Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (53 page)
The frightened man. Yeah. They had to go from that very—you know, the running man. And they had to start there. The doubting man. The guy who, whoa, he’s not sure about the next step he’s gonna take. And
move out into the other stories. And really, I approached the freedom songs …
Are the freedom songs, for you, “We Shall Overcome” and “Eyes on the Prize”? Do you include “O Mary Don’t You Weep” in that?
Yeah, you would, you would. That starts out, the same thing—most of the stuff, it’s that I’ve got to find … you, the singer, you have to find your individual place in it. Where’s the story?
Did you read the
New Yorker
story about Pete Seeger?
I haven’t seen it yet, no.
Well, it’s very interesting, because that writer makes an interesting contrast—I don’t even know if he intended to, it was just sort of laying there on the page. I think he intended to. It’s a very good story for anybody out there who hasn’t read it. But he talks about Pete almost trying to become transparent in these songs—I don’t mean anonymous, I mean to let the song come through him, that that was his approach
.
And of course, you’re in here, you and the writer are talking, and you talk about finding
yourself
in the song. And that’s a different approach. And I think that’s why, if you listen to, say, your version of “Oklahoma Home” and Pete’s version of “Oklahoma Home,” Pete’s trying to let that guy come through. You’re
being
the guy
.
Well, I think that whenever I say sort of “finding myself,” it’s not quite as simple as that. Because really, you’re trying to find your voice in that music, so that the character can come forth and tell his story again. All valuable stories need to be told over and over and over again. And at the same time, yeah, obviously, it’s that big collective “we” you’re always on the lookout for, and so [it might be] misleading when I say …
I understood what you meant, and that’s what I mean about finding yourself in the song is a way to give that character a life
.
Yeah, and I do it with all the songs—on
Tom Joad
and
Nebraska
, everything I write, if it works, those mechanics have to be in place. Because it’s the thing that connects the singer to the singers, and to the audience … and makes those walls as porous as can be. So those are the elements, whether it’s
The Rising
or anything else, I’m always on the lookout for.
But the way to get to it, once again, is you’ve gotta—there’s no cheap
way to get to it! You gotta pay. The way you pay your dues on every song is by digging up the piece of you that has felt that frightened, that uncomfortable, that disempowered, that scared, that lonely, and that angry. That’s the price of admission if you want things to fly. And then everybody starts singin’ and talkin’, and the song comes to life, and the character emerges and comes to life.
Well, this is making me think about “John Henry” because I’ve heard—well,
everybody
has heard “John Henry,” since
they
were a little baby. This one’s different. That’s the triumph, when Polly picks up the hammer at the end, it’s different, because it’s a personal triumph
.
Yeah, his story keeps being told, the hammer keeps being swung [
laughs
].
That’s the one song, when I was researching, I could never believe, it seems unquestioned: this
really
happened. Well, I don’t know about the Polly part, obviously, but it really happened—some guy took this on! It’s one of the most amazing things in American history to me, that somebody did that. To try to save his job [
laughs
]
.
The version I read—which is funny, this is a song I heard many other times in different guises, but I didn’t remember the verse about Polly. I said, that’s a cool verse! [
Laughs
] And it does lift the song to a different place, because the hammer continues to be swung.
And anybody can swing it
.
Yeah—who’s next? Anybody can. And that’s the beauty of folk music, and the stuff that Pete has handed down. And obviously Bob Dylan and everybody else.
Well, Bob sort of hovers around the fringes of this thing, doesn’t he? You’ve got the one song, “Froggie,” that you and he have both done now
.
Bob is the father of my country, so … [
Laughs
]
The old, weird America
.
And the one that I know! The one that I recognize. He was the guy who really first gave me a vision of my country that I recognized. Wasn’t the one I got in history books in school; it wasn’t the one that I was hearing
completely on pop radio. Bob was the guy that really laid out the first map of America that was, I think, understandable and felt real and true. And so, a lot of us are running to this day on that inspiration. And so he’s just always there.
But I think, for another generation, so are you. Not because you made this record, but because in a lot of ways you describe an America for people now that—you know,
The Rising
is part of that.
Devils & Dust
is part of that
.
That was something that the guys that I loved—you know, Frank Sinatra did it. Hank Williams did it. Woody Guthrie did it. Bob Dylan did it. Elvis did it. James Brown did it, big time!
Maybe that’s the circle on the beach where you belong, Bruce!
Curtis Mayfield. Marvin Gaye. Public Enemy. So, you have those seminal musicians that come along that—the Band, obviously—that for one reason or another want to tell that story. Those are the guys that I admired, and those are the things that I aspired to. And they still really are, you know? I just want to tell my part of that story—I want to be part of that story, I want to be a part of that circle on the beach [
laughs
].
Well, I think you are, and it’s a big beach that runs the length of the country, so, we’re all lucky to share it with you
.
In his second interview with Phillips, Springsteen was in the midst of rehearsing with the E Street Band for their first outing since
The Rising
, as they prepared for the
Magic
tour. He discusses songs he hasn’t played live in decades, like “The Price You Pay” and “Crush on You,” as well as the then-impending
Magic
album: “We’ve got a record that’s gonna play really great live. It’s just built for it.” Approaching 60, Springsteen is acutely aware of the passage of time—though he promises he will never do a farewell tour—and deeply appreciative of the long run he has had with the same band members. Sadly, it would be Danny Federici’s final tour. The organist of the E Street Band would succumb to melanoma on April 17, 2008.
So—the E Street Band is back!
Yeah—it’s pretty exciting. We’ve been having fun.
Gearing up for the tour now, how much of a vision do you have in advance? When you go in to rehearse, do you have things planned out in your head?
No, I don’t, really. What do we do—we kind of pick up a little bit where we left off. First of all, we start playing just to feel the machine again [
laughs
]. You’ve gotta drive it a little bit before you push the envelope on it.
So you take a few laps
.
Yeah. You know, we’ll get in, and we may run through a few things we know, just to reacquaint ourselves with the sound and the power of the band. How it moves underneath you, and everything. That’s sort of the first thing I do, is I refit myself into that bucket seat, you know? “
Oh
yeah, okay, now I remember …” And that takes all of about 15 minutes.
And then you just start. I’ll probably go in with a general idea: maybe I’ll have a general list of some songs I know I want to play, maybe there will be some things I’m not thinking of playing. But we leave the door very open, because over the course of a long tour, we end up playing so many songs … I don’t know, I think there were 120 or something we played on the last tour? [149!—Ed.] So it’s a very open door.
I think the initial thing you try to do is, you try to place your new work, to find a place for a lot of your new work. Obviously, you’re excited about that. I’m excited about it. We have some stuff—not
some
stuff, we’ve got a
record
that’s gonna play really great live. It’s just built for it. I wrote with a lot of melody, and with a lot of hooks, and there’s a lot of band power behind the stuff that I wrote this time out. So I’m excited to hear that come straight off the band.
I’ll begin by just starting to play some things, and once you get comfortable with the playing of them, then you search for their context. You start making connections between the songs you have from your past work and some of the new songs. You’re in search of
the show
. So once we start playing the things really well, then we go in search of how we’re going to present it this time out. You go searching for the show: what collection of songs, what’s feeling right, the balance between [old and new].
I like to play a lot of new stuff. We played a lot of
The Rising
on the [2002–2003] tour, that was pretty consistent. Because once again, it was stuff that just played really well live. We’ve got that again in spades on this record.
And would you say it’s wall-to-wall that way? I remember on the
Rising
tour, there were a few songs like “Paradise” that took a while to come out. Do you think this whole record is going to play pretty initially?
There are always the things that draw you in more than come out and grab you, I suppose, I always have some of that. And then you’ve got to see what people respond to. I have a
good
idea, but it’s still a conversation with your audience. And when they start listening, and talking back, then different things come to the front.
And that’s one thing that’s been pretty consistent with your tours over the years, is that you seem to come out with something in mind, and there’s always the evolution that occurs as you continue
.
Yeah, we’ll come up with a show, and we may play that pretty steadily for the first series of gigs, because we’re getting our feet underneath us. And then somewhere along the way, things start to loosen up—it’s a pretty natural progression. Until we get to the end, where it gets … I still try to keep a schematic that remains centered around our newest material, but also you start to open up to your whole body of work. And that’s always fun to do, too.
On the last few tours, at a certain point a lot of the experience really became about the songbook—I was thrilled on the
Devils & Dust
tour when you wound up playing every song from
Tunnel of Love
, and I think a lot of other people were, too. Were there some discoveries there that you think you’ll bring to this tour?
That
Tunnel of Love
record had a lot of good songs on it! [
Laughs
] And I think we only touched on it on the
Rising
tour. Toward the end of it, we started to play “Tunnel of Love” and some other things from it—I remember it was fun bringing some of that stuff back. But it’s hard to say until we get into it. I don’t know, I don’t like to go in with any rigid ideas; these days I try to remain as fluid as possible. I’m interested in seeing where the music is going to take us, and where the band feels best. And that shifts slightly as the tour goes on, and obviously we try to make the shows unique, and it all falls into place. But I’ve got a lot of songs, obviously, that I’m carrying around at this point, and it’s fun to get to them as the tour passes.
I think back to ’88, when you came out on the
Tunnel
tour and kind of chucked a lot of the stuff that had become rote. And since then, you’ve tended to start off some tours with some resolutions, like “We’re not playing ‘Rosalita,’ ” or on
Devils & Dust
, “I won’t be playing ‘Thunder Road.’ ” Anything on your mind that you’re
not
going to play this time?
It depends on what feels right. I mean, those are songs I’m sure we’re not going to be playing every night. But I wouldn’t go into the tour saying I’m never going to play anything at this particular point. I mean, stuff comes up, and if something feels right for a stretch of shows … we played “Rosalita” over that last piece of the
Rising
tour, we played it during the summer. And that was fun, bringing that back. It’s fun to bring it back, but the band is currently making too much good music to sort of lock yourself into anything. And particularly something like that … yeah, it’s got some miles on it! [
Laughs
] A lot of those songs, they have some miles on them, so I tend to treat them like that: Like, “Oh, no, this song has served its purpose and done its job well.” So it’s a horse I’ll call in every once in a while.
Well, one horse you haven’t called in for a while is “The Price You Pay”—I know a lot of people have been hoping to hear that one
.
Yeah, I have no idea why—it’s become a thing just because I
haven’t
played it. If I had played it, nobody would give much of a damn if they heard it or not! [
Laughs
] Just because it
hasn’t been played
.
So you kind of keep that going, don’t you?
Well, you start to get into that thing, which I don’t like very much, like: “Oh, man, I’m gonna be there the night …” you know, “I was there the night he played …” [
Laughs
] I don’t run by those rules very much. If I haven’t played something, it’s usually because I don’t
want
to.
But no particular reason for not bringing that one back?
No specific reason—I’m sure if you searched the catalog, maybe there’s other things that we haven’t played, too. You know, my recollection is that it’s been a while since we’ve played “Crush on You” [
laughs
]. And I’m not sure that one’s going to be popping up in the set any time soon, either, you know?