Review: Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters, ed. Jeff Burger

I first saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform in 1985 at Soldier Field in Chicago (I had won the tickets from a radio call-in contest), the second year (second year!) of the Born in the U.S.A. tour. The stage was in the football field's end zone, and in my memory, my friend from high school Jim and I were standing on about the 20-yard line at the stage-end of the field, although now I can't believe we actually managed to get anywhere near that close. Wherever we were standing (standing, for three-plus hours), I could see things pretty well, given my height and the presence of huge video screens. Even though by that point the band was playing ten of the new album's twelve songs, eschewing some older classics (where oh where was "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"?), it was still an amazing, life-enriching show for me, and for the probably 60,000 other people in attendance.

1985. 60,000 people.

Here's Springsteen in an unpublished interview from 1974, eleven years prior:

Usually we won't play anyplace over three thousand [people]--that's the highest we want to do. We don't want to get any bigger. And that's even too big....

P[aul] W[illiams]: But then there's The Who. They announce they're playing Madison Square Garden and it sells out in an hour. So I guess they'd have to book a week, a whole week.

BS: You gotta do that. And if you get that big, you gotta realize that some people who wanna see you ain't gonna see you. I'm not in that position and I don't know if I'll ever be in that position. All I know is those big coliseums ain't where it's supposed to be. There's always something else going on all over the room....

PW: I guess people go for the event.

BS: What happens is you go to those places and it turns into something else that it ain't. It becomes an event. It's hard to play. That's where everybody is playing, though, I don't know how they do it. I don't know what people expect you to do in a place like that. Especially our band--it would be impossible to reach out there the way we try to do. Forget it! (pages 34-35)

But Bruce and the band not only fairly soon managed "the impossible"; they became the undisputed, three-hour-plus masters of it, and have remained there for close to four decades.

In Springsteen on Springsteen, editor Jeff Burger allows us to see how Bruce was able to develop from a pretty inarticulate but hungry young artist into one of rock's elder statesmen and most eloquent spokespersons. Burger has gathered interviews, speeches, and more, ranging from a profile from 1973 to Springsteen's keynote address to the South by Southwest Music Festival in 2012. (The book is also peppered with "Bruce Bits," snippets of other interviews that touch on ideas not covered in the full-length pieces.) I've read several books about Springsteen in the past couple of years (most recently Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin), and each have their strengths, but this one does a wonderful job of demonstrating Springsteen's ever-evolving sense of himself as an artist.

His early interviews reveal an incredibly prodigious songwriter who was nevertheless very cautious--even guarded--when it came to how much of his music he presented his music to the public. Later in life, though, he began opening his vaults, beginning with the four-disc set Tracks (1998). There was evidence of this shift in perspective a few years before that, though, such as in this Guitar World interview with Neil Strauss in 1995:

Certainly, I go back and realize that there are many outtakes that should have been released at different times. I still wish I'd put more records out, and maybe I could have. But I made records very purposefully, with very specific ideas of them being about  and representing certain things. That probably caused me to be overly cautious about what I released and what I didn't. I certainly feel a lot more freedom now. (page 200)

It becomes clear when reading the earlier pieces that the feeling of freedom he felt in the 90s came for him only after consciously and meticulously shaping his early career along specific thematic lines.

And for a performer who's now known for his political activism, appearing on behalf of politicians like John Kerry and Barack Obama, he was for a long time reticent to espouse any overtly political rhetoric, although his populist sympathies generally weren't hard to spot in his lyrics. Even in the 1990s, an invitation from then-President Bill Clinton wasn't enough to tempt him, as David Corn inquired in a Mother Jones interview (1996):

DC: The White House wanted you to drop by today, but you chose not to.

BS: What ears this man has! [Laughs.] I don't know what to say. In my opinion, the artist has to keep his distance. (page 217)

Springsteen seems to have avoided many sorts of temptation. Unlike just about every other rock or pop musician you can think of, he never fell prey to the dangers of chemical addiction. Indeed, several early reviews make a point to mention his tea-totaling ways. By the 1990s, though, interviewers occasionally set the set the scene for their pieces with tales of Springsteen offering to share some beer or Jack Daniels, drinks which the performer then barely touches (if at all) for the duration of the interview. Gavin Martin, from the New Musical Express, brought up the subject of drugs in 1996, and Springsteen replied:

I've had a funny experience in that I didn't so any drugs; I've never done any drugs. It's not about having any moral point of view about drugs whatsoever--I know nothing about them.... I didn't trust myself into putting myself that far out of control. I had a fear of my own internal life....

 I was 'round very many people who did many drugs and I can't particularly say I liked any of them when they were stoned or high, for the most part. Either they were being a pain in the ass or incomprehensible. That's my experience--so it didn't interest me.

Also, at a very young age, I became very focused on music and experienced a certain sort of ecstasy, actually, through playing. It was just something I loved doing. (page 225)

One of the strengths of this book is that editor Burger didn't just collect old interviews; he also contacted the interviewers and asked for any background stories or years-later comments they might have. One good example is the introduction to Springsteen's Advocate interview with editor-in-chief Judy Weider (1996). In comments to Burger, Weider placed Bruce's rhetoric in a specific political and personal context:

"Probably the most significant contribution made by Bruce in the interview (aside from revealing his own struggle with how he'd really feel if one of his own children turned out to be gay) came when e discussed marriage for LGBTs. It is important to remember that this was 1996; I had the heads of our own gay organizations cautioning me not to push for marriage. 'Civil unions are enough for now. People are not ready.' It drove me nuts. But Bruce not only understood that was an equal-rights issue, he pushed for gays and lesbians not to settle for less in this interview. His clarity and passion gave me extra backbone for my own ongoing fight over the years: '[Marriage] makes you a part of the social fabric. You get your license; you do all of the rituals.... [It's] a part of your place in society and in some way part of society's acceptance of you.'

"No one has said it better in my view," Wieder concluded. "The world is catching up to Bruce even now." (pages 234-235)

Again, these later pieces demonstrate a sense eloquence that simply wasn't there in the early days. I recall reading a Rolling Stone interview back in 1984 or 1985 (not included in this book) and wondering more than once how someone who could write lyrics with such directness, power, and beauty could so often speak so hesitantly. How could the man whose poetry I admired be so, well, inarticulate so often? This was before I began doing some writing and public speaking myself, before I learned that my own best self came not through extemporaneous speech but through carefully considered and crafted prose. Revision is the key to good writing, and Springsteen has always been a notorious reviser of his lyrics.

As we see over the course of this collection, Springsteen took revision in all forms seriously, and eventually got to the place where he spoke to reporters not hesitantly but thoughtfully and reflectively, with all of the care and craft his lyrics exhibited. Nick Hornby introduced his Observer Music Monthly interview in 2005 in part by noting:

[Springsteen's] answers came in unbroken yet carefully considered streams. He is one of the few artists I've met who is able to talk cogently about what he does without sounding either arrogant or defensively self-deprecating. (page 313)

In an interview with the actor Ed Norton in 2010, Springsteen channels a filmmaker to give one of the best examples I've read of a description of an artist: "Martin Scorsese said the artist's job is you're trying to get the audience to care about your obsessions" (page 354). And later that year on Australian television with interviewer Ian "Molly" Meldrum, he positioned himself as a particular kind of artist: a storyteller.

If you look at the role of storytellers in communities going back to the beginning of time, they played a very functional role in assisting the community and making sense of experience, of the world around them, charting parts of their lives, getting through parts of their lives. I was interested in the eternal role of storyteller and songwriter and how I was gonna perform that function best. (page 369)

The Bruce Springsteen of 1974, at least the public speaker, never mentioned ideas like this. But did he think things like this? The Springsteen of 2010 says he did. Can we gainsay him that? For an artist whose first two albums especially delighted in the play and sound of words, his interviews--his honest, raw declarations "for the record"--took quite a long time to catch up and become lyrical in and of themselves. Perhaps he needed to hone not just his song-craft but his larger word-craft over time. The young Springsteen's speech strikes us as a bit crude and unfinished; the elder man speaks in sharp-edged, purely forged prose.

Springsteen on Springsteen not only traces the career of a songwriter; it chronicles the development of a thinker. As the imagery in his songs became more direct, more focused on the real world than on flights of verbal fancy and epics of escape, Springsteen's inner life blossomed to the point that his everyday speech could speak of hopes and dreams, of aspirations and heartache, with a beauty and a power and a poetry all its own.  In assembling these interviews spanning nearly four decades, Jeff Burger helps us to build a complex, evolving portrait of a performer, of a human being who grew into being the boss of his own mind.

Springsteen on Springsteen:

Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters

ed. Jeff Burger

Chicago Review Press, 2013

ISBN-10: 161374434X

ISBN-13: 978-1613744345

428 pages, $27.95

With a Three Philosophers from Brewery Ommegang.

Review: Bruce, by Peter Ames Carlin

Bruce Springsteen is another of my musical heroes. But I don't keep up on the latest music news like I used to, so I wasn't aware that there was a new book about him in the works until I saw a copy of it in a bookstore a few weeks ago. I quickly requested a copy from the library, and once it arrived I dove right in.

Peter Ames Carlin's biography Bruce is advertised on its dust jacket flap as "the first in twenty-five years to be written with the cooperation of Bruce Springsteen himself." That cooperation is apparent throughout: The book can boast original interviews with not just Springsteen himself, but also most of his family; current and former (and, sadly, deceased) members of not only The E Street Band but of pretty much every band Bruce has ever been a part of; management teams; crew members; journalists; childhood and family friends; and more.

However, as Carlin notes in the Acknowledgments section,

This was never an 'authorized' book in the technical sense. (I had no contractual relationship with Bruce, Thrill Hill Productions, or Jon Landau Management; they had no control over what I would eventually write.)

It took until page 472 for him to confirm my suspicions that the book might not be authorized. Beyond the fact that the cover would have proudly announced that fact if it had been, there was simply too much evidence throughout that seemed out of place in an official biography, too many anecdotes where Springsteen, frankly, comes off poorly. These aren't tales of drunken or drug-fueled binges: It seems that Bruce pretty much never did drugs, and his drinking, when it was there, never rose to the level of abuse, or even of public drunkenness. (Quite a change from almost every other rock star biography!) Rather, the book tells tales of Bruce's immaturity (which seemed to last quite a long time, well into adulthood), his anger, and his tendency to manipulate, particularly lovers and bandmates.

Indeed, the line between "lovers and bandmates" is a fuzzy one. Not just in the obvious example of Patti Scialfa, who joined the E Street Band in 1984 for the "Born in the U.S.A." tour (after having first auditioned for one of Bruce's bands back in 1971!) and who later became Bruce's second wife and mother of their three children, but in the example of nearly everyone who's ever played in a band with him. Many of their interviews reveal a similar mixture of fierce dedication to, admiration for, and frustration with Bruce the man (though pretty much everyone can't praise his musicianship and dedication to his craft enough). These relationships are complicated. There is a deep an abiding love between them all, but Bruce also is clearly their employer (their "boss"), as he has occasionally been known to make clear - as when once, on the "Darkness" tour, he discovered two of his band members doing cocaine: he exploded and threaten to fire anyone who would do that again. "'I could replace any of those guys in twenty-four hours.' The he thought for a moment. 'Except for Clarence [Clemons]. Replacing Clarence would take some time'" (262).

And Clemons himself makes a similar point, speaking about the time when Springsteen took a break from / broke up the E Street Band after the "Tunnel of Love" tour:

'It's like being married to someone. You have certain expectations of someone because you love them so much. But the these things happen, and he probably doesn't even notice. So I felt like I put all this out for the situation and didn't get much back.' (433)

Bruce's attitude toward his girlfriends could be equally capricious. As Joyce Hyser reminisced, "'His whole thing in those days was, "When I want to see you, you need to be here, and when I don't, you need to be gone"'" (290). His failed first marriage, to the actress Julianne Phillips, gets a somewhat cursory treatment, apart from generally positive memories for friends; neither Bruce nor Phillips speaks to Carlin on the record about it beyond vaguely complimentary memories of each other, and Carlin does not pry further. Bruce's relationship with Patti is presented as complicated at first (as would be expected), but quite solid once their first child was born. Scialfa did not contribute much of anything to the book (she "stayed out of it for the most part, but was welcoming all the same" [472]).

It's hard to imagine these days, when Springsteen has become something like a national musical treasure, that there was a time, even after fame had begun in earnest after "Born to Run," that the band's fortunes - not to mention its future - were gravely in doubt, due to the lawsuits between Bruce and his manager Mike Appel. Forbidden from recording, the band played gigs to get by - but just barely get by. This ancedote was frighteningly telling:

When [Gary W.] Tallent checked out a Springsteen/E Street tribute band playing in a bar near his apartment in Sea Bright, he learned that the tribute bassist made three times more for playing Tallent's parts than Tallent earned for creating, recording, and then playing them around the country. (230)

What's truly impressive about the book, however, is the insight it gives you into Springsteen's creative process, his dedication to his songwriting, and how hard he and his bands have always worked to get to the sound that he has in his head and that he wishes to create both on record and on stage. You get a good sense of his fanatical dedication in the Thom Zimny-directed documentaries included in the large "Born To Run" and "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" box sets, but the book's career-long span really drives this point home. Which is why this comment from Bruce on the spontaneously recorded "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" album seems so shocking:

'It's fascinating to record a song when the musicians don't know it,' he told USA Today's Edna Gundersen. 'If people learn their parts too well, they consciously perform rather than flat-out play.' (424)

That "perform" is telling, I think. When the E Street Band is on stage, it's a performance. There's lots of spontaneity, of course, perhaps moreso than nearly any other band; but that spontaneity has its bedrock in an excruciating amount of rehearsal, not just of the music, but of the stagecraft. And given some of the information we learn about tensions among the band members (well, really, between individuals and Bruce), particularly at the start of tours after there have been (Bruce-induced) breaks, I have to wonder if at times the camaraderie and good humor they demonstrate on stage ("night after night after night," as their bandleader is fond of intoning) isn't occasionally a bit of performance as well.

But then I read this from Clarence, and I wonder again:

'Bruce is so passionate about what he believes, that if you're around him, you have to feel it. It'll become part of your passion.... I believed in him like I believed in God. That kind of feeling. He was always so straight and so dedicated to what he believes, you become a believer simply by being around him. People see him and think, "This is how it's supposed to be, this is how it's supposed to happen." You dedicate your life to something. And Bruce represents that.' (433)

Bruce is a solid read throughout, interested more in biography than in analyzing lyrics (there are plenty of other books for that purpose). You learn about Springsteen the artist as well as Springsteen the man, from an author who, while clearly admiring his subject (and perhaps even idolizing him, a bit), nevertheless isn't averse to pointing out the lows as well as the highs. The last couple of chapters, on the most recent decade, are generally less enlightening than the rest of the book, but I suppose that's to be expected when writing of a subject who's still alive. The bulk of the book enjoys and exploits the benefits of hindsight, from Bruce, from the other interview subjects, from Carlin himself; the last few years are probably still too recent in everyone's memory to allow for much reflective thought yet.

Overall, Bruce is a nuanced, comprehensive portrait of a vital artist, as well as of his circle of friends and fellow artists. I've been a Springsteen fan for thirty years or so, but I still learned a lot from this book.

Bruce

by Peter Ames Carlin

Touchstone, 2012

ISBN-10: 1439191824

ISBN-13: 978-1439191828

512 pages, $28.00

Review: Who I Am, by Pete Townshend

Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend is one of my musical heroes, but a complicated person: spiritual but self-destructive, innovative but prone to nostalgia. So I was predisposed to like this book, yet knowing full well that parts of it would annoy the hell out of me. And I wasn't far wrong. I came away both admiring him more than I had before, but feeling sad for him and being angry at him in equal measure, as well.

His childhood traumas, hinted at in earlier portraits of him I've read, are spelled out in a bit more detail here, though some things - especially what was most likely molestation at the hands of one of his grandmother's boyfriends - are discussed only nebulously. Which is absolutely within his right: no one needs to know specific details like that, perhaps most especially the young boy who experienced their horrors in the first place. The trauma has haunted him personally, artistically, and, sadly, publicly ever since.

We learn a lot of the thinking behind not just his songs, but behind his career moves: his struggles in developing the band The Who's looks and sounds, his solo albums, his editing career with Faber and Faber, his many charity works, his spiritual quests. What we don't learn as much of as I would have expected is about his Who bandmates Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon. It's not that we learn nothing about them, or of Pete's opinions of them; we do, but somehow I expected them to play larger roles here. This is probably my own failing, however, of still thinking of Pete as "a member of The Who" instead of as his own person. Of course we get some crazy Keith stories, and tales of fistfights with Roger, and concerns over John's financial difficulties; but mostly, what comes through is his obvious love for these men, his absolute admiration of them as friends and musicians. Roger in fact comes across as a rock for Pete more often than I would have guessed.

He's generally very forthright about his goals and choices, and he isn't afraid to admit mistakes (which are many). For a man who had it in his mind that he wanted to be a good husband and father, he had a remarkable ability to fall in love with other women at the drop of a hat. Was he confused and conflicted? Yes. Did he reign himself in? Occasionally. Did I want to slap him for his inconsiderate stupidity? Repeatedly.

The same could be said for his use of drink and drugs, which varied over time from abstinence to depravity. Yes, it's "the life of a rock star" - but why, damnit? He gives some reasons, but they're usually excuses. His multiple, non-ironic references to alcohol as "medicinal" in small doses seem myopic for someone who's had a much therapy and treatment as he's had. I'm far from a teetotaler myself, but if someone has an admitted, serious alcohol problem, comments like these seem disingenuous, at least. But again, what he's given us is a portrait not of a perfect or perfected person, but of one who is at least acutely aware of and at peace with himself.

Of course, a career like his is full of great stories, and even having been a fairly obsessive fan, there was a lot here that was new and unfamiliar to me. Phil Collins called to offer his services as drummer after Moon died? Pete was and is a fan of Bruce Springsteen? I knew of Pete's longstanding and fruitful obsession with recording technology, but not with boating. And he does sort of claim to have invented the idea of the Internet, though that one is less of a surprise.

Townshend is a good writer (this is not news), and I've seen enough interviews with him that I could easily hear his voice, his cadence in my head as I read the book; if there was any ghost-writing involved here, I'd be astonished. He does have a tendency to skip back and forth at times chronologically, but that might simply be a symptom of a life pulled in several directions at once. In the Acknowledgments, he admits that he had to cut the book down from 1,000 pages to 500 pages, and you definitely can feel the gaps at times at times; I would love to be able to read the longer version.

Who I Am: A Memoir

by Pete Townshend

Harper, 2012

ISBN-10: 0062127241
ISBN-13: 978-0062127242

544 pages, $32.50