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.
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.
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.
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.
The name 'Boss' started with people that worked for me... It was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like 'Boss, where's my dough this week?' And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it.
'Darkness on the Edge of Town' came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs.
For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in.
That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.
I was looking for some way to put my music to some service on a nightly basis. You go into a town, you play a little music, you leave something behind. That idea connected us to the local community. It was a very simple idea, but it really resonated with me.
Anyone who's grown up or lived on the Jersey Shore knows the place is unique.
I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.
I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that's the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up - either religious or social laws - become meaningless.
All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records, but if you were a kid, you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful.
I was real good at music and real bad at everything else.
All I try to do is to write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.
I don't write demographically. I don't write a song to reach these people or those people.
On any given night, what allows me to get to that higher ground is the audience.
I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.
I'm interested in what it means to be an American. 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 grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street.
I've had an experience through music that has touched almost every part of me. It educated me in ways that I didn't get educated in school. So we try to lay on a bit of that, through being funny, being serious, playing hard.
You have to create the show anew, and find it anew, on a nightly basis.
A good song gathers the years in. It's why you can sing it with such conviction 40 years after it's been written.
Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult. Very, very difficult.
At the time, there was a great disagreement over 'The Wild and the Innocent,' and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn't do it, and they basically said, 'Well hey, look, it's going to go in the trash can.' That's the record business, you know.
I think there's only eight songs on 'Born to Run' - I don't think it's much more than 35 minutes long. But as you move into it, where every song comes up in the sequence makes a lot of sense - though we weren't thinking about it; we were going on instinct at the time.
We struggled together, and sometimes, we struggled with one another... We took care of one another... In the end, we kept faith in each other.Collection: Together
You can't start a fire without a sparkCollection: Fire
Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.Collection: Looks
All people have is hope. That's what brings the next day and whatever that day may bring... A hope grounded in the real world of living, friendship, work, family...Collection: Real
The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.Collection: Challenges
So let's take the good times as they go and I'll meet you further on up the road.Collection: Good Times
A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be.Collection: Inspirational
Nobody wins unless everybody wins.Collection: Winning
I'm ready to grow young againCollection: Young
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night.Collection: Night
At the end of every hard day, people find some reason to believe.Collection: Work
Ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough: Man meets woman, and they fall in love, But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough. You got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.Collection: Falling In Love
"Born To Run," that expands every time we go out. It just seems to you - more of your life fills it in, fills in the story. And when we hit it every night, it's always a huge catharsis. It's fascinating to see the audience singing it back to me. It's quite wonderful, you know, to see people that intensely singing your song.Collection: Running
Someday girl, I don't know when, were gonna get to the place where we really want to go, and we'll walk in the sun. But til then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.Collection: Inspirational
The future is now. Roll up your sleeves and let your passion flow. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.Collection: Country
It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.Collection: Inspirational
Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, But you and I know what this world can do. So let's make our steps clear so the other may see. And I'll wait for you...should I fall behind wait for me.Collection: Dream
If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.Collection: Fashion
Let there be sunshine, let there be rain, let the broken hearted love again.Collection: Rain
Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.Collection: Life
When they built you brother they broke the mold.Collection: Brother
I met a girl and we ran away, I swore I'd make her happy every day. And how I made her cry, two faces have I.Collection: Relationship
Physical pain is my friend. I pursue it every night for four hours.Collection: Pain