Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (18 page)

In a lot of ways,
The River
feels like the end of a cycle. Certain ideas that began with the second and third albums have matured and a lot of the contrasts and contradictions have been—not resolved—but they’ve been heightened
.

On this album, I just said, “I don’t understand these things. I don’t see where all these things fit. I don’t see how all these things can work together.” It was because I was always focusing in on some small thing; when I stepped back, they made a sense of their own. It was just a situation of living with all those contradiction. And that’s what happens. There’s never any resolution. You have moments of clarity, things become clear to you that you didn’t understand before. But there’s never any making ends meet or finding any time of longstanding peace of mind about something.

That’s sort of like “Wreck on the Highway,” where, for the first time in your songs, you’ve got the nightmare and the dream in a package
.

That was a funny song. I wrote that song real fast, in one night. We came in and played a few takes of it and that’s pretty much what’s on the album, I think. That’s an automatic song, a song that you don’t really think about, or work on. You just look back and it sorta surprises you.

On this record, it also feels like you’re relying a lot more on your instincts, the sort of things that happen on stage
.

Yeah, that’s what happens the most to make the record different. A lot of it is real instinctive. “Hungry Heart” I wrote in a half hour, or ten minutes, real fast. All the rockers—“Crush on You,” “You Can Look,” “Ramrod”—were all written very quickly, from what I can remember. “Wreck on the Highway” was; “Stolen Car” was. Most of the songs were, sit down and write ’em. There weren’t any songs where I worked—“Point Blank” I did, but actually those last two verses I wrote pretty quickly. “The River” took awhile. I had the verses, I never had any chorus, and I didn’t have no title for a long time.

But you always had the basic arrangement?

No, on that song, I had these verses, and I was fooling around with the music. What gave me the idea for the title was a Hank Williams song, I think it’s “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” where he goes down to the river to jump in and kill himself, and he can’t because it dried up. So I was just sitting there one night, thinking, and I just thought about this song, “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” and that’s where I got the chorus. [Actually, he’s referring to “Long Gone, Lonesome Blues”—D.M.]

I love that old country music. All during the last tour that’s what I listened to a whole lot—I listened to Hank Williams. I went back and
dug up all his first sessions, the gospel kind of stuff that he did. That and the first real Johnny Cash record with “Give My Love to Rose,” “I Walk the Line,” “Hey Porter,” “Six Foot High and Risin’,” “I Don’t Like It But I Guess Things Happen That Way.” That and the rockabilly.

There was a certain something in all that stuff that just seemed to fit in with things that I was thinking about, or worrying about. Especially the Hank Williams stuff. He always has all that conflict, he always has that real religious side, and the honky tonkin’, all that side. There’s a great song, “Settin’ the Woods on Fire.” That thing is outrageous. That’s “Ramrod,” that had some of that in it. And “Cadillac Ranch.”

Earlier, you said that “Ramrod” was one of the saddest things you’d written. Why?

[
Laughs
] Well, it’s so anachronistic, you know. The character—it’s impossible, what he wants to do. One of the ideas of it, when I wrote it, it was sort of like a partner to “Cadillac Ranch” and a few things, it’s got that old big engine sound. That song is a goddam
gas
guzzler [
laughing
]. And that was the sound I wanted, that big, rumbling, big engine sound. And this guy, he’s there, but he’s really
not
there no more. He’s the guy in “Wreck on the Highway”—either guy, actually. But he’s also the guy, in the end, who says, “I’ll give you the word, now, sugar, we’ll go ramroddin’ forevermore.” I don’t know; that’s a real sad line to me, sometimes.

If you believe it, you mean
.

Yeah, but it’s a funny kinda thing. I love it when we play that song on stage. It’s just a happy song, a celebration of all that stuff that’s gonna be gone—is gone already, almost.

I threw that song ten million times off the record. Ten million times I threw it off
Darkness
and I threw it off this one, too. Because I thought it was wrong.

You mentioned something similar about “Out in the Street,” that it was too much of a fantasy to possibly believe it
.

I was just wary of it at that time, I guess for some of the same reasons. It always seemed anachronistic, and at the time, I was demanding of all the songs that they be able to translate. All the characters, they’re part of my past, they’re part of the future and they’re part of the present. And I guess there was a certain frightening aspect to seeing one that wasn’t part of the future. He was part of the past.

To me, that was the conflict of that particular song. I loved it, we used to play it all the time. And there was that confusion too. Well, if I love playing the damn thing so much, why the hell don’t I want to put it on the record?

I guess I always made sure that the characters always had that foot planted up ahead somewhere. Not just the one back there. That’s what makes ’em viable, or real, today. But I also knew a lotta people who were exactly like this. So I said, well, that’s OK. There was just a point where I said, that’s OK, to a lot of things where I previously would not have said so.

I gained a certain freedom, in making the two record set, because I could let all those people out, that usually I’d put away. Most of the time, they’d end up being my favorite songs, and probably some of my best songs, you know.

You mean the kind of songs that would show up on stage, but not on record? [
“Fire,” “Because the Night,” “Sherry Darling”
]

Yeah. I’m the kind of person, I think a lot about everything. Nothin’ I can do about it. It’s like, I’m a thinkin’ fool. That’s a big part of me. Now, the other part is, I can get onstage and cut that off and be super-instinctive. To be a good live performer, you have to be instinctive. It’s like, to walk in the jungle, or to do anything where there’s a certain tightrope wire aspect you need to be instinctive. And you have to be comfortable at it also.

Like tonight, I was falling on my head. I wasn’t
worryin’
about it. I just went, it just happened [
laughs
]. You just think, what happens next? When I was gonna jump on that speaker, I couldn’t worry about whether I was gonna make it or not. You can’t. You just gotta do it. And if you do, you do, and if you don’t, you don’t, and then something else happens. That’s the point of the live performance.

Now, when I get into the studio, both things operate. When we perform on this record, I feel that we have that thing going that we’ve got live. To me, we’re not rockin’ that stuff better live than a lot of it is on the record. I can still listen to it. Usually, two weeks after we’re out on the road, I cannot listen to my record anymore. ’Cause as soon as I hear some crappy tape off the board, it sounds ten times better than what we spent all that time doing in the studio. This is the very first album that I’ve been able to go back and put on to play, and it sounds good to me.

But in the studio, I’m conceptual. I have a self-consciousness. And there’s a point where I often would try to stop that. “No, that’s bad. Look at these great records, and I betcha they didn’t think about it like this, or think about it this long.” You realize that it doesn’t matter. That’s unimportant, it’s ridiculous. I got into a situation where I just said, “Hey, this is what I do, and these are my assets and these are my burdens.” I got comfortable with myself being that kind of person.

But only after going to extremes.
Darkness
is the least spontaneous of your records
.

That’s right. And it’s funny because “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” that cut is live in the studio. “Streets of Fire” is live in the studio, essentially. “Factory” is live. It’s not a question of how you actually do it. The idea is to
sound
spontaneous, not be spontaneous.

So at this point, I just got settled into accepting certain things that I’ve always been uncomfortable with. I stopped setting limits and definitions—which I always threw out anyway, but which I’d always feel guilty about. Spending a long time in the studio, I stopped feeling bad about that. I said, that’s me, that’s what I do. I work slow, and I work slow for a reason: To get the results that I want.

When you try to define what makes a good rock and roll record, or what is rock and roll, everyone has their own personal definition. But when you put limits on it, you’re just throwing stuff away.

Isn’t one of your definitions that it’s limitless?

I think it is. That’s my definition, I guess. Hey, you can go out in the street and do the twist and that’s rock and roll. It’s the moment, it’s all things [
laughs
]. It’s funny, to me, it just is.

You know, my music utilizes things from the past, because that’s what the past is for. It’s to learn from. It’s not to limit you, you shouldn’t be limited by it, which I guess was one of my fears on “Ramrod.” I don’t want to make a record like they made in the ’50s or the ’60s or the ’70s. I want to make a record like today, that’s right now.

To do that, I go back, back further all the time. Back into Hank Williams, back into Jimmie Rodgers. Because the human thing in those records, that should be at least the heart of it. The human thing that’s in those records is just beautiful and awesome. I put on that Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers stuff and Wow! What inspiration!
It’s got that beauty and the purity. The same thing with a lot of the great ’50s records, and the early rockabilly. I went back and dug up all the early rockabilly stuff because … what mysterious people they were.

There’s this song, “Jungle Rock” by Hank Mizell.
Where is Hank Mizell?
What happened to him? What a mysterious person, what a ghost. And you put that thing on and you can see him. You can see him standing in some little studio, way back when, and just singing that song. No reason [
laughs
]. Nothing gonna come out of it. Didn’t sell. That wasn’t no Number One record, and he wasn’t playin’ no big arena after it, either.

But what a moment, what a mythic moment, what a mystery. Those records are filled with mystery; they’re shrouded with mystery. Like these wild men came out from somewhere, and man, they were so
alive
. The joy and the abandon. Inspirational, inspirational records, those records.

You mentioned earlier that when you went into the arenas that you were worried about losing certain things
.

I was afraid maybe it would screw up the range of artistic expression that the band had. Because of the lack of silence. A couple things happened. Number one, it’s a rock and roll show. People are gonna scream their heads off whenever they feel like it. That’s fine—happens in theatres, happens in clubs [
laughs
]. Doesn’t matter where the hell it is, happens every place, and that’s part of it, you know.

On this tour, it’s been really amazing, because we’ve been doing all those real quiet songs. And we’ve been able to do ’em. And then we’ve been able to rock real hard and get that thing happening from the audience. I think part of the difference is that the demands that are made on the audience now are much heavier, much heavier on the audience that sees us now than on the last tour.

But the moment you begin to depend on audience reaction, you’re doing the wrong thing. You’re doin’ it wrong, it’s a mistake, it’s not right. You can’t allow yourself, no matter what, to depend on them. I put that mike out to the crowd, you have a certain faith that somebody’s gonna yell somethin’ back. Some nights it’s louder than other nights and some nights they do, and some songs they don’t. But that’s the idea. I think when you begin to expect a reaction, it’s a mistake. You gotta have your thing completely together—boom! right there with you. That’s what makes nights special and what makes nights different from other nights.

On the other hand, the only way to do a really perfect show is to involve that audience. Maybe an audience only gets lazy if the performer doesn’t somehow keep it on its toes
.

I’m out there for a good time and to be inspired at night, and to play with my band and to rock those songs as hard as we can rock ’em. I think that you can have some of the best nights under the very roughest conditions. A lotta times, at Max’s or some of the clubs down in Jersey, they’d be sittin’ on their hands or nobody wants to dance, and the adversity is a positive motivation.

The only concern is that what’s being done is being done the way it should be done. The rest you don’t have control over. But I think that our audience is the best audience in the world. The amount of freedom that I get from the crowd is really a lot.

The way the stage show is organized is that the first half is about work and struggling; the second half is about joy, release, transcending a lot of those things in the first half. Is that conscious?

I knew that I wanted a certain feeling for the first set. That’s sorta the way it stacks up.

What you rarely get a sense of around rock bands is work, especially rock and roll as a job of work. Yet around this band, you can’t miss it
.

That’s at the heart of the whole thing. There’s a beauty in work and I love it, all different kinds of work. That’s what I consider it. This is my job, and that’s my work. And I work my ass off, you know.

In Los Angeles one night, when you introduced “Factory,” you made a distinction between two different kinds of work. Do you remember it?

There’s people that get a chance to do the kind of work that changes the world, and make things really different. And then there’s the kind that just keeps the world from falling apart. And that was the kind that my dad always did. ’Cause we were always together as a family, and we grew up in a … good situation, where we had what we needed. And there was a lot of sacrifice on his part and my mother’s part for that to happen …