Fresh Air - Pete Seeger / Bruce Springsteen

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

The new biopic A Complete Unknown follows a young Bob Dylan as he arrives in New York and changes American folk music forever. Edward Norton plays folk icon Pete Seeger, who had a big impact on Dylan. Seeger was famous for his songs about working people, unions, and social justice. We're revisiting Terry's 1984 interview with Seeger, as well as her 2016 interview with Bruce Springsteen, who was compared to Dylan when he broke onto the scene.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Merry Christmas. I hope you're enjoying the holiday. The new Bob

Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened today in theaters. It stars Timothy Chalamet as Dylan. Today we're featuring interviews from our archive related to Dylan. We'll start with folk singer Pete Seeger, who influenced Dylan and is portrayed in the film by Edward Norton. And later we'll feature an interview with Bruce Springsteen, who described Dylan as the father of my country and inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Pete Seeger was famous for his songs about working people, unions, and social justice. He was one of the most important figures in 20th century American folk music and was at the forefront of the folk music

revival in the 1950s. He popularized the songs, This Land is Your Land and We Shall Overcome, and wrote, If I Had a Hammer and Turn Turn Turn. In the 1940s he sang union songs with the Almanac singers. A few years later he co-founded the Weavers, who surprised everyone, including themselves, when they became the first group to bring folk music to the pop charts, until they were blacklisted. Seeger refused to answer questions about his politics and personal associations when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s during the committee's investigation

into so-called subversive activities in the entertainment field. When the committee asked about a song, Seeger offered to sing it. Permission was denied. In 1961, he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about his politics and about other people's politics. Permission to sing the song was denied again at his trial. There's a scene based on that in the new movie.

Your Honor, you may know a friend of mine, Woody Guthrie. Great songwriter and great American, and Woody's not well. But he's been much on my mind as I've been going through this, because Woody once said that a good song can only do good. And the song I'm in hot water for here, it's a good song. It's a patriotic song, in fact. And I thought maybe you'd like to actually hear the words and I can play it for you.

Pete Seeger was convicted for contempt of Congress, but that was eventually overturned on appeal. He later performed at President Obama's inaugural concert. As a young man, Seeger believed songs were a way of binding people to a cause. Here's one of his many labor songs called Cotton Mill Colic. When you go to work, well you work like the devil. At the end of the week you're not on the level. Payday comes, you ain't got a penny, cause when you pay your bills you got so many. I'm gonna starve and everybody will, cause you can't make a living in a cotton mill

When you buy clothes on easy term Collect a a treat you like a measly worm. One dollar down and then the Lord knows if you can't make a payment they take your clothes. I'm gonna starve and everybody will cause you can't make a living in a cotton mill. Pete Seeger kept singing and protesting right through 2011 when he joined a march in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests. He also spent many years championing environmental causes. He died in 2014 at the age of 94. When I spoke with Seeger in 1984, he told me about how much he was influenced by Woody Guthrie. Woody showed me how to hitchhike and how to ride freight trains, how to sing in saloons. I

said what kind of songs you sing? Well, he said, this year, here's five or six tunes that are nearly always worth a nickel or a quarter. Makes no difference now what kind of life fate hands me. I'll get along without you. Now that's plain to see it's a gene artery hit," was in 1940. Was it hard to learn how to jump a railroad car? No. For men, of course, for women it'd be much more difficult. The danger of being assaulted by men who assumed that any woman who'd travel that way opened

her his advances. But Woody said, you wait in the outskirts of town, and when the train is picking up speed, it's still not going too fast. You can grab ahold of it and swing on. Getting off the first time, I didn't know how to do it, and I fell down and skinned my knees and elbow and broke my banjo. Fortunately, I had a camera with me, and I hocked it in a local pawn shop and bought a very cheap guitar. I knew a few chords, and I got through the rest of the summer playing

the guitar. Woody was a direct actionist. When he was singing once to raise money for war bonds during World War II, he and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee were in Baltimore. And they said, Mr. Guthrie, we have a seat for you at the table, and your friends, we have some food for them in the kitchen. He said, what do you mean? He tipped the whole table up in a big crowded dining hall, dumped a whole table full of plates and everything on the floor, and tipped another table up. Finally, he was restrained. Brownie says, what are you going to get us all in trouble? I'm lame and Sonny's blind. And they let him out. He was absolutely furious. That was Woody Guthrie. Yeah. You started doing a lot of performing for unions and union halls and even on picket lines.

How did you all come up with the songs that you thought would really speak to the people who were there? Well, long discussion. When I met Lee Hayes, I met one of the few geniuses I've met in my life. We were always talking and thinking what kind of songs were needed. We'd be trying out this and trying out that. Sometimes one person would start a song and another person would finish it. That's how it was with the song Talking Union. We'd heard Woody singing the old talking blues. If you want to go to heaven, let me tell you what to do. Got to grease your feet little mutton stew. Slide out of the devil's hand.

Ooze over in the promised land. Take it easy. Go greasy. So on. And I don't know whether it was Lee or Mill or me who thought of, you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do. Got to talk to the workers in the shop with you. Got to build you a union. Got to make it strong. But if you all stick together,

boys, it won't be long. You get shorter hours. Better working conditions. Vacations with pay. Take your kids to the seashore. I got the idea across that in spite of all the things that could go wrong, all the attacks that would be made on a group of working people, that you could win if you stuck together. In 1949, you were one of the people who were supposed to perform at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekville. I did. I sang, I sang, If I had a hammer and tea for Texas, I forgot what else. We shall not be moved,

maybe. You and many other people there were... And we had stones thrown at us. It was a pretty horrifying day. A lot of people thought this is the beginning of American fascism. This is how Hitler got started. I was just one of 10,000 people there, 20,000. It was a huge crowd. I came to hear Paul Robeson. But the Ku Klux Klan had infiltrated the police force of the county, and maybe the state for all I know, and the city. I don't know the details, but it was the Ku Klux Klan that initiated the attack.

And they had the concert surrounded with walkie talkies, like a battlefield. And after the concert was over, everybody who attended it was directed down one road. There were three roads you could have gone, to the left or straight ahead or to the right. I wanted to go to the left because my home was up there, but the police said, no, all cars down here. They directed us as though we're going to run the gauntlet. There are some 15 piles of stones about the size of a baseball, which had been waist high, these stones, thousands of stones. And every car that came by got a stone, wham, at close range. There was a policeman standing about 80 feet away, and I said, Officer, aren't you going to

do something? And he said, Move on, move on. Then I look around, the guy in back of me was getting stone after stone because he couldn't get past me. I was stopped. So I moved on. Funny, about a year and a half ago, I was out west. The man says, Pete, you were at Peekskill, weren't you? Yep, I said. He says, do you remember the car in the time you stopped and spoke to a policeman? And I said, yeah. And there was a car in back of me again. And he says, I was in that car. Had he been hurt? Well, he would have been killed if I hadn't moved on. When you look back, I don't know how many times before that you had been confronted

with that kind of direct violence. How did you behave during it and are you satisfied with the way you behaved when you look back? I'm sure that in retrospect, you can think how of things we did wrong. But knowing what I knew then, why I think we did the right thing, and I was of the opinion then that the average American wouldn't go in for that kind of fascist approach. You see, their that went up in Peekskill. Somebody printed them up. They were put on bumpers, bumper stickers. They were put in windows of apartments and houses. I saw them in bars. I said, wake up America. Peekskill did. Now, there was all America to do the same thing. You find these commies, so-and-so, traitors, whatever

you think they are, and you show them what's going to happen to them. They either get out of this country, that's the whole idea of America, love it or leave it. Yet within about a month, those signs were taken down. Now, nobody knows exactly why those signs came down, but I'm convinced that within Peekskill, there were many arguments within families. It might have been a grandparent that would say, you mean you threw stones at women and children? Well, we don't like these people either, but still you don't throw stones at women and children. I mean, is that what Abe Lincoln would have done? Is that what Thomas Jefferson would have done? Or anybody you admire? Is that what Jesus would have done? Is that what Thomas Jefferson would have done? Or anybody you admire? Is that what Jesus would have done? And it's significant that those signs did not stay up in Peekskill,

and you'll be interested. As of last month, Peekskill has a black mare. Danielle Pletka During the 1950s, when you were performing with the Weavers, I think that initially you performed at a lot of demonstrations and union halls and outside, and then you made a decision to start trying nightclubs. Was that a big crisis to actually decide to move into the clubs? That was a soul-searching. In one sense, I felt we're going into enemy territory. Why should I want to contribute to the nightclub scene, which I thought was anathema?

I come from old New England Puritans who thought nightclubs were dens of iniquity and never have been much of a drinker myself. But I wanted to reach people. And I remember Woody telling me, Pete, if it's a good experience singing at a bar. You ought to do it occasionally. So I did.

But to take a job at a nightclub and work there six nights a week. But we took it and it was a very valuable experience. We learned a hell of a lot. In six months, the Weavers had had six months of rehearsals and were ready to make some records. Were you really surprised when your records started getting played on the radio and became big hits? Yes.

We never expected to get on the hit parade. And to everybody's surprise, including the head of Decca Records, good night, Irene sold two million copies in the summer of 1950. It was the biggest seller since World War II, along with one of Bing Crosby's songs, Sam's song was the big seller. But Good Night Irene was on every jukebox in the USA in the year 1950. You couldn't escape that song. It floated out from every filling station, from every diner. That might have made it even more difficult than when you were blacklisted.

I thought the blacklisters would be after us a lot sooner. It took them a couple of years to chop us down. And it was a full five years before they got around to calling me up before the committee on un-American activities. I was surprised it took so long. You went to sing a song to the committee, right? I think I did. They questioned me about a song. I said, oh, that's a good song. I'll sing it to you. Oh, no, they didn't want me to sing it. They wanted to know where I had sung it, at the following place. I said, well, I have a right to sing a song anywhere I want to, whether I agree with the people or don't agree with them. I'm not interested in telling you that. They said, we direct you to tell us. I said, no. They said, you are liable to be under contempt

of Congress. Do you use the Fifth Amendment as your defense? No, I said, I just don't think these are questions any American should be asked, especially under threat of reprisal if they give the wrong answer. So, in effect, I was defending myself on the basis of the First Amendment. The Fifth Amendment, in effect, says, you have no right to ask me this question. But the First Amendment in effect says, you have no right to ask any American such questions. I was speaking with Pete Seeger, if you're just joining us. Have the wounds ever healed among the folk musicians who were friendly witnesses and those who weren't before you act? I think it's been harder for the friendly witnesses. History has not been kind to the

Un-American Activities Committee. It feels, as I felt, that these people didn't love America so much as their own particular version of America, which was somewhat limited, shall we say. And so those who cooperated with the committee, I wish they could forget it all. Those who stood up to the committee, as Lee says, if it wasn't for the honor, he'd just as soon not been blacklisted. It was an honor. Well, that honor kept you off of television for many years afterwards. How did you feel around the early 60s when the folk music boom started taking off, when finally folk music had become commercially viable, and you were in a way prevented from participating in it because you weren't allowed on radio or TV? Well, I was mad. I wrote some articles in Sing Out magazine warning people that this

ABC television show called Hootenanny would be kind of a travesty on what a real Hootenanny would be. A real Hootenanny was a bunch of people who hoped that music could bring people together to bring a peaceful world, a world without racism, a world where you had a right to join a union, a world without sexism. And instead, it was a second-rate vaudeville show. Some good folk music got played on the air, but there was an awful lot which was kept off the air. Why? Because it wasn't cheerful, happy music. And yet, to my mind, some of the greatest tragic music in the world

are the tragic songs that I've heard sung by American working people. Well, take a song like If I Had a Hammer. That is, I think, one of the most recorded songs in the world. I mean, hundreds of people have recorded it, right? But when you had first written it, it was considered a very dangerous song. Oh, yeah. What was considered dangerous about it? Hard to say. Talk about freedom and justice, maybe. It's hard to say. Hard to say. If you tried to pin people down, well, they'd just say, that's one of these Kame songs.

I'm sure in the southern states, the segregationist leaders would have said, oh, let's talk about all my brothers and sisters. Only the Kames talk that way. Only the race mixers talk like that. My gosh, people today can't realize, though, how much America has changed as a result of the civil rights movement, and one thing after another, the women's movement. We didn't win all the victories we hoped we would win, but we won some victories. And maybe that's the way the world moves forward. One of my favorite songs these days is, oh gosh, I love it, but don't have a guitar with me. Arlo and I sing it all the time.

it all the time. We are climbing Jacob's ladder. We are climbing. Jacobs ladder, brothers, sisters, all. I sang it way down low, the way you might sing it if you were singing a child asleep. That's a great song. It was made up by people in slavery, but it's, I think, one of the most scientific songs in the world. Revolutionists as well as religionists often forget that heaven doesn't come in one big bang.

It comes in many steps. Your work has inspired thousands and thousands of Americans of different generations. You could have, if you wanted to, really played that role to the hilt of the father of the modern American folk music movement. No, I would have known it was a lie. My main purpose as a musician has been to get people singing and get people to make their music by themselves. And it's the only reason I keep singing is because I'm a skilled song leader now. My voice is 50% shot. I can still shout in the high notes, but my low notes are very wobbly. But I can still get a crowd singing. And so when they're singing, they don't bother listening to

me. They're having a lot of fun. And that's my main purpose. I want to show people what a lot of fun it is to sing together. My interview with Pete Seeger was recorded in 1984. He died in 2014 at the age of 94. In the New Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, Seeger is portrayed by Edward Norton. After we take a short break, we'll hear the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016, after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. He performed with Seeger and recorded an entire album of songs associated with Pete Seeger. Here's one of them. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. Tomorrow is our sailing day Pay me my money down Pay me, pay me, pay me my money down

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Listen to The Indicator, the Daily Economics podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terri Gross. The new Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened today. Our next Dylan adjacent interview is with Bruce Springsteen. Not only did Dylan influence Springsteen, Springsteen was hailed as the new Bob Dylan at the start of his recording career. In Springsteen's memoir, he called Dylan the father of my country

and wrote that Dylan's albums, Highway 61 Revisited, and Bringing It All Back Home, were quote, not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived, unquote. When Springsteen inducted Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Springsteen said, "'I wouldn't be here without you.'" He performed Dylan's,

The Times They Are a Change In, in 1997 at the Kennedy Center, when Dylan was a Kennedy Center honoree. We're going to hear the interview I recorded with Springsteen in his home studio in New Jersey, not far from where he grew up. It was back in 2016 when his memoir had just been published. The book shares the title of his most famous song, Born to Run. The theme of that anthem is escape, but in much of the book, Springsteen reflects on how he and his music were shaped by home, roots, blood, community,

freedom, and responsibility. We started with a track from his CD Chapter and Verse that serves as an audio companion to the book with a selection of songs that span his career. This is his demo recording of his song Growing Up. Okay, take two. Well, I stood stone like at midnight, suspended in my masquerade I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch Well I stood all along to a fallout thong and came out with my soul untouched I hid in the clouded ramp of the crowd and they said sit down I stood up

Ooh growing up Well the flag of piracy flew from my mast Bruce Springsteen, welcome to Fresh Air and thank you for welcoming us into your studio. I'd love it if you would start by reading the very opening from the forward of your book. It's really a fantastic book and I'd like our listeners to just hear a little bit of your book. It's really a fantastic book and I'd like our listeners to just hear a little bit of your writing. Okay, my pleasure. I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I. By 20, no race car driving rebel. I was a guitar player on the

streets of Asbury Park and already a member in good standing amongst those who lie in service of the truth, artists with a small a. But I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hardcore bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style, and a story to tell. This book is both a continuation of that story and a search into its origins. I've taken as my parameters the events in my life I believe shaped that story and my performance work. One of the questions I'm asked over and over again by fans on the street is how do you do it? In the following pages I'll try to shed a little light on how and more importantly

why. Thanks for reading that. So what's it like for you to write something that doesn't have to rhyme and that you don't have to perform on stage? That's actually not having to perform it on stage is a good one. It's a little different, you know, it's I'm used to writing something, it becomes a record, it comes out, then I go perform and I play it and I get this immediate feedback from the audience. So that's been the pattern of my life, but the book has been a little bit different, you know.

I mean, you get feedback from the press and the fans are just starting to get a chance to read it, so I'm looking forward to that. But you still had to find the music inside your language. It was, that's a big part of what sort of moved me to begin writing the book. I wrote a little essay and I felt, yeah, this is a good voice. This is a good feeling. It feels like me. But then once you get into the book you've got to constantly find your

the rhythm of your prose and It ends up being quite a musical experience either way Well, that's one of the things I love about the book is that there is rhythm and music in it even though It's not a song So many of your songs particularly the early ones are about you know like searching for a dream and running like bust out of the confines of of your life and In some ways, you know, I get the impression from your book that that's that was your father's story except he never

Found the dream. It's kind of like a little bit like the story that you described in your song the river, right? My dad was young We went to work a little bit like the story that you describe in your song, The River. Right. You know, my dad was young. We went to work. But he'd been to war. He'd seen some of the world. It wasn't like he was going to be an extensive traveler or something. It didn't seem to be in the nature of, in his nature or in the nature of his parents or many of the folks in my family, really, there were, we had a cousin that went off to Brown University. It was like a nuclear explosion took place.

It was just incredible for everybody. So you're correct that my parents did really sort of live out a big part of that story. And to a certain degree, he did find his little piece of what he was looking for in California. Because when you were 19, he moved to California. Yeah, they moved out west, which was a huge undertaking because no one, it's like, it was like moving to another planet for them. But I think that's what my father wanted to do. He wanted to move to another planet. And they had very little, they had $3,000 and they, I think they had an old Rambler

and they slept two nights in the car and a night in a motel and they had my little sister with them with all their stuff packed on top. It was a really go for broke decision and it did pay off for them. I think they enjoyed the West Coast and their California life quite a bit. My father still had periods of illness that were- You have a mental illness? Yeah, difficult to manage. But I believe he did feel like he found something there that he couldn't have found at home. Do you think the song Born to Run is in part about him and in part about you?

Well, someone mentioned that to me the other day. I always thought it was just about me. But what do you know? And looking back on it, my parents lived out quite a bit of that story themselves. So you had a dream in a way that your father maybe didn't have a dream that he could articulate? It certainly wasn't one he could articulate. It was just, I got to get out of here.

Yeah, yeah. So you write, write too about your father that he was kind of very, let me quote you because you put it so well. You write that, 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. Inside, beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, timidity, shyness, and a dreamy insecurity. These were things I wore on the outside, and the reflection of these qualities in his boy repelled him. I was soft and he hated soft. Of course, he'd been brought up soft, a mama's boy just like me. So that timidity and shyness that you wore on the outside, it's kind of like the opposite

of your stage persona. I know, it's bizarre. Can you tell us a little bit more about the timidity and shyness of your youth? T. Burnett once said that much of rock music is simply someone going, why, daddy? Daddy. So I've got to take some blame for that myself, I guess. But yeah, just when I was young, I was very shy and that was my personality. I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety, which all would have been very familiar to my pop,

except it was a part of himself he was trying to reject, so I got caught in the middle of it, I think. So do you think that your stage persona draws both from like the angry and uninhibited side of you and the more inhibited timid side of you? I think it's both there. I think if you just, you know, I think that plenty of folks, if you just looked at the outside, it can read, you know, it's pretty alpha male, you know, which is a little ironic because, you know, that was personally never exactly really me.

I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life. And perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree. When I was looking for a voice to mix with my voice, I put on my father's work clothes, as I say in the book, and I went to work. Whether it was a result of wanting to emulate him so I felt closer or whether it was, as I say in the book, I wanted to be the reasonable voice of revenge for what I'd seen his life come to. It was all of these things and it was an unusual creation but most of these, most people's

stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography and they're trying to create something that solves a series of very complex problems inside of them or in their history. And I think when I, unknowingly, when I went to do that, that's what I was, I was trying to integrate all of these very difficult things that I've been unable to integrate in my life and in my life with my parents. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 after the publication of his memoir Born to Run. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is fresh

air. This is fresh air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in his home studio in New Jersey back in 2016 after the publication of his memoir Born to Run. During your early years as a musician, you were in Asbury Park, Boardwalk, Carnival atmosphere. What did you love about that kind of urban beach? Yeah. And the, you know, Mata Marie and all of the, like,

all the Boardwalk regulars, you made great stories out of those characters, great songs out of those characters. What appealed to you about knowing them and writing about them? It was just my location at the time. I didn't move to Asbury with the thought of, it wasn't an anthropological reason.

But you connected in some way. with the thought of, you know, it wasn't an anthropological reason, but I went in and I just fit in there. Asbury was down on its luck, but not as bad as it would get. And so there was a lot of room to move. You know, clubs were open till 5 a.m. There were gay clubs. And even in the late 60s, it was a bit of an open city. So as young ne'er-do-wells, we fit very comfortably in that picture. And then when I went to write, I just wrote about what was around me. It fired my imagination. It was, of course, a colorful locale. The city was filled with

characters and plenty of people at loose ends. And so it just became a very natural thing to write about. I didn't give it too much thought at the time, but I did think that it gave me a very individual identity and that if I was going to go out into the musical world on a national level, I was very interested in being connected to my home, my home state. There wasn't anyone else writing in this way about these things at that time. So it was something I did very intentionally in a sense as creating a certain very very specific and original identity. And that's one of the things that really interests me in

comparing you to Dylan because when you first started people were comparing you to Dylan one of the new Dylans and everything. In some ways like persona wise you're the opposite. He changed his name. He surrounded himself in mystery. His lyrics are very obscure. Your lyrics tell stories. You're all about a place.

You reveal so much about yourself and the world around you in your songs. You know what I mean? Like, I know that you're more than what you literally tell us about in the songs, but still, you have an identity and try to tell us something of who you are in your songs. You just go where your psychology leads you. I think, you know, I've always loved the fact that Bob's been able to sustain his mystery

over 50 or 60 years. That's, in this day and age, that's quite a feat in itself. And you know, the things that I loved about Bob's music, and I describe him in the book as the father of my country, which he really is, were things that just didn't fit when I went to do my job. You know, I'd come out of a somewhat different circumstance and the clothes just didn't fit. I want to quote you again. See, you're right, this is toward the beginning of your career. I wanted to be a voice that reflected experience and the world I live in. So I knew in 1972 that

to do this I would need to write very well and more individually than I had ever written before. And this was, at some point you realized too that, although you had like the most popular bar band in Asbury Park, that there was a bigger world, there was a lot of talented people. And in order to like be someone in that world,

to have a career to make a difference that you had to figure out what was unique about you and you had to write great songs and in fact you achieved that you wrote great songs but you know how did you go about trying to write the best songs that you could I mean when you when you knew that a lot of this was going to depend on the songwriting when I thought about signing a record deal or or writing something that Might put me in the position because I'd already had plenty of things that had fallen through with my rock bands

I Looked at myself and I just said well, you know I I looked at myself and I just said, well, you know, I can sing but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world. What excites me about a lot of the artists I love? And I realized, well, they created their own personal world that I could enter into through their music and through their songwriting. There's people that can do it instrumentally like Jimi Hendrix or Edge of U2 or Pete Townsend. I didn't have as unique a purely musical signature. I was a creature of a lot of different influences.

And so I said, well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing. And at the time, for one of the few times in my life I didn't have a band, I just had myself and the guitar. So I was going to have to do something with just my voice, just the guitar, and just my songs that was going to move someone enough to give me a shot. So I wrote songs that were very lyrically alive and lyrically dense and they were unique but it really came out of the motivation to, where I understood I was going to have to make my mark that way.

We're listening to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. We're featuring it today because the new Dylan biopic just opened and Springsteen's music was deeply influenced by Dylan. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in his home studio in New Jersey back in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. You started going to therapy in 1983. And at some point, you say in your 60s, you had a really bad depression. And I'm wondering if you thought about during that period

when you were very depressed, how many people in the world really wanted to be you? And... Doesn't count for that much at the time. Yeah, right. You know? But I quote, you know, people see you on stage and, yeah, I'd want to be that guy.

I want to be that guy myself very often. I have plenty of days where I go, man, I wish I could be that guy. It's not quite, there's a big difference between what you see on stage and then my general daily, my daily existence. You write about, I'm sorry? No, I'm talking to myself. Don't let that bother you. It's part of my illness. I do it all the time.

You write about how being on stage is almost like medicine for you. Sure. Does it get you out of yourself? Oh, of course. You're immediately pulled out of the inside of your head. And it immediately changes your frame of mind. I've never been on stage where I've... No, that's not true.

I have been on stage on a few occasions where I felt I couldn't escape the interior of my my interior thoughts, but Peter Wolfe once said, what's the strangest thing you can do on stage? Think about what you're doing. There's just nothing weirder you can do. If you're up there thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen. So trying to learn how to overcome those, which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards

self-consciousness and just blow it wide open and you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together. During the depression there's a period of a year and a half when you weren't on the road, you were home with one of your sons, I guess with your youngest. Did that contribute to the depression because you couldn't be on stage and you couldn't have that kind of cathartic experience? Yeah, I tend to be not my own best company. I can get a little lost if I don't have my work to occasionally focus me. But at the same time, you've got to be able to figure that out.

The year and a half I was home, my son was in his last year of high school and it was kind of my last opportunity to be here with him in the house. And I wanted to get that right. As you mentioned in your book you wanted to write songs that you would not grow, that you could sing as an adult, that weren't just kids songs and you know, done, accomplished. But when you sing some of your early songs now as you still do like Born to Run, does the song have a different meaning to you than it did when you first started performing it? We just had a series of concerts where the show was very interesting because we'd

start out with my earliest material and we played about half a record off of our first record and then half or three-quarters off of the second record. So it was going back to my earliest music and re-singing my earliest songs that I wrote when I was 22. And it was funny that they just fit perfectly well. They sort of gather the years up as time passes. And you can revisit the wonderful thing about my job is you can revisit your 22 year old self or your 24 year old self any particular night you want. The songs pick up some extra resonance I hope, but they're still there and I can revisit that period of my life when I choose. So it's quite a nice experience. And the songs themselves do broaden out as time passes

and take on subtly different meanings, take on a little more meaning, I find. What's an example of a song that's taken on a different meaning or more meaning for you? A lot of the ones that are people's favorites, you know, Born to Run, that expands every time we go out. It just seems to, more of your life fills it in, fills in the story.

And when we hit it every night, it's always a huge catharsis. It's fascinating to see the audience singing it back to me. It's quite wonderful, you know, to see people that intensely singing your song. As someone who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Philadelphia, I love that you've continued to live in New Jersey, not only in New Jersey, but not far from where you grew up. Why have you stayed close to the home that your father left?

Your father went to the opposite coast when you were a teenager. It's ironic, yeah. It's rather ironic, but I just felt very comfortable here, and I was uncomfortable with city life. I was more or less a kid that came out of a small town, and I was a beach bum, and loved the ocean, and loved the sun, and I liked the people that were here. I liked who I was when I was here. I wanted to continue writing about the things that I felt were important and those things were pretty much here. I felt like a lot of my heroes from the past lost themselves in different ways once they had a certain amount of success. And I was nervous about that and I wanted to remain grounded. And living in this part of New Jersey

was something that was essential to who I was and continues to this day to be that way. Bruce Springsteen, I can't thank you enough for inviting us into your studio and allowing us to do this interview. Thank you very much. Very enjoyable. I appreciate it. And I really love the book. Thanks a lot. My interview with Bruce Springsteen was recorded in his home studio in 2016 after the publication of his memoir Born to Run. We featured it today because Bob Dylan was so influential on Springsteen, and today the Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened in theaters. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we begin our holiday week series featuring interviews we particularly enjoyed this year. We'll start with my interview with Jeremy Strong, who played Kendall Roy in the HBO series Succession.

He's nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in the HBO series Succession. He's nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in the film The Apprentice which stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump at the start of his career and Jeremy Strong as the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn who became Trump's lawyer and mentor. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Orji Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Boudinot, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Tha Challener, Susan Yacundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivi Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. All of us at Fresh Air wish you a very Merry Christmas. Thanks for watching!