I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns.
— Bruce Springsteen
I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.
The E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we've had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world.
When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.
For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in; my intelligence was elsewhere.
Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention.
And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.
When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.
Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you're trying to say on stage. Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.
The release date is just one day, but the record is forever.
The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for you. People will say yes to anything you ask, so it's basically down to you and what you want or need.
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.
I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.
You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records.
Steve Van Zandt, the poor guy, doesn't get to play enough as it is with me hogging a lot of the solos. Steve has always been a fabulous guitarist. Back from the day when we were both teenagers together, he led his band and played lead and was always a hot guitar player.
I'm not in any rush. I'm not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That's not something I've ever really quite done.
If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.
Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.
You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses.
We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves.
I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.
I was the only person I'd ever met who had a record contract. None of the E Street Band, as far as I know, had been on an airplane until Columbia sent us to Los Angeles.
Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why.
It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.
Talk about a dream, try to make it real.
Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.
Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.
When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.
In the early years, I found a voice that was my voice and also partly my father's voice. But isn't that what you always do? Why do kids at 5 years old go into the closet and put their daddy's shoes on? Hey, my kids do it.
I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.
An outgrowth of having a long career is that I have a lot of interesting things around that I get to revisit, and someday get to the place where they become something that I want to do next.
Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.
In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.
I think politics come out of psychology.
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. I got the chutzpa or whatever you want to say to believe that if I write a really good about it, it's going to make a difference.
If you're good, you're always looking over your shoulder.
Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.
If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it.
Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
In America everything's about who's number one today.
No, I always felt that amongst my core fans- because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid '80s that was sort of a bump on the scale- they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work.
But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.
My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.
In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
