Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

by Jeff Burger

  Now, they’re a real band; each member plays a vital part. I believe they actually practice some form of democracy—toxic poison in a band setting. In Iraq, maybe. In rock, no. Yet they survive. They have harnessed the time bomb that exists in the heart of every rock-and-roll band that usually explodes, as we see regularly from this stage. But they seemed to have innately understood the primary rule of rock band job security: “Hey, asshole, the other guy is more important than you think he is!”

  They are both a step forward and direct descendants of the great bands who believed rock music could shake things up in the world, who dared to have faith in their audience, and who believed if they played their best it would bring out the best in you. They believed in pop stardom and the big time. Now this requires foolishness and a calculating mind. It also requires a deeply held faith in the work you’re doing and in its powers to transform. U2 hungered for it all and built a sound, and they wrote the songs that demanded it. They’re the keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in rock and roll.

  The Edge. The Edge. The Edge. The Edge. He is a rare and true guitar original and one of the subtlest guitar heroes of all time. He’s dedicated to ensemble playing and he subsumes his guitar ego in the group. But do not be fooled. Think Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, Pete Townshend—guitarists who defined the sound of their band and their times. If you play like them, you sound like them. If you are playing those rhythmic two-note sustained fourths, drenched in echo, you are going to sound like the Edge, my son. Go back to the drawing board and chances are you won’t have much luck. There are only a handful of guitar stylists who can create a world with their instruments, and he’s one of them. The Edge’s guitar playing creates enormous space and vast landscapes. It is a thrilling and a heartbreaking sound that hangs over you like the unsettled sky. In the turf it stakes out, it is inherently spiritual. It is grace and it is a gift.

  Now, all of this has to be held down by something. The deep sureness of Adam Clayton’s bass and the elegance of Larry Mullen’s drumming hold the band down while propelling it forward. It’s in U2’s great rhythm section that the band finds its sexuality and its dangerousness. Listen to “Desire,” “She Moves in Mysterious Ways” [sic], the pulse of “With or Without You.” Together Larry and Adam create the element that suggests the ecstatic possibilities of that other kingdom—the one below the earth and below the belt—that no great rock band can lay claim to the title without.

  Now Adam always strikes me as the professorial one, the sophisticated member. He creates not only the musical but the physical stability on his side of the stage. The tone and depth of his bass playing has allowed the band to move from rock to dance music and beyond. One of the first things I noticed about U2 was that underneath the guitar and the bass, they have these very modern rhythms going on. Rather than a straight two and four, Larry often plays with a lot of syncopation, and that connects the band to a lot of modern dance textures. The drums often sounded high and tight and he was swinging down there, and this gave the band a unique profile and allowed their rock textures to soar above on a bed of his rhythms.

  Now Larry, of course, besides being an incredible drummer, bears the burden of being the band’s requisite “good-looking member,” something we somehow overlooked in the E Street Band. We have to settle for “charismatic.” The girls love Larry Mullen! I have a female assistant that would like to sit on Larry’s drum stool. A male one, too. We all have our crosses to bear.

  Bono … where do I begin? Jeans designer, soon-to-be World Bank operator, just plain operator, seller of the Brooklyn Bridge—oh hold up, he played under the Brooklyn Bridge, right. Soon-to-be mastermind operator of the Bono burger franchise, where more than one million stories will be told by a crazy Irishman. Now I realize that it’s a dirty job and somebody has to do it, but don’t quit your day job yet, my friend. You’re pretty good at it, and a sound this big needs somebody to ride herd over it.

  And ride herd over it he does. He has a voice that’s big-hearted and open, thoroughly decent no matter how hard he tries, and he’s a great front man—against the odds. He is not your mom’s standard skinny, exjunkie archetype. He has the physique of a rugby player … well, an exrugby player. Shaman, shyster, one of the greatest and most endearingly naked messianic complexes in rock and roll. God bless you, man! It takes one to know one, of course.

  You see, every good Irish and Italian-Irish front man knows that before James Brown there was Jesus. So hold the McDonald arches on the stage set, boys. We are not ironists. We are creations of the heart and of the earth and of the stations of the cross—there’s no getting out of it. He is gifted with an operatic voice and a beautiful falsetto rare among strong rock singers. But most important, his is a voice shot through with self-doubt. That’s what makes that big sound work. It is this element of Bono’s talent—along with his beautiful lyric writing—that gives the often-celestial music of U2 its fragility and its realness. It is the questioning, the constant questioning in Bono’s voice, where the band stakes its claim to its humanity and declares its commonality with us.

  Now Bono’s voice often sounds like it’s shouting not over the top of the band but from deep within it. “Here we are, Lord, this mess, in your image.” He delivers all of this with great drama and an occasional smirk that says, “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” He’s one of the great front men of the past twenty years. He is also one of the only musicians who’s brought his personal faith and the ideals of his band into the real world in a way that remains true to rock’s earliest implications of freedom and connection and the possibility of something better.

  Now the band’s beautiful songwriting—“Pride (In the Name of Love),” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “One,” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “Beautiful Day”—reminds us of the stakes that the band always plays for. It’s an incredible songbook. In their music you hear the spirituality as home and as quest. How do you find God unless he’s in your heart? In your desire? In your feet? I believe this is a big part of what has kept the band together all these years.

  You see, bands get formed by accident, but they don’t survive by accident. It takes will, intent, a sense of shared purpose, and a tolerance for your friends’ fallibilities, and they of yours. And that only evens the odds. U2 has not only evened the odds but they’ve beaten them by continuing to do their finest work and remaining at the top of their game and the charts for twenty-five years. I feel a great affinity for these guys as people as well as musicians.

  Well … there I was sitting on my couch in my pajamas with my eldest son. He was watching TV. I was doing one of my favorite things—I was tallying up all the money I passed up in endorsements over the years and thinking of all the fun I could have had with it. Suddenly I hear “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!” I look up. But instead of the silhouettes of the hippie wannabes bouncing around in the iPod commercial, I see my boys!

  Oh, my God! They’ve sold out!

  Now, what I know about the iPod is this: It is a device that plays music. Of course, their new song sounded great, my pals were doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old tape operator Jimmy Iovine somewhere. Wily. Smart. Now, personally, I live an insanely expensive lifestyle that my wife barely tolerates. I burn money, and that calls for huge amounts of cash flow. But I also have a ludicrous image of myself that keeps me from truly cashing in. You can see my problem. Woe is me.

  So the next morning, I call Jon Landau—or as I refer to him, “the American Paul McGuinness [U2’s manager]”—and I say, “Did you see that iPod thing?” And he says, “Yes.” And he says, “And I hear they didn’t take any money.” And I say, “They didn’t take any money?!” And he says, “No.” And I think, “Smart, wily Irish guys.”

  Anybody … anybody … can do an ad and take the money. But to do the ad and not take the money … that’s smart. That’s wily. I tell Jon, “I want you to call up Bill Gates or whoever is behind
this thing and float this: a red, white, and blue iPod signed by Bruce “the Boss” Springsteen. Now remember, no matter how much money he offers, don’t take it!”

  At any rate, after that evening, for the next month or so, I hear emanating from my lovely fourteen-year-old son’s room, day after day, down the hall calling out in a voice that has recently dropped very low: uno, dos, tres, catorce. The correct math for rock and roll. Thank you, boys.

  This band has carried their faith in the great inspirational and resurrective power of rock and roll. It never faltered, only a little bit. They’ve believed in themselves, but more importantly, they’ve believed in “you, too.” Thank you Bono, the Edge, Adam, and Larry. Please welcome U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  A FAN’S EYE VIEW

  NICK HORNBY | July 16, 2005, Observer Music Monthly (UK)

  In April, a month after he made his U2 speech, Springsteen delivered another album—Devils & Dust, without the E Street Band—and it quickly rose to the top of the charts. The accompanying tour began in the United States the same month, then moved on to Europe in May. Longtime fan Nick Hornby—whose books include High Fidelity, arguably the best and funniest novel ever with a rock-music theme—met up with Bruce on the tour’s second stop on the Continent: London’s Royal Albert Hall, where the artist performed to packed houses on May 27 and 28. —Ed.

  Earlier on in the week that I met Bruce Springsteen, and before I knew I was going to meet him, I’d decided I was going to send him a copy of my new book. I got his home address off a mutual friend, and signed it to him, and the book was lying around in my office in an unstamped Jiffy bag when the editor of this magazine asked if I’d like to do this interview. So I took the book with me.

  I wasn’t expecting him to read the bloody thing, nor even to keep it, and yet even so it seemed like something I needed to do. A Long Way Down was fueled by coffee, Silk Cuts, and Bruce (specifically, a 1978 live bootleg recording of “Prove It All Night,” which I listened to a lot on the walk to my office as I was finishing the book). And Springsteen is one of the people who made me want to write in the first place, and one of the people who has, through words and deeds, helped me to think about the career I have had since that initial impulse. It seems to me that his ability to keep his working life fresh and compelling while working within the mainstream is an object lesson to just about anyone whose work has any sort of popular audience.

  The first time I met him was after his Friday night show at the Royal Albert Hall, at a party in an upmarket West End hotel. He talked with an impressive ferocity and fluency to a little group of us about why he demanded restraint from his fans during the solo shows. The following afternoon I went to the sound check for the Saturday show, and sat on my own in the auditorium while he played “My Father’s House,” from Nebraska. It wasn’t the sort of experience you forget in a hurry. I interviewed him in his dressing room, and I was nervous: I have, in transcribing the questions, made them seem more cogent than they actually were.

  He looked younger than the last time I’d seen him, and he’s clearly incredibly fit; he changed his shirt for the photographer, and I could tell that he does a lot more two-and-a-half-hour shows than I do. He was pleasant and friendly, but though he asked after a couple of younger musicians who both he and I know, there wasn’t much small talk; his answers came in unbroken yet very carefully considered streams. He is one of the few artists I’ve met who is able to talk cogently about what he does without sounding either arrogant or defensively self-deprecating.

  I gave him the book, and he thanked me. I have no idea whether the cleaner took it home, but it didn’t matter much to me either way.

  Nick Hornby: I was thinking when I was watching the show last night that maybe when you play with the band you can at least say to yourself, “I know why people are coming to see us. We’re good at what we do, and there’s this dynamic between us.” But when it’s you on your own, you can’t tell yourself that anymore. How does that feel? Have you got to a stage in life where it doesn’t feel weird that so many people come to see only you?

  Bruce Springsteen: I performed like this in different periods of most of my playing life before I made records.* It just so happens that I didn’t do it on the Nebraska tour. Maybe I was feeling unsure about … I hadn’t performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I’m with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them. So I think the same things that make people plunk down their hard-earned bucks for the tickets … it works both ways. You’re looking for an experience and something that contextualizes, as best as possible, a piece of the world. I’m just taking a different road to it out there at night. It’s the same thing, you know?

  NH: It’s always struck me that you work very hard on the stage side of things, that you have a theory of stagecraft. Is that right?

  BS: Well, I don’t know if I’ve worked hard at it. It’s always felt natural, because I’m generally very comfortable with people. That’s probably genetic in some fashion [laughs]. There is a presentation and I think being aware of the fact that there’s a show going on is a good idea* [laughs]. I think it fell into some disrepute when the idea of the show became linked to falseness in some fashion, which is a superficial way to look at it. It’s actually a bridge when used appropriately. It’s simply a bridge for your ideas to reach the audience. It assists the music in connecting and that’s what you’re out there for.

  I think if you do it wrong, you can diminish your work, but if you do it right you can lightly assist what you’re doing. It can be an enormous asset in reaching people with what might be otherwise difficult material. I have a large audience coming to see this kind of music, an audience which in other circumstances would not be there. The audiences are there as a result of my history with the band but also as a result of my being able to reach people with a tune.

  I have my ideas, I have my music, and I also just enjoy showing off [laughs], so that’s a big part of it. Also, I like to get up onstage and behave insanely or express myself physically, and the band can get pretty silly. But even in the course of an evening like this there’s a way that you sort of attenuate the evening. Your spoken voice is a part of it—not a big part of it, but it’s something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what’s otherwise difficult music.

  NH: I think that’s right. Those shows where you borrowed things from James Brown … I think some people did find it troubling that this music is supposed to be real and authentic and yet there’s this stagecraft, this messing around, at the same time.* I think the people who get the shows always see that there’s not a contradiction.

  BS: Plus, you know, when I was young, there was a lot of respect for clowning in rock music—look at Little Richard. It was a part of the whole thing, and I always also believed that it released the audience. And it was also a way that you shrunk yourself down to a certain sort of life-size [laughs], but I also enjoyed it, I had fun with it, and I never thought that seriousness and clowning were exclusive, so I’ve approached my work and my stagecraft with the idea that they’re not exclusive. You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you’re making those connections with your audience then they’re going to go right along with it.

  NH: What have you been listening to the past couple of years?

  BS: I listen to all kinds of things, you know? Take your choice. [He reaches into a bag and pulls out a whole heap of homemade CDs.] I’ve made all this music for walking … A lot of this is a little acoustic-oriented but I hear everything. I hear all the Britpop stuff, the Stone Roses and Oasis, and I go on to Suede and Pulp. I’m generally interested in almost everything.

  NH: For the benefit of [readers], I’m looking at CDs that feature Dylan and Sleater-Kinney and the Beach Boys and Jimmy Cliff and Sam Cooke and Bobby Bland and Joe Strummer, pretty much the whole history of recorde
d music.

  BS: I left a lot of my more rock things off, because this is my walking music. But I listen to old music; some Louis Armstrong stuff recently. And then I’ll listen to, I don’t know, Four Tet or something. I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination. I still like to go to record stores. I like to just wander around and I’ll buy whatever catches my attention … Maybe I’ll read a good review of something or even an interesting review. But then I go through long periods where I don’t listen to things, usually when I’m working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

  NH: And is that part of the process of writing for you?

  BS: I don’t think it has to be. I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you’re twelve years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life—certainly by the time you’re eighteen. But I do find it helps me with form, in that something may just inspire me, may give me an idea as to the form I’m going to create something in, or maybe the setting. Ten or twelve years ago, nature writing struck my imagination and it’s seeped into my work a little bit here and there ever since. It’s all kinds of things.

  I heard this live version of “Too Much Monkey Business” by Chuck Berry and it sounds so close to punk music. So when you go to record with your band, you have all those sounds; you’ve created a bank. I like to stay as awake and as alert as I can. And I enjoy it too, I have a lot of interest in it … I like not being sealed off from what’s going on culturally.