Bruce Springsteen

Presenter0:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast. This is an extended edition of the original Radio Four broadcast. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:16

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:39

My castaway this week is Bruce Springsteen, the bard of Blue Collar America. For over forty years, he's been capturing in music and words and performance.

Presenter0:48

the defining truth of lives as they're lived in factories and diners, dive bars and schoolyards, chronicling in his own words the distance between the American reality and the American dream.

Presenter0:59

His twenty Grammys, two Golden Globes, and an Academy Award are pretty much shorthand for not just sales, but the significant cultural mark his music has made.

Presenter1:08

And he couldn't surely have done it so well if he hadn't lived the story himself. Born in New Jersey at the tail end of the 40s, he was brought up in a household often beset by poverty and emotional chaos. He says, I believe every artist had someone who told them they weren't worth dirt and someone who told them they were the second coming of the baby Jesus, and they believed them both. And that's the fuel that starts the fire. And so welcome, Bruce Springsteen, the fuel that starts the fire.

Presenter1:37

Who were the two people in your life that were telling you those two things?

Bruce Springsteen1:41

It's usually your parents.

Presenter1:43

And it was for you.

Bruce Springsteen1:43

Oh yeah, absolutely. Obviously your mother's telling you the second coming of the baby Jesus and your father holds down the other the other part of the role.

Presenter1:54

I'm meeting you at a fascinating time, it strikes me, because you've just finished a massive tour. You've written your memoir. The book is called Born to Run. That's a song you wrote when you were, I think, just 24. As I understand it, it's always on the set list. You play it at every gig still. It is. It is. It couldn't not be. There would be a revolt, I imagine.

Bruce Springsteen2:12

It is.

Speaker 12:12

It is.

Bruce Springsteen2:16

Um

Bruce Springsteen2:17

What does it mean to you now? It takes you back, it takes you forward, you know, a good song.

Bruce Springsteen2:23

It takes you all in all those different directions, I think.

Bruce Springsteen2:26

Jackson Brownlet said, Well the nice thing about good songs is they stay written.

Bruce Springsteen2:31

And not only do they stay written, but they they live. They live the years with you. You sort of take the measure of your moment at night when you play that song. And I suppose the show builds to it. It's a cathartic moment. And it it's still something I I find a lot of satisfaction in playing.

Presenter2:53

Tell me a bit about this list of eight tracks that you've you've chosen then. What was your basis for choosing them?

Bruce Springsteen2:59

It's not an unusual grouping of songs. It's songs that a lot of people are going to be familiar with and that affected, I'm sure, many others. But I chose it because this was the music that electrified me, that when I heard them for one reason or another, they just galvanized me into changing my life in some way.

Presenter3:21

Tell me about the first track then.

Bruce Springsteen3:22

Okay, that's Hound Dog Elvis Presley. Uh if I had to choose an album, I'd probably choose a Sun Sessions. That's probably my favorite Elvis music. But for a single track, which is the first Elvis song I ever heard,

Bruce Springsteen3:39

That when I was relatively young, probably seven or eight years, seven years old or something, when I heard it.

Bruce Springsteen3:47

It just shot straight through to my brain.

Bruce Springsteen3:51

And I realized suddenly that there was more to life than what I'd been living, you know, and immediately went out, rented a guitar, tried to play the thing, couldn't quite get to playing it, but I was then in pursuit of something. And there had been a vision laid out before me. It was just an incredibly meaningful record. Elvis was considered a novelty act. He wasn't deemed to have a lot of cultural significance initially at all. So you were just dealing with the pure thrust, the pure energy of the music itself. And it's funny because I was so very young, but it still hit me like a thunderbolt and still sounds great to this day. We still base our snare drum sound. One of the ultimate snare drum sounds is on Hound Dog. It's a beautiful, beautiful sounding record. And of course, Elvis sings it fabulously.

Speaker 14:30

Uh

Speaker 34:30

Uh

Speaker 14:30

Yeah.

Speaker 34:49

You ain't nothing but a hound dogger

Speaker 34:53

The crocodile fire

Speaker 34:55

You make me look good, Hannah Bogan.

Speaker 34:58

Crying all the time.

Speaker 35:01

Well, you in Delaware Abbott and you ain't no friend of mine.

Speaker 35:06

Well I said you was highlights Well that was just a lot

Speaker 35:11

Yeah, they said dude's high class Well just a lot

Speaker 35:17

Yeah, you ain't never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine.

Speaker 35:22

You ain't nothing but a huh

Presenter5:25

That was Elvis and Heimdog. Bruce Springsteen, you started life then, as the world knows, in in New Jersey. You were in this little sort of L shaped enclave. You lived with your grandparents and surrounded by aunts and uncles. What are your earliest memories of that time?

Bruce Springsteen5:36

Hmm.

Bruce Springsteen5:39

It's always the church, the church, the church, I think, because it was the center of our existence. I think the thing I remember the most is just the tall steeple at the end of the corner and the red bricks of the church. It was your second home. You lived there, you know, every Sunday and Friday and we saw every wedding, every funeral in town, because we lived next door. So it was there was always a show going on. Somebody was always getting married or getting dead.

Bruce Springsteen6:07

So it was an enormous center of my childhood life.

Presenter6:12

And of course this would have been the early fifties, and it sounds, you know, this little

Presenter6:16

L-shaped grouping of houses, the church just across the yard. That can all sound idyllic, but but notably you do say of your childhood. You grew up surrounded by very ill, secretive people with disturbing, unpredictable behaviours. Tell me more.

Bruce Springsteen6:29

Yeah.

Speaker 36:29

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen6:32

There was just a lot of illness that ran through my family on the pr on the Irish side particularly, but even somewhat on the Italians also. I mean, when you're young, you don't think anything about it ver very much. And their behavior might be what? Depression and a mental illness that uh just swept through my family and kind of gets passed on down.

Presenter6:54

And so an intriguing counterbalance to this is your mother Adele. Tell me more about her.

Bruce Springsteen7:00

Yeah.

Presenter7:00

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen7:00

And her sisters there were three Italian sisters.

Bruce Springsteen7:03

Endless optimism was a part of of who they were. And no matter how hard life got, that was always there. They always decided that

Bruce Springsteen7:13

Life was worth living. They just insisted on the fact that life would be good.

Bruce Springsteen7:18

No matter what curves it threw at you. And this was this is what they they brought into my life and my sister's life for my entire childhood, no matter how strange or how rough things got. They were this sort of World War Two generation, never say die.

Bruce Springsteen7:35

Insisted on joy and and beauty. What did your dad do for a living as you were growing up?

Bruce Springsteen7:42

Well, he did a lot of different things. You know, he worked on the line at the Ford motor plant.

Bruce Springsteen7:48

He worked as a guard at the jail for a short period of time. He worked in a plastics factory. He drove a taxi. He did a lot of different things.

Presenter7:57

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen7:57

Yeah.

Presenter7:57

Yeah. Yeah. And your grandmother

Bruce Springsteen7:59

Yeah.

Presenter7:59

on your father's side.

Presenter8:01

Ceaselessly indulged you. You were more than the apple of her eye. Just explain the circumstances of that.

Bruce Springsteen8:07

What can you say? The circumstances were were unusual. She'd had a young child who'd

Presenter8:09

Uh

Bruce Springsteen8:15

who died in a traffic accident around the corner from my home. She was only five years old. Was my father's sister.

Bruce Springsteen8:23

And so

Bruce Springsteen8:25

it put her in bed for several years and it was a very damaging part of her life that she never really forgot. So when I came along I was sort of the first

Bruce Springsteen8:36

new child in the family since that that had happened and uh it it gave me quite a bit of license.

Presenter8:42

What did she let you away with?

Bruce Springsteen8:45

I was doing a lot of strange things when I was a young kid. I was staying up till 3 a.m. and waking up at 3 p.m. in the afternoon. So that was like a.

Presenter8:53

So that was like a proto rock and roller. You were there already.

Bruce Springsteen8:55

I always say that it's very strange the way the choices you make play out. I always say that I went to school, which I hated, but in the minute I got out of school, I found a job where I'm up till three AM and I sleep till three PM. So it couldn't have been a coincidence.

Presenter9:13

Tell me about your second piece of music, Bruce Springsteen. What are we going to hear?

Bruce Springsteen9:17

It's I Wanna Hold Your Hand by The Beatles. This was another song that just changed the course of my life. The harmonies were very unusual. It was a very raucous sounding record when it came out of the radio in nineteen sixty four.

Bruce Springsteen9:33

And once again, I went for another shot at the guitar, and this time I kept playing it.

Bruce Springsteen9:40

And it was really the the song that inspired me to

Bruce Springsteen9:43

play rock and roll music, to get in a a small band and to start doing some small gigs around town. But it was a life changing it's still a beautiful record, the way it once again, the way it sounds, and it was just a life a life changing piece of music.

Speaker 39:59

Oh yeah, tell you something.

Speaker 310:03

I think you'll understand

Speaker 310:07

Can I say that something?

Speaker 310:10

I wanna hold a hand.

Speaker 310:15

I wanna hold your hand.

Speaker 310:18

I wanna hold your hand.

Speaker 310:21

Oh please, say to me

Speaker 310:25

Let me be your man and please say to me

Speaker 310:32

You let me hold your hand.

Speaker 310:36

I'll let behold.

Presenter10:38

That was the Beatles, and I want to hold your hand. Bruce Springsteen, I'm delighted and not a little bit surprised to learn that you were a regular at the Friday Night Soires of the Young Men's Christian Association. That you were dancing the monkey, the swim, the jerk, the pony, the match potatoes. I'm not going to ask you to do them now. How did you learn the dances, and what did you look like?

Bruce Springsteen10:59

I do. Oh man, I'm sure a complete fool. But before I could play the guitar, I realized that girls love to dance. And so I'd spent quite a bit of time in my own home mirror practicing all the different dance moves of the day. Well, you could.

Bruce Springsteen11:22

I don't

Presenter11:22

I don't know.

Bruce Springsteen11:23

That was good enough to get the girls on the dance floor.

Presenter11:26

Glad to hear it. And what about the hair? How did you look in those days?

Bruce Springsteen11:29

Pretty hideous. Let me see. I would use my mother's hair clips to pin my hair down, and then I would sleep on it exactly right on the pillow because I had Italian curly hair when I had more hair. But I would pin it down till it was as straight as Brian Jones, and then I would go to the Y. So there was a complete presentation that I got ready for on Friday night. My black chinos, my black shoes, the pointy toes, red socks, red shirt, and my hair just so. And off I'd go.

Presenter12:13

You've of course played these legendary stadium gigs in front of tens of thousands of people. You have played at the Super Bowl in the intermission in front of, I imagine, tens of millions of people of a live T V audience, but your first ever live performance on stage was at the Freehold Elks Club.

Presenter12:30

What can you remember? How old were you?

Presenter12:33

I was probably...

Bruce Springsteen12:35

Ma

Presenter12:35

Maybe fifteen. What was your set?

Bruce Springsteen12:37

We had a bit of a stonesy playlist. We played a lot of RB, some blues, and the big capper was at the end of the night I would sing Twist and Shout because it was still the day when there weren't many groups with singers. The invention of the group that sang everything, wrote everything, and played everything, of course, was the Beatles. But before that, all local bands were instrumental. They played based on like the Shadows, and in the States, it was the Ventures. So you'd come to a dance at night.

Bruce Springsteen13:10

And there were no microphones. The band would simply set their amps up, play instrumentals all night long,

Bruce Springsteen13:17

No one would sing. And our idea was we were going to be one of the first groups in town that tried to sing. And so really we had no voices, but we gave it a shot. And that was our that was our calling card. Too often

Bruce Springsteen13:37

disastrous results but

Presenter13:39

Did you feel at home on stage from the very beginning?

Bruce Springsteen13:42

Yeah, I did. Uh I mean I was nervous when I first started, but at the same time

Bruce Springsteen13:49

It was a very singular place and I was.

Bruce Springsteen13:53

I was seeking that out, you know, someplace that was going to cut me out as different.

Presenter13:59

Because that sort of confirmed that you were different, you felt yourself.

Bruce Springsteen14:01

Yeah, yeah. I suppose everyone feels like that. But I was looking for some place to express it, and so getting up to that mic and and doing whatever I did into it at the time.

Bruce Springsteen14:14

Uh it was exciting and

Bruce Springsteen14:18

I always felt good afterwards. Let's hear your next piece of music. What are we going to hear now?

Bruce Springsteen14:22

This is It's All Over Now by The Rolling Stones. I suppose the penultimate song for me for The Rolling Stones is still satisfaction. That was the song that solidified the Stones in our neighborhood as real competition with the Beatles, you know. But It's All Over Now held a special place for me because when I got thrown out of my first band, I learned the guitar solo.

Bruce Springsteen14:46

I went home that night.

Bruce Springsteen14:48

And I was pissed off, and I went in my room and I said, All right, I'm going to be a lead guitar player.

Bruce Springsteen14:56

And for some reason, that solo felt like something I might be able to manage. And so I put the record on and I sat there all night until I was able to scrape up some relatively decent version of Keith's solo on It's All Over Now. That and also, once again, it's a great sounding record. The echo and the way the two guitars blend and mix. And there's a little country influence in it also, which I always liked coming out of the stones. Mixings are great. But it was once a very important record for me because it was the first solo I ever learned to play.

Speaker 315:39

Well, I used to wake the morning, get my breakfast in bed.

Speaker 315:45

But I gotta watch it ease my aching head.

Speaker 315:50

Well now she's here and there, but every man in town Still trying to take me for that same old path Because I used to love her

Speaker 316:03

But it's all over now.

Presenter16:07

That was the Rolling Stones, and it's all over now.

Presenter16:10

You've uh written, Bruce Springsteen, that throughout your teens, talking about your father, you've said, when my dad looked at me, he didn't see what he needed to see, and then a little later, he loved me, but he couldn't stand me. Those are very powerful words. Explain the background to those words. Why do you think your father felt the way he felt?

Bruce Springsteen16:29

Um

Bruce Springsteen16:31

It was just the lay of the land in our household at the time, you know, it was uh

Bruce Springsteen16:36

My dad had a sort of gruff exterior, but inside he was really he could be quite soft and sensitive and

Bruce Springsteen16:42

The qualities he had inside were the things I wore on the outside.

Bruce Springsteen16:47

Then, uh

Bruce Springsteen16:49

They were just difficult for him to deal with, you know.

Presenter16:52

So in seeing your sensitivity, it reminded him of the things that he was trying to

Bruce Springsteen16:55

Yeah, it might have reminded him of his own frailties in some way, or fragility. So it was just a

Bruce Springsteen17:06

terrible cross current of emotion that uh went on between us, you know. It was it was uh we sorted through some of it as as he got older and as I got older. But uh uh it was sad when I was young.

Presenter17:22

We live in a time now, of course, when people talk within families. People talk about their feelings. It's sometimes it wasn't that way in the fifties and sixties. It was a very, very different culture within the family. You've spoken about this extremely loving, optimistic

Speaker 117:26

It's something

Speaker 117:28

Wasn't that way in the fifties and sixties?

Presenter17:36

Mother that you had. Did you talk to her about your dad at the time? Because I'm sure you couldn't talk to him.

Bruce Springsteen17:40

Uh

Presenter17:40

Yeah. Uh Hmm.

Bruce Springsteen17:41

No, no, I I don't remember. I mean, she would occasionally

Bruce Springsteen17:46

She would cover for him, but

Bruce Springsteen17:50

It's it's very hard to explain today, but at the time

Bruce Springsteen17:54

People simply didn't speak about their inner feelings. He didn't even think about speaking about it.

Bruce Springsteen18:00

It wasn't on the table at all, so you just sort of lived with it. I think, you know, my mother tried to make up for it as best as she could through giving us a lot of love and a lot of affection. She was very physical and very warm. She was a very warm person. And so, you know, you learned the other side through what you were seeing, which is the way kids basically learn anyway. I mean, there's a small percentage of what you say, I think, that registers on them. But at the end of the day, they do what they've seen.

Bruce Springsteen18:34

And uh so my mother tried to balance balance that out and

Bruce Springsteen18:40

as best as she could.

Presenter18:42

You were making your way you say you were thrown out of one group, but you you went onto another small group and you began to make your way in your musical career. There came a very pivotal moment when you met John Landau. You've had this forty year both professional association and also very close friendship. There was a moment when he went to see you as a music producer. It's gone now in legend now. The review he wrote of The Gig in Boston and he penned the line, I saw Rock and Roll Future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.

Presenter19:12

When you first met him after he'd written that, aside from the flattery, what was it that meant that you got on with each other? Why did you click?

Bruce Springsteen19:19

When I first met him, I don't think he'd written he hadn't written that piece yet, but he'd written a small review.

Bruce Springsteen19:26

That was tacked up outside of the club we were playing, trying to get some breathing customers in for the night. We were playing a little club in Boston. There was about eight or nine people in it. The little review was tacked on the glass window outside. And it was in wintertime, and I was standing out in the cold with my jacket wrapped up around me, reading this little review. And at that exact moment, along came two guys. One was John Landau and the other one was Dave Marsh. And they said, hi. I said, hi. I said, what do you think? I said, well, that's pretty good. And he introduced himself as the guy who had written the review. And I met Dave. They came in and saw the show that night. And.

Bruce Springsteen20:09

we struck up sort of a a modest friendship, but uh

Bruce Springsteen20:13

There was a show at I think called Harvard Square Theatre where John s saw us and wrote that particular piece a little bit later on. But it's followed me around quite a bit since then.

Presenter20:25

Do you like it or does it irk you? I mean, it's quite the proclamation, isn't it?

Bruce Springsteen20:29

Yeah, that's for sure. Initially it was it was a little it was a little difficult, but I mean looking back it's all it's all funny now.

Presenter20:39

You went on to collaborate with him, of course, on on Born to Run, and and you've said of that you wanted to pen a record like the last record you might hear, the last one you'd ever need to hear.

Bruce Springsteen20:50

Yeah.

Presenter20:51

It's quite an ambition for a young man.

Bruce Springsteen20:52

Yeah.

Presenter20:53

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen20:54

Well, let me see. I was twenty four and I was an ambitious young man, I was. Clearly, but also you must have thought you could write that song. I guess I did. I guess I did. And

Bruce Springsteen21:09

You know, I'd I'd had a lot of

Bruce Springsteen21:12

a lot of experience before then. But I'd already been I'd been playing for ten years. And I'd experienced just about every sort of uh gig you can imagine. You know, we played supermarket openings, drive in theaters, firemen's fairs.

Presenter21:16

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen21:28

VFW halls, weddings. I'd played in front of every conceivable audience you could imagine. And I'd drawn thousands of people to my shows at that point. And it was a band I had called Steel Mill. We drew thousands of people without a record to our local shows. So I knew what having some success was.

Bruce Springsteen21:51

I traveled around the country already. I'd been back and forth across the United States several times, traveled to San Francisco with one of my bands, competed in that area where there were a lot of good musicians in those days, and we held our own pretty well. So I'd seen a lot, and I felt like, well, I've been around a bit, I've seen a lot.

Bruce Springsteen22:15

And I still felt, well, I think I'm one of the most distinctive musicians I've seen at my age. And so I had a lot of confidence, a lot of confidence. And I had a certain vision.

Bruce Springsteen22:30

I wasn't so much a revolutionary as I was an alchemist, you know. When we went to do Born to Run, I mean, I had Dwayne Eddy in my head, Roy Orbison, great Phil Specter records, Dylan, the physicality of Elvis. I said, somehow I'm going to mix all these things together, and I want to make the greatest record anyone's ever heard, you know.

Bruce Springsteen22:53

Tell me about your next piece of music then. This is your fourth disc.

Bruce Springsteen22:57

Madam George Van Morrison, Astral Weeks is an extremely important record for me and a lot of other people. It made me trust in beauty. It gave me a sense of the divine. The divine seems to just run through the veins of that entire album. So there was a spiritual side of it that was very, very deep. Of course, it was incredible singing and playing of Richard Davis on the bass. It had the jazz influences.

Bruce Springsteen23:27

And it was trance music. You know, it was repetitive. It was the same chord progression, three chords over and over again. But it showed how expansive something with very basic cymbal underpinning could be. So there'd be no New York City serenade if there hadn't been Astral Weeks. And this was, of course, my favorite cut off the entire record.

Speaker 323:51

Yeah, that's sad I'm making all the stops

Speaker 323:57

A kid stand in the street collecting bubble tops

Speaker 324:05

Yeah.

Speaker 124:05

Go on for cigarettes and matches in the shops

Speaker 124:12

Happy Tech and Madam Joy.

Speaker 124:18

Oh that's when you're falling.

Speaker 124:24

Welcome back.

Presenter24:27

That was Van Morrison and Madam George. You said, going into that Bruce Springsteen, that it taught you, among many other things, to trust in beauty. In nineteen eighty four, you released what remains, in spite of all your other huge successes, your most successful selling album born in the USA, and that iconic image on the cover, the the Annie Leibovitz photograph.

Speaker 324:33

Um

Presenter24:45

You said at the time, in the end, that picture was chosen because my ass looked better than the picture of my face, which always makes me smile. But it tells tales of ordinary Americans, of people just grinding out their jobs, of trying to make difficult relationships work, of dealing with being short of money. I mean, that is still what you write about, and yet the further away you have moved from that in your life,

Presenter25:06

How easy is it to always connect when you go to that place of writing with the ordinary lives of everyday Americans?

Bruce Springsteen25:13

Well, you know, you

Bruce Springsteen25:16

You have all of your experience to draw from all the time. So you can always go back and draw on any place you've ever been. And the formative years of your childhood and your young adulthood still remain incredibly powerful, which is why people feel most connected often to the music that they were, say, in high school with at a certain moment, or in college or your early 20s. Your formative years, the music that you use to build your identity.

Bruce Springsteen25:55

always remains very prominent in your tastes.

Presenter25:59

You know, people who have had great pain and difficulty in their childhood often manage to make a success of being an adult.

Bruce Springsteen26:02

Oh yeah.

Presenter26:06

By not going there anymore. And yet, in order to

Speaker 126:09

Yeah.

Presenter26:10

To write about the things you do, you you've you've always gone back. You've there there was there a price to pay in that, in mining your past for your current creativity, of going back to where you came from?

Speaker 126:11

Right.

Bruce Springsteen26:18

Liberty of going back.

Presenter26:21

I see.

Bruce Springsteen26:21

Take the

Bruce Springsteen26:23

that you work on

Bruce Springsteen26:26

The thing that's eating away at you.

Bruce Springsteen26:29

And I think that the performers that we feel are wrestling with something significant are the performers that hold

Bruce Springsteen26:36

They hold our attention.

Bruce Springsteen26:38

Why couldn't people take their eyes off Brando?

Bruce Springsteen26:41

Something was always eating at him.

Bruce Springsteen26:43

I I don't know if it was ever named, but whatever it was, you couldn't take your eyes off him when he came on screen.

Bruce Springsteen26:50

Why can't you take your eyes off of Dylan? Well, there's there's something eating at him.

Bruce Springsteen26:55

So, a lot of my work is drawn from the period in my life.

Bruce Springsteen27:00

where I'm trying to go back.

Bruce Springsteen27:03

and make sense of things.

Bruce Springsteen27:04

that at the time were unfathomable and uncontextualizable.

Bruce Springsteen27:10

And that continues to this day. I constantly go back and I put my father's clothes on and I walk out on stage and I.

Bruce Springsteen27:19

present some version of him and myself at night.

Bruce Springsteen27:25

To my audience. And why am I doing that? Well, I'm trying to find.

Bruce Springsteen27:30

The piece of it that would lead to a certain sort of transcendence over those circumstances that I grew up in. So these are all things I'm working out on stage at night and why people

Bruce Springsteen27:41

Come to see us.

Presenter27:43

It's clearly worked professionally. Has it worked personally?

Bruce Springsteen27:48

Yeah.

Presenter27:48

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen27:48

Well

Presenter27:49

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen27:49

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen27:51

Generally doesn't work as well personally as professionally. At some point you have to, you know, you address these things and you let a certain amount of them go and of course you move on. But you're always called back to those moments and while I don't live in them anymore, I do occasionally revisit them.

Presenter28:00

You know

Speaker 328:00

Yeah.

Presenter28:15

I know you didn't have a beer till you were 22. Steve Van Sant says you are the only person he has ever known who has never, ever taken drugs. You operate your band setup in a kind of benign dictatorship. It seems that the control that you've been able to exert personally has also been a very significant part of that. You exerted just untypical in your industry control over how you've behaved.

Speaker 128:31

Peris.

Bruce Springsteen28:40

For how you've behaved? Yeah, I'm sure too much at times, but uh I come from a chaotic childhood, I felt, and so what I was interested in doing was creating some order and a safe environment for myself, because my childhood felt very unsafe, and a structure where I can express myself freely and grow into

Bruce Springsteen29:09

grow into a man, you know. So for me

Bruce Springsteen29:12

My first luxuries were

Bruce Springsteen29:14

A place where I could create some semblance of order out of my life. And I think that explains why I really didn't go into introducing into my system any sort of chemicals that I thought were going to unbalance me. I'd had enough imbalance. So I went.

Bruce Springsteen29:31

I went in the other direction. And initially I was very tight about it. And then of course as you get older you relax with things. But I did, you know, I didn't really drink a lot until I was a little older than most people. And it was just, it was what I was in pursuit of. I was in pursuit of a certain I wouldn't say tranquility, but certainly a certain order that had been missing from my life when I was young.

Bruce Springsteen29:56

Let's have some more music, Bruce Springsteen. Tell me about your next one. What's going on, right? Marvin Gaye. First of all, this entire record is from start to finish is a masterpiece.

Bruce Springsteen30:08

It was sultry and very sexual while at the same time having a very political point of view, dealing with street-level politics. That had a big influence on me, along with the idea that it was somewhat of a concept record without being cursed by that name. It was a record that had a thread you could follow from the first song to the last, and it created a world that you could walk into and then come back out of, but bring along with you things you'd learned and energy and a source that you'd found for living.

Bruce Springsteen30:42

What's Going On was a record that really struck home for me for all those particular points.

Speaker 330:47

Yeah.

Speaker 330:49

War is not the answer

Speaker 330:52

For all in love.

Speaker 330:54

Okay.

Speaker 330:57

You know we've got to find our way.

Speaker 331:02

To bring some love and get here today.

Speaker 331:08

Wicked line

Speaker 331:10

Picket side, don't punish me with a brutality Talk to me so you can see

Presenter31:27

That was Marvin Gaye. Beautiful. Beautiful. It was 1984 then, when Patty Skalfa joined the E Street Band, a pivotal time for you. You were, of course, to fall in love, to get married, to have children, but a very

Presenter31:39

Significant, I'm sure, part of your relationship has been that you share the music together. But she is too a musician and a performer.

Bruce Springsteen31:44

But she is too.

Bruce Springsteen31:47

Patty is just a great songwriter and very distinctive and original voice. She gets to show about one hundredth of that on stage with the East Street Band, you know, but she's made three very good records. I initially saw her fronting a band in Asbury Park, singing a song by The Exciters called Tell'em.

Bruce Springsteen32:10

And she just had a sound that sort of was part Dusty Springfield, part the Ronettes and Crystals. It was just a beautiful combination of elements. And then she just had something in it that was her own. And Patty joined the band literally days before we went out on tour in 1984. And then it was years later, I guess three or four years later, we got together as a couple. And it was very interesting. I hadn't been involved with another musician before.

Speaker 132:36

There was

Bruce Springsteen32:40

She had a lot of understanding of where I was coming from and some of the choices I make and a little bit about the twisted parts of my personality that she knew how to handle and live with better than some of my other relationships. It was a lovely beginning to what's been a very beautiful relationship.

Presenter33:02

So you've had three children together, Evan, Jessica and Sam. Tell me about that point in nineteen ninety before the birth of Evan, your first child, where your father got in a car and drove hundreds of miles to to come and see you. Wh why was he doing that and what happened?

Bruce Springsteen33:18

Oh, I think it was uh

Bruce Springsteen33:21

You know, I was gonna be a father and I think that he'd

Bruce Springsteen33:24

had some things he wanted to say, which was very unusual for my for my dad, but uh he must have felt pressed to come down and sort of give me slightly a bit of a warning as to where he felt he went wrong. What what did he say?

Bruce Springsteen33:38

Just that he'd uh

Bruce Springsteen33:41

He felt he hadn't been present enough for me and hadn't perhaps been as good to me as he might have wanted to be. And um it was a very short conversation,'cause my dad's not much of a talker, but it was it was a pretty meaningful one at the time.

Presenter33:56

You said, you know, very poignantly, you you put on your father's clothes, as it were, to go onstage. You are an amalgam of both yourself and him when you perform. Offstage, becoming a father yourself. What what was that transformation like?

Bruce Springsteen34:08

T-Bone Burnett had a great quote where he said, all of rock and roll was somebody going, Daddy, wow!

Bruce Springsteen34:18

So I say it's certainly true in my case, you know. So, so.

Bruce Springsteen34:26

It's it's my indulgence, I guess. But um but when you became a dad myself was it was a very different experience, you know.

Presenter34:30

But when you become

Bruce Springsteen34:38

It opens your life and your it opens your heart, your mind, your life up to a world that was present, but that previously you had not recognized nor seen. So suddenly you get this beautiful flooding of another vision of life and of what life can be. It surprised me how much I'd missed. And so the child, when they come, you know, there's a little window that opens and they bring in a certain amount of grace with them. And suddenly when that's gifted to you, it changes the way you see everything, the way you write, the way you think. You step outside and you fill your lungs with, it feels like, with more air. It was, has been, and continues to be an incredible thing to experience.

Presenter35:30

Let's have some more music, Bruce Bringstein. This is uh year six. Out of sight.

Bruce Springsteen35:34

Pure Excitement, pure electricity.

Bruce Springsteen35:39

Pure get out of your seat, move your ass. Pure sweat filled, gospel filled, raw, rock and roll rhythm and blues.

Speaker 335:53

Got your highest eagles on

Speaker 335:58

Flippin' new

Speaker 336:01

Got your highest figure song

Speaker 336:05

And you're slipping new

Speaker 336:09

You're more than alright.

Speaker 336:11

You know you're out of sight.

Speaker 336:16

Got a shapeless thing of mama

Speaker 336:20

Let's keep me off time.

Speaker 336:23

I was shape the bigger mama

Speaker 336:26

Keep me up tight.

Bruce Springsteen36:29

That was James Bryan. That's fascinating. I haven't heard that in a while.

Bruce Springsteen36:34

And it's like a taut rubber band. I was surprised at how tight and restrained that record sounds.

Presenter36:41

Um

Bruce Springsteen36:41

Very exciting.

Presenter36:43

You've spent your professional life being a hero on stage to many, many people. Barack Obama said I'm only running for president'cause I can't be Bruce Springsteen.

Presenter36:51

Um

Presenter36:52

How much are you concerned about being as open as you have been in your memoir, and indeed as you have been occasionally on stage, and certainly in your music?

Presenter37:01

About depression because people want to think of you as other than them, and here you are sharing your weakness with everybody.

Bruce Springsteen37:08

With everybody.

Presenter37:10

Uh

Bruce Springsteen37:10

I didn't think about it that much when I went to write about it. It was just if you're writing an autobiography, you have to open your life up to a certain degree and you agree to show them your mind and how it works and how you've made your decisions and the things that have affected you that have shaped your music.

Bruce Springsteen37:34

And you know, I tried to do it as humorously and as discreetly as possible, but it's just something that's been a part of my life. I mean, it was much more difficult for my pop and for a lot of the other members of my family who suffered from it a lot. But I've had to deal with it as time's passed on, and it's usually okay. And then once in a while, Churchill's black dog, you know, jumps up and bites you in the ass for a little while. I've developed some skills that help me dealing with it, but it's still a powerful, powerful thing that really comes up from things that still remain unexplainable to me.

Presenter38:08

And can I ask you what the skills are? What are the you say you've developed skills to learn that just Uh

Bruce Springsteen38:13

Naming it?

Presenter38:14

It's sometimes

Bruce Springsteen38:14

Sometimes, you know, it's on a particular day, it's a chemical imbalance also. What most people tend to want to do is when they feel bad, the first thing you want to do is name a reason as to why you feel that way. I feel bad because and you'll transfer that to someone else. Well, because Johnny said this to me, or this happened, or that, you know, and sometimes that's true, but a lot of times you're simply looking to name something that's not particularly nameable. And if you misname it, it just makes everything that much worse. So I think my skills are sort of saying, okay, it's not this, it's not that, it's just this. This is something that comes, it's also something that goes. You know, it may be something I have to live with for a period of time. But if you can acknowledge it and if you can relax a little bit with it, very often it shortens its duration.

Presenter39:07

And you said that in in recent years you suffered an episode of depression where you were close to the abyss. You felt closer than you had ever been. That is a very dangerous place to be. What was it that brought you back from that?

Bruce Springsteen39:20

Um you know, Patty's very helpful.

Bruce Springsteen39:24

And sometimes just time, you know, or sometimes the correct medication. You need the right drugs. That can really help also. So these are all things that can pull you back into your life and certainly in my case how how blessed my life's been.

Presenter39:41

Let's have some more music, Bruce. Um tell me about your next one. We're on your your penultimate disc, your seventh. All right, like a rolling stone. This could be

Bruce Springsteen39:47

at the top of the list. Um the way I described it and I think when I I inducted

Bruce Springsteen39:56

doing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and

Bruce Springsteen40:00

So the snare drum that opens the song feels like somebody kicked open the door to your mind.

Bruce Springsteen40:05

And like a Rolling Stone is a torrent that comes rushing.

Bruce Springsteen40:10

Rushing towards you floods your soul, floods your mind, alerts and wakes you up instantaneously to other worlds, other lives, other ways of being. You know, it's perhaps one of the most powerful records ever made and still means a great, great deal to me, along with all of Dylan's work. This is the first time I heard it was it came out of the radio. I didn't know anything about Bob Dylan's acoustic music. I was a creature of top 40, so the first time I really heard him was on the radio with this song, and it just instantly...

Bruce Springsteen40:49

It started to change my life, you know.

Speaker 340:53

Does it feel?

Speaker 340:57

Uh

Speaker 340:58

How does it feel?

Speaker 341:03

To be without home.

Speaker 341:08

Like a complete unknown.

Speaker 341:13

Like a rolling stone

Speaker 341:26

Are you going to define

Presenter41:29

That was Bob Dylan. How does it feel? The difference then, this is your specialist subject, Bruce Springsteen, the difference between the American dream and the American reality. And your music over the decades has asked those very big questions about what it means to be an American, what it means to be free.

Speaker 141:44

Yeah.

Presenter41:47

What it means to be a man. And you've written landmark albums. The Rising was written in response to 9-11, The Wrecking Ball after the crash of 2008, The Financial Crash.

Presenter41:57

Do you think?

Presenter41:59

rock and roll still has the cultural muscle to reach people now? Do you think it's where we go to to understand our experience and hear it meaningfully reflected back at us?

Bruce Springsteen42:10

Well, you know, music has gotten very uh

Bruce Springsteen42:14

factionalized so it's it's very different one of the

Bruce Springsteen42:18

most prescient statements on this whole subject was

Bruce Springsteen42:22

Lester Bangs, one of the great rock critics from the seventies, when Elvis died.

Bruce Springsteen42:28

said well, from here on in

Bruce Springsteen42:31

I'm going to have my own heroes and you're going to have yours. I may like Iggy Pop, you may like Joni Mitchell.

Bruce Springsteen42:38

But there's going to be very few things we're ever going to agree to ever again. So uh instead of saying goodbye to Elvis, I'm going to say goodbye to you.

Bruce Springsteen42:49

And it was very, very forward looking. And I think that that's what we've had to deal with as the lay of the land over the the past quarter century of pop music.

Bruce Springsteen43:02

I don't know if there is any one place where people go to hear cultural comment these days. I think you can find it in the super pop and RB that's on top 40 radio these days. You can find it in a lot of indie music. So rock doesn't have the hegemony that it used to have. Everybody goes to the coal mine and digs as best as they can. But there's also acts that have to behave as if none of the above is true.

Bruce Springsteen43:33

or you have to go out looking for your biggest audience.

Bruce Springsteen43:36

an audience that you feel is interested in the times that you're writing about.

Bruce Springsteen43:41

and the form that you are using to communicate your insights, whatever they may be.

Bruce Springsteen43:46

And that's the way I proceed with my job. I think U2 does something like that. Artists as varied as Kanye West go out and do it, assuming they can speak to everyone at a certain moment. I think that's that's how I like to approach it these days.

Presenter44:03

We're gonna cast you away to a desert island on this show. You know that. I'm imagining you know that. Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen44:06

Really?

Speaker 144:07

Uh

Bruce Springsteen44:07

Yeah.

Presenter44:08

When you get there, you will be all alone. How are you a coper? Are you a guy who can cope? I mean, are you are you practically minded? Do you think you'll be able to survive?

Bruce Springsteen44:17

In some ways I'm pretty good on my own. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would necessarily be my best company.

Presenter44:25

Let's have your final piece of music, Bruce Springsteen. What are we going to hear? What's your eighths?

Presenter44:30

Baby, I need your love and

Bruce Springsteen44:31

Uh

Presenter44:31

By the fourteenth

Bruce Springsteen44:31

Uh

Presenter44:31

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen44:31

And I had to have some Motown.

Bruce Springsteen44:35

'Cause Motown was

Bruce Springsteen44:37

An incredible part of My Youth. It was also If You Wanted to Know How to Write.

Bruce Springsteen44:44

how to structure successful pop records. You could learn it all from Motown. The sound of the band, the importance of a great singer.

Bruce Springsteen44:55

Motown was just the school where you wanted to go to learn your craft. And this was a song that every little bar band played this one back in the day. And along with that, it was just a beautiful piece of music.

Speaker 345:10

Some say to sign a reason for a man

Speaker 345:18

And we are the webinar.

Speaker 345:22

If it meets having you

Speaker 345:25

Cause lately I've been losing skill

Speaker 345:30

I live on love.

Speaker 345:34

You have all your none

Speaker 345:39

I need your love in the

Speaker 345:41

Yeah.

Speaker 345:42

I have all your love

Presenter45:46

That was the four tops and baby I need your love ones. So uh Bruce Springsteen, it's come to the point in the programme where I give all our castaways a couple of books to take with them and you get to take to this island uh the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare and along with those you get to choose one other book. What is your book gonna be?

Bruce Springsteen45:58

And along

Bruce Springsteen46:03

Hmm, that's a that that that was a a tough question.

Bruce Springsteen46:06

I'm a fan of Philip Roth, John Cheever, Jim Thompson, James M. Kane, Flannery O'Connor, all the Russian guys. But.

Bruce Springsteen46:17

If I had to pick a book that sort of changed my way of thinking, it might be Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie biography, Woody Guthrie a Life. It was a very influential book for me and changed my way of thinking about what you might be able to do with popular music.

Presenter46:34

Okay, we'll give you that book. You're allowed a luxury too.

Presenter46:37

Uh

Bruce Springsteen46:38

12.

Presenter46:38

Boom.

Bruce Springsteen46:38

Uh

Presenter46:38

Uh

Bruce Springsteen46:40

A sh

Presenter46:43

I'm afraid it can't be any living being or thing. That's the bad news. I can give you a kitchen. I have to kill you. I can give you a kitchen.

Bruce Springsteen46:43

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen46:46

I can give you a kitchen. I have to be alone. Can you cook? A kitchen? What good is that going to do me?

Presenter46:52

Or your guitar. Would you like to?

Bruce Springsteen46:53

I'd definitely bring the guitar, that's for sure.

Presenter46:56

Well, it's only one, so you're not getting the kitchen, but you are getting the guitar. And if you had to save one of these eight discs from the waves, which single disc would you run to save?

Speaker 146:56

Uh

Bruce Springsteen47:05

That's really tough.

Bruce Springsteen47:07

I'd have to say like a Rolling Stone.

Presenter47:09

Okay, it's yours, Bruce Springsteen. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island visit.

Bruce Springsteen47:12

For letting us hear your desert islands. I appreciate it.

Presenter47:55

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.

Speaker 148:29

This is the B B C.