Bruce Springsteen: ‘Time Is Finite, and Your Performing Time Is Finite'

Yahoo

5 hours ago

When the pandemic brought the live-music industry to a complete stop in 2020, Bruce Springsteen found himself at home with a lot of free time on his hands. He decided to make good use of it by poring over his massive vault of unreleased music, pulling out seven complete records he shelved between 1983 and 2018, and packaging them together as Tracks II: The Lost Albums, which features an astounding 74 songs most hardcore fans have never heard.
'If you look at them as a group, they're sort of genres that I haven't quite dived into as of yet,' Springsteen says via Zoom from his home in Wellington, Florida, noting that the albums touch on everything from Western swing to Burt Bacharach-inspired Sixties pop. 'They were all these sort of outliers, and what do you do with them? I don't know. So this is how we ended up solving the problem.'
More from Rolling Stone
Jeremy Allen White Was Born to Run as Bruce Springsteen in 'Deliver Me From Nowhere' Trailer
Bruce Springsteen Says Without Brian Wilson There'd Be No 'Racing in the Street'
Bruce Springsteen, the Crooner? Hear Surprising 'Lost' Track 'Sunday Love'
A high percentage of these songs were recorded in the Nineties, often seen as a lost period for Springsteen since he released only a single studio record, 1995's The Ghost of Tom Joad, between 1992 and 2002. 'That was for a variety of reasons,' says Springsteen, who is touring in Europe this summer, and spoke to us before his anti-Trump remarks on opening night of the tour sparked a tense back-and-forth with the president. (Springsteen declined to comment on the exchange.) 'Our children were very young at exactly that moment. And also I didn't have any interest, really, in working with the band. I felt just burned out on it at that particular place in time. But I was working on music all the time. I just wasn't releasing it.'
In a wide-ranging interview, Springsteen delves deep into Tracks II: The Lost Albums, explains why he was never happy with Born In The U.S.A., reveals that he has a new album in the can for next year, drops a revelation about the fabled Electric Nebraska tapes, and explains why he still believes in America.
The box set starts with . Nobody knew you recorded an entire album between and I enjoyed the recording and the experience of Nebraska, and thought I might continue in that vein with a small rhythm section, still very lo-fi, and a new group of songs. At the time I wasn't sure where I was going with Born in the U.S.A. I had half the record, but I didn't have the other half. And so it was just a record that happened in between those two records.
Prior to , you'd never cut an album outside of a studio before. It must have been really freeing.I was a lot less inhibited, so I was a lot more experimental. If you go to the studio, the whole band is there, all the producers are there. It's a very formal environment, and I found it tended to make me conservative in some ways. And so, Nebraska really broke through that ceiling where I brought in an element of risk that I hadn't previously to my recording process. I wanted to continue that, to continue to feel that freedom in the studio, and so I began to simply record at home more often.
You say in the liner notes that you 'weren't happy' with and that it didn't 'connect' like your other albums. Why not? It was a record I put out. It became the record I made, not necessarily the record that I was interested in making. I was interested in taking Nebraska and making a full record that had somewhat that same feeling. If you hear 'My Hometown' and you hear 'Born in the U.S.A.,' they were sort of the bookends I intended. And the rest of the stuff was … just what I had at the time. Those were the songs I wrote. Those were the songs I recorded.
From conception to execution, it was not necessarily the record that in my mind I had planned on, but that's the way creativity works. You go in the studio, you have an idea. It's not necessarily what you come out with. So that was just the situation of that record for me personally.
I'm a little surprised to hear you say that. I always heard as dispatches from various people left behind by Reagan's America. As a listener, it felt cohesive. I guess, it was to a lot of other people too. I suppose maybe I was looking for something darker. But outside of that, the themes of Nebraska are in there — in 'Downbound Train,' they're in there, they're disguised somewhat into pop music.
Did you feel any label pressure after 'Hungry Heart' to create music less like and more radio-friendly?No, I've been lucky in my relationship with Sony for all the years that I've been on there. I've never received any pressure to do anything other than what I've exactly wanted to do.
'The Klansman' is a chilling song. It's in the same vein as 'Johnny 99,' where you write from the perspective of someone truly villainous.I do that from time to time. That was 'Nebraska.' And this was a particularly risky choice. I'm singing in the voice of a member of the Klan. The song is about the way that hate and toxicity is passed down from generation to generation.
I want to briefly talk about your albums and. When you got inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1998, you said, 'I tried to write happy songs in the early Nineties, and it didn't work. The public didn't like it.' Can you elaborate on what you meant by that?On the fan sites in general, Human Touch particularly is a record that doesn't get a lot of respect, even though I actually like it quite a bit, and it has got some great songs on like 'Roll of the Dice,' 'Human Touch,' and 'Real World.' I think people had some second thoughts about the production, and maybe they were right, maybe they weren't. I don't know, but it is what it is.
So, I sort of was making light of the fact. Actually, Lucky Town came out pretty much precisely the way I wanted it to, and I think that's a very good record. But I was making light of just its public perception.
And I think recording without the E Street Band also affected a lot of fans perception of it, so that had something to do with it also. The records weren't timed well, I would say.
There's an entire album of songs on built around drum loops. What drew you toward that sound? 'Streets of Philadelphia.' I set up a small drum loop on that. I liked the way it worked. It interplayed with synthesizers, which was an instrument I was beginning to write on. And so the natural thing to do after that was, I said, 'Well, I'm going to try and create a whole album with the basic sound of a synthesizers and drum loops.' And so, that's what I did.
How were the loops created?Some of them I created myself, and some of them were just off CDs that my engineer brought in and we listened to, and I'd say, 'Yeah, that's a cool one' or 'That's a cool one. Let's try that. Let me try to write to that.'
It's been called your 'hip-hop album' by fans in the past, but that's a real misnomer.Yeah, it's not that. I do use the drum loops, but I think when they heard drum loops, they jumped to hip-hop. But no, it's basically a record that uses loops and synthesizers.
How did the drum loops change your writing process?Drum loops are trance-like, I find, and so a lot of the music on that record is a little bit trance-like, very dreamy. The combination of the synthesizers and the loops made for a sort of dark, dreamy sound. And there's quite a bit of that on the record.
Why didn't the record come out?Bob Clearmountain mixed it. I had it at home. I was in the process of sequencing it. But I could never quite get the sequence correct, and I felt…. I've had a conversation going with my fans for 50 years now, which I try to honor as best as I can; and one of the ways I honor that conversation is by trying to keep its context open. And I said, 'Well, gee, I'm not sure.' After the three records I wrote about relationships and the nature of the record, I just said, 'I'm just not sure. Is this too closed off at this moment? Is it the right time?' A lot of releasing records for me comes down to timing, and it was one of the records where, for better or for worse, I didn't think the timing was right.
A lot of the lyrical content is pretty dark, which is interesting because this was a pretty happy time in your life.Yeah, those things don't go together. People tend to think that singer-songwriters are always writing autobiographically. Certainly in my case, that's not the point. I'll go to some completely different geography in my head, I'll strike a vein that I find that is rewarding to write in, and I'll just work in that vein for a while.
Somewhere was made at the same time as . How did that work?I'm recording that in the afternoon often, and Tom Joad, the darker material, was recorded in the evening, assuming they were both going to be part of the same record.
How did you realize you could only release one?Well, obviously if you listen to 'Repo Man,' it doesn't back up against the 'Straight Time' very well. So, it became obvious pretty quickly that I was in the process of making two records. And when I tried to put them together to make either a double album or a single album, it just didn't work. And so, I cut the material down to the music that felt like it worked well together, which was The Ghost of Tom Joad album.
Marty Rifkin does amazing work on this one.Marty Rifkin is a badass steel guitarist, one of the absolute best in the country. He played with me on the Seeger Sessions tour. He plays tremendously on this album. He's a real secret resource. He's an incredible musician, a wonderful guy, and he really comes to the fore and shows what he can do on Somewhere North of Nashville.
So much of this music was made in the Nineties, but I don't really hear any 'Nineties' sounds on this record. A lot of your peers were incorporating elements of grunge and alternative. You never went even near the trends of the day.I believe you are who you are. And chasing trends, for me anyway, it never fit with who I was. It's just not the way that I operate. I work from the inside out, not from the outside in. And I believe that's what gives my music its intensity and its personalness.
It means the music isn't stuck in the amber of any particular time. You can play 'Racing in The Street' next to anything on Tom Joad or anything that I've written since, and it'll slide right in. So, I've always wanted to write about themes that were timeless: family, work, spirituality, love, sex, just things that are always in people's lives. And that's the trail that I've always followed. I still follow it to this day. And like I said, I work from the inside out.
What drew you to the mariachi sounds on ?We've had a farm since the early Nineties, and I was writing a few songs that were set in Mexico, and I had an assistant who would occasionally help me researching some details. He said, 'Hey, there's a charro that moved into New Jersey in the apartment above me.' I said, 'Really?' He says, 'Yeah. A girl from New Jersey went to Mexico, met the 1994 All-Around Mexico Charro, and moved him back to New Jersey. I mean, this is one of the most incredible horsemen and guy with a rope I've ever seen.'
So I said, 'Well, bring him over to the house.' So he comes to the house and he ends up working on the farm with me for five years. And he taught us how to ride, a little bit of roping, rope tricks.
He was an incredible guy. When we would have our harvest parties, he said, 'Man, I know this great mariachi band.' And I said, 'Bring them down.' So he brought down these incredible mariachi bands, and they would play at our harvest parties. And so, I just got into the music sort of like that. And I had a few songs that I felt they would work well on, and that's how they ended up on the record.
How close did you come to putting this one out?Not that close. I did get Devils & Dust out [with some songs from this era], but I still had a large group of material left over. And I knew the songs were good. Once again, the timing wasn't right, so they were there in the vault. And so that one sat until I had time during the pandemic to go and put it together.
On , there's a bunch of songs you co-write with Joe Grushecky. He's one of the few songwriters you've ever collaborated with. What drew you to him?Well, I always like his songs and I felt we had something in common in our roots, coming out of the working class, and he wrote about that a lot. And also, Joe was just very persistent. He would just send me lyrics. I think most of them I wrote for him to record, and I produced his record [American Babylon]. And so, he'd send me lyrics, I'd write the music, and send it back.
He was just a persistent guy, and we became very close friends, as we are to this day. We haven't done a lot of writing together, but we've done some, and it's always fun. I tend to not write with others.
By the end of the E Street Band reunion tour, you were playing new songs in the set. You had 'American Skin,' 'Land of Hope and Dreams,' and some of the songs with Joe like 'Code of Silence.' Were you planning another E Street record around 2000 or so?Once we did the reunion tour, my next thought was, 'OK, now we've got to make a record if we're going to continue.' I did go into the studio with 'American Skin,' 'Land of Hope and Dreams,' a few other things, and we did do some recording, and it just wasn't good.
The production team I'd used for many years, really, we'd done the work we were going to do, and it was time for somebody else to come in with some fresh ideas, and to give us more of a current sound for the times we were working in.
And that of course, was Brendan O'Brien, who was and is a tremendous producer, great guy. I've had wonderful times working with him, and he really was deeply responsible for giving us our modern recorded sound. And then I've worked with Ron Aniello — also an incredible producer and great guy — since then also. Once I started working with Brendan, the songs came, and The Rising came out of it. And then Magic and Working on a Dream. And he also assisted me in finishing Devils & Dust.
Unlike the others here, wasn't a completely finished record at the time.Yeah, that was the one record that I didn't conceive of as a record. It was just material that I had, not sure where it was going to go. And so, when I thought of this particular project, I said, 'Gee, there's a lot of stuff on here, but there's no rock music. And I know I've got some rock music fans out there.' So I said, 'Well, maybe I'll try and put something together.' And I had that selection of material, and I put that album together from the material that I had.
Do you have any regrets that you didn't put out any of these albums back in the Nineties?Well, it's fun putting them all out at once with this project because it's unusual, and I actually believe it's the correct context for them to come out in. So, I don't regret it. No.
Was there any point in the Nineties where self-doubt started to sink in that maybe your career was slipping away? Not really. I always used to say, when I was in the middle of some of the big lawsuits [in the mid-Seventies], 'OK. Well, somebody can take your publishing and somebody can take your records or take your songs or take whatever money you've made out of the thing, but you can drop me out of an airplane anywhere in the United States or most parts of the world, I'll land and I'll find the nearest roadhouse and I'll light up somebody's night.'
And so, that's something that's in me. You can never lose it. And so during the Nineties, I understood that. And I even had a conversation with Jon Landau at one point where I said, 'Gee, this record didn't do as well. Jon, it's just not our time. Somebody else's time.' If you're ever going to have a long career, hey, it's going to be your time and it's going to be not your time sometimes, and you got to be OK with that and you just got to carry on, work on.
Did any part of you think that the period simply got too big? There were seven hits off that record. You were almost as big as Michael Jackson. The red hat, blue jeans, and the flag became this iconic image of you that remains with many people to this day.I wasn't interested in carrying on with that. I did it at the time, but I wasn't interested in trying to catch those horses again. I always looked at it like, 'Well, that was one of a thing,' and I immediately returned to my singer-songwriter roots and made Tunnel of Love. And so, I wasn't under any illusion that that was going to be my career.
And also, I didn't have any real desire for that to be my career, and I wasn't concerned about selling less records because I wasn't concerned about selling that many records in the first place.
So, it was just an interesting moment in time. It was challenging. I generally had a great time during most of it. And to this day, if somebody is imitating me, they'll generally put that uniform on. I still see it at my shows. I see young men in their twenties come in with the bandanna and the sleeveless shirt. It is charming at this point, and I don't regret any of it. It was a great experience, but it wasn't something I considered a career.
And after that, there was no way to go any bigger. Wisely, you didn't even try.My attitude is I was never interested in going bigger. I was always interested in going deeper. That's how I've conducted my career.
Tell me about . This one really came out of nowhere. Nobody knew it existed.That was an unusual record. I was contacted to write a small group of songs for a film that was a Western. I was down here with my daughter in Florida in about two or three weeks, and I believe I wrote the whole record. And then I went home and I recorded it in, I don't know, a week or two weeks maybe, something like that, very, very quickly in the living room of the house next door to my house, which I was using as a temporary studio. And that was it.
I sat on it waiting for the moment when perhaps the film would get in the production, and it just didn't happen. So, I figured after about 20 years, 'Well, maybe I would put this out myself, and who knows, maybe it'll still get made.' But I figured I put it out in this collection because Patti always loved this particular record and said, 'You got to put that out.' And so, it's a really unique little selection of songs, and I'm glad it's in this particular package.
How'd you get in the mindset of these characters? Did you read a screenplay?There was a book, and there was a screenplay.
I imagine that you don't want to say the name of the director or anything, right?Correct.
Let's talk about There's obviously a lot of commonality with the songs on , but they're distinct.Well, if Western Stars tilted a little more towards your Jimmy Webb and country music, Twilight Hours tilts more towards the Burt Bacharach and classic American songbook songwriting.
If you listen to 'Sunday Love' or 'September Kisses' or 'Late in the Evening,' many of those things you think Sinatra could have sung, or Andy Williams or Jack Jones or any of the crooners from the early Sixties or Fifties. That's material they could have used. It's sort of in that Mad Men vein of pop music. So it differs quite a bit from Western Stars in that sense. But a few songs like 'High Sierra' could have gone on Western Stars, and maybe 'Sunliner.'
I was using chord changes that I had not previously used, and that allowed me to investigate slightly more sophisticated types of chordal structures and songwriting than I've used in most of my other music.
Did you think about releasing and as a double album?I did, and I decided against it. Usually, when I write a lot of material at once, particularly if you're talking about 40 songs or something you wrote at one time, I always go, 'Well, maybe this should be a double album.' But I usually end up opting for something that's more compact and intense.
'High Sierra' is a stunning song. Can you talk a bit about that one?I probably should have got that onto Western Stars somehow, and I almost did. I kept trying to squeeze it in this way, squeeze it in that way, and for one reason or another, it just didn't happen. I suppose there were a lot of other things in that with the same mood. There was a lot of those characters dealing with American isolation. I had 'Drive Fast (The Stuntman),' 'Western Stars,' 'Tucson Train,' and 'Stones.'
It was a lot of these singular characters dealing with American loneliness. It might've just tipped the balance a little too much, or I figured it might have not been as appreciated as much as I felt it might be in the context of this other record. It's one of my favorite songs in the whole package.
You played the entirety of in your barn for the concert film, but you've never done any of them in public. Might you bring some of them into the set at some point?If I was going to do that, I'd go out on probably a smaller tour, where I might engage an orchestra and play those records specifically. When I go out with the E Street Band, I go out to do a rock show. I want to come out, put the pedal to the metal for three hours, and exhaust you, myself, and anybody in the immediate 20-mile vicinity. And so, there's certain things that mix and certain things that don't mix for me, and that's sort of the way I look at the work that I do with the band.
You've been photographed a lot on the set of your upcoming biopic, , which centers around the creation of . What's it been like to watch an actor play you? I'm sure it's much worse for the actor than for me. Jeremy Allen White was very, very tolerant of me the days that I would appear on the set. I said to him, 'Look, anytime I'm in the way, just give me the look and I'm on my way home.' So the days that I got out there, he was wonderfully tolerant with me being there. And it was just fun. It was enjoyable.
I mean, there's some unusualness to it because the movie involves, in some ways, some of the most painful days of my life. But it was a great project, and Jeremy and Jeremy Strong [who plays manager Jon Landau] were both fantastic, terrific in it as were all the other actors. Stephen Graham plays my dad, and he's out of this world, but everybody that was engaged in the film, they were all tremendous.
Watching actors re-create your childhood right in front of you must have been really intense emotionally.Well, some of the scenes I wasn't at. If there was a scene coming up that was sometimes really deeply personal, I wanted the actors to feel completely free, and I didn't want to get in the way, and so I would just stay at home. If Scott Cooper, the director, wanted or needed me there for something, I would try to make it. But I was on tour in Canada for the whole first month or so of the filming, and so I was out really out on the road quite a bit and working at that time.
Hey — a shout-out to my Canadian audience, who was incredible on that tour, just the best Canadian tour we ever had.
Speaking of , fans are fascinated by the idea of a full-band. It's become this mythical thing over the years. Well, I can tell you right now, it doesn't exist.
Really?No, we tried to do a few songs with the band for a few minor electric versions of 'Nebraska,' maybe something else, I'm not sure. But that record simply doesn't exist. There is no electric Nebraska outside of what you hear us performing onstage.
and have talked to me about running through a lot of the songs in the living room of Roy's house. I have no recollection of it, but I can tell you there's nothing in our vault that would amount to an electric Nebraska.
[Note: About a month after this interview took place, I turned my phone on after a plane ride and saw a missed call from an unfamiliar number in Freehold, New Jersey. I had a text from that number too: 'Hey Andy! Bruce Springsteen here. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. I checked our vault and there IS an electric Nebraska record though it does not have the full album of songs. All best, Bruce.']
Fans have fantasized about some sort of special show before the release of the movie where you play straight through, which you've never done before. Is that possible?I doubt I'll do it, but I could possibly go out and play that record straight through one day. I think that would be fun to do, and the fans would get a kick out of it. That's not off the table.
We talked last time about . Is that in the can?Yeah, that's finished, done. It's been finished for quite a while. Once again, timing. The covers records are things I make for my own amusement and entertainment when I'm not writing. It was just a project that I had a lot of fun doing. And I love all that music, I love all those songs and those singers. So I do have another one, and there's other covers things I've done that were not necessarily soul-related, so it's another project.
Are you writing songs now or thinking about your next record?Yeah, I have a record finished.
Is it with the E Street Band or is it solo?It's a solo record.
Is there anything you can say about it?No.
Do you think it'll be out next year?I would imagine it will come out in '26 sometime.
Besides Broadway, you haven't done a tour without the E Street Band in 19 years. Do you think you might do another solo tour at some point?Well, Broadway was 240 shows or something like that. But yeah, definitely, I will be doing that again at some point. I'm not sure what the music will be, but I'll have a lot to draw on because I'm making a lot of records. But at some point, I'd like to do that.
Is this summer run in Europe the end of the E Street Tour you started in early 2023?Yes. This next 15 or 16 shows are the official end of our 130-date E Street Tour. That's something debatable. Rather than do a 130-show stretch, which we did this time because we had been off for six years, so I had to get back in touch with my audience, and it was fun playing with the band … in the future, I think we'll probably play more often and less dates.
The fans in Australia are dying to see you down there.I'm doing my best as we speak to get down there, hopefully next year sometime. And I feel bad. I apologize to my Australian fans for not getting down on this stretch, but I want them to know that we are planning to get down there as soon as feasible, probably in the next year sometime.
The show you did last summer in Asbury Park was just an unbelievable night.Well, I put that in one of the top five or three shows we've ever done. That's how special it was for me anyway. And partly because I was in that town when there was no one there, when it was a ghost town. I mean, Asbury Park was a complete and utter ghost town for 30 years, and me and the guys were there. So to be there for its rebirth and when it came back to life, and to see that happen on that beach in front of us on a beautiful September night was one of the loveliest performing experiences of my life.
Is happening?Yes. Still a lot of music in the vault, and that's something that I've finished and is ready to be released. It's just a question of when we have time to put that out, considering that I have a variety of other things that I'm interested in releasing soon also. But you won't be waiting 25 years for the next Tracks album. I suppose it'll come out in the next three years or so.
Are there other full, unreleased albums on there?No, there are no complete albums. This is all music from different points in my work life that I've made, some with the band, without the band, some that go way back. At that point, the vault will be not completely empty, but virtually empty. There will be really not more, which I'm sort of excited about doing, finally getting all the music that I have and have recorded out to my fans.
During the George W. Bush presidency, you wrote a lot of songs about the agony and insanity of that time. Are you tempted to write songs about this political era we're living through?Well, I think I'm inspired to sing about it. As of yet, I haven't been inspired to write about it. Whether I will or will not be, I don't know. But obviously we're living through an American tragedy, and I believe we will come out intact. The country is not like other countries that have had authoritarian histories. We have a democratic history, and I believe that will rear its head again. That is not a tradition that I believe is going to disappear overnight regardless of how hard somebody tries to subvert it.
You're not losing hope?No, no, no. Got to have hope, man. I got to have hope.
When we , you said that 'the light from the oncoming train focuses the mind?' Do you feel that even more at this age?Yes. You realize time is finite, and your performing time is finite now. And I feel like if you come to see the band, you see a band at the top of their game. We played different in 1980. We played different in 1975. There was a different youthful energy that you have at that particular moment. But the depths and resonance and experience that we've had over the past 50 years of playing together has really come to the fore right now in our performance. And the band is just completely badass onstage at this moment. So, it's very exciting to play with the E Street Band now, and I'm looking forward to doing a good deal of it in the future. But that future is finite.
There are nights I look at Max near the end of the set and I think 'How on earth is this man still going?'Well, Max, I believe has refined a technique where he is able to do that, which is amazing to me. I tell people, 'Look, I come out and I have a brief breath in between songs because I like to keep the show just constantly moving.' Max doesn't get that because I say, 'Max, while we're taking these five seconds, keep playing.' So the guy comes out and plays basically for three hours straight without stopping. He stops, maybe there's 30 seconds where he gets to take a sip of water twice, two or three times during the night. So Max is a human marvel, and he's a great blessing in my life and in my work life.
I often think about the crazy luck of putting an ad in the looking for a drummer and keyboardist, and Max and Roy show up.Yeah. And they really defined an enormous part of the band sound where Roy Bittan's keyboards are very distinctive to E Street Band, as is Max's drumming. So, you got to have a little luck with you when you're going for the long haul also. I had some good luck. Those were some lucky days.
Do you hope to be like Pete Seeger and still be onstage in your nineties playing your music?Oh, absolutely. I mean, I knew Pete, and Pete had a lot of energy. And when his voice began to go, he simply found another way to do it. I think, was it his cousin or something who would play alongside him? Pete understood that people were coming to experience his spirit, which was as strong as could be.
He's a great role model.He certainly is, as is Willie Nelson, as were a lot of the fathers [of rock] who played well into their eighties. And the Stones are a great inspiration right now. I think the Stones are playing better than they've ever played, as is Paul McCartney. And Bob Dylan is out there. So these guys, they're a little in front of me, and they're showing, 'Hey, it's not time to sleep yet. There's many miles to go.'
So there will be no farewell tour?No.
Best of Rolling Stone
Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs
The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs
All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked