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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Bruce Springsteen Talks with David Remnick
00:55:15
In October, 2016, Bruce Springsteen appeared at The New Yorker Festival for an intimate conversation with David Remnick. (The event sold out in six seconds.) This entire episode is dedicated to that conversation.
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- [00:09]
Announcer
From one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.
- [00:20]
David Remnick
Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
- [00:22]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I'm David Remnick.
- [00:23]
David Remnick
Every year the New Yorker throws a big festival that lasts the whole weekend. And in 2016, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an hour on stage with one of the great musicians of our time, one of the great human beings, really, somebody I've admired since I'm a kid, and I'm hardly the only one. This event sold out, I kid you not. In six seconds. I first set eyes on Bruce Springsteen in June of 1973. I was 14, a North Jersey boy, and I told my parents some outrageous lie about what I was doing.
- [00:55]
Bruce Springsteen
And.
- [00:56]
David Remnick
And I took a bus across the river all by myself to New York City. I had a $4 ticket to see a band called Chicago, which was a huge band at the time. And they had a big hit called 25 or 6 to 4. I have no idea what that means. And I climbed to the highest seat in Madison Square Garden, the blue seats, and out trundled the opening act, a skinny guitar slinger and songwriter from down the shore. And this guy was outrageous. He was like the white James Brown. He was singing, dancing, stabbing at his guitar, leading the band with a crazy urgency, bursting all the while through the indifference of a huge arena crowd that had not come to see him, they had come to see Chicago. And in every sense, he was brilliant. And soon things exploded. One reviewer wrote about him, and this is John Lando, who became his manager. I saw rock and roll's future, and that was the consensus view of Springsteen. In rock and roll circles, he was the future. And he was on the COVID of Time and Newsweek in the same week. And now, 40 years later, plus 20 Grammys, an Academy Award and a Presidential Medal of Freedom all behind him. Bruce Springsteen is starring on Broadway in a performance called Springsteen on Broadway. And in the show he performs solo and tells stories from his autobiography, Born to Run. The book, which came out in 2016, is as vivid as his songs, with that same pedal to the floor quality, and just as honest and intimate about the struggles in his own life.
- [02:26]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
Hello.
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Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Welcome, Bruce.
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Bruce Springsteen
Thanks so much.
- [02:40]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Let me ask you this. People tend to write their memoirs at different points in their lives. Barack Obama wrote his when he was, I think, barely in his 30s. You've waited. You've probably thought about this over the years. No. Why now?
- [02:58]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, I wanted to do it before I forgot everything, you know, so. So it's it's getting a little edgy with some of. So this was the time.
- [03:13]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Did you do any research? Did you think, oh, my, I forgot all about X, Y, or Z and I have to go look at the clips. Or John Landau's going to remind me, or Patty's going to remind me.
- [03:22]
Bruce Springsteen
I had a few friends. I called up buddy.
- [03:25]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
George Tadis was in the Castiles with me. I gave him a call, and we threw around some of the Castiles memories. But I didn't do much research on it.
- [03:34]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
No, you tell us at an incredibly revealing moment, just after a long passage about a really difficult time you had not too many years ago. You call it Condition Red. It was a prolonged depression. And then you break it off and you say, writing about yourself is a funny business. At the end of the day, it's just another story. The story you've chosen from all the events of your life. What did you feel that you couldn't write about? Because this is a pretty brutally honest book about yourself.
- [04:02]
Bruce Springsteen
That I couldn't write about.
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Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Yeah, I don't want to talk about that.
- [04:13]
Bruce Springsteen
If we could talk about it, I would have written about it.
- [04:17]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
It's just between us.
- [04:22]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, you know, I mean, basically, I tried to find a way I could write about most of my experience, you know. Once again, you had to find the right voice. And you had to find a voice you were comfortable in. Opening up your life and revealing parts.
- [04:37]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Of yourself that normally might feel awkward.
- [04:43]
Bruce Springsteen
And then, I suppose the trickiest part to write it was the third section of the book where it's all people you're living with and people you currently have a life with.
- [04:52]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And so you're a little more sensitive about that section. When Patti was very helpful with me.
- [04:59]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
There as a censor or.
- [05:02]
Bruce Springsteen
No, not really, she cut me a lot of slack and gave me a lot of room to express myself, you.
- [05:09]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Know, So I have to thank her for that.
- [05:14]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
T bone Burnett once said that rock and roll is one long scream of Daddy.
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Bruce Springsteen
I believe that's true. You know, it's true in my case, anyway.
- [05:28]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And I. And your father and his. The reality of your relationship and his difficulties and the anxiety it caused you when you're young. And its afterlife and its profound influence on your work is a dominant part of this book. And I wondered if you could read. There's a passage on page. In fact 29, we discussed before we came in.
- [05:50]
Bruce Springsteen
Yep.
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Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Get out those reading glasses.
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Bruce Springsteen
Put those cameras down. I only use them in bed.
- [06:06]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
What? Hey, there it is.
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Bruce Springsteen
All right. Okay. Here we go. Unfortunately, my dad's desire to engage with.
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Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Me always came after the nightly religious ritual of the sacred six pack. It was one beer after another in the pitch dark of our kitchen. It was always then that he wanted to see me. It was always the same. A few moments of feigned parental concern for my well being, followed by the real deal, the hostility and raw anger toward his son, the only other man in the house. It was a shame. He loved me, but he couldn't stand me. He felt we competed for my mother's affections. We did. He also saw in me too much of his real self. My pop was built like a bull, always in work clothes. He was strong, physically formidable. Toward the end of his life, he fought back from death many times inside. However, beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, a timidity, shyness and a dreamy insecurity. These were all the things that I wore on the outside. And reflections of these qualities in his boy repelled him, made him angry. It was soft. He hated soft. Of course, he'd been brought up soft. A mama's boy, just like me.
- [07:26]
Bruce Springsteen
One evening at the kitchen table, late.
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Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
In life, when he was not well.
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Bruce Springsteen
He told me a story of being.
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Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Pulled out of a fight he was having in the schoolyard. My grandmother had walked over from our house and dragged him home. He recounted his humiliation and said, eyes welling, I was winning. I was winning. He still didn't understand he could not be risked. He was the one remaining living child. My grandmother, confused, could not realize her untempered love was destroying the men she was raising. I told him I understood that we'd been raised by the same woman in some of the most formative years of our lives and suffered many of the same humiliations.
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Bruce Springsteen
However, back in the days when our.
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Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Relationships was at its most tempestuous, these things remained. Mysteries created, a legacy of pain and misunderstanding.
- [08:27]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I think, Bruce, part of the emotional power of that is that you understand so much of it now, but in real time. As a young person, you understood so little. In other words, what's the gulf? How long did it take you to begin to understand him from the inside?
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Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Well, let me see. 35, 40. I don't know, 50 years. Two psychiatrists. One died on me already.
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Bruce Springsteen
Long time.
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Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I wrote a piece about you some years ago, and I was interviewing Steve Van Zant, and he said, you have to understand, even if your father wasn't ill, the gulf between fathers and sons. These are fathers in particular. Fathers who, in his words, won the war in Europe and came home Built the suburbs, doing jobs that they hated. And meanwhile, their sons were growing their hair long and listening to music they didn't understand and taking drugs and doing all kinds. The gulf was unbelievable.
- [09:35]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Yeah, it was impossible at the time, really. You know, there was. It was just that moment in history. You know, there were two alternate realities occurring at the same time. And really, coming from where my father came from, it was. It was impossible to understand. You know, when I grew my hair and, I mean, everybody. Many of the people in the audience, I'm sure, had the same experience. It was just split the house down the middle, and those were the times.
- [10:06]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And at the same time, in this book, there's kind of a heroic, enlightening presence in your life. And in this book, that's a kind of counterpoint to your father, and that's your mother. And one of the most touching things about it is that she not only by force of will holds this family together, but is also a musical presence in your life. She's sitting there watching this music that you would have thought was incomprehensible to someone of her generation. She loved it.
- [10:32]
Bruce Springsteen
Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, she was, you know, when I was 13.
- [10:36]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
What was she, 30? She's only in her early 30s, probably, you know, you know, mid-30s.
- [10:44]
Bruce Springsteen
And so she was excited by Elvis Presley and she was interested in the Beatles, and she had. We had the radio on top of the refrigerator that played top 40 music every morning when you came downstairs. Music was a big part of.
- [11:01]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Of her life, and she was, you know, we always had the radio on in the car, so I heard all the hit records of the day. And I think music was kind of passed down in the Italian side of my family. They all played piano a little bit. And of course, there was a lot of singing and carrying on, but you.
- [11:20]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Couldn'T possibly have thought that this is my way out, the way some kids will think about sports.
- [11:25]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
No, it was just something that. That obsessed me when I was young. And you didn't have any idea where it was gonna take you. You know, I mean, you looked at the covers of those records and you dreamed and dreamed of, but it was a million miles away.
- [11:42]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
So, in fact, you dreamed very specifically. You dreamed about being Mick Jagger and that he'd call you up and he'd say, I have the flu. Can you fill in?
- [11:55]
Bruce Springsteen
Yeah, yeah, I had a good one. It was, Mick gets sick and they're playing.
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Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Everyone does.
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Bruce Springsteen
They're playing at Asbury Park Convention hall, and they need somebody. So there's this, you know, pimpled young 15 year old kid in the front rows. And so Keith says, come on up, help us out. And I get up and of course.
- [12:22]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
You know, the crowd goes wild. You know, that was my dream.
- [12:29]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
So why was Asbury such a big music scene? It's not such a big place. It's pretty far from New York. But it had an incredibly lively music scene. An outsized lively music scene.
- [12:44]
Bruce Springsteen
At that time it was like a Jersey shore, Fort Lauderdale. It was a place where, you know, people came to the summer, you know, it was a big season and bands came from all over to ply their wares there in Asbury. So it was a center for top 40 bands who came in, played all the little beach clubs and nightclubs. And it was just a natural gathering place for musicians. And it had a very, very unusual club called the Upstage Club, where that was open from 8 to. There were no survivors. So whoever's clapping, I don't believe you were there. But it was open from 8 to 5, which was very unusual. Sold no booze, so you could be a kid and get in. And the bars closed at three. So those final two hours, every musician would line up on the street outside the upstage to get in and play the music that they really wanted to play in the club after hours. So there was an amazing clearinghouse for musicians.
- [13:55]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
When I listened to what surviving records there are in recordings from those early days and read about it, it seems like a million influences are going on at one time. You had one band that was kind of like Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It was this gigantic band. You had a trio at one point. You're playing kind of.
- [14:11]
Bruce Springsteen
Yeah, I had tried it all, you know, so. But it was just different. I was kind of following the times a little bit, you know. And I had a nice three piece band that was fun to play in.
- [14:22]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Where I got to play a lot of guitar. And we kind of half assed Jimi Hendrix and the Cream stuff.
- [14:28]
Bruce Springsteen
And I had a big band, 10 piece band, similar to the band we had out on the Wrecking Ball tour where there was a couple of horns.
- [14:37]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And a couple of singers and we.
- [14:39]
Bruce Springsteen
Played a lot of R and B.
- [14:41]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And all original music.
- [14:43]
Bruce Springsteen
So I bounced around in a lot.
- [14:46]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Of different genres trying to find something that was. That settled me.
- [14:49]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And you played teen clubs, you played, I think even trailer parks. And you even played the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital. And if I'm right, you played the Animal Song. We gotta get out of this place. Yeah, good set list.
- [15:07]
Bruce Springsteen
We Just played all over, you know. And somehow we got booked at the psychiatric hospital. And it was. My main recollection was a guy got up on stage and gave a long introduction to the band, went on, went on, went on. We were waiting to go on, then.
- [15:24]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Somebody came up and took him away.
- [15:29]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And at some point though, you realized, I'm a good guitar player, but I'm not Jimi Hendrix. I'm a good singer, but maybe I'm not Roy Orbison. And my way to become an original is to write my own songs. How does that start? How do you have the kind of give yourself the permission to sit down and create for yourself?
- [15:48]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, we played a lot and we'd.
- [15:51]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Been around a lot by that time. You know, I traveled across the country a couple of times with the band and we'd seen some other bands and.
- [16:01]
Bruce Springsteen
I, you know, we thought we were pretty good. But I would occasionally bump into somebody who I said, well, they got a.
- [16:09]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Little bit of an edge on us.
- [16:11]
Bruce Springsteen
And I come home and at some point I was in my early 20s and I just tried to assess my.
- [16:18]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Talents one by one. And I said, well, guitar player. Well, I'm a good guitar player, better than a lot of guys. I'm not the best. So singer, well, that's a tough one.
- [16:31]
Bruce Springsteen
You know, I never thought I had much of a voice, so I'm gonna have to learn how to sing, how.
- [16:37]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
To sing as best as I can. But I'm never gonna make my way just as a singer.
- [16:44]
Bruce Springsteen
Plus, I'd been writing all along, but I was at a moment where I.
- [16:49]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Just came to a crossroads and I said, well, if I'm going to take the next step, I'm gonna have to write some songs that are fireworks that I'll be able to put across with just the guitar, my voice and my song. Cause I wasn't working in a band at the time and I felt I needed to that was more original. And I just sat down at the piano and I just started to hack out the songs from Greetings from Asbury.
- [17:26]
Bruce Springsteen
Park.
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Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
Princess Cards she Sends Me with her Regards.
- [17:35]
David Remnick
Bruce Springsteen. I spoke with him in 2016 at the New Yorker Festival. Bruce realized that if he was going to make it, he had to make it as a songwriter. And pretty quickly after that, he had a life changing encounter with John Hammond, the record producer who had discovered everybody from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan. We're going to hear exactly how that went down in a minute on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.
- [18:05]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
You wouldn't even give me time to Cover my tracks, you said here's your mirror and your ball and jacks but they're not what I came for and I'm sure you see that, too.
- [18:33]
Bruce Springsteen
This.
- [18:33]
David Remnick
Is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This week, we're dedicating the entire New Yorker Radio Hour to the favorite son of New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen is such a huge part of the pop landscape that it's hard to remember now just what a bombshell he was when he broke out 40 some years ago. If you remember back, that was a kind of iffy moment in rock and roll music. Seemed bloated all of a sudden. It was loud, but not so much.
- [18:58]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Fun and not really very interesting.
- [18:59]
David Remnick
It was fragmenting into all different genres and not all of them very good. And then here came Springsteen, whose music had everything at once. It had brains, it had soul, it had muscle, it had heart. And that was all present from his very first album.
- [19:17]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Now, at an early point, you managed to get an audition with the great John Hammond, who had discovered any number of jazz greats, as well as Bob Dylan. We were going to hear just one of those songs that's also on this album. Chapter and verse, which accompanies the book. So a bit from growing up.
- [19:42]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
Well, I stood stone like at midnight Suspended in my masquerade and I combed my hair that was just right and command of the night brigade I was open to paint and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked brunch I strolled all along To a fall I saw Came out With my soul untouched I hid in the cloud.
- [20:14]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
That was the recording with the band. But sitting across from John Hammond with just your guitar in an office.
- [20:20]
Bruce Springsteen
Right.
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Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
How did he seem to know right away, as he. And that has happened historically any number of times. Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday. Count, basically.
- [20:29]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Yeah.
- [20:30]
Bruce Springsteen
That was.
- [20:32]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
That was a wild, wild day.
- [20:34]
Bruce Springsteen
Because I didn't have an acoustic guitar.
- [20:38]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
So I had to borrow one from Vinnie Skibat's Maniello, who was the original.
- [20:44]
Bruce Springsteen
Drummer in the Castiles.
- [20:45]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
You just made up that name, didn't you?
- [20:48]
Bruce Springsteen
No, there was a Baby botts and a Mrs. Botts also, but. So I borrowed a guitar, said Vinnie lent me the guitar, but it didn't have a case. So I have to get on the bus and I gotta go to New York with kind of the guitar over my shoulder.
- [21:04]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Which is very embarrassing. You know, it's.
- [21:09]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
But mythological almost. I mean.
- [21:11]
Bruce Springsteen
Yeah.
- [21:11]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Yeah.
- [21:12]
Bruce Springsteen
So we get to the city and amazingly enough, the music business was, at that moment was such that John Hammond.
- [21:21]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
One of the greatest A and R men and producers of our time, were seeing idiots off the street, you know.
- [21:31]
Bruce Springsteen
So, you know, that was the lay of the land, amazingly enough. So I remember it was me and Mike Capel and Mike Cappell had talked.
- [21:43]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
His way in, which was the single greatest thing he ever did. And we were going up in the elevator and I was a little nervous. I just read the Anthony Scaduto biography of Dylan where there's so much about John Hammond in it.
- [21:59]
Bruce Springsteen
So I had two choices.
- [22:02]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
I could say, well, okay, this is your moment, Mr. Big Shot. When you're gonna see if you've got anything or you don't. I decided not to do that to myself.
- [22:21]
Bruce Springsteen
And instead I tried to do a.
- [22:24]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Little mental jujitsu where I said, well, I have nothing, so I have nothing to lose.
- [22:32]
Bruce Springsteen
If nothing happens, I'm gonna walk out.
- [22:36]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
The same as I walked in.
- [22:40]
Bruce Springsteen
And, yeah, I almost convinced myself of.
- [22:44]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
It by the time I got up.
- [22:47]
Bruce Springsteen
I couldn't completely buy my own bullshit, but I tried. But we went in and there was John Hammond sitting across this very small room, you know, not much bigger than his carpet. Little tiny corner room, had the gray.
- [23:04]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Suit on, the tie, the gray flat top haircut, the horn rimmed glasses. And we walk in and Mike Appel, my manager, immediately begins to hide me, the next biggest thing since Shakespeare and Bozo the Clown.
- [23:30]
Bruce Springsteen
And tells John Hammond that he brought me to him to see if he really had ears or if discovering Dylan was a fluke. Now I'm standing there with my naked guitar having one of the biggest weenie shrinkers of all time. And, you know, so Mike is happy that he said his piece. And he goes and sits on the windowsill and folds his arms and John Hammond says, who was ready to hate.
- [24:04]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Us by that time? Says, well, well, play me something. So I sat down and I closed my eyes and I played Saint in the City.
- [24:14]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
Well, I had skin like leather and the diamond hard look of a cobra I was born blue and weathered but I burst just like a supernova well, I walked like Brando right into the Sun Dance Just like a Casanova, you know, with my black jack and jacket and hair slick Sweet silver star studs on my duds like a Harley and he. When I flopped down the street I could hear its heartbeat and all the women fell back and said don't that man look pretty the cripple on the corner cries nickels for your pity and gasoline boys downtown they sure talk with it it's so hard to be A saint.
- [25:06]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And when I was done, I looked up, he had that big smile on his face. You got to be on columbia records.
- [25:21]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Now. 30 seconds before he said that.
- [25:25]
Bruce Springsteen
Oh, yeah.
- [25:26]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
What was your alternative future?
- [25:30]
Bruce Springsteen
Back down the elevator.
- [25:32]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
But no kidding around. What would that have been? What would have been the other path for you that you had to have in your mind sometimes?
- [25:39]
Bruce Springsteen
I was a musician at the time, so I would have just, you know, kept on playing music. That was all I knew how to do.
- [25:45]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
I had absolutely no other skills.
- [25:48]
Bruce Springsteen
And so.
- [25:49]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
So wouldn't have been like Steve Van Sant, who went off and was a construction worker for a while, or somebody, you know, to make it. To make it happen.
- [25:55]
Bruce Springsteen
I couldn't have done that, you know, I just didn't have the skills, you know, so you could learn, basically. I probably would have went back to Asbury and thrown a little band together and just found a bar to play.
- [26:09]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
In and kept swinging on it.
- [26:11]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
One element we haven't discussed is that the great addition to the musical presence of your playing was Clarence Clemens. And this. And this was not just a. Somehow a musical addition to the band. This was. There was some. A spiritual dimension to it. Shamanistic. That's the word you use in the book.
- [26:33]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Yeah.
- [26:35]
Bruce Springsteen
A band is a dream, you know, it's a dream that you have. It's a dream that all your band members are having. It's a dream of another world, of some other place.
- [26:47]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
You know, a place that feels adventurous, that feels, I suppose, safe.
- [26:53]
Bruce Springsteen
That where you feel you have, you're accepted.
- [26:57]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And a real band is a very, very, very, very particular and special thing. So the connections you make amongst your band members become.
- [27:10]
Bruce Springsteen
Near sacred positions as you get older.
- [27:13]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Carnage was like a dream I had. You know, I'd been looking for years for a saxophonist. Cause I love the great sax solos from great soul records and the Dion records. And I just wanted to hear that sound, you know. And a real rock and roll saxophonist is hard to come by. You know, you don't want a jazz guy that'll come in and kind of slum with you.
- [27:37]
Bruce Springsteen
You need somebody who just is an.
- [27:39]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
R and B player.
- [27:41]
Bruce Springsteen
And that was Clarence. Clarence was playing with a band called Little Melvin and the Invaders.
- [27:47]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
They were a local soul band that Gary Talent happened to be playing bass in. So Clarence was a bit mythic in the area before anyone met him, with the exception of Gary. And then, of course, he came into the club we were playing in one night, and he wandered to the stage and asked if he could sit in. And he got Up. And the sound that came out of his saxophone was a real force of nature. It was. You know, so I get to stand next to Clarence when. And I hear Clarence's sound before it goes into the microphone. It was just an amazing thing to stand next to and to hear. And then also, Clarence's presence was unique.
- [28:50]
Bruce Springsteen
He was just a unique person on the planet.
- [28:53]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
You know, it was just. It was just only one of them.
- [28:55]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Let's play the beginning of a song that's the title track of the book, if we can call it that.
- [29:03]
Bruce Springsteen
Okay.
- [29:03]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And.
- [29:18]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
In the day we sweated out on the streets Of a runaway American dream At night we ride to mansions of glory and suicide machines sprung from cages on Highway 9 Chrome wheel fueling Checking and stepping out over the line oh, baby, this town rips the phones from your back It's a death trap, It's a suicide rap we gotta get out while we are. Cause tramps like us, Baby, we were born to run.
- [30:02]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
You've heard of that song, So a lot is going on there. You've got Peter Gunn and Dwayne Eddy and Elvis and Dylan and you. And a million things going on all at once.
- [30:16]
Bruce Springsteen
Everything I could think of.
- [30:19]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
But seriously, it is everything you could think of. There's everything you could get in there.
- [30:22]
Bruce Springsteen
Oh, it was. I threw the kitchen sink and everything else at it was. I talk about it in the book.
- [30:30]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
I said I wanted to make a record that felt like, okay, this is the last record you're ever gonna hear. And then the apocalypse, my friend.
- [30:40]
Bruce Springsteen
And so I wanted to make a sound that would. It would feel like that, you know.
- [30:46]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
It would feel completely cathartic, you know, over the top, you know, I was trying to make one of the greatest records I'd ever heard, you know, so.
- [30:54]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And you succeeded, God knows. And if you. And yet, if I remember, when the record was finished, rather than release it, you threw it into a swimming pool because you didn't think it was ready yet.
- [31:05]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, I had second thoughts. I had second thoughts, but I have second thoughts about everything. So the record came down, and the album was supposed to be done. And I'm not sure if I was ready for it to be be done.
- [31:19]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Because it would mean people were going to hear it. And I wasn't sure I was ready for that. So Jimmy Iovine visited me somewhere out on the road in Richmond, Virginia, I think, and we played it.
- [31:32]
Bruce Springsteen
We had to go down to a.
- [31:33]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Stereo store in town because there was. There were only records in those days, and you needed a record player. And you didn't carry one on the.
- [31:41]
Bruce Springsteen
Road, so you had to go to.
- [31:43]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
The record store, player store, and ask.
- [31:46]
Bruce Springsteen
The guy if you could play your album on one of their systems. So we went in the back and Iovine was walking back and forth and.
- [31:54]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Back and forth and watching me, watching me, watching me to see what my response was. And my response internally was, I just want to get out of here, you.
- [32:04]
Bruce Springsteen
Know, I don't want to have to listen or think anymore.
- [32:08]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And I think at the end of the day, we came back to the motel and I threw it in the pool. And that was my.
- [32:14]
Bruce Springsteen
But it all worked out later, I think. I think I took it. I think John Landau helped me out.
- [32:26]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
He said, look, he says, you know, sometimes the things that make that are wrong with something are the same things that make that thing great. And that's the way it is in life. That's the way art works. So I said, well, all right, let's put it out.
- [32:43]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And then you take this stuff on the stage. And the performances in the mid-70s and into the late-70s get more and more developed longer, as if you are trying to do. To lose yourself on stage. It's really like no other performances that we had seen anybody had seen until that moment, except maybe from James Brown in soul music. What were you up to there? Why so long?
- [33:11]
Bruce Springsteen
Losing myself was a big something I was shooting for, you know, I'd had enough of myself by that time to.
- [33:20]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Want to lose myself.
- [33:21]
Bruce Springsteen
And so I went on stage every night to kind of do exactly that. You know, it was. It's playing is orgiastic. It's a moment of both incredible self realization and self erasure at the same time. You disappear and blend into all the other people that are out there and into the notes and the chords and the music that you've written. You kind of rise up and vanish into it. And that was something I was pursuing. I was pursuing intoxication.
- [34:02]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Why have people gotten intoxicated since the beginning of time? Why will the war on drugs never be successful?
- [34:09]
Bruce Springsteen
Because people need to lose themselves. We can only stand so much of.
- [34:13]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Ourselves.
- [34:17]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
On that topic. You didn't lose yourself in drugs. In fact, you had a no drugs rule for yourself and the best you could manage.
- [34:23]
Bruce Springsteen
I was too frightened. I was also very. It took me so long to find.
- [34:29]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
A piece of myself that I could.
- [34:31]
Bruce Springsteen
Live with, that I was very frightened.
- [34:33]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
With losing that when it came to other substances.
- [34:38]
Bruce Springsteen
Plus, I'd lived around a lot of drug takers.
- [34:42]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
I'd seen some of the really worst Effects. I had friends that killed themselves and friends that really kind of went and never came back.
- [34:50]
Bruce Springsteen
And so I was very frightened of it.
- [34:53]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
So it wasn't for me.
- [34:55]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
You once said that the audience part.
- [34:57]
Bruce Springsteen
I'll take some now, however, if you have any.
- [35:06]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I've got something here.
- [35:07]
Bruce Springsteen
All right.
- [35:08]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I think I've got 14 beta blockers, if you'd like to. You once said that the audience, for the audience's part, they come not to learn something, but to be reminded of something. When they come to see a performer like you or something that they love deeply.
- [35:25]
Bruce Springsteen
Yeah, I mean, what are you doing? You're getting people in touch with the center of themselves, you know, their. Their life force, you know, the part.
- [35:35]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Of them that feels.
- [35:36]
Bruce Springsteen
What?
- [35:37]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Why do people come to a show? Well, you want to be reminded of how it feels to be really alive, you know, and.
- [35:48]
Bruce Springsteen
You know, that's what. That's what a great three minute pop song does. In three minutes, you get the entire picture. You get the possibility of life on earth and what that can mean and what it can do for you and do for others. It's just encapsulated in three minutes of what feels like nothingness, but for some reason has had the power to inspire and lift up and. And just bring you closer to Godhead or whatever you're pursuing. So I always feel that's our job.
- [36:29]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Our job is we're repairmen and we're reminders.
- [36:32]
Bruce Springsteen
You come to our show and we will. I always figured I don't get paid necessarily to play this song or that.
- [36:41]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Song or this song.
- [36:42]
Bruce Springsteen
I get paid to be as present as I can conceivably be on every.
- [36:48]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Night that I'm out there.
- [36:49]
Bruce Springsteen
Because, you know, the. You know, if I'm there and I'm alive, then I know you're feeling it too.
- [37:05]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Now, this is my wife's question, and it's caused some complication in my marriage. And I think it's probably the question that some of you have out here. And it may be an idea for your second book. What is your workout routine? Because this is ridiculous. And I don't want any broad generalities. I want to know everything you do.
- [37:34]
Bruce Springsteen
It's all mental, you know.
- [37:38]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
No, that's gotta be bullshit.
- [37:42]
Bruce Springsteen
It's all about what is and isn't going right up here. You know, my own take on it was initially music was the first way.
- [37:53]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
That I kind of medicated my anxieties.
- [37:57]
Bruce Springsteen
And so I used it, being a good Catholic boy, of course, as a. Yep. As a purification ritual, which we are.
- [38:07]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
All taught to do.
- [38:08]
Bruce Springsteen
And I would simply go out and play until I just, you know, burned.
- [38:15]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Up or felt incandescent inside.
- [38:18]
Bruce Springsteen
And that's what, at the end of the night, that's what momentarily satiated all.
- [38:26]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
The jagged little pieces of my puzzle that I had running around inside of me.
- [38:31]
Bruce Springsteen
And really, that. That hasn't changed over the years. I basically worked till, I always say.
- [38:39]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Exhaustion, as my friend, you know, and.
- [38:41]
Bruce Springsteen
Partly because I realized when I was done working the night, the next day I'd feel incredibly clear and quite free and simply too fucking tired to be depressed. You know, it was like, I mean, you gotta have some energy to get to be depressed. You gotta be able to get out there and search through the weeds for the one thing that's gonna, you know, bust your ass that particular day. And then you gotta put a lot of energy into that thing. Well, if you're too tired to do that, you're feeling better, you know, you're feeling pretty good.
- [39:22]
David Remnick
Bruce Springsteen, singer, songwriter and bandleader.
- [39:25]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I spoke with him at the New.
- [39:26]
David Remnick
Yorker Festival, and in a minute we'll talk about how Springsteen's troubled relationship with his father fueled his very best songs. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
- [39:37]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
Stick around, Sandy the fireworks are hailing over little Eden tonight Forcing a light and all those stones Only faces left.
- [39:52]
Bruce Springsteen
Stranded on this warm July down in.
- [39:56]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
Time the circuits for a switch Blade.
- [40:00]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Lovers so fast, so shiny, so sharp.
- [40:05]
Song Performer / Singer (Bruce Springsteen singing)
As the wizards play down on pinball.
- [40:09]
Bruce Springsteen
Way on the boardwalk way.
- [40:29]
David Remnick
I'm David Remnick. Today's program was recorded at the New Yorker Festival, our annual blowout featuring dozens of performances and interviews. This week, we're spending the hour entirely with Bruce Springsteen. When we spoke, he had just published his autobiography, Born to Run. In the book, he's very frank about his difficulties with his parents, his father's mental illness, and his own lifelong struggle with depression.
- [40:53]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
One other thing that you were doing on stage was having a conversation with your father. There's a lot of songs about him. When you asked him which songs he liked the best, he said he liked the songs about him.
- [41:04]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Yeah.
- [41:05]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
How did that help to do that? Not to a shrink, which came along a little later, but to be on stage and as a kind of warm up to a lot of your songs, you would have these kind of stuff, spoken stories, some of which seem reflected almost, if not word for word, but very directly in the memoir, which they seemed absolutely true.
- [41:27]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, it was an imperfect way to communicate with somebody who you love.
- [41:32]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
And whose love you're seeking.
- [41:34]
Bruce Springsteen
But it was the only thing that I had.
- [41:38]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
I was always trying to sort out what our relationship was about. And so I think I initially, obviously Steinbeck's east of Eden, and I said, oh, I get that. You know, I've had some of that.
- [41:53]
Bruce Springsteen
And so I cast this a little bit in, you know, in that way. And it was a way that I could talk about our relationship without. I was never gonna have a direct.
- [42:07]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Conversation about it because it just wasn't possible. My dad was very ill and wasn't susceptible to doing something like that, even on his best days. So I had my music, which is where I went to sort out everything in those days. And so that was naturally where I went to sort that out. And I just started to write about. Worked out somewhat in the end, you know.
- [42:33]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Bruce, how did you become a more politically engaged person? That seemed to happen over time. How did that happen and why?
- [42:42]
Bruce Springsteen
We grew up like that. We, you know, if you grew up in the 60s, you know, politics was. It was just in the air.
- [42:51]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
It was a culture part of your cultural experience. And we were doing things for, you know, we were playing benefits for anti Vietnam War benefits when we were 19 or 20, you know.
- [43:03]
Bruce Springsteen
And so that was a very big.
- [43:06]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Part of just growing up at that time. And it was just.
- [43:12]
Bruce Springsteen
It just. It really came up out of my life experience.
- [43:16]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
I didn't have some. There wasn't any eureka moment or it just came out of living and growing.
- [43:23]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
There was a piece in the Times and it went through various landscapes in your songs. Youngstown, Badland, South Dakota, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which is the. The scene of the river Darlington, South Carolina. These are all Trump voting areas. And white working class areas have changed dramatically in their political orientation since the days of, say, Bobby Kennedy. What do you make of that? And do you feel that you have an acute hold on some of these landscapes as you once might have?
- [43:57]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, I think if you look at the history of. Of Youngstown or any of the places.
- [44:01]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
You'Ve mentioned, you see that.
- [44:04]
Bruce Springsteen
Basically I've.
- [44:05]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Written about the last 40 years of deindustrialization and globalization hit a lot of people very, very, very hard. And.
- [44:18]
Bruce Springsteen
There was never their concerns and their problems and their issues were never addressed by either party, really. So there's this sea of people out there who are waiting and hoping and looking for something that's going to bring.
- [44:35]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Some meaning back into their lives, you.
- [44:38]
Bruce Springsteen
Know, so it's not a surprise someone.
- [44:41]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Comes along and says, you want your jobs back. I'm Going to bring them back. You're uncomfortable with the Browning of America. I'm going to build a wall, keep all these folks out.
- [44:52]
Bruce Springsteen
You want to hear these kinds of.
- [44:55]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Solutions to your problems. Unfortunately, they're, you know, they're fallacious and it's a con job, you know. But I completely understand why a voice like that would be appealing.
- [45:09]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I want to go back to. It seemed to me that there was a kind of framing in this book that if the hero of the first part of the book in some ways was your mother, Adele, there's a heroic presence in the latter part of the book by your wife Patty. And you're.
- [45:29]
Bruce Springsteen
What'S here for.
- [45:38]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
And she is a presence in the band, but you're the singular primary presence in the band. And then you come home where things are not as ecstatic and she's the boss, I gather. But also, and not to make it too programmatic, but what holds you together, that you've had some tough times and tough years. This is not a book that has a fake happy ending where depression is concerned. That this is something that even if you're carried across a sea of people surfing the crowd and standing ovation after standing ovation, that has no effect whatsoever on the next morning necessarily.
- [46:24]
Bruce Springsteen
If only in my wildest dreams, you know. Yeah, I mean, you know, you're that person on stage for three hours.
- [46:33]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Most people get four. Bruce.
- [46:39]
Bruce Springsteen
You know, so, you know, Patty's got to live with me the other 20 hours of the day and most people see the best of me and she unfortunately bumps into the worst of me. Hopefully not that regularly, but sometimes. But we connected right from the very, very beginning. Patti came down to New Jersey in 1974 before the born to Run tour and she came in and auditioned. We were going to take a singer.
- [47:14]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Out at the time, which we didn't end up doing, but we sat at piano together and she played me some of her songs. And this was when we were. I was 24 years old, she was probably 20. And then we saw each other regularly after that. And I always kid Patty, I say.
- [47:33]
Bruce Springsteen
Yeah, we get along because before, before.
- [47:37]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
You were you, you were me.
- [47:39]
Bruce Springsteen
You know, she, she was a musician.
- [47:43]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
She was independent and she was very, you know, be careful.
- [47:53]
Bruce Springsteen
You know, she was just very single minded pursuit of her work and we.
- [48:01]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Just had a lot in common which has sustained us for a long time. And she's needless to say that when I've had my rough times, she's been there and continues to be there 110% you know.
- [48:18]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Bruce, you have. You have three kids who are grown. And I have to think that no matter how great a father and mother, it's got to be a little weird on college visiting day, or you're driving down this avenue or that and people are screaming, Bruce. And how do you kind of keep that at bay for your children? At one point, you describe in the.
- [48:45]
Bruce Springsteen
Book, it's not as hard as people think.
- [48:49]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
A lot of it is how you think about it.
- [48:50]
Bruce Springsteen
I mean, basically, we just go about our business.
- [48:53]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
If something a little strange starts to happen, you can kind of move away from it or you calm it down.
- [49:00]
Bruce Springsteen
It comes up once in a while, but we've been pretty lucky.
- [49:06]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Didn't you tell your kids that you're like Barney the dinosaur?
- [49:10]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, that was when they were little. You know, they were wondering, you know.
- [49:14]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Why it didn't work when they were in their twenties.
- [49:17]
Bruce Springsteen
Why do people want you to scribble your name pre selfie? Why do people want to script you to scribble your name on a piece of paper? And they were just puzzled by people approaching us, you know. And I said, well, to explain it to them, I said, okay, you know.
- [49:30]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Barney, you're a dinosaur, right?
- [49:32]
Bruce Springsteen
Are you interested in. Barney said, yeah, well, people are interested.
- [49:35]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
In me in the same way, except grown up people.
- [49:38]
Bruce Springsteen
So that actually.
- [49:42]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
You know, and that worked.
- [49:45]
Bruce Springsteen
It actually made a lot of sense to them. And so they were pretty divorced from it. I think one day Evan came home and said, dad, what's 10th Avenue freeze out. So I said, 10th Avenue. Where'd you hear that? I heard it at school. Somebody said, their parents are always singing 10th Avenue freezer. So I said, well, I don't know. I'll show you what it is. I got the guitar and I started to play it tune kind of Barney style. He said, no, dad.
- [50:18]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
No, dad.
- [50:19]
Bruce Springsteen
Play it for real. All right. So I played him the song. I said, that's it. That's 10th Avenue freeze out, you know, and it seemed to satisfy him. And there was a moment when the children were actually saying, okay, we're old enough now to where we need to be a little bit of a part.
- [50:38]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Of what you're doing, and we need to understand that. And Patti was really good at saying.
- [50:43]
Bruce Springsteen
Because at the time, I was so.
- [50:44]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Overprotective of the children that I would just basically hide them. And she'd say, look, you know, they're gonna grow up wondering why were we.
- [50:54]
Bruce Springsteen
Being hidden all the time in the attic? And so she said, yeah, they may get their picture Taken. But it's more important for them to feel that we stand as one, as a family. And from then on, you know, we went about our business and I think the kids felt better if you took their hand and you, you know, whatever.
- [51:15]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Walked to your car or your van, even if somebody took a picture, they felt better that you were claiming them. And they were, they, they were an intimate part of even that part of your life.
- [51:28]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
One of the great stupid questions I've ever asked in an interview, and there are many, as I said to you some years ago, well, you know, you jump off the piano and you run up and down the ramps and you crowd surf and there's probably going to come a time, probably not necessarily definitely, that you might find that when you wake up in the morning, as I do, you feel like you've been beaten by a baseball bat. And all I do is pick cartoons for a living. And I don't do that. And I say, what are you going to do when that happens? And you said, well, I won't do that anymore, which was a stupid question. But can you see yourself becoming like years and years from now like an old blues man sitting in a chair doing your songs instead of jumping around like a matrix?
- [52:16]
Bruce Springsteen
Well, part of it is you have to not mind feeling like you've been.
- [52:21]
Mike Appel (Bruce Springsteen's manager)
Beaten up with a baseball.
- [52:29]
Bruce Springsteen
So pain has to become your friend. But I don't know, you know, as I say in the book, you know, I forget I have a piece where I say, well, you know, the day may come when and when this happens and when that happens, but not tonight and not right now. So that's the way I approach it. I also will have no problem whatsoever sitting in a nice little chair with my acoustic guitar knocking out the songs from Nebraska or something. There is no end.
- [53:10]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
I've got one. Why are you booing him? I've got one more question. You gave a speech in Austin some years ago and said, I knew I was never going to be like Woody Guthrie. I liked Elvis. I liked the pink Cadillac too much. I liked the simplicity and the tossed off temporary feeling of pop hits. I like a big fucking noise. And in my own way I like the luxuries and the comforts of being a star. Yeah, it ain't that.
- [53:49]
Bruce Springsteen
You are correct, sir. I don't have anything to add to that. You got it exactly right.
- [54:00]
Interviewer (possibly David Remnick or another New Yorker Radio Hour host)
Bruce Gregston. Thank you.
- [54:03]
Bruce Springsteen
Thanks. Thanks a lot, dude, that was great.
- [54:16]
David Remnick
Bruce Springsteen is the author of the autobiography Born to Run along with, I don't know how many best selling albums and currently he's starring in the show Springsteen on Broadway on, you might have guessed it, Broadway. This is Baby I from the album Chapter and Verse. It's an archival song from way before the E Street Band. I'm David Remnick and I want to thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the show and I hope you had a terrific Thanksgiving. See you next week.
- [54:43]
Announcer
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced with special help from the staff of the New Yorker Festival, Rhonda Sherman, Alexis Goldberg, David Ohana, Bradley Gee, and Hilary Leichter Griffin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.