by Jeff Burger
Soon after completing “Into the Fire,” Springsteen penned “You’re Missing” and “The Fuse.” Springsteen calls “Into the Fire” and “You’re Missing” genesis songs because, he explains, they triggered ideas for other songs that he wrote for the album.
“I’d come up with one and that would lead to another and then that one would lead to another,” Springsteen says. “After that happens a few times, you see that you have enough emotional elements to make the song thoughtful and complete, and the songs come together to tell a story. And finally the story begins saying, ‘I’d like this emotional ground covered or that emotional ground covered.’ We finished the album in about five months.
“The songwriting itself was not time-consuming. The songs formed themselves pretty quickly, and I had a process where I’d demo them pretty fast because I have a studio set up at home and it enabled me to see if it was a good song. That really helped me weed through a lot of different ideas I had. But the songs were written quickly.”
Springsteen calls that type of writing “soul-mining.” “You’re mining, but not always around the rich veins,” he explains. “Sometimes a lot of time goes by before you hit on one that works.”
Springsteen has mined much gold in his career. The journey from paying dues in bar bands to becoming known as “the Boss” was a long haul for him, but he has made it with flying colors. His songwriting has been a major part of that journey, and part of the reason for that is his ability to convey emotions in his songs. For instance, in writing the songs for The Rising, Springsteen researched before he wrote. The story goes that he actually called widows of two of the men killed in the attacks to learn more about their husbands and their loss.
“When you’re putting yourself into shoes you haven’t worn, you have to be very thoughtful,” Springsteen explains, when asked why he did so much research for this project. “You call on your craft, and you search for it, and hopefully what makes people listen is that over the years you’ve been serious and honest,” he says.
“This album is the opposite end of the lyrical spectrum [from songs like those on his Tom Joad project]. There’s detail, but it was a different type of writing than I’ve done in a while. It was just sort of pop songwriting or rock songwriting. I was trying to find a way to tell the story in that context. One of the things I learned on some of my earlier records where I tried to record the band … for instance, on Nebraska, when the band played those songs, they immediately overruled the lyrics. It didn’t work. Those two forms didn’t fit. The band comes in and generally makes noise, and the lyrics want silence. They make arrangement, and the lyrics want less arrangement. The lyrics want to be at the center and there is a minimal amount of music. The music is very necessary but it wants to be minimal, and so with The Rising I was trying to make an exciting record with the E Street Band, which I hadn’t done in a long time, so that form was kind of driving me.”
Another thing that gave Springsteen freedom to write was his association, for the first time, with Brendan O’Brien, who produced The Rising. “I trusted his viewpoint very intensely, and I had a lot of faith in where he thought it was going to go sound-wise.
“The guitars were brought way up front, the keyboards were put in a different spot; things sounded a little different. We used a variety of tape loops, and we had a lot of different sounds going on—everything to sort of not do the normal thing that we’d done in the past. The essential thing was to get the band to feel sonically fresh. He knew exactly what to do there, so I got to kind of sit back and do the singing and the playing and the songwriting.”
Now that the album has been written and recorded, Springsteen can look back and see how and why it is relevant to the people who were directly affected by 9/11 as well as those who were touched from a distance.
“I didn’t sit down to write this or that, but I know music can help people discern meaning when they experience chaotic or cataclysmic events. Songwriters and storytellers in general are people who attempt to assist people in contextualizing some of that experience. Not explaining the experience, because I don’t know of an explanation, but sorting through things emotionally and locating ties that people have that continue to bind even in the face of events of that day. I think I went in search of those things on many of the songs and found myself moving toward religious imagery to explain some of the day’s experiences. It’s unavoidable to some degree because of the nature and the type of sacrifice that occurred.”
“What happened on that day was a very natural thing to write about, and there were a lot of obviously inspirational things happening at the time. You’re trying to weave that experience into words for yourself. I think that’s where it starts. It starts with you trying to do it for yourself, and then in the process—because I learned the language of songwriting and music—trying to communicate it to other people.
“I’m just doing something that’s useful for me, and then, I hope, in some fashion it’s gonna be useful to my audience and will provide some service to them.”
TV INTERVIEW
TED KOPPEL | August 4, 2004, Nightline, ABC Network (US)
Like many popular musicians, Springsteen tends to grant interviews when he wants to promote a new album or an impending concert tour. But the following conversation with ABC-TV Night-line host Ted Koppel, which took place at the singer’s New Jersey home, was different. There was no new album. And while Springsteen did plan a limited tour, it was not to benefit himself but rather to raise money to help elect Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Springsteen talked with Koppel about why he felt the need to become directly involved in partisan politics for the first time ever. —Ed.
Ted Koppel: Bruce, let me put it very bluntly.
Bruce Springsteen: All right.
TK: Are you entitled to your own opinion? Of course, you are. But who the hell is Bruce Springsteen to tell anybody how to vote?
BS: This is my favorite question.
TK: I thought it would be.
BS: This is an interesting question that seems to only be asked of musicians and artists, for some reason. If you’re a lobbyist in Washington, or … in a big corporation, you influence the government your way, right? Artists write and sing and think. And this is how we get to put our two cents in.
TK: This is clearly not the way you felt for most of your professional life. Most of your professional life, you have written songs that express how you feel about a lot of social issues. But you’ve never gone partisan on us.
BS: I stayed a step away from partisan politics because I felt it was always important to have an independent voice. I wanted my fans to feel like they could trust that. But you build up credibility. And you build it up for a reason over a long period of time. And hopefully, we’ve built up that credibility with our audience. And there comes a time when you feel, all right, I’ve built this up and it’s time to spend some of this. And I think this is one of the most critical elections of my adult life, certainly. Very basic questions of American identity are at issue. Who we are. What do we stand for? When do we fight?
As a nation, over the past four years, we’ve drifted away from very mainstream American values. I think that, in the question of tax cuts for the richest 1 percent … hey, that’s me, you know. It’s corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players. But I watch services get cut. After-school programs for people that need it the most. Watch rollback of environmental regulations. And a foreign policy that put at risk the lives of the very bravest young men and women, under what’s ended up to be discredited circumstances. I feel the nation is in danger of devolving into an oligarchy.
These are issues I’ve written about my whole life. Probably since my late twenties I started to think about them. And I’ve had plenty of quarrels with the past Administrations. And if you go back to when I grew up during the Vietnam War and you say, hey, Democrats were in the White House. Gulf of Tonkin—we were misled into the Vietnam War. It’s not a purely Democratic and Republican issue. I don’t
think they [the Democrats] have all the answers. Right now, for the problems we have out there, I haven’t seen anybody who does.
TK: What is it about Kerry’s policy on Iraq that differentiates him from George Bush? What would you point to?
BS: There is not a great difference at the moment. That’s absolutely true. But I believe that, in the area of foreign policy, our president’s burned his bridges in a lot of ways. And I feel that he’s eroded trust in a large segment of American voters. And that we need somebody else in there to try and regain some of our stature internationally. I think we need a new face. And I think that would make a difference.
TK: If in fact he has eroded trust among a significant portion of the American people, why do we need a bunch of rock stars and country-western singers to tell us about it?
BS: Well, this goes back to our first question. Number one is, hey, we’re citizens. And I think that, as I’ve said, lobbyists, labor unions, farmers, teachers, everybody has a way of putting their input in.
TK: But they’re openly and patently doing it for their interests. If I have company X that makes widgets, I want the legislation out of Congress to be as widget friendly as it can possibly be. What does Bruce Springsteen want? You’re not doing it for yourself, are you? Or are you?
BS: Well, of course, I’m doing it for the kind of country that I want my kids to grow up in. Damn straight. I got young sons. And one’s fourteen. He’s going to be eighteen soon. And I am concerned about our approach to foreign policy.
TK: Is this a pro–John Kerry thing? Or an “anybody but George Bush” thing?
BS: I like John Kerry and John Edwards. I don’t believe it’s an “anybody but Bush” thing.
TK: Is your activism going to hurt you with your fans?
BS: People really invest themselves in you and you invest yourself in them. You look into the audience and you see yourself. The audience looks onstage and they see themselves. That’s at the core of the rock experience. And I think for a percentage of my audience, this may feel like a severance of that bond.
I think if you followed me for the past twenty-five years, or even for a brief amount of time, you have a pretty reasonable idea where I stand on most issues. And we’ve done things before where there’s been controversy. The song “American Skin”—we play that song, some people boo it. They cheer the next one, they boo that one, you know. The night we played it, we stood onstage and I received the New Jersey state salute from a few folks.
Springsteen in New Jersey in 2004, the year he campaigned for John Kerry. FRANK STEFA
TK: Is that a one-finger salute?
BS: Yes, it is. And so that’s part of the whole thing. And the audience aren’t lemmings. They come to you for resource and inspiration. And sometimes they’ll come and maybe you’ll make them angry or you’ll disappoint them or you’ll excite them. And that’s how I see my job.
TK: But your intent here is to do what to them? I mean, obviously you’re doing this because you think it’s gonna make a difference in the election. Otherwise why do it?
BS: Absolutely. The tour has a very basic intent. Its intent is to change administrations in November. To mobilize progressive voters and get them to the polls come election time.
TK: This [tour] was all organized by MoveOn.org.
BS: MoveOn presents it and America Come Together is the beneficiary of the money we raise.
TK: We’re talking, theoretically, about some tens of millions of dollars that might be available here, at a very critical stage of the election.
BS: Right.
TK: And one of the things that liberal Democrats are complaining about more than anything else in the world is the influence of big money on the political process.
BS: Right.
TK: All right? Well, here we’ve got a lot of big money, at the most vulnerable time in the political process. You got any thoughts about that?
BS: Hopefully, it will be a substantial sum, you know. And the point is … I feel we’re going out and we’re trying to level the playing field with a lot of the kinds of corporate donations that the Republicans can raise. We’re going to try to infuse the campaign with a certain amount of cash at that time that’s going to enable foot soldiers to go door to door and activate voters and get people to the polls. There’s a very specific goal that we feel is worth accomplishing. That’s really the bottom line, as far as I’m concerned.
TK: And when I suggest that that goal is beating Bush?
BS: Yes, it is.
TK: Well, a few minutes ago, when I asked you if it was supporting Kerry or beating Bush, you were on the supporting Kerry side. And my instinct all along has been that maybe what’s uniting Democrats this year, more than anything else, is less a passion for Kerry than a—as Michael Moore puts it—a white right sock rather than George W. Bush.
BS: Well … I think people have been unified by the president’s policies in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time.
TK: Unified against them?
BS: That’s right.
TK: You’re nice to have had us at your home again. Thanks very much.
BS: Thank you.
JOHN KERRY CAMPAIGN RALLY SPEECH
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN | October 28, 2004, Madison, Wisconsin
After talking with Koppel, Springsteen went out on the road as promised to campaign for the Democratic ticket. He delivered the following speech to a Wisconsin audience of about eighty thousand only five days before the election. —Ed.
Thank you! Thank you.
As a songwriter, I’ve written about America for thirty years. Tryin’ to write about who we are, what we stand for, what we fight for. And I believe that these essential ideas of American identity are what’s at stake on November second.
I think the human principles of economic justice—just healing the sick, health care, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, a living wage so folks don’t have to break their backs and still not make ends meet, the protection of our environment, a sane and responsible foreign policy, civil rights, and the protection and safeguarding of our precious democracy here at home—I believe that Senator Kerry honors these ideals. He has lived our history over the past fifty years. He has an informed and adult view of America and its people. He’s had the life experience, and I think he understands that we as humans are not infallible. And as Senator Edwards said during the Democratic convention, that struggle and heartbreak will always be with us.
And that’s why we need each other. That’s why “united we stand,” that’s why “one nation indivisible,” aren’t just slogans, but they need to remain guiding principles of our public policy. And he’s shown, starting as a young man, that by facing America’s hard truths, both the good and the bad, that that’s where we find a deeper patriotism. That’s where we find a more complete view of who we are. That’s where we find a more authentic experience as citizens. And that’s where we find the power that is embedded only in truth, to make our world a better and a safer place. Paul Wellstone, the great Minnesota senator—he said the future is for the passionate, and those that are willing to fight and to work hard for it. Well the future is now, and it’s time to let your passions loose.
So let’s roll up our sleeves. That’s why I’m here today, to stand alongside Senator Kerry and to tell you that the country we carry in our hearts is waiting. And together we can move America towards her deepest ideals. And besides, we had a sax player in the [White] House—we need a guitar player in the White House.
All right, this is for John. This is for you, John. [Springsteen launches into “No Surrender.”]
U2 ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION SPEECH
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN | March 17, 2005, New York
It was U2’s Bono who inducted Bruce Springsteen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. Six years later, Springsteen returned the favor, making this warm and sometimes funny speech to welcome the Irish band into the Hall. —Ed.
Uno, dos, tres, catorce. That translates as one, two
, three, fourteen. That is the correct math for a rock-and-roll band. For in art and love and rock and roll, the whole had better equal much more than the sum of its parts, or else you’re just rubbing two sticks together in search of a fire. A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.
It’s embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens—The Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Pepper’s, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run— oops, I meant to leave that one out [laughter]—the Sex Pistols, Aretha Franklin, the Clash, James Brown … and the power of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. This was music meant to take on not only the powers that be, but on a good day, the universe and God himself—if he was listening. It demands accountability, and U2 belongs on this list.
It was the early eighties. I went with Pete Townshend, always one to catch the first whiff of those about to unseat us, to a club in London. There they were: a young Bono—single-handedly pioneering the Irish mullet; the Edge—what kind of name was that?; Adam; and Larry. I was listening to the last band where I would be able to name all of its members. They had an exciting show and a big, beautiful sound. They lifted the roof.
We met afterwards and they were nice young men. And they were Irish. Irish! And, this would play an enormous part in their success in the States. For while the English occasionally have their refined sensibilities to overcome, we Irish and Italians have no such problem. We come through the door fists and hearts first. U2, with the dark, chiming sound of heaven at their command—which, of course, is the sound of unrequited love and longing, their greatest theme—the search for God intact. This was a band that wanted to lay claim to not only this world but had their eyes on the next one, too.
