Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen (36 page)
Do you think you’ve extended your audience to include some of the kinds of people that you’re writing about now: Mexican immigrants, homeless people? Do you feel that you’re doing something for those people with your music?
There’s a difference between an emotional connection with them, like I think I do have, and a more physical, tangible impact. There was a point in the mid-eighties where I wanted to turn my music into some kind of activity and action, so that there was a practical impact on the communities that I passed through while I traveled around the country. On this last tour, I would meet a lot of the people who are out there on the front line—activists, legal advocates, social workers—and the people that they’re involved with. It varied from town to town, but we’d usually work with an organization that’s providing immediate care for people in distress, and then also we’d find an organization that’s trying to have some impact on local policy. It helped me get a sense of what was going on in those towns, and the circumstances that surround the people that I’m imagining in my songs, in the imagined community I create with my music.
I’m sure I’ve gotten a lot more out of my music than I’ve put in, but those meetings and conversations keep me connected so that I remember the actual people that I write about. But I wouldn’t call myself an activist. I’m more of a concerned citizen. I think I’d say that I’m up to my knees in it, but I’m not up to my ass!
I guess I’m—rock bottom—a concerned, even aroused observer, sort of like the main character of Ralph Ellison’s
Invisible Man
. Not that I’m invisible! But Ellison’s character doesn’t directly take on the world. He wants to see the world change, but he’s mainly a witness, a witness to a lot of blindness. I recently heard two teachers, one black and one white, talking about that novel, and it sure got to them; it’s what Ellison wanted it to be, it’s a great American story—and in a way we’re all part of it.
Releasing
Tracks
in 1998, a four-CD collection of largely unreleased recordings dating back to 1972, Springsteen termed the box set an “alternate route” for his career. With a paucity of explanatory liner notes, this in-depth interview with BBC producer Mark Hagen became vital to putting the contents of the collection in context. Delving into the whats and whys of these outtakes and B-sides, Springsteen reflects on his creative process and retraces his career in light of these lost songs. On the verge of reuniting with the E Street Band, he exclaims that playing rock ’n’ roll “is the greatest job in the world.”
That is definitely a deer. Fast-moving, hard to spot and not prepared to hang about and exchange pleasantries. Yes, a deer. And it’s running past the front door of Bruce Springsteen’s Thrill Hill Recording studios, a farmhouse on the fringes of his land deep in rural New Jersey. It’s a lovely old building, combining the hi-tech Springsteen now uses to make most of his recordings with a warm homey atmosphere, artfully distressed walls, comfy sofas, a roaring log fire, a fine collection of horse prints, an impressive selection of tequilas and bourbons. Currently in
residence is Patti Scialfa (otherwise known as Mrs. Springsteen), and we are discussing the finer points of
Bridget Jones’s Diary
.
An engine growl signals the arrival of an immaculately restored and customised 1948 Ford pick-up truck driven by her husband. He bowls into the room, tanned and smiling, with hair trimmed back to
River
levels and no sign of the
Tom Joad
goatee. With none of the “look at me” attitude that so often comes with the turf, Bruce has the kind of natural charisma that makes a room somehow seem more alive. Relaxed and friendly, the conversation moves to the finer things in life—the delights of vintage denim and old rockabilly records; the Mavericks, the Waco Brothers, the Clash and Dave Alvin; tattoos; the sartorial requirements of the British judicial system and the short stories of William Price Fox.
We’re here to talk about Springsteen’s long-hidden but now (partially) revealed artistic life, the fruits of which are, after years of fan requests and vague promises, collected in the
Tracks
box set. Springsteen recording sessions are epic occasions which have been known to stretch over several years before an album emerges, inevitably leaving behind dozens of fabulous songs gathering dust on the studio shelf. It’s from these that
Tracks
has been compiled. Initially a 6-CD set featuring 100 songs, it’s now emerged as a 4-CD, 66-song affair focusing, according to Bruce, on “songs that were part of specific albums, things that got left off the records that came out rather than songs that were recorded without a particular project in mind.” While this has meant the loss of material like “The Promise” (“I just didn’t have a take of it I was happy with”) and “The Fever” (“It was never one of my favourite songs anyway!”), what has emerged is a secret history of a man with a larger plan than we might have realised. Also on the horizon is
Songs
, a large collection of photos and lyrics which Springsteen has introduced, annotated and augmented with such fascinating curios as the original work sheet for “Prove It All Night” and the note to manager Jon Landau, suggesting that new song “Born in the U.S.A.” might have potential.
All this retrospection and, presumably, the death of his father earlier this year has cast Bruce in a more than usually reflective mood. In the past a reluctant interviewee, on this occasion he relaxes right into it and digs candidly and deep, his voice at times cracking with emotion. Springsteen is a mesmerising speaker, often circling a subject cautiously before honing in on it full-beam. Oh, and he laughs a lot too …
The first voice that we hear on
Tracks
is John Hammond, introducing your audition for Columbia. What do you remember of that day?
It was a big, big day for me. I’d played a lot of bars, a lot of different shows. I was 22 and came up on the bus with an acoustic guitar with no case which I’d borrowed from the drummer from the Castiles. I was embarrassed carrying it around the city. I walked into his office and had the audition and I played a couple of songs and he said, “You’ve got to be on Columbia Records. But I need to see you play. And I need to hear how you sound on tape.” Me and Mike Appel [his manager/publisher] walked all around the Village trying to find some place that would let somebody just get up on stage and play. We went to the Bitter End, it didn’t work out. We went to another club. And finally we went to the old Gaslight on MacDougal Street and the guy says, “Yeah, we have an open night where you can come down and play for half an hour.” There were about 10 people in the place and I played for about half an hour. John Hammond said, “Gee, that was great. I want you to come to the Columbia Recording Studio and make a demo tape.” A demo I made at Bill Graham’s studio in San Francisco in ’69 was the only other time I’d ever been in a real recording studio. Columbia was very old-fashioned: everybody in ties and shirts; the engineer was in a white shirt and a tie and was probably 50, 55 years old, it was just him and John and Mike Appel there, and he just hits the button and gives you your serial number, and off you go. I was excited. I felt I’d written some good songs and this was my shot. I had nothing to lose and it was like the beginning of something.
I knew a lot about John Hammond, the work he’d done, the people he’d discovered, his importance in music and it was very exciting to feel you were worth his time. No matter what happened afterwards, even if it was just for this one night, you were worth his time. That meant a lot to me. He was very encouraging—simply being in that room with him at the board was one of my greatest recording experiences.
How did you arrive at the sound on that audition tape?
I’d been in Steel Mill, which was basically a riff-oriented hard rock thing, and we took it to San Francisco. Drove across the country in a truck older than my ’48 out there, I was 19, it was 1969 and we auditioned at the Family Dogg, which was a well-known ballroom in San Francisco at the time. There was three bands, another band got the job and we thought we were robbed, blah blah, but we really weren’t. They were just better than us. I’d played a lot locally, and for a long time
hadn’t seen anybody better than I was, and I walked into that ballroom that afternoon, there was somebody better than we were. We played a few more shows but I knew that I was going to do something else.
We ran out of money, and scrambled our way back across the United States—I ended up in the back of this big flat-bed that we’d built a box on for two days, in the wintertime in a sleeping bag with my bass player and the equipment. We got back home and I started another band. I moved from hard rock to rhythm and blues–influenced music, and I began to write differently. We’d built a very large audience, sold out 3,000 seaters in a few places down South and in Jersey—an enormous audience for a band with no record—and we were able to live on it. A lot of that audience disappeared and I couldn’t keep it going. It became the Bruce Springsteen Band—basically me, Vini Lopez, Steve Van Zandt, Davey Sancious, Garry Tallent—which played initially at a place called the Student Prince, a bar in Asbury Park. But I’d lost my audience almost completely, so the first night we played, we charged a dollar at the door and that was our pay. The first night we made 15 bucks. The next week we made 30 and then when the place was jammed you could make 150, which spread five ways, three nights a week, was enough to keep you going.
Eventually I had some personal problems with this, that and the other thing and I decided I was going to California to make a living out there playing. But I really couldn’t do so—nobody really paid unknowns to play at that time. So I said, “Well, I’ve got to come back home because this is the only place I can really survive as a musician.” My parents didn’t have the kind of money where they could support you—they lived in a little apartment and you slept on the couch. I drove back to New Jersey and did some bar gigs and I started to think that I needed to approach the thing somewhat differently. I began to write music that would not have worked in a club, really. It required too much attention, too much listening, a certain kind of focus. But I felt if I was going to take a real shot at it, I was going to have to do something very distinctive and original. I wanted the independence, the individuality of a solo career, and that’s when I began to write some of the initial songs for
Greetings from Asbury Park
. I was living above this little out-of-business beauty salon with an old piano in the back, and at night I’d go down amid all the hair dryers and I wrote a bunch of the songs from that album.
I’d met Mike Appel before I’d gone to California and I was thinking, “Well, I know a guy in New York who’s connected to the music business.” Mike was enthusiastic and talked his way into an audition
with John Hammond through John’s secretary, which was a miracle as it was—John Hammond invited us in off the street just on his secretary’s hunch. I don’t know if that happens anymore but it was pretty amazing just to get in the door.
I had to have some slightly bigger idea about the music I was going to make, some different context. I’d always had a band but I also wrote acoustically on the side quite often, and occasionally I’d play that music in local coffee houses. But I focused on it and committed to it in a way that I hadn’t before. I’d stopped working in the bars and was strictly, strictly working on my writing, hoping that I was going to get somewhere, find somebody who was interested in it.
How did everybody react, then, when you started to bring the band in again?
I think the record John Hammond would have liked would have been one that the first four or five cuts from
Tracks
sound like. Maybe that exact thing, and, listening back, he may have been right. When I went back and listened through some of that music, it was a very austere presentation of those songs, probably more immediately connected to folk music. Which is really what it was—the music was an abstract expression of my direct experience where I lived in Asbury Park at the time and the kinds of characters that were around; they call them twisted autobiographies. Basically, it was street music.
The first few things on
Tracks
are really that in its rawest form. It’s funny—Patti never heard any of those things, and when she heard it she said I should have made the record like that. But Mike and his partner Jimmy [Cretecos] were always very production-oriented; they were big Cat Stevens fans at the time and he had these very enhanced acoustic records—everything was limited and compressed for a slightly hyped sound, and that’s the direction that
Greetings
went in. Also, I wanted a rhythm section—I wanted a
band
actually because I’d played with a group for a long time and knew that a big part of my abilities was to be able to use a band. So what we ended up doing was an acoustic record with a rhythm section, which was the compromise reached between the record company, everybody else and me.
I handed the finished record in and it was handed back. Clive Davis [Columbia Records boss] said there were no singles. So, because I’m in the music business now, I said, “OK, I’ll write some.” I went back home and wrote “Spirit in the Night” and “Blinded by the Light,” where I
moved back a little bit into the R&B that I had been working on earlier, so I said, “Hey, all right, let me try and find that sax player …” I’d met Clarence [Clemons] while I was playing in Asbury, but he was hard to find, which wasn’t that uncommon in those days. You’d see people, then you wouldn’t see them—no-one had addresses so sometimes months would go by before you saw them again. But I got hold of him and he came in and played on those two songs. So that’s how we filled the band out.
But listening back now, that pure, very straightforward presentation of those initial songs sounds a little truer to me now.
Did you find yourself writing songs for live performance, for a specific function?