1995-08-29 Cheers, Long Branch, NJ

Scheduled: ??:?? Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info | Venue

Joe Grushecky and Bruce Springsteen talk about Joe's American Babylon album.

In Conversation; American Babylon

^{© All credits to the original photographer. We do not monetize a photo in any way, but if you want your photo to be removed, let us know, and we will remove it.}

Joe Grushecky and Bruce Springsteen: In Conversation

~Cheers Bar, Long Branch, New Jersey~
Tuesday, 29th August, 1995

1. B.S. ~ Joe's made a lot of great music over the years. Written a lot of strong songs, tough songs. Songs about something and he certainly should be in line for an audience that can sustain and that was one of the things we were trying to accomplish with this record. I think that was the most important thing and everything else was just the icing on the cake.

###

B.S. ~ Part of what drew me to his work was that he wrote really good songs about the themes that we both sort of shared, things we had the same interest in, similar experiences. So that was a way of connecting me up to some of the themes I'd written about in the past and hadn't written about in a while. For me it was kind of… it filled that space in. Working with him on his record made that connection. I got a lot out of it outside the music; we hit it off, had some good times but that connection was a big part of what drew me in to putting the time and effort in.

###

B.S. ~ I met Joe at Clarence's place first…

J.G. ~ Yeah, but this is the first time we really hung out. I met Bruce with Steve, that was the first time we met. You guys were at The Power Station. Steve was working on Have A Good Time and I walked in there one night. Been down to see Mick Ronson and ran into you guys…

B.S. ~ First time I saw his band… Clarence had a place near here in town… you guys came down and played that club……

2. Extract from 'Never Be Enough Time'

B.S. ~ The ball never actually rolled… it ground along inch by inch! We bumped into each other in Pittsburgh one night, talked a bit. I don't know if he said he was going to send me a tape. I forget what was going on y'know…! Actually, I got a call from Jon (Landau). Jon said, 'Joe called… he's making a record and might be able to use a little guitar'. And I said, 'great'. Then we got talking. I had some free time and I said 'well, come on out and bring some songs with you. I have a studio and… let's give it a shot'.

~ My wife suggested it, she said 'why don't you ask Bruce to play'. I was getting ready to make a new record. I had a couple of songs written. I hemmed and hawed for a while but I called Jon, he called Bruce, we got in touch and it sort of took on a life of its own.

~ Yeah, we just had some fun. Initially, it started out that I was going to play guitar on one song. And then I said 'come on out and we'll…' It's easier to put something together in that setting. I think we did three songs…

~ Two songs there…

~ Right….

~ I came to New York and gave you the lyrics to Homestead…

~ Right… We did a song in New York City and we had a couple of sessions down in New Jersey over a pretty extended period of time. I was trying to make a record of my own. Streets Of Philadelphia came along and that ended up being some work to do. So we did it, kind of squeezed it in whenever we could together. Like I say, it's a record made very quickly over a long period of time.

~ What I like about the album is… I think it's pretty far reaching. A lot of different types of music on it. It's fun working with Bruce because if I'd just gone in with my guys, we'd have played the songs and they'd have turned out… y'know, a lot different. In some cases Bruce had little twists and turns that I wouldn't have come up with on my own which make the record a lot of fun to do musically.

3. Extract from 'Comin' Down Maria'

J.G. ~ For most guys the music they hold dear is the music they grew up with. I guess we like most of the same bands. The band scene in Pittsburgh didn't seem so terribly different to what was going on out here. Maybe a little more R&B. Blues than it was back there.

B.S. ~ Yeah but there was a lot of Soul and Blues here too. The scene was really…pretty much Top 40 and it was very hard to find places to play. We found one club, maybe not quite the size of this place – maybe three quarters of… The guy wouldn't pay but he let us charge a dollar. And the thing was, we could play whatever we wanted. But that was the only way we got a job, playing what we wanted which, at that time, was pretty much roots music, lot of Blues and Soul and then our own original things. I think the roots of Joe's music and mine are based a lot out of that particular kind of Blues and Soul and '60's pop songwriters.

###

B.S. ~ I'm not really a producer. I don't… It's a big dedication… it's something… It's like making your own record almost. It's a big job and I find generally my time has been full trying to just come up with my own records and sorting my way through that so… like I say it happened by accident. I wouldn't normally have said 'hey, I'll produce Joe Grushecky right now.' But it started little by little, did a couple of songs, liked the way they came out and, like I say, I was enjoying simply the process of working, not being the centre of the thing. It's his record, he's the centre, the nucleus of whatever came out of it came out of him basically. I was around the edges and made some suggestions! It's a lighter position I found and you get to use your abilities without having to sort of shoulder the burden of the whole project, I get to suggest… 'what do you think about this…this rhythm or that riff?'. So I was enjoying what we were working on. I like Joe's voice and the writing and it was connecting themes I'd written about myself in the past.

4. Extract from 'Homestead'

B.S. ~ When I've collaborated previously was sort of by accident y'know. The stuff with Southside was… I'd have a song or Steve would come up and say, 'remember that riff' and I'd sing it to him and he'd go off and write a song around it or… I've never actually sat in a room with somebody and written a song together. With Patti Smith, Jimmy Iovine heard this track we'd cut and said 'wow, I'm making this record with Patti Smith and could I play it for her?' And I said 'sure, sure…' And so we ended up writing Because The Night together.

B.S. ~ Joe had some words which are always the hardest part. It's always easier to throw the music on I find anyway. Pretty quickly we'd come up with a musical thing and a couple of tunes we wrote together. The hard work… in my opinion… is coming up with the idea. And the lyrics!

###

J.G. ~ We're a type of band that starts playing. This next two weeks we've got off, that's the longest we've taken off since I can't remember. The band's been intact since '86, '87 so… We've always played so all the time you sort of get to know what each other's gonna do, each other's strengths, you don't have the preciseness of a studio.

B.S. ~ Yeah, it depends on the kind of music you're making. Also, different musicians are available at different times for different things but the particular kind of stuff that Joe was writing, that connection was real important to get on the record.

~ Bruce came down and played with us a couple, no three weeks ago.

~ We played a little club here, five, ten minutes away. That was nice… real nice…

~ What we did was play a few of our songs, played some old standards like Mustang Sally and we even worked up a few of Bruce's tunes too.

###

5. J.G. ~ It was probably the most relaxed recording session… once we'd got together! It seemed like we were real sure of what we were doing. Not a lot of second guessing, pulling your hair and thinking is this good, is that good? We went in and did it in a very relaxed atmosphere. It was fun.

B.S. ~ We had a limited amount of time which which is good also. Three [or] four days here or three days there so you had to be pretty direct about the way you're approaching it. I think that's… it keeps you from being obsessive overmuch of the insignificant details. You immediately go to the things that matter and the things that don't matter get basically placed outside. I've sat and listened to a guy hit a Tom Tom for a few hours y'know! And it's… not… quite… right! Then, the minute the band start playing it doesn't sound anything like you thought it was gonna anyway! There's a point where some of that can make some sense but a lot of it just comes out of demands of the job and people who are insecure… you need the Tom Tom to sound… perfect! It's got to sound exactly like the one on… y'know! But if you've got a limited amount of time, it's hey, the Tom Tom sounds like a Tom Tom! It's fine. You want the snare to sound like a reasonably balanced snare drum and the band'll play well. If the song is right then that's the whole story. You tend to not get into the kind of things that can sort of drive you crazy! It went pretty easy, we cut…

~ We cut eight songs……

~ In like five days or something. Gar[r]y, my bass player, produces a lot of bands down in Nashville and he'll make an album in a couple of days 'cos that's what people… and, at the same time, Elvis did thirty-two takes of Hound Dog, something like that! So… something there wasn't… quite… right!

~ There's no pressure either. Actually, it's thanks to Bruce, because when we started out we didn't even have a label. We were recording with hopes of getting a label. So the only pressure that was on us was self inflicted.

###

6. Extract from 'Dark And Bloody Ground'

B.S. ~ That was a tune where Joe came in with the words…

J.G. ~ Right…

~ And we wrote the music right there, just taught it to the band and it happened pretty fast, an hour or so…

~ Yeah, we just went in and wrote it. I had the words like you say. We changed a few things. We told the band to take a break and worked on it for maybe an hour, max right? Cut it in two takes. That was nice 'cos it was instant.

~ Yeah, it's a Stratocaster through a…

~ Tonemaster?

~ Tonemaster, yeah… I don't play a Strat usually on records. Sounds slightly different you know?

###

7. Extract from 'Chain Smokin'

B.S. ~ That was the tune, right, that… Bobby Clearmountain mixed that. It was sort of… it reminded me of… that was your pop song. Someone will play this one!

J.G. ~ I was actually thinking of The Beatles when I wrote the middle part, the bridge. I was shooting for something Beatlesque, something for people to sing along to. It started as this kind of raw hypnotic type of song and got boring so, after I wrote other bits it started to turn into something completely different.

###

8. Extract from 'No Strings Attached'

J.G. ~ I seem to have an easier time with lyrics than I do with the music… Not every song is written the same way. When I was driving to work, I'd be writing a lot of stuff in my car. Pencil and paper and think up in my head. Some songs… like Dark & Bloody Ground, I read this book about Kentucky and that inspired me… so the words came first. Other songs like No Strings Attached, I had the music before I had the lyrics so for me they're all different. I don't know about Bruce?

B.S. ~ Yeah, usually I kind of… I struggle along and get where I can! Occasionally… there's that quote of Brian Wilson where he says 'we struggle along' and then I think he said 'all of a sudden your soul comes out to play for a few minutes'. And that's kind of what you wait for I think.

~ Get lucky, get something good…

~ Yeah. Joe's music was… I mean the stuff he sent me… he was coming up with a lot of stuff pretty quickly and I think when I listened to what we wanted to do, the only thing that I felt was the stuff on this record moves slightly differently than the things on some of Joe's earlier records. We sort of shaded the music, slightly differently… rhythmically it tended to be a little more… I don't know if less rigid would be the right word. I mean, there wasn't that much to do really! To me, if there is something different about this particular record compared to some of your earlier records was the way we slightly altered… he'd play me something and I would slightly alter the way that it moved..

~ Occasionally suggest a different chord change.

###

9. Extracts from 'Labour Of Love'

B.S. ~ That was one… a thing where we changed the rhythm…

J.G. ~ Yeah, he changed the rhythm. That was the last thing we cut actually. I kept saying, 'I got this song'. I'd wrote another good pop song and we were playing it slightly differently. More twangy with electric guitars so… right at the end he and I ended up playing it on acoustic guitars…

~ And tried to get some swing into it…

~ Like you say, he changed the rhythm of it. Once that changed, the whole song opened up. A different direction, so it was just minor stuff like that because ours was almost a country waltz song type of thing.

###

10. Extracts from 'What Did You Do In The War'

J.G. ~ I had this job working with teenagers and I had one very curious kid. Woodstock 2 had just happened and he literally… 'Did you got to Woodstock? Did you ever see Janis Joplin? D'you ever see The Doors? Did you burn your draft card? Did you smoke marijuana?' All this struck me that… Jeez, these are all questions that my own boy's going to be asking me. 'How come you weren't over in Vietnam, were you one of those hippies?' That was sort of the trend of thought that struck me… he was asking so many questions. Seemed like natural thing to write the song about.

###

11. Extracts from 'Only Lovers left alive'

B.S. ~ There's nothing automatic about it, it's still a mystery. Y'know, if you have a big audience, when you gain a big audience you can forget it's an amazing thing. It IS an amazing, an amazing thing. It can have the illusion of coming easily, if you're ten or fifteen years down the road you forget… it didn't come easy. That was really hard. It's as hard to find those people and to make that connection. And even then, if you make that connection, to sustain that connection.

J.G. ~ I'd like to get a bigger audience, make a half decent living playing music. That's basically the goal. If this album's good enough then it'll reach enough people and I'll be able to do that.

~ That's a hard place to come by you know? The music business can be feast or famine. Joe's made a lot of terrific music over the years and he never quite reached that audience that he deserved. I think part of what both of us wanted to do was to try and make a record that was true to [w]hat he'd written over the years, who he is and where he comes from, what his band's about and, at the same time, maybe, plug into a slightly bigger audience… hey, they can be as big as they want!… so he'd be able to quit his day job……

~ I just did that anyway.

^{Interviewed and recorded by Neil Storey in Long Branch, New Jersey. Edited and mixed by Paul Sexton in London.}