considered inland. All these guys used to surf every day. I was friends with ’em all but never went. Finally, they got to me. One afternoon they were merciless. They just kept taunting me and kidding me about not surfing and it just sorta got me riled. I grabbed a board and
we all headed out to the beach.

  “I must have been some sight, surfing for the first time, but I’ll tell you something—I got the hang of it pretty quick. Hell, it ain’t harder than anything else. It’s like riding a bike. I haven’t surfed in a while. Now that’s something I’d love to do. As a matter of fact, I think I will.”

  He seems resolute.

  He continues. “This guy Jesse taught me the finer points of surfing. We used to stay in North End Beach in Long Branch all the time. Some guy owned the beach so we had the use of it for almost two whole years. We’d be there every day. We’d stay on the beach, go in the water. It was great.

  “This area is really amazing. There’s really poor neighborhoods and then there’s real nice neighborhoods, all in a five-mile radius.

  “I used to go to New York a lot back then. I played at the Café Wha? a lot in ’68. I used to play there with Jerry Jeff Walker’s old group, Circus Maximus. Let’s see, I played the Night Owl (all these places were in the West Village). They had a lot of good bands there at the time—the Raves, Robin and the Hoods. Let’s see, the Mothers of Invention were playing all the time in that area and so were the Fugs.

  “I didn’t go to too many concerts then. I much preferred playing and jamming with these people. There was a whole ’nother scene taking place over in the East Village that I wasn’t a part of at all—the Fillmore, the Electric Circus. I think my first experience seeing a rock star was going to Steve Paul’s Scene and seeing Johnny Winter. That was really something. I remember between sets, he came out and sat at the very next table from me and my friends.”

  Let’s go back to Asbury, I suggest.

  I ask Bruce if he’d take me back to the old Upstage site where he held court almost every night, and he gladly obliges. We get out of the car again in what could be termed downtown Asbury.

  “I gotta be cool,” Bruce says with a chuckle. “I ran out of here without paying the rent.”

  We walk over to the site, which is upstairs from a shoe store.

  “I lived here while Greetings from Asbury Park was being made. I slept in my sleeping bag on my friend’s floor for a good portion of that album.”

  Bruce poses for pics while people pass by right and left. Surprisingly enough, nobody recognizes him (or if they do, they keep on walking).

  “I’m lucky in that respect. What happened in the movies the other night is a rarity. Usually, I really don’t get recognized. I don’t have that instantly recognizable feature that a lot of other people have.”

  Yeah. Like Frampton’s hair.

  “My folks had already moved to California,” Bruce remembers, “and I was out of high school by the time I got to Asbury.

  “Upstage was a great place for us to play. We played here an awful lot.”

  In answering questions about his immediate future, Bruce says, “I have one more day off before we finish the tour. Then I have a whole month off before we start up again. In February we go back into the studio for work on the next album. I’m hoping it will be out by next summer.”

  Just for the record, the tour ended officially in Atlanta on October 1. It started in Buffalo on May 23. The new tour starts (possibly in New Jersey) on November 1 and finishes by December 20. If the time it took to cut Darkness is any indicator, then number five will be lucky to hit the stands by the summer after next.

  The just-finished tour took in seventy cities and eighty-six shows in four months and eight days. That’s why Bruce has to be listed as a “great guy” to do up an afternoon on one of his rare days off. Another highly impressive thing is that he spent the whole day without the protective cradle of a publicist’s presence. Rarely have I done an interview without the artist’s publicist in tow.

  In talking about the current LP, Bruce says, “This guy who took the cover shot for that album is a friend of mine from South Jersey who works full-time in a meat market. The shots were taken at his house. He’s a great photographer.” [Springsteen is referring to Frank Stefanko, whose photographs appear in this book. —Ed.]

  Bruce’s only comment about the self-destructive syndrome (dope-money-power) affecting so many rock stars is that “they let all the other things become more important than playing. Playing is the important thing. Once you forget that, you’ve had it.”

  Bruce obviously hasn’t forgotten that. He’s been having fun with music since the start. Bruce Springsteen is the perfect assimilator of many styles—Chuck Berry/Stones/Elvis/Buddy Holly/Dylan/Little Richard/Animals. His image onstage is also an amalgamation of many images—Elvis/ young Brando/James Dean. Somehow he melds all of these influences into one cohesive framework for his own strikingly original material. The man is all that he has devoured musically from the time he started listening to music, and it all pours out of him every time he steps on a stage. “That Elvis, man,” Bruce says, “he is all there is. There ain’t no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. He is everything to do and not to do in the business.”

  If Elvis Presley is Bruce’s prototype, then Bruce himself is the focus for a lot of current envy and speculation. We all have fantasies—Bruce included—of making it big and living as stars. Well, Bruce is living the ultimate realization of that fantasy right now. He’s made it through all the bullshit inherent in such a proposition. He’s doing it. And doing it in style.

  Yet if you talk to him, he’s quite humble. Ask him what part he played in the writing of “Because the Night” and he’ll tell you that he wrote only the title line (although he admits he will probably put it on his next album).

  Seeing him so close up and listening to him speak makes one realize that although he’s not articulate, there is a certain aura about him. A certain intangible. His charisma is the well-worn personality of the working-man. His handsome/beautiful face could even make the transition to the silver screen as a prophet of the proletariat. His facial features are tough. There’s a certain hardness to him. You’d swear he’s Italian before you’re told he’s of Dutch descent.

  His enthusiasm is real. The moment when Gary “U.S.” Bonds came over the car speakers with “Quarter to Three”—that’s when Bruce really started to groove. The song is his encore in most of his performances. He still loves the original and still sings along with it when it comes on.

  The essence of rock and roll can be distilled into a performance that a fella by the name of Bobby Lewis did on American Bandstand many years ago. Lewis performed “Tossin’ and Turnin’” on the show, lip-synced it, and drove the small television studio audience crazy with his slips and slides. Host Dick Clark did a never-before-done thing—he, in his madness of the moment, screamed for Lewis to perform the same song again. The soundman cued it up and Lewis went back out onto the stage and really tore into it this time, twisting, turning, giving it all he had. By now his lip motions were completely out of sync with the record being played, but it didn’t matter. It was a piece of rock-and-roll heaven. And one, I’m sure, Bruce Springsteen would have enjoyed.

  BRUCE BIT

  On Possibilities

  “You may not have the same expectations [in your thirties as you had in your twenties]. You’re not as open to options. You may have a wife and a kid and a job. It’s all you can do to keep those things straight. You let the possibilities go. What happens to most people is when their first dreams get killed off, nothing ever takes their place. The important thing is to keep holding out for possibilities, even if no one ever makes it.”

  —interview with Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, October 1980

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN TAKES IT TO THE RIVER

  So Don’t Call Him “Boss,” OK?

  DAVE DIMARTINO | January 1981, Creem (US)

  Springsteen had enjoyed a string of successes by the beginning of the 1980s, but as he had told an unidentified interviewer when he played San Francisco’s Winterland in December 1978, “I was successful when I avoided having a nine-to-five job. To me, that was success. I was going out and playing at night. I wasn’t
making a lot of dough [but] … it was an easy life…. I felt more of a struggle after … the magazine covers and stuff. Before, I didn’t feel no struggle. I thought I was living it up. But if you want to make more than five hundred dollars a night, you’re gonna have more than five-hundred-dollar problems, you know?”

  He added that “the whole star system, the limos and all that stuff” was “just totally unrealistic…. Too many people get blown away by that kind of stuff. You go down the drain. Elvis was the ultimate example, a real heartbreaker.”

  For Springsteen, the real reward was clearly in the performing and the writing, not the moneymaking and fame. “I go onstage and every muscle in my body is tight for three hours,” he told the Winterland interviewer. “We just blast it out as hard as we can.” And as for his writing: “If it motivates, that’s the best. Like when a kid comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, this song did this for me,’ or you change people’s minds or anything like that, you have any effect whatsoever, it’s a miraculous thing.”

  By the time of this conversation, Springsteen had affected millions with his now-legendary performances and with Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, both of which were top-five records. But he enlarged his already massive fan base with the October 1980 release of the instantly accessible The River, his first number-one album, which topped Billboard’s charts for four weeks.

  The double LP—which Rolling Stone’s Paul Nelson called “a rock-and-roll milestone”—included profound poetry (“Wreck on the Highway” and the title cut), a powerful ballad about Springsteen’s relationship with his father (“Independence Day”), some wonderful “frat rock” in the spirit of Gary “U.S.” Bonds and Jimmy Soul (“Sherry Darling”) and numerous examples of what sounded like a 1980s answer to Phil Spector (such irresistibly upbeat rockers as “The Ties That Bind,” “Jackson Cage,” “Two Hearts,” and “I Wanna Marry You”). The collection also featured his first Top 10 single, “Hungry Heart,” which climbed to number five and stayed on the Billboard charts for fourteen weeks. (“Born to Run” and “Prove It All Night,” his earlier hits, had made it only to numbers twenty-three and thirty-three, respectively, and had faded from the charts after just a few weeks.)