WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 773 - Bruce Springsteen

Episode Date: January 2, 2017

Marc leaves the cozy confines of the garage and heads to New Jersey (where else?) to talk with The Boss. Just two Jersey guys hanging out, talking about dads, depression, fear, fulfillment, and the future. Bruce tells Marc how and why he constructed "Bruce Springsteen" and what he's learned about the struggle we all go through to become who we really are. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Lock the gate! Alright folks, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck sticks? What's happening? What is happening?

Happy New Year. Or it's New Year. Here we go. That's better. Not Happy New Year. Here we go again. Hang on. This one's going to be nuts.

And nuts is a diplomatic description, I think. I made no resolutions. I had some idea that maybe I would change some things, and maybe I will. I kind of stuck it in my head, but I didn't draw any lines. I don't need a reason to beat the shit out of myself. It's something that happens naturally. Maybe my resolution should be not to do that. How about that one? How about let's not beat the shit out of ourselves? Can you do that? Because there is a difference. You know, there's a difference

between beating the shit out of yourself and being hard on yourself. My guest today is Bruce Springsteen, the boss from Jersey. I went to Jersey. And I'll tell you more about that experience in a second. But I was reading his book. I immersed myself in a lot of Bruce's music, and I read most of his book.

I didn't get through it. I got just past darkness at the edge of town. It's pretty much chronological from his childhood through his music, through his experience with his father. Talked a lot about his relationship with John Landau, his producer, who was originally a music writer and his great friend and a lot of other relationships in his life. But it's written beautifully. It's very poetic. It's very self-aware. This is definitely Bruce Springsteen looking back and reflecting and seeing who he was and is. But the interesting thing for me was that I noticed that he's very hard on himself. And that resonated with me because

he is a one of a kind. He's very prolific. He's an amazing entertainer. He moves millions of people. People love him. And he's hard as hell on himself. And I started thinking about the difference between being hard on yourself and beating the shit out of yourself. They're just different. And I think that the difference is it has to do with your drive. You know what I mean? It's like if you beat the shit out of yourself, you're just driving yourself into the ground.

If you're being hard on yourself, you might get better. You might drive yourself to get better. But it is a very fine line. It has something to do with your disposition. I mean, if you think you suck and you just tell yourself that all the time, I suck without any real recourse or without any forward thinking. That's a disposition. I suck. I've convinced myself again that I suck. But if you're hard on yourself and you think you're great, you're just not as good as you want to be yet, then you might get better. I mean, it's just,

it's a mild adjustment, but sometimes people are just too comfortable in sucking and too comfortable in self-pity and too comfortable in, you know, I'm fucked to make that mild adjustment to like, you know, yeah, I'm fucked, but I'm going to get better. I'm pretty fucking good. And that's what Bruce Springsteen had, obviously. You know, talent and courage will also determine the outcome. And one of those is sort of God-given. The other one you have to earn somehow.

But I'm going to talk to Bruce. If you let me do a little New Year's stuff here in the beginning, that would be nice. You can scramble on forward if you want, but I do have some things to say. The day before New Year's Eve, I watched Adam Curtis's new documentary, Hypernormalization, and I would highly recommend you go find that thing. It's a beautiful piece of journalism. It's a very interesting two and a half hours that will expand your mind, blow your mind. I'm not going to say it's going to give you hope. It may be a little bleak in some ways, but at least you'll have the information. And I don't want to tip too much, but it starts, it tracks two stories at the beginning. One beginning in Damascus in 1975, and alongside of that, New York City in 1975. And he's able to start there and run through all levels politics power

money technology uh and he he sort of pulls back the veil on some things and frames things in a way through history and through connectivity and and filmmaking that will really blow your fucking mind. So in the new year, I would recommend that so you can get a little depth in terms of what is really happening. And I believe it's in there. And I don't believe that too often. So heading into the new year, I got an email that I think is a nice way to start the new year if I could. And the subject line is WTF can make babies happen.

Hi, Mark and the people of WTF. I just wanted to share a little story with you for the new year. Bear with me. About five years ago, I moved from London to Barcelona. I left my friends and my job and my city of 11 years, all for a woman. This might sound like the beginning of one of those stories of woe and heartbreak, which ends with me living on the street in urine soaked clothes, yelling at strangers and collecting plastic bags, but it isn't. The last nine months have been pretty wild. My girlfriend got pregnant in the midst of me and my buddy pushing to finish

filming on a documentary that we are working on. I left my job and started working for a great company. Meanwhile, my girl's belly grew and grew and I panicked late at night when no one was around. I read shitty parenting books. I looked for wisdom from fathers and mothers. I walked. I cried at dumb songs and movies. I thought about my ego and being a dad. I felt far away from my family and my friends. So nine months later, the due date came and went. Two days, hot bath. Three days, massage. Four days, a spicy curry. Five days, a long walk, six days, a fight. We tried everything. On the seventh day, I was doing the dishes and listening to an episode, and I decided on impulse that I would put my headphones on her stomach and let my little girl hear some of your final

guitar noodling, and a little boomer lives. The little bun in the oven kicked up a storm, and a short 20 minutes later, her water broke. The contractions came every eight minutes, then six, then five, then four, then three. I ran around like a loon and got everything ready. I pulled up the car and we left for the hospital. A 24-hour labor marathon and emergency C-section later, my sweet baby girl Greta was brought into the world. I was taken to meet her alone in a little room off the operating theater while my girlfriend was being stitched back together.

I left her there, again on impulse, and was just handed my daughter and left alone in a little room off the operating theater while my girlfriend was being stitched back together. I left her there again on impulse and was just handed my daughter and left alone in a tiny room. She was calm, staring up at me. I had tears streaming down my face. Today I was thinking of your episode with Louis CK and how he cried telling the same story. I cried then listening to it and I cried when it happened to me and I'm tearing up a little now. Anyway, man, she's beautiful. She's made a shitty year feel like it never happened. And she made this shitty person feel like he can never be shitty again. I've spent Christmas with my girls.

And I feel like a new man. I feel like a dad. It's in there, Mark. I highly recommend it. Well, let's not go crazy, pal. I just wanted to thank you for what you do, share something with you, and thanks for all the brilliant people who have told their stories on your show. And I wanted to personally thank you for your cry of Boomer Lives, which sparked my baby's mind into this life.

Even if you read this or not, I just wanted you to know I love you, Maren. Can't wait for Springsteen. Greta lives. Neil in Barcelona. So Bruce, Bruce Springsteen. So Brendan and I drive to Jersey. Here's how I come into Bruce. I flew to New York because I had this opportunity to spend an hour with Bruce Springsteen, the boss, a mythic person. He is unto himself. He is the boss. He is Bruce Springsteen.

And the funny thing is, is like, I like Bruce Springsteen, but I'm not crazy. You know, like I'm a fan, but I'm not like, oh God. And that was helpful because I went through most of his catalog, listening to it again, most of it, and really kind of entering the world of Bruce Springsteen at the age I'm at now, 53, getting a new appreciation for things that I was familiar with. I remember when I was a teenager, I had Greetings from Asbury Park. I had the E Street Shuffle record. I had Born to Run. I had The River. I bought Nebraska. I was definitely in. And the weird thing about getting the opportunity to interview him is I was going back to New Jersey. Now, I don't know how many of you know this. Some of you do.

I'm a New Jersey boy. I was born in New Jersey. Both of my parents are from New Jersey. And I left New Jersey very young, but I'm New Jersey, genetically New Jersey. That's just the truth of it. And as I was preparing in my mind to talk to Bruce, knowing that I had an hour, I needed to somehow connect with him. As many of you who listen to the show, I really wanted to connect personally with Bruce Springsteen. And I knew we're both genetically New Jersey. He's from Asbury Park area. And my great grandfather owned an army surplus store in Tom's River. My aunt still lives down in Oakhurst.

And I used to go to Deal Beach in Tom's River. My aunt still lives down in Oakhurst and I used to go to Deal Beach in Asbury Park. My grandparents lived in an apartment at the end of the Asbury Park boardwalk. I have that in my life, in my past. And when Brendan and I drove out to the Jersey Shore, I had a lot of that thinking. I was thinking a lot about that. My grandparents are buried in Elizabeth just off the highway. It was like trying to find some genetic connection to jersey again and then to connect with bruce springsteen who is one of the uh one of the most powerful representatives of new jersey so heading into it that's what i was thinking about and that's difficult when and i have this with a lot of musicians when you you have an hour, I have an hour with Bruce

Brinkley, I'm going to his house. So we drive in, we get there early and we end up going to Dunkin' Donuts. So I got jacked up and ate two muffins and a giant Dunkin' Donuts coffee. And then we drove out to the estate, the farm. We went through security. We were shown to this separate building. It looked like a stable, but it was a studio. And we were met by the publicist and a guy who works for Bruce, a carpenter on the property, who hooked up the plugs and plugged us in. And he just left us in this room with like a hundred or so guitars, acoustics, electrics, keyboards of all kinds, a huge board. There was a separate living room area and a bathroom. We had coffee. There was

some cronuts there and we were just there hanging around for a half an hour. And I didn't touch a guitar. I just looked and it seemed like there was another room past the studio that had some motorcycles in it, but it was beautiful. It was all beautiful. And you know, the excitement was sort of starting to build. And then I'm just looking out the window and I see Bruce walking down from the house, just Bruce Springsteen kind of walking around the corner into where we are. And he walked in and I said, hey man, I just want you to know I didn't touch any of the guitars. He went, oh, okay. I say, yeah, a lot of nice guitar. I play guitar, but I didn't touch any. He's like, good. And then he walked me around, showed me some guitars. He showed me that he had somehow found the first guitar he played in the first amp, the first setup.

It wasn't the original equipment, but he went out and found the first pieces of equipment he had as a guitar player. Obviously, there were a few tellies around, but there's a lot of different types of guitars. We talked about guitars a little off mic, and then we sat down, and we got into it. guitar is a little off mic and then we sat down and we got into it and there was just some you know this was one of those things where i wanted to uh i wanted to relate and get to know bruce springsteen and i was uh it was an amazing experience so um before i get into this i need to tell you that you know you can get his book the memoir born to run and the audio companion chapter and verse they're they're they're now available so they're out there and i've enjoyed the book very much but um but that aside okay this is me and bruce springsteen

the boss in new jersey in his studio sitting face to face. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region.

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I'm using 58s. Shores, Beta 58s. The Shores we used in, I'm trying to think which ones we used back in my first band. They didn't have the bulb on the end. They were the straight-ended. Oh, really? They were the high end of what every local rock band used. If you had your Shore mic yeah you were good you were good and a 50 watt amplifier to run your pa oh right right just like one speaker two speakers

two speakers two column speakers it just said and then the box with the knobs yes right on columns right right right the kind that you'd see at any event and if you had any sort of echo rigged up you were way way way ahead of the game yeah the raw goods of rock and roll are very simple yeah you don't you don't need you don't need a lot of anything no you don't need a lot i you know i read here's where i'm at i'll be honest with you with the book i'm right at i'm right i just finished uh darkness okay so like i i didn't get to the end does it end happy is there a happy ending you have you'll have to finish it and tell me you're not clear on it it's like it's a beautiful book you know because and i and i locked into it and i just kept going

with it so now like i feel like i'm in your head and now i have to get out of your head and into the present here okay how now when you're sitting around what are you getting you're getting ready for christmas now correct yeah so it's nothing but chaos up there in the house you are correct my thought my whole family's from Jersey. I never lived here really, except when I was a little kid. And you know, in Asbury Park, like my grandparents lived in Asbury Park.

Like down at the end of the boardwalk in that one white building. Sure. And there's pictures of me in those boats. The little swan boats. Right. The ones that went in a circle. The rides.

There was rides there, right? Oh, those boats. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The little circlesan boats. The ones that went in a circle. The rides. There was rides there, right? Oh, those boats. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The little circle. Yes. Pretend power boats. That's right.

You remember those? Of course. And then I remember it got real shitty there. But I was thinking about it. It's a weird thing. And I'm just talking for a minute. Because I talked to my dad. Because I wanted to track before I came over here.

Like my great grandfather owned a surplus army surplus store in Tom's River. Right. And my you know, and then all of a sudden my father, I says, yeah, my father used to go down to Asbury Park and he'd go to Springfield Avenue and do whatever the hell. Springwood Avenue. Springwood. Yeah. He said he got involved with what like there are these bits of information because my relationship with my old man's not great either but he's still around and uh you get these bits of information about your parents or your grandparents yeah

and all of a sudden you're like holy shit there's a whole world i didn't i didn't fucking understand that they lived in yeah well springwood avenue was was the spot in town for a long time had fish's clothing store yes was the the superfly store if you were looking for right latest the the latest rig yeah so uh people traveled from all over to go to fish's clothing store on springwood avenue and what was Avenue. And was it a black neighborhood? Yeah. Primarily? Yeah.

Yeah, it was weird that you get this secret history of your family. Like, I didn't get the feeling that my grandfather was going down there for good reasons. Uh-huh. And I don't know, like, when I read the book, the struggle to become who you are seems to go all the way through it. That's what we're all doing.

Right. But, but you know that feeling when, when, cause like, cause I identify so strongly with the father stuff where, you know, you sort of left on your own to do it.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That was the, that was part of the problem. Yeah. That also part of the solution. In retrospect, do you think when you think about your old man, are you able now to, and maybe this is too heavy to start out with, but are you able now to see which parts of him that you got that are good?

Of course. Yeah? Yeah. What'd you land on? Yeah. What'd you land on? Well, you look back, you know, he had his own arc. I forget when we were probably having our biggest troubles. I was 16, which would have made him, let me think, 31 or 2.

Young. Yeah, you know. So he's a young guy. Right. And he was, you know, still deep into sorting. He had his mental issues, and then he was also deep into sorting. He'd never sorted those things out for himself. Drinking a lot, too.

You know. Yeah, yeah, the beer. Yeah. The beer. Yeah. The beer. So my folks left me in 1969, which was a little unusual. Usually you're leaving them, but they left me in New Jersey in 1969 and went to California. So that sort of left you on your own to continue parenting yourself as best as you could. And, you know, your life was yours from that point on. Right.

And that suited me. It was just one of the things that for where I was at, I was independent already. I had the band. I had my own little community that I was a one of the things that for where I was at, I was independent already. I had the band. I had my own little community that I was a part of. I was making a few bucks on the weekends so I could survive. And I was happily independent. Right.

Not making a lot of money. No. Of course, you're making $20. Right. money no right of course you're only you're making 20 right but anybody that couldn't live on 20 or 40 dollars in 1969 having no dependence and right you know anybody could do that you're right so it was different time yeah i mean you ate for you know three three dollars a day right four dollars a day was all you needed is so it was it was it was just enough money to get by and have a good time on and when you when you started playing rock and roll when you started playing

like when you decided that that was going to be it what's sort of fascinating about me this stuff you know after listening to music my whole life that you always had this sort of this working ethic about that it wasn't it wasn't going to come easy ever right and that that the that you know you maybe you in particular i don't know how how other people do it we're gonna have to you know work twice as hard as anybody else well as long as you didn't expect it to come easy you were fine you know and also the work was a part of a project of self-realization that everybody has to go through in those early periods of their youth through their 20s and into their 30s. So I had a tool that assisted me in in doing that you know it was the the collecting of my thoughts in song and the the measuring of my progress through music yeah you know not necessarily through success right but

through the music itself is it getting getting better? Am I getting better? Am I becoming more realized as a musician and then therefore hopefully as a human being? And so I had this whole project that I was working on from when I was really 14 years old that I was deeply, deeply, deeply involved in that was giving my life a course to follow, a center, meaning, joy, fun. And I was sort of merrily just working in the coal mine, you know? And I didn't have a problem with that as i got older and i listened to the radio and started to think well gee i'm as good as a lot of those guys yeah you

know why am i undiscovered which of course there were a lot of reasons in those days you were in you might as well been in uh uh egypt as it be in new jersey right yeah people just it was the local the localism of the music scenes in those days was was all so no one came down from new york yeah let's go discover somebody in asbury park not gonna happen no let's take let's take our a and r guys down to the Jersey Shore. Where? And see who's fabulous down there. Yeah.

No, that wasn't going to occur. And it was all cover bands, too, you said, that there was a lot of R&B stuff, but it was not a lot of original music. No, it was all your sort of cover bands that worked all the Shore clubs. Yeah. Because the Shore was sort of a faux Fort Lauderdale at the time.

Right. You know? And so, as I say in the book, we had to dig out a little bar that was doing no business. Right. Ask the guy if we could play for a dollar at the door. The Student Prince part? Yeah.

And go to work there. To jam. Yeah, go to work there. Now, when you were going through all this, the one thing, getting back to that idea, that seems to me that you know from the small bits and pieces that you talk about your family well there's a lot about your family but those moments with your old man it seemed like he had a lot of fuck you attitude to him well i mean just about the the this and then that things that outside of him yeah it wasn't so much as that as he was just lost within himself.

The project that I'm describing was one that he never undertook. Yeah. And if you don't undertake that project, you're lost in the wilderness at a certain age. Right. And and so I always look at my dad is, of course, he had anger and frustration and humiliation. But he was also just a guy that was lost in the wilderness. You know, he'd never undertaken that project to find your course and steer it towards something. And then, of course, what I was doing looked ridiculous to him

because, as it might to a parent looking at their kid who's spending 10 hours in the day just whacking on the guitar right in their room you know but uh um but you think that was it that it was just that you know he not he not self-realized and and and he had depression and on top of it yeah he you, all of those things sort of contributed to, I think what he would have felt was an unsuccessful life, which is not necessarily how I look upon it right now. I mean, he had three children. He raised solid citizens. And my mother was a fabulous partner. and there was actually a lot of joy in his life but i think he was he was too at sea himself to appreciate it and he had to put it on

top of it he was truly mentally ill and that cast a shadow over over everything he didn't know that necessarily no he certainly didn't know it and he and really neither did the rest of us until we were probably into our our 20s and he was in his 40s you know well into his 40s that's that's a tough moment to to like you know to sort of have to make that decision of giving him a pass out of empathy and compassion or holding on to your own resentment. Yeah, well, at some point, you know, I was never much a believer in holding deep grudges for the most part. For the most part.

You know, and your parents are someone, you love them regardless. Yeah. And so I was just more interested in who he was, what that had to do with me, and also how I could be of service and helpful once I realized that I was going to be the parent and he was going to be the child. Did that happen? Yeah, it happened when he got very ill and he needed to be taken care of. And my mother had a limit to, because of her relationship with him,

was limited as to how disciplined she could be with him. as to how disciplined she could be with him. So it kind of fell on me to get to California, and I had to get him medicated, and I had to get him to the doctors, all of which he resisted, resisted, resisted doing. But he became a danger to himself and to others. What was it? Was it Alzheimer's? No, no, no. it was just paranoid schizophrenic is

what they call it at the time is that what he ended is that what the diagnosis ended up yeah really and so it was pretty intense because you're hearing voices and and you're uh you're becoming very manic you're you know you're going for days without sleep. He engaged in very manic behavior. At some point, he became very a risk to himself and to my mom and to the citizenry at large. the citizenry at large so uh i had to go out and try to assist him in getting better you know which we were able to do after quite a big battle so getting him kind of you know locked up and medicated then taken out yeah he had he had he had to he had to get treatment yeah and the correct medication and it improved his life greatly towards the last 15, 20 years of his life.

Wow. Well, that must be an amazing feeling as a son to be able to show up for that. Yeah, it was. It was... Bittersweet? It was good, you know, and to see him improve and enjoy his family, and he was never going to be normal. He wasn't going to be a normal father you know you weren't going to get uh i'm proud of you son yeah you weren't going to you know get too much of that so you had to accept that fact and you know take take take things for what they were and enjoy what you could get and and not and at some point you're obviously lose

your anger about the rest because you see this was somebody who had to struggle very difficultly yeah losing anger is a it's sort of a a weird thing because it's a choice yet when you're in it it doesn't feel like you have a choice well when you're in it without understanding you know or but there are as i say in the book there are also irretrievable relationships where uh events have occurred that uh that relationships don't come back from i mean i know plenty of people who had to sign off from their families for a variety of reasons, for good, healthy reasons, and move on with their lives.

So that can happen too. Yeah. But if the relationships are retrievable, and I felt like mine was, then there's a nice payback in seeing things come closer and become a little more healthy. To let go a little bit. And let go of, look back on your anger as a part of youthful misunderstandings and of course you had your reasons and there was bad behavior. You know, my papa could be very cruel when he was young. And, you know, it's

not that you let that slide. You live with it. It's a part of your life. And if you're lucky, it's fuel for the fire. You know, I mean, people don't end up in my circumstance who generally had these very placid loving very happy fulfilled lives it's not how you become a rock and roll star you know you've got to have some chaos tumult uh you know disastrous relationships humiliation at a young age, feel disempowered, enormous amount of weakness, and suddenly things start to burn, burn, burn. Yeah. And when that burning starts, if you take that flame and you aim it towards the right thing, powerful weapon.

Yeah, yeah. And a powerful gift. And powerful. And if you were lucky and had the talent it's a powerful gift well that you know that's sort of the the interesting thing about it is that when you don't get that thing from your old man but your mother seemed like a real uh a real piece of work yeah just a you know kind of like uh the attitude the solid citizen you know right and uh always sort of you know moving Right, right. Always sort of moving through. So I was lucky enough that I had a yin-yang. Yeah, yeah.

You know? If you had two people bailing on you, I have no idea you could get so lost. But my mother was the opposite. She was the essence of consistency, the essence of unconditional love, always on your side, doing her best to guide you as much as she could, but mainly that feeling of the deep love that was in your life every day. So I had these two things that I was balancing, and those things did later show up in my music as part of the yin-yang of my own music

from the dark parts and the light parts. So it ended up being a very powerful balance that I grew up with. And it's also interesting to have to reckon with know to reckon with the fact that like they they're not they're going to stay together that the yin and yang like there's several points in the book where they're sort of like she couldn't leave him he wasn't going to leave right because it was the responsibility of the situation which i imagine had something to do with with commitment and faith and maybe some religion yeah you know they it was not it wasn't the day of divorce or an easy out on things you know my my mother came from a divorced family and i think she

decided that that was never going to happen to her yeah no matter what no matter what. No matter what. And my father provided, one of the things he did provide was a man that wasn't going to go anywhere. You know, he was. Literally not out of the house. Yeah, they were stuck together forever and for good. And so I had to address them both as a couple. You know, I always had to deal with them as a couple and deal with both sides of the coin. Yeah, it's hard to figure out, I would imagine, the justice of that. That how do you, you know, you're in it and your dad's being abusive

and your mom's doing whatever she does and you've got to just deal with it. Yeah, that's the lay of the land. Those are the cards you've got to just deal with it. Yeah, that's the lay of the land. Those are the cards you've been dealt. And when you're young, they're impossible to understand. How could you live in a house where there was so much kindness and great cruelty? It was very, very difficult to understand those things, and it set you very on edge and you had your own little local minefield that you had to walk every single day which caused a great deal of anxiety

and neuroticism in me right you were always on edge you were always waiting for you know you had this one great thing but then you were always waiting for the other shoe to drop made me a very nervous kid right and also you know there's two routes you go with that when you have like a drinking or abusive parent either you you become that or you become the guy that controls as much as you can and that was me yeah that was me i became the control guy right became all right i'm not gonna go to the other side of this thing. So I went the other way, and I said, okay, I've had enough drama. I've had enough unsureness in my home, so I'm going to create a life where everything is very controlled,

and I feel safe, and I feel like I can go about my business. So I worked very, very hard to do that. Obviously, that becomes a problem, too, because you become too controlling and you squeeze out so much life. Right. From that you can't live a life. Because some things are uncontrollable. Yeah. In other words, if you want to live a life, you've got to realize you are not going to be the writer of your own script.

Life is something that happens. You know? You don't happen to it. It happens to you. So you've got to allow it in all of its uncontrollable, often chaos, to come into your life. And the way you reach adulthood is you realize that you have the power to withstand the hurricane forces that uncontrolled events bring into your life once you take a few hits yeah you know but also what comes with those uncontrolled events love happiness fulfillment satisfaction you know all those you let all those things in too which if you are a control nut you squeeze out because what's more dangerous than love? There's nothing more dangerous than that.

You don't know what the hell is going to happen. That's right. Yeah. You don't know what the hell is going to happen. You know you're going to get hurt. Yeah. Probably. Yeah.

So you cannot be some control nut and allow that into your life with all the good things while feeling, well, the bad things are going to be so bad. I'm just not going to let that happen to me. so what you do is you end up sort of building a wall yeah i mean you talk a little bit about boundaries in the book but you know what you had to do in your mind was sort of build the wall yes i built i built quite a few of them yeah yeah you know just to protect this other part which leads to this thing you know i do stand up and i've been doing it for years and there was something I identified with in the book, which was for some reason, and this is me now, and maybe you can help me. Maybe you already are.

But I can open up in front of a crowd. Yeah. And put it all out there. Well, that's easy to do. I guess. If you're that kind of person. Correct. Right.

But when I get home or I'm in a relationship, I'm like, what do you want? What's happening? Well, there's certain kinds of people that only feel at home in a crowd. Performing for them. Performing for a crowd. You have control, number one. You have tremendous control. Tremendous control.

Everybody's listening to you. Isn't that great? But what about those times though? You know, like, you know, I don't know if you ever did it, but like, it seems like that you really kind of had a practical way of addressing fear, you know, heading into things. Like you didn't want it

i have to assume it was there but somehow of course right but did you ever have those nights where you know you you you that one place where you have control you go up and it's like this and i mean i know you talk about one gig in london yeah of course But your desperation has to be greater than your fear. You know, your desperation, your hunger, your desires, your ego, your ambition has to be greater than your fear of complete humiliation. And so as long as you have that equation correctly balanced, you're going out there, my friend, no matter what happens. Because you have to. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but it's funny, though, because there was an interesting realization that you had. And I assume a lot of this stuff in the book, it's you thinking about this stuff. I have to assume that some of the stuff you write in the book about the past is you now going like, oh, yeah, well, now that I know this, that's what I was doing. Of course.

But back then, you're like, I don't know. Who knows? Yeah, just go with it. All of this stuff is inside me. Right. Working its magic. Yeah. And I'm just following it,

and I'm stumbling out on stage because I have to I'm not sure why I have to at the time and then I'm just you know exploding and letting things take their course but those nights where it's like that you didn't get the love you needed out there that's bad

because that means there ain't no love nowhere that's why those nights are bad if you've squeezed all the rest out of your out of your daily life and then you're not getting it there there ain't no love nowhere my friend it's a lonely world when that happens and you went through months like that well sure i mean now most of the time you know not about the crowds but where you take you were out in the exile in a way you know i went through that for years you know years and years you know in my real life yeah you know yeah but uh you know i always fell back on my pretend life where i got to pretend i was Bruce Springsteen. And I always had that to fall back on

for three or four hours a night, you know? Right, right. Yeah, when things get real dark, it's sort of like, let's do the show. Yeah, at least that's something that I know where the fuck I am, you know? Right, yeah. Let's just do the show.

I'm safe there. I know what's going on. I know what's expected of me. I have no problem busting my ass to deliver it. And at the end of the evening, I can go home and put my head to sleep on my pillow in a short moment of peace. I did it. I did it. And then you wake up.

And hell starts all over again. Yeah, you just sort of like, that elation, that victory. And then you just wake up and it's like, oh, fuck. That's right. Now what? I'm back.

I'm back in the real world. No more cape. I don't got my superhero outfit on anymore. That's right. So is that where, I mean, that real world thing and the difference between the two. I mean, how difficult did that get for you on a day-to-day basis? Well, when you're young young it's not that different when you're 25 you know sleeping in the beach or on some floor is grand you know and and you don't

have that much off time because you're touring constantly and and uh and you don't think anything's wrong you know you have girlfriends they're kind of coming and they're going and that's kind of natural that's that's the way life is when you get to be 35 and 32 something starts creeping in you know that that's telling you well you know you've had enough of you you've done enough of sort of the coming and going to realize something's broke oh yeah something's broke like that, yeah? Something's broke. Like that shit ain't working. Yeah, so something's wrong, you know, either with me or with the people I'm choosing or just there's something broke in the machine. So you start to realize that starts to creep into you when your own, people always talk about women have a body clock, but I think that men have one too.

And when they get into the early 30s and mid 30s, you start thinking about, okay, where's the rest of my life? Right. I'm a success. Why am I sitting here in this void? Yeah, where's the rest of my life? And why don't I have one? I mean, shouldn't I have one?

I worked for it. Haven't I figured out all the big problems? I got all the answers. Yeah, and that's when you realize, when it finally lands on you, you realize, oh, my God, I'm back to zero in this area. And this area has nothing to do with the craft that I have, with this fortress I have built for myself for 30-some years. In this other area, I'm completely naked in the desert there is no fortress right right it doesn't exist right and so suddenly when you realize that you realize how adrift you are

and you realize that life plays a nasty little joke on you and that you can become quite mature and quite successful and quite developed in one area and be completely retarded in another part of your personality did you find that that was see like because I've dealt with some of that but like you seem to have dealt with it in your 30s I'm just feeling that now oh boy because i didn't get successful until i was in my 40s so so the feeling of getting that thing shored up like i'm gonna be okay there right you know took me a lot longer right so now i'm sort of like well that's okay and i thought that would answer a lot of questions but then you're like well you think it's gonna answer all your questions will you be okay at least how can you not feel good yeah and then you're not and

then you know then i start to realize because you know my father's uh got a bipolar and i got some of that my family but like with me i was so anxious and shit like it what i realized was i didn't trust anybody of course why would you exactly and then you know it's like so how you're not gonna let anybody in that's right so all this stuff no matter how many people you got around the band the women whoever you're still alone no i built a thing where i would survive alone i didn't trust anybody after my parents left and after I had some very close people who died on me my grandparents I said whoa this world will kick your ass and burn you inside out I don't trust anything or anybody that I haven't built myself right and so you go about building building building building building building and you keep the world at large at bay you know and that's how you live yeah and you believe that not only

that's how you live that's how you can live forever right and then you reach a point forever right and then you reach a point where you realize that yes you have built yourself a fortress and you are locked inside right by your you know all by your little lonely self and that's when you realize i gotta go outside i gotta go outside but i don't like outside yeah i don't like what's outside i i i don't trust any of the people outside yeah you know you know i only trust myself when i'm doing what i do and other people are doing what i hope they tell them my audience is there but outside of that i don't trust the world at all and the world is dangerous and scary so how'd you get out there well you gotta go you know you gotta go well i mean when like in the music like like because like when i'm talking to you you know

face to face you know i can hear the and i can hear through the work the the resolution of those problems intellectually and emotionally but i put all of these things, I got to a point where I hit a wall and I realized, man, I am locked inside this thing. What year was that? Like what were you doing creatively? Well, I was, I wrote Nebraska and I took this trip across the country that I mentioned in the book. Yeah. in the book yeah and uh during that trip i felt so alienated from everything that i was coming in contact with that when i hit the west coast where i had bought myself a small home and i realized i can't live here this this is in new Jersey and this little house is closing me in oh really

get me back on the road yeah yeah and but I realized that if I got back on the road I was just going to bounce back to the east coast and feel the same way and bounce back again I realized I'd run out of my options all my rock and roll medications had come to a point where, okay, that part of your life where all those things worked for you and you thought you were okay is over now. It's over. You're never going to feel that those things can make you feel completely all right again. So like Nebraska was almost a cry for help in a way. It's over. It was over then.

And so now you're going, oh, my God, I got to go out. And that was when I got into the analysis because I didn't have a key or a clue as to how to put my foot in the real world i was 30 some years old and still doing every every deal i had was in pure cash i didn't have a checkbook i didn't have a credit card if i wanted anything i paid for it in cash yeah and and so i was in my own little you know my own little dream work and and john landau told you that and he was the guy that said yeah you need professional help and that's not something you'll grow up with or it was you probably had a natural aversion of course who the hell does that i didn't know anybody working people that do that i didn't ever i never knew

anyone with the exception of john himself who i did trust greatly but with the exception i never knew anyone who had anything like that and i grew up around sick people i mean i grew up around people we don't we don't we don't get help no who are deeply deeply mentally if jesus doesn't work then we're going to live with it. You went off to the county home is where you went. And I grew up around people who were seriously mentally ill, and no one really got any help. So this was a revolution for me, but it was the thing that worked. I went in, i a lot of the

things we're talking about i gave a name to you got tools yeah and i said okay oh i got it this is all this playing this is just this it's not everything everything compartmental yeah everything is still waiting for me right but to get to everything i gotta go out where everything is and i don't like to do that everything being life love you know children world at large children you know and to go out there i gotta go out there where life and the world is going to happen to me. But that's an interesting thing to me because right now if I really think about the music

and I think about that relationship that you have with your audience, a very specific audience in a way, they love you and they look up to you, you speak for them because in the midst of all your understanding poetically, both light and darkness and the charisma that you bring to the show, there was,

there was a certain purity to it. Like there was almost an innocence to it because, you know, you were working this stuff out mentally that, you know, emotionally you were connecting to other stories and moving some of your own emotions through it. But because of your kind of almost because of the world you built for yourself,

they were experiencing you as this pure being. Well, the funny thing is I was writing about it richly in my music. Right. I just wasn't living it. Right. You know? In the book, you have that amazing passage

where you said that because your father was incommunicative, you had to picture both sides of the conversation in your own head and and resolve issues that were going on between you and him in the characters that you built in your own head so your empathy was huge but perhaps you know that to embracing that came part of that is i always believe it's a genetic predisposition to being a certain kind of person. My mother was extremely sensitive. We had a lot of empaths on her side of the family. And I got dealt those cards,

which was very helpful when it comes to watching and writing music and experiencing life in other people's shoes and putting yourself in other people's places it's a great way to work not always the best way to live but because you get crushed yeah you get crushed you know and so you got to learn how to then you have to learn how to do that and be that person while at the same time putting up some very sane where you need to put up some very sane and protective uh boundaries boundaries right so you don't get taken advantage of which you were at times many times yeah you know and so i had to learn like oh i got it i'm really in control here but i'm kind of a sucker for all these other things that's when they come my way you're a mark i'm a mark for all these other things i had a classic

thing happen to me in New York City where I got caught in a classic New York City con game. No kidding? Three-card money? No. Oh, yeah. Guy came up to me on the street. Yeah.

This is when you were Bruce Springsteen? Yeah. Okay. People knew you. Guy came up to me on the street, said he was from South Africa, came into town, taxi driver picked him up, got dropped off. Lost a briefcase?

Lost a briefcase. It's at Madison Square Garden. It's filled with money. And I'm going, oh, how can I help you? and this leads to a variety of other circumstances where i finally end up on a street corner and a guy who says i've got a gun in my pocket because i finally was i finally realized i'm caught in something here that's it's not bogus yeah you know and i end up walking away anyway uh but i said hey why did i why am i the guy that out of the thousands of people on the street that day somebody looked at me and said that's my man yeah yeah yeah I know that that's my man and I said okay

I'm putting something out here that's great sometimes but not so good in everyday life that's a tough realization. It was. I had to realize, whoa. Yeah, because then you've got to learn how to look hard. I'm kind of stupid this way. I don't know what it is because it's like either you got that. It's like William Burroughs said, you can't hide the mark inside. No, you can't.

You can't. Right. And it took me a long time to realize that a part of me was that person and then to start to build boundaries that not only were good for me, but were good for the people that were around me because I wasn't doing them any service either. And that was kind of the beginning. It was an adult thing to do.

Well, you've got to learn how to go like, no, I can't. No, you've got to learn the door. learn the yeah yeah yeah you know can't do it yeah to your friends or to people that are yet to you got to learn how to you know say no i can't and for me that was really hard because i'd heard no i can't so often when i was a child i said i'm not going to say no to anybody when i when i grow up i'm not going to give it all away yeah I'm not going I'm going to give everything everything away and so uh and you trusted people stupid yeah completely yeah completely I both I both was somebody who didn't trust anyone and trusted everyone yeah at the same time when I went outside so so uh well you trusted your creative vision you know so like so like they like that ego you're

talking about which i can kind of identify with in the sense that sort of like i'm gonna be big you know i'm and i'm gonna do it my way yeah and also i idealized people in my songs and so i then projected that onto you know just whoever i met you know sure right which which i made this guy up i wrote this guy which plenty of times worked out great, but sometimes not so great. Right, but the stubbornness really, like there's some points in your career where you were like, you know,

the my way thing served you, you know, greatly. Yeah. And that, you know, you fought the good fights for your creative vision that eventually paid off. Oh, yeah, yeah. But it was a hard time. Yeah. There was one bit in the book that struck me just because of what we're living through now.

There was a moment in the book where you talked about the high school principal encouraging the – you had the rah-rahs and the greasers and then the meatheads. But this was a high school thought. But when you were a long hair and you were going to go to graduation that he subtly encouraged somebody to anybody to get you in line yeah you know which we now have a president-elect that that's a high school prince that high school principal the guy who's going to sick the bad guys on you like i can't do it myself but i'm not saying you should somebody knocked that guy in the face right right that's scary not me but somebody do it i'll pay the bill i'm not even gonna tell you to do it i'm just saying it wouldn't bother me if you did

exactly and that's you know you know it's like when i think about, I don't know, are you scared now? Yeah. Yeah, of course. How could you not be? Right. Have you felt this fear before? No. Right.

I felt disgust before. Right. But never the kind of fear that you feel now. Right. And it's simply the fear of, is someone simply competent enough to do this particular job right forget about what where they are ideologically right do they simply have the pure competence right right to uh to be put in a position as such you know uh in responsibility he's so like when you when you've done the amount of self-work you've done and you've grown up the

way you've grown up and you know people, it's sort of like they elected the most insecure, needy, volatile dude to do this job. That somehow or another, I don't think it embodies strength to a lot of people, but it does embody, fuck you. It just voted for, who are you but it does embody fuck you yeah there's just like it just they just voted for who you voting for the fuck you got that happened yeah that happened yeah and you know like in in like so i started thinking about like this weird thing about the themes of your

music and and the people that you empower and empathize for, people in your life, your younger sister who live a working class life. Of course. And times are tough, but that shift, and I think you might have suggested it in the book a little bit, the strength that comes through faith or determination to deal with adversity, through faith or determination to deal with adversity is, is, is that that's a celebration of the American spirit. But once adversity tips into hopelessness,

however that looks, and you've written those characters too, you know, and, and they've acted, you know, sometimes badly, but when,

when the hopelessness, you know, has no place to go, this is where we're at. You're right. So how, how do you like, where's your empathy around that you know i know people that voted for him you live in new jersey you probably know a few of course and then you have that moment where you're like well who the fuck are you who are you

i thought i knew you yeah i mean i understand how we got elected yeah you know and uh i think And I think if you were affected deeply by the deindustrialization and globalization, the technological advances, and you have been left behind, that somebody comes along and tells you, I'm going to bring all the jobs back. Don't worry about it. They're all coming back. And you're concerned about America changing, the browning of America, I'm going to build a wall. You're worried about ISIS, I've got a secret plan to defeat ISIS. Don't worry about that. You're worried about terrorism in the United States,

I'm going to register the Muslims and we're going to ban. I mean, these are all very simplistic, but very powerful and simple ideas. I mean, they're lies. They can't occur. If they do occur, they can't lead to a better place. Yeah, but if you've struggled for the past 30 or 40 years, and this has been the themes, themes of my of much of my creative life for all those years somebody comes along and offers you something else particularly after you feel you've been failed by the the two parties you know that it's a compelling it's a compelling choice and

it it just appeals to your worst angels. And under certain circumstances, you know, enough people went there. Not a majority of the people, but enough. And what's your biggest fear of it as we enter it? I suppose would be that a lot of the worst things and the worst aspects of what he appealed to comes to fruition. When you let that genie out of the bottle, bigotry, racism, when you let those things out of the bottle,

the intolerance, they don't go back in the bottle that easily if they go back in at all. Right. You know, whether it's a rise in hate crimes, people feeling they have license to speak and behave in ways that previously were considered un-American and are un-American. and are un-American. That's what he's appealing to. And so my fears are that those things find a place in ordinary civil society, demeans the discussions and events of the day, and the country changes in a way that is unrecognizable, and we become estranged. As you say, you say, hey hey wait a minute you voted for trump i thought i knew who you were you know i'm not sure you know the country feels very estranged you feel very estranged from your countrymen you know yeah so those are all dangerous things that and we don't even know you know he hasn't even taken office yet. He never went to see us. Those of us who panic are panicking.

Yeah, you know, so we've got to wait and see. But those are certainly the implications, and if you also look at who he's been picking for his cabinet, it doesn't speak very well for what's coming up. You know, those are all things that, you know, I'm very frightened of and waiting to see play out. And all you can do is say, well, I'm going to do my best to, hey, America is still America. I believe in its ideals and I'm going to do my best to play my very, very small part in maintaining those things. Are you writing about it?

No, I haven't written about it. You know, it takes a while to digest all those things. Are you writing about it? No, I haven't written about it. It takes a while to digest all those things. And I don't know if I will, because I don't write, I don't go, okay, I need a Trump album. That's what's got to come next. No, but I think if you look at, certainly your heroes

and certainly your shift into the power of of popular folk music and and what you know folk music meant like you know it's interesting i've got a lot of songs that are about it right now you know they're all there that's done they're there you know they're kind of there already and and uh you know if i work from the inside out in other words i'm inspired by something internally and I make a record based on what I can write about at a given moment. Sometimes it ends up being topical.

Sometimes it doesn't, you know. But we've got a good arsenal of material right now that we can go out and sort of put in service of. It's interesting when you write in the book about the, that there was an intimacy to the business, whether it was, you know, broken or corrupt or whatever,

but you know, where you had relationships with DJs where, where an article in the press could make a difference where, where a song, when you think about Woody Guthrie, or you think about the power of, of that, that music in those circles,

how it could convey a message of unity. And I think a lot of what you talk about in your experience with your fans and what music does is that there is a community. What's scary now, and I think you kind of point your finger on it a little bit, is that it's so fragmented,

that there's now, you know, you can pick a world to live in that's not the real world. Yeah, it's, you know you know as they say it's your little bubble you know yeah and uh you know new jersey's a blue state and you know i certainly ran into more clinton supporters than i did trump supporters but but uh i did i did know both and and uh i think if there's a benefit to what's occurred, and this was a little similar after the OJ verdict, was that people realized, whoa, there are some other Americans that are my countrymen that I simply, I'm not sure I know who they are. So the answer is not to pull back into your little box,

but the answer is, well, let's find out. One way or the other. We're going to find out. There's plenty of good, solid folks that voted for Donald Trump, as well as people who had other agendas. But to know that that you've got to like you've got to know some you know and uh i think what it is some a little bit is just this idea of change you know that whatever they were afraid of they voted their fear yeah and but they

they but the thing that's american that that is is sort of unnerving a little bit is that sort of like, it'll be all right. It's going to work itself out. And then me, and I'm probably, I don't know about you, but there's part of me that's like, I don't know. I hope so. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's shaking the faith. Of course.

You know? So we'll see. Yeah, that's it. That's all we can say right now. Yeah. And what have you done differently to finish up here? Like, you know,

because I know like I don't have kids. Like I, I, you know, I don't, uh, yeah, I've been married a couple of times and didn't have any kids.

You can do that. If you really focus on it, it's incredible. You can put your mind to it. Like, you're like, I can fuck up early. I can be with a woman who wants kids.

I'm not gonna have kids. But, uh, but you, you somehow, you somehow, I guess through self-work and through whatever you had to do to get your darkness in place, were able to rise up. There's that moment after darkness where you said, all right, Born to Run's about freedom in that way, selfish freedom. And then there's responsibility. And somehow or another, you've put yourself together enough well there's there's there's license and there's freedom and those two things are very different i always say licenses to freedom as masturbation is to real sex

it's not bad but it's not the real but like you talk a lot about manhood it seems like you've manned up and you've become a a decent you're always a decent guy but you're a good father and how do you do it differently you have a conscious i think you have to believe in the things that you don't know you know most people the things they don't know they don't believe exists very often you know yeah yeah so you you have to sort of believe in the things that you don't know. Know that they're there. Know that they're an important part of a full life. And then you have to go out and you have to find a process in which you come to know those things, whether they're appealing things about yourself or whether they're not. Usually you've got to go out and learn about all the ugly things about yourself or whether they're not you've got to and usually you've got to go out and learn about

all the ugly things about yourself and all the mistaken things that you've done uh to construct a responsible version yeah you know you've got to go out and sort of incorporate that learn those things and incorporate them into your life in doing so you learn a lot of forgiveness you learn uh you know your tolerance increases tremendously and you learn a lot about the way life happens to you as i say and you've got to prepare yourself for good things that come in your life and also the bad things that come when you open yourself up to the world at large. And so that was the biggest change that happened in my 30s that I had to make. It was like going back to learning my first chord on the guitar.

I had to learn the first chord on myself and build it just the same way I built the craft of playing and singing, slowly, step by step, angry, sometimes joyful, until finally I was able to put together a me that other people, once they got to know me, would be able to stand. And then once I was able to do that then you know then your kids come along and and you know you have a wife and a relationship and and you do your best to try and not fuck those things up as you go which is not easy to do and uh and but suddenly you wake up one morning and, you know, there's a life there, you know?

And a lot of it's not in your control. Most of it, some of it is, but a lot of it, a lot of it is not. And you're okay with that. And you've got to be okay with it. And you've got to have a little faith. That's right. Yeah. That's right.

Thanks for talking, Bruce. My pleasure, man. Thanks a lot okay well that's me and bruce i hope you enjoyed that i know i know i wish i could have hung out for another couple hours but uh read the book it's very honest it's all in there. After we were done with our hour, we were walking around a little bit. I told him about Keith

Richards and smoking that cigarette with Keith Richards and he laughed. I said, hey man, can I have a pic? I thought maybe he had a lot of people, a lot of musicians have pics with their names on them or whatever. He goes, ah, yeah man, I can give you a pic. He's looking through all these picks, and he doesn't have any Bruce Springsteen picks, but

he does have a pick that he uses, and it's special because it's this large, thick pick, which I use, a big triangular pick, and on the top there's this thing on it, and it's a piece of sandpaper. He has his guitar tech, or his guy, he puts

sandpaper, taped sandpaperpaper on the top of these picks so bruce doesn't lose him because his hands get sweaty they'll slip out of his hand so i've got a uh a sandpapered springsteen pick that i will cherish along with this conversation so all right i gotta i gotta play a little guitar now but you know you can split if you want. Happy New Year. Thank you. Boomer lives! Boomer lives. Happy New Year. It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. new year. That's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now.

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