Homecoming: Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band

Interview von Bill Flannigan / VH 1
http://www.vh1.com/community/springsteen_unseen/ 

When Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in early 1999, he took the occasion to honor his comrades in the E Street Band, the legendary group he formed in 1973 and fronted for sixteen years. Shortly after that, Springsteen announced what his fans had been hoping for - that he and the E Street Band would reunite for a world tour. The tour began in early spring of '99 and ended, with ten emotional shows at Madison Square Garden, in June of 2000. 

Throughout the tour, Springsteen declined all requests for interviews. He said he wanted to stay below the radar, to pull himself away from the media hype that accompanies most major rock events these days, to let the audience find the music, rather than shove it in their faces. Along that line, the generous concerts included songs from every part of Springsteen's career with the notable exception of his big video hits from the mid-80s. There was no "Glory Days" or "I'm on Fire" or "Brilliant Disguise" or "My Hometown." "Born in the USA" showed up rewritten as an acoustic blues. The rare times he played "Dancing in the Dark," it was as a solo country song.

Springsteen spent much of 2001 working on tapes - video and audio - of the Madison Square Garden shows. He made some of them into an HBO special, and now has put the entire show onto two DVDs for release as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live in New York City. That follows the release earlier this year of two other Springsteen DVDs, a video collection and Blood Brothers, a documentary about the E Street Band.


Bruce invited VH1 to his farm in New Jersey, not far from the towns of Freehold, where he was born and raised, and Asbury Park, where he began his musical career. He was relaxed, hospitable, quick to laugh but also thoughtful with his answers. This is, after all, his life's work we're dealing with. It is the only interview Bruce Springsteen will give for this project, and it got at the heart of his relationship with the stage, his family, his fans, and the E Street Band.

Homecoming: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will premiere on VH1 on Sunday, December 16 at 9/8c. The special combines performances not seen in the HBO special with Bruce's reflections about the music, the tour, and his songwriting. 

What follows is some of the rest of what he told us:

VH1: You once said that the E Street Band represented something to your audience that was bigger than you realized, until you went your separate ways.

Bruce Springsteen: You built the thing, so you have a slightly different perspective on it. But you forget that music goes out into the world and has a life of its own, apart from whatever your ambitions may have been. One of the things that made me want to take the band out was I was in Freehold and ran into a couple of young guys in their early twenties. They came up to me and said, "We're big fans, but we've never seen you play with the band." I felt that I'd like to play for these guys, and I'd like for my own kids to see it. Because my band is one of the greatest bands in the world. When the band reformed, we realized we were important to one another. One of the things I was proudest of was that everybody was alive and well and healthy and the best that I'd ever seen them. It was a reflection of the values that were in our music from the beginning. We all had a bigger respect for the power of the band and the meaning of the band to our audience, just from having that time apart.

VH1: What was your kids' reaction to the shows?

Springsteen: It varied from nights where they would be excited about it to "Can I go home please?" [Laughs] In the end, it's your mom and dad [up there]. The main thing was I wanted them to see us doing a job that we loved with our very close friends. They met Clarence, but they had never seen Clarence and me onstage together, or Steve and me onstage together, or Nils. The band is a good model of successful friendships and working relationships. I wanted the kids to see that it was powerful, when we all stand together and do this.

The way you all took turns singing the verses of "If I Should Fall Behind" was a perfect summation.

Springsteen: Yeah. In one of his interviews Danny [Federici] said, "When you're young, you don't know what you have." That's always true. You get a little older and you go, "This is a real great thing to have as part of your life." I was looking for a song we could all sing. The idea was: There's this group of very individual people. Everybody's gone off and followed their own careers in different ways. I wanted the symbolism of having their individual voices heard. Hear Clarence's voice. Hear Nils' voice. Hear Steve's voice. Patti's voice. They're all so particular to themselves. That song perfectly leant itself to that presentation. At the end of the night that's what it's all about, right there.

VH1: When you were first going through songs for the set, did you think, "I don't feel like I can comfortably sing that one, but I can do a new thing with this one?"

Springsteen: If the tour didn't feel present, it wasn't going to happen. We've set a particular mark on the bar that I didn't want to find myself falling short of. Initially, I went in with the idea of just playing things that I was excited about singing. A lot of it we pulled from Tracks, because it was all stuff that had the power and passion the band had, yet hadn't been heard very much. Then there's the Darkness on the Edge of Town stuff. I knew I wanted to sing some of those songs, but I didn't want to sing them as I'd sung them previously. We took a long time making our records, because we were thinking about them a lot. The songs were very thoughtfully written. That paid off 15 years later, because when I went to them, they maintained their emotional vitality and their realness. I wrote from a pretty adult perspective when I was very young. That also paid off when we went back to the music. The depth was there in those songs. So your 50-year-old self could reach for those different things that you went in after before and pull them out. Once we had that, I knew we were going to be very good every night. The first night we played for an audience, in Asbury Park, there was about 50 people standing outside. It was rainy, so we said, "Well, let everyone in." The whole thing transformed itself. I had some anxieties about, "Gee, can I sing this? Can I sing that?" The minute there was an audience there, it was shocking. I was like, "There's the element that's going to make this live here and now." I think we played 110 songs over the course of the tour. Some of them only once. Some of them every night. 

VH1: Some songs were changed radically live, some subtly. On "Thunder Road," for instance, you begin singing in the past tense and then you go into the story. I don't know how planned that was.

Springsteen: I didn't realize I was doing that! [Laughs.] I think I was just trying to find my current voice inside the music. There were some lyric changes. There were definitely ways that I sang, inflections, falling on certain words. I wanted the audience to connect with the music that they loved, but I also wanted them to find a subtle new spot in it. With a song like "Thunder Road," we were able to do that. I sung it the way I'd sing now, which is different from the way you'd sing ten or fifteen years ago. Your inflection changes. The tone of your voice is subtly different. That all changes as you move along as a singer. So you're able to refine those songs with a slightly different voice. That was the main thing we were interested in. You hopefully pick up the past and the present. It can broaden the song in a nice way.

VH1: The most striking thing was that you went out and did very different shows night after night, with songs from 1973 to today. But you didn't really play any of the big '80s video hits.


Springsteen: We had hits at a certain moment, but we weren't much of a singles band. They weren't as essential as playing "Promised Land" or "Darkness on the Edge of Town" or something new that captured the band's essence, like "Land of Hope and Dreams." No one really missed them. I played "Dancing in the Dark" a couple of times. We had a neat little country version we did. But it was pretty few and far in-between. Those things can really date you. The people who had seen us before were coming because they remembered they [once] got something that they needed [from us]. That was what our band tried to deliver. The new people were coming because they wanted that intensity, to see what was that thing that people needed. When we put the set together, my concern was playing essential material - things that defined my voice and the band's power. Those are the songs we incorporated into the show. The stuff that I felt was essential, that had fallen during that time period I reinterpreted in some fashion.

VH1: The country thing has definitely become more of a presence in the live show. When I first heard you and the E Street Band it was not there. It was at the time of the Eagles, but yours was a band that had everything except country.

Springsteen: Yeah. Before I recorded I had some things that were a little more country-oriented. Steve was a massive country music fan. When we were in the teen clubs, he was a gigantic country rock fan. He was a gigantic Youngbloods fan. Stevie played the hell out of that first Youngbloods album! He had a great band and played all that. And Nils learned to play steel guitar for the tour! I said, "I'd like to use steel on this thing." He said, "Let me try and see what I can do." He spent a month or two and learned to play that damn thing right before he went on the road. Amazing! That's hard to play. I can't sit down and make heads or tails of that, because you're using your legs and your hands. It's like you're rubbing your tummy and scratching your head. It allowed us to bring stuff that I'd gotten into through The Ghost of Tom Joad record, a little more of the country thing, and put it into what we were doing with the band. It was a nice element to throw in there.

VH1: One of the other things you've always been able to do is mix material as profound as "Mansion on the Hill" with the showmanship of "Light of Day," with that fantastic New York vs. New Jersey routine as a centerpiece.

Springsteen: When we grew up, rock musicians were clowns, you know? Go back to the Coasters and the guy standing on the stand-up bass with Bill Haley. They clowned. It was part of the fun of the whole thing. That came natural, being alongside Steve. The fun things were always a natural part of the band. Part of what you're there for is it's joyous and silly. That's maybe the most essential part. I've said often in the past, it was supposed to be a circus, a political rally, and a dance party. All those different things.

VH1: Until this tour, I really never saw the great song in "Light of Day." You've done that song a lot, and I've always wondered what you see in it.

Springsteen: That's a funny thing. It's just a pretty generic rock song, but it ends up being a little more than that because of the context. It's ended up ending the show. Partly because it gives itself over to shtick very easily! [Laughs] It's so basic that you can do anything with it. Start it. Stop it. Do all kinds of routines inside it. It's one of those all-purpose pieces of material.

VH1: At the very end of it, when you're down on your knees. I wonder whether it's a moment of collapse or a moment of delight.

Springsteen: I think it's all of those things. I'm collapsing and I'm delighted that I get to rest for a few minutes!

VH1: Are you lost in that moment? Or are you like an actor going, "Okay, finish that scene. Let's go on to the next one."

Springsteen: Well, it can only be real if you're really there. The hardest thing about the show is that I wake up in the morning and know I've got to turn myself into a hysterical raving lunatic later that evening. The trick every night is to get there, and get as far into that as you can. It's part of what your guarantee is, that you're going to reach that moment for your audience. Because if you're not there, there's nothing worse. Somebody once asked [the J. Geils' Band's] Peter Wolf what's the weirdest thing he ever did on stage. He said, "Think about what I was doing." That is the strangest thing you can ever do. You've got to be down and in it. We've got a lot of music that helps you get there, and I've got a band and an audience that gets me there. But you have to walk onstage with a complete commitment to go there. And it's absolutely essential that you get there, which isn't hard when there are all those people screaming in your face. You want to do something.

VH1: For some people the ability to reconnect with that goes away.

Springsteen: I guess it can happen. From the beginning, I've said, "You've got to go up there believing that it's only rock 'n' roll and it's the most important thing you're going to do in the world that night." You've got to hold both those ideas in your head simultaneously. For me it still remains a tremendous opportunity. I worked very hard to develop a voice and create a situation where I can communicate. That's something of extreme value to me.

VH1: Is there part of you that doesn't need the audience as much any more now that you have your family?

Springsteen: It's different. It's not completely a question of need. It's just part of your life. There were some simple reasons to do the tour. One was asking myself: "Is that who I was or who I am?" I developed all these skills and this craft and used it to its greatest effect in this context. It's just things I know how to do. I would have to have a real strong reason to not do them. I enjoyed playing acoustically and I certainly want to do that again and make records like that again. In a sense I'm very happy at home. I'm pretty good at not working. But at the same time, this is something that is part of my life. It's part of our lives. Once you set it in motion, all the old things come into play. All the old motivations, your desires, your own needs, what you get from the audience at night and what you deliver. You still need the audience. There isn't a particular night where you don't like 20,000 people screaming your name. That's still fun. I always used to watch this film Gentleman Jim with Errol Flynn and Ward Bond. Ward Bond played the great boxer John L. Sullivan. There was a great scene where he's coming down the street and there's a crowd around him. He would say to everybody that he met, "Shake the hand that shook the world!" I always enjoyed that. You go out on the town and you're sitting there and people come up and say, "Hi." I get something out of that. I enjoy that more often than not. That's still a big part of what gets you out there.

VH1: You put a lot of stuff out on DVD this year.

Springsteen: [Laughs] Catching up!

VH1: Do you think of it like making an album? You seem to be putting a lot of care into it.

Springsteen: We were getting towards the end of the tour, and hadn't filmed anything. I didn't film the Tom Joad tour and that was stupid. My manager Jon Landau said, "Look, Sony will give us these cameras and the last couple of nights we can film the thing. If you like it, great. If not, okay." I said, "Okay. As long as it doesn't get in the way of doing the last shows here in the city." The fellows that had worked on the video, our director Chris [Hilson], were with us the whole tour and knew the band real well. I looked at a little of it one afternoon before the show. I had a few suggestions about the lighting and this, that and the other thing. I didn't think about it after that, because it wasn't super-expensive. If it didn't come out good, it didn't come out good. Then I saw it a few weeks after we stopped and said, "Wow, this is a pretty good record of who the band is and what we do." The hardest thing to do was cut it down to the hour and 50 minutes we thought was going to get on television. I wanted to make sure it had the impact that I felt was part of the personality of our group. It was supposed to be straight at you, play to your insides as best we could and have that work on television. I felt so relieved when we saw it, because I realized there had not been any real extended video record of the E Street Band. To have captured the band at its best and in that fashion was something I felt really good about. Twenty years from now when my son Evan or somebody has their kids, they can say, "Hey, this is grand-pop. This is what he did." I have something to put on and say, "This is what I've done with my life." It's nice to have that. I hope the fans enjoy it.

VH1: It's got to give you a different perspective on the band. It must have been the most time you've ever spent looking at yourself and the E Street Band on film.

Springsteen: I've never seen the band really, except for bits and pieces of videotape and things. So I had never really seen the show. It was fun to see it, you know? I was superstitious. Focusing on it too much like that I always felt was not good for the soul! [Laughs] We just go out and do it. I was very intent on the transitional nature of it. Tonight we're in Oklahoma. And this is a show for Oklahoma. We're going to do it tonight and then it's going to be gone and done and whoever was there saw it and that's that. That was the way that I felt it was supposed to be for a long time. But I certainly wanted to get some piece of film on everything we did from here on in.

VH1: When something like this is over what happens? Does everyone say, 'Let's get the band in the studio?' Or does it feel like, OK, let's go make another Tom Joad?

Springsteen: Actually, after Tom Joad I felt like making another Tom Joad! [Laughs.] But my whole thing has been a sort of yin-yang. I would make a record that was somewhat quiet, whether it was Tunnel of Love or Nebraska, and then I would tend to make a rock record. Even before I recorded I played acoustically. So I always went back and forth between those two things. I wrote some good songs. I didn't have enough for an album and I didn't think I had a record that was as good as the Tom Joad record. Then you get an itch to do the other thing. The physicality that playing in a band involves is something you don't quite get out of an acoustic show. Just the level of fun and excitement. Coming out and making a big noise. It's fun to do for people and for yourself. I'd like to make a record with the band, have something that I can go out and play on the road. We'll see where it goes. We've played a little bit on the studio. We came off the road, spent a couple of days just knocking some things down. I've made some demos of "Code of Silence," "Further On Up the Road," a bunch of things we started to play on the tour. I'm just starting to get into what that's going to pan out as. I think I'd like to play again live like that not too far in the future if everything goes all right.

Interview von vh1.com