Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (32 page)
On the sleevenote to your
Hits
collection you describe “Born to Run” as your shot at the title, a 25-year-old’s attempt to craft “the greatest record ever made.” How do you feel about it today?
Oh, I don’t know, I can’t listen to it objectively, it’s too caught up in my life. I don’t sit around listening to my work, I’d be insane if I did, I’d be crazy. I like it as a record but, right now, it’s hard for me to hear it because it’s caught up with so many other things.
It’s a really good song. The way I would record it now would be a lot different, probably not as good, because I would be afraid of going over the top, and there’s a moment to go completely over the top and push the edge of things.”
Your relationship with “Born in the U.S.A.” is like Dylan’s with “Like a Rolling Stone,” trying to grasp back the song’s real meaning rather than allowing it to become a faceless anthem. It wasn’t just Ronald Reagan (who tried to claim it as an effective endorsement of his jingoistic agenda) who misinterpreted the song
.
The record of it I still feel is very good and I wouldn’t change it or want it to be different. I wouldn’t want the version that I’m doing now to have come out at that time. At that particular moment, it was how I heard it and it happened in a couple of takes.
You put your music out and it comes back to you in a variety of different ways through your audience. But a songwriter always has the opportunity to go out and reclarify or reclaim his work; it pushes you to be inventive. I think the version I have now … for me, at least, it’s the best version I’ve done of the song, I suppose it’s the truest, y’know. It’s got it all—everything it needs to be understood at the moment.”
You write a lot about killers—people like the death-row inmate played by Sean Penn in
Dead Man Walking
[Springsteen’s title song for the Tim Robbins–directed movie has just been Oscar-nominated] and the slayer in “Nebraska.” Have you ever met a real-life killer? Is it necessary, to do your job right?
No, you’re not trying to re-create the experience, you’re trying to recreate the emotions and the things that went into the action being taken. Those are things that everyone understands, those are things that everyone has within them. The action is the symptom, that’s what happened, but the things that caused that action to happen, that’s what everyone knows about—you know about it, I know about it. It’s inside of every human being.
Those are the things you gotta mine, that’s the well that you gotta dip into and, if you’re doing that, you’re going to get something central and fundamental about those characters.”
So it’s just coincidence that you currently look like the character Sean Penn plays in the movie?
I do? I didn’t realise that. Help! I’m going home … I don’t have as much hair as he does, for a start.”
In the aftermath of the success of “Streets of Philadelphia,” Springsteen spoke with the editor of the
Advocate
, a national magazine devoted to gay and lesbian issues. Springsteen discusses gay rights and his attitudes toward sexual preferences and cultural conformity. As for parenting, Springsteen admits that “accepting the idea that your child has his own life is the hardest thing to do.”
“The bonus I got out of writing ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ was that all of a sudden I could go out and meet some gay man somewhere and he wouldn’t be afraid to talk to me and say, ‘Hey, that song really meant something to me.’ My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights,” says rock’s most thoughtful megastar, Bruce Springsteen. Sitting in the dimly lit living room of a West Hollywood hotel suite, the man the world calls “the Boss” is talking about his 1994 Oscar and Grammy Award–winning song from the film
Philadelphia
—a song detailing the feelings of a gay man facing the final turmoil of his struggle with AIDS.
Now, with his second Oscar-nominated song, “Dead Man Walkin’,” and his stark new acoustic album,
The Ghost of Tom Joad
, the 46-year-old Springsteen seems relieved to have returned once again to the deliberately noncommercial core of his best social-commentary songwriting skills. Like “Streets of Philadelphia” and 1982’s daring
Nebraska
—recorded on his home tape recorder—Springsteen’s latest album and tour strip his muscular stadium rock down to a dark one-man stage show. No E Street Band, no mania-driven masses waving lighters from the balconies and shrieking “Bru-u-u-ce!” Just Springsteen, alone onstage, singing out from the shadows of all that’s gone wrong between people in the world today.
For many skeptics, the idea of a hard-core rocker from the mean streets of New Jersey growing up, growing rich, and aligning himself with those who have not is pretty far-fetched. Yet that’s essentially the Springsteen way. Although he has sold millions of albums, filled thousands of concert arenas, and won mantelsful of Grammy and American Music awards, over the years he’s still managed to lend his support directly or indirectly to people and causes as diverse as Amnesty International, feeding the starving in Africa (“We Are the World”), the plight of immigrants, AIDS awareness, and the struggles of gays and lesbians. “After Bruce supported me by appearing on my VH1 special last year, we became friends,” says out lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge. “I think the experience of having his song in
Philadelphia
led him to meet a lot of gay people and learn a lot about our lives. My girlfriend, Julie, is always with me when we go to his house, and he always treats us as a couple. I’ve often talked to him about my frustration over not being able to get legally married, and he’s always supportive and sympathetic.”
Springsteen’s own struggles with finding love and settling down have been well documented in both his songs and the press. After his herculean 11-year rise to superstardom—which began with
Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J
. in 1973 and culminated in 1984 with
Born in the U.S.A
.—he married model-actress Julianne Phillips. The marriage ended in the tabloids four years later when Springsteen fell in love with his backup singer, Patti Scialfa. They were married in 1991 and have three children.
You think you’ll win another Oscar for your song “Dead Man Walkin’ ”?
[
Laughing
] Oh, I don’t know. When those Disney pictures are out there [
Pocahontas
], you don’t stand a chance. “Dead Man Walking” is another song that’s pretty offbeat, so I am not really expecting one.
Still, offbeat subject matter served you well in “Streets of Philadelphia.” You say you’re pleased that gays and lesbians began approaching you after that song?
Oh, yeah! I had people come up to me in the streets or in restaurants and say, “I have a friend” or “I have a lover” or “I have a partner” or “I have a son.”
Why do you think Jonathan Demme—the director—asked you to write a song for
Philadelphia
?
Demme told me that
Philadelphia
was a movie he was making “for the malls.” I’m sure that was one of the reasons why he called me, I think he wanted to take a subject that people didn’t feel safe with and were frightened by and put it together with people that they did feel safe with like Tom Hanks or me or Neil Young. I always felt that was my job.
How could you make people feel safe?
When I first started in rock, I had a big guys audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid ’80s.
But why could you reach them?
I knew where the fear came from. I was brought up in a small town, and I basically received nothing but negative images about homosexuality—very bad. Anybody who was different in any fashion was castigated and ostracized, if not physically threatened.
Did you have some personal inspiration for the song?
I had a very close friend who had sarcoma cancer and died right around that time. For me, it was a very devastating experience, being close to illness of that magnitude. I had never experienced what it calls on or asks of the people around the person who is so ill. Part of that experience ended up in the song.
You caught a particular isolation that many gay AIDS patients experience. When there are walls between people and there is a lack of acceptance, you can reach for that particular kind of communion: “Receive me, brother” is the lyric in the last verse
.
That’s all anybody’s asking for—basically some sort of acceptance and to not be left alone. There was a certain spiritual stillness that I wanted
to try to capture. Then I just tried to send in a human voice, as human a voice as I possibly could. I wanted you to be in somebody’s head, hearing their thoughts—somebody who was on the cusp of death but still experiencing the feeling of being very alive.
Were you surprised the song was a hit?
I would never have thought in a million years it was going to get radio airplay. But people were looking for things to assist them in making sense of the AIDS crisis, in making human connections. I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
Because you come from the streets of New Jersey, was there a personal journey for you in accepting and learning about homosexuality? Did it ever frighten you?
I don’t know if frighten would be the right word. I was pretty much a misfit in my own town, so I didn’t buy a lot of those negative attitudes. Sure, you are affected and influenced by them. But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got. I guess the main thing was that the gay image back then was the ’50s image, the town queen or something, and that was all anyone really knew about homosexuality. Everybody’s attitudes were quite brutal. It was that real ugly part of the American character.
When you said you were a misfit, what did you mean?
Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks—and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves. So, no, I didn’t feel a part of those homophobic ideas. Also, I started to play in clubs when I was 16 or 17, and I was exposed to a lot of different lifestyles and a lot of different things. It was the ’60s, and I was young, I was open-minded, and I wasn’t naturally intolerant. I think the main problem was that nobody had any real experience with gay culture, so your impression of it was incredibly narrow.
So you actually met gay people?
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody’s different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous [
laughs
]. I did pretty good with it.
Because of your macho rock image, I didn’t know if you were going to tell me, “Oh, yeah, there were years when I didn’t want anybody to feel that I had any sympathy for that.”
No, I always felt that amongst my core fans—because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid ’80s that was sort of a bump on the scale—they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work. Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music. If my work was about anything, it was about the search for identity, for personal recognition, for acceptance, for communion, and for a big country. I’ve always felt that’s why people come to my shows, because they feel that big country in their hearts.
You mean a country big enough for everyone?
Yes. Unfortunately, once you get a really big audience, then people come for a lot of different reasons. And they can misunderstand the songs.
You even had to deal with President Reagan thinking “Born in the U.S.A.” was about his values
.
Yes, at that one point the country moved to the right, and there was a lot of nastiness, intolerance, and attitudes that gave rise to more intolerance. So I’m always in the process of trying to clarify who I am and what I do. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.
On
The Ghost of Tom Joad
, you have a song, “Balboa Park,” and in it you say, “Where the men in their Mercedes / Come nightly to employ … / The services of the border boys.” Are you talking about drugs or sex or both?
I’m talking about sex, hustling.
What do you know about this subject?
I read about it in a series of articles the
Los Angeles Times
did about border life. It fit into the rest of the subject matter in the album.
It’s impossible for most people to imagine the kind of fame you have. Everyone in the world knows who you are. Does it make you feel alienated?
The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for
you. People will say yes to anything you ask, so it’s basically down to you and what you want or need. Yes, you can get isolated with an enormous amount of wealth and fame. You can get isolated with a six-pack of beer and a television set. I grew up in a community where plenty of people were isolated in that fashion.
How do you keep your personal life connected to the real world?
Over the years I think you may have to strive for some normalcy. Like you need to say, “Hey, I’m not going to lock myself up in my house tonight. I’m going to go to the movies or maybe down to a club or take my kids to Universal Studios.”
What keeps you connected?
You have to want to be included. I always saw myself as the kid who got the guitar and was going to hold it for a while and play it and pass it on to somebody else. I always saw a lot of myself in my audience.
But that changed when you got so big
.
True, and by anybody’s measure I have an extravagant lifestyle. But I never felt that I’ve lost myself in it. I want to feel that essential spiritual connection that you make with your deep audience, your true audience.