2020-10-12 Springsteen Residence, Colts Neck, NJ

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The Boss sat down with Chris Jordan of the Asbury Park Press (for USA Today Network) via Zoom to talk about the new album Letter To You and film Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You. The interview was published on October 25th.

Asbury Park Press Interview

Chris Jordan
Bruce Springsteen (Guest)

Chris Jordan Interview for Asbury Park Press

Chris: The E Street Band on the album, in the movie, 45 years. There’s never stories about bad things happening to members. No members have written a tell-all book like “I Survived Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” and even members who have been asked to leave have nothing but good and positive things to say. How does this happen? This strikes me as quite a rare thing in the rock ’n’ roll world?

Bruce: We try to do right, take care of them. Me and Vini Lopez remain very close. Vini’s a great guy, a totally unique and fabulous drummer and we bump into each other every once in a while and I don’t see him a lot but when I do see him, he’s a lovely figure in my life and I go back a lot of those days with Tinker. All the people from my old time, we’ve sustained good relationships.
As far as the band goes, the band is just like every other band, after 45 years, people have their old grudges, things they don’t like about this guy and things they don’t like about that guy and there’s the normal array of emotional feelings that you would find in any group of people, or any family who’ve spent 45 years of their lives together. That’s a long time. But at the same time I will pat myself on the back and say that the ship was well captained, No. 1, and that everyone on the ship subsumed their own egos and grudges for the greater good and the greater identity of what we believed in, which was the E Street Band. That would be the best way I could put it. Up to this point that’s been how we’ve operated, and the guys are free to say or do whatever they feel like saying or doing, but basically I feel that’s it’s been good relationships and we’ve dealt with each other in good faith. Not perfectly, we’re all human. People make mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. Guys in the band have made mistakes. We’ve argued, we’ve split apart for long periods of time. We had a decade where we didn’t play together, Steve left the band in ’83 or ’4, then came back later, so we’ve had our ins and outs and ups and downs, so it wasn’t all completely smooth sailing. But what we’ve had over the past 20 years is the greatest 20 years of our playing life where I believe most of the members would say they’ve been the happiest they’ve ever been, and sort of the past is the past for most of us and we live in the present and the present is pretty nice for everybody. The E Street Band is a pretty nice place to be and I think when we split apart from everyone for that period of time that it gave people the chance to say, you know that E Street Band, that was a pretty nice thing in my life, I liked it when it was in my life, and I’m including myself, you know? I had to learn to value them a little more than perhaps I did, and they had to learn how to value me more than perhaps they did and each other more than perhaps they did. So that hiatus sort of brought home a certain reality that when we got back together, the grudges felt smaller or insignificant and not central anymore. We’d grown older, people had sort of grown beyond most of those things. So it’s not that all those things aren’t there, but we’ve had a process to this point where the band, I believe, is happy to be in the E Street Band and I’m happy to have them there. That’s sustained our relationships and like I said, we’ve subsumed whatever grudges we’ve had or negative feelings. At some point people decided that the band itself was bigger than those things and that was important.

Chris: The band formed in the ’70s. It’s an amazing thing in rock ’n’ roll that there’s never been a situation with substance abuse or anything. Did you know that these guys were going to get the job done and not have drama like that, or did you have to do something else, like set any rules or anything?

Bruce: No, there was drama like that. We did not have clean living people.

Chris: Fair enough, OK.

Bruce: We had people who were into what other rock musicians had gotten into and who got themselves in trouble with it on more than one occasion and this happened with more than one member. So our general approach was to assist them and get them help as quickly as we possibly could and I can say that worked out. We looked out for one another in that sense. If someone was doing bad you may get a phone call, “Hey, I saw …, he didn’t look so good.” Maybe I better call him up. I call him up, you don’t sound so good and one thing would lead to another and people would go into rehab and they would do what they had to do. But it was a group that looked out for the other guy a little closer than some other groups and so consequently the guys who needed help, they got the help. And for the most part I know the band certainly over the past 10, 20 years has been pretty sober, a lot of it for the most part. We were not free of the difficulties or troubles that other bands had but we managed to treat them in a way that worked for the good of the band and for the good of that individual. So that was a very powerful and positive thing to do.

Chris: Acknowledged. You never had any public flameouts in that way and I think that speaks to how finely tuned the E Street Band machine is?

Bruce: Part of it was we were sort of a band, ah, it was my band and everyone knew that the buck stopped here and I had my rules and my rules were very simple. I stayed out of your private life until I saw it affecting your work life. Or until I saw as a friend you were ruining your life, then I would interrupt as a friend. But as your employer, I would stay out of your business until I turned around on stage and if I looked at you, and you didn’t looked at me back, or you looked at me back really squirrely, or you were behaving rather strange. It was different for each member because there were guys I’m sure who went onstage in different states of inebriation who could simply hold what they were doing very well, so I judged on what I perceived the performance of the band was. If I felt it slipped beneath its best, I would confront you about that. I would say in this band, this doesn’t go – this is just something that can’t happen. So we either got to get you help, or you got to stand back for a while. So I had a series of, I don’t know if you want to call them rules, but there was a code that was just a part of being in the band. I believe that’s why the guys have died of natural causes. We’ve had no drug flameouts. The guys who have passed away in the E Street Band died from natural causes and that’s the way life works.

Chris: The album and the movie are great and last time we spoke, we spoke about how you’re looking more inward for your music, your muse, and I think album, the movie and the radio show you do, which really strikes quite a touchstone with me, is a part of your looking inward for your art. It’s been a season of introspection for you that continues with the E Street Band because for you, I guess, the E Street Band is a personal thing. These are your friends and your bandmates.

Bruce: I’ve been through a five-year cycle of self-reflection I suppose. It just happens when you’re getting at 70. I would say the book certainly was. The Broadway play also fell into that category, “Western Stars” was fresh but the film had some of that reflecting in it and certainly the film “Springsteen on Broadway” and this record and film look back as well as well as look into the future. So I’ve sort of been in a process of summarizing things up to this stage in my work life and I suppose it’ll clear the way for other projects. It was just a period of life that I naturally fell into and when I did I found a great vein of creativity there and so I’ve just been mining it. And “Letter to You” and the film “Letter to You” is sort of the apotheosis of those moments.

Chris: The album and the film speak to the preciousness of life, an affirmation of being alive and mourning those who have passed. It comes in a season where there’s a lot death around us, Mr. Springsteen. I think we’ve all lost loved ones from the coronavirus, and we’re getting messages from our leaders that, OK, people are going to get sick and they’re going to pass on and you’re going to have to deal with it. To me, the album is an affirmation of life in a time, a very unsettling time, when life seems kind of cheap these days, frankly.

Bruce: I didn’t set it out to comment on, or to be topical at all, or a comment of the times. It was simply where I arrived after 70 years on Earth. This is what I know. I like being here. I like living, you know? I worked hard at trying to put together a good life, and a good life for my friends and my family and for my fans, I hope. I hope I have an opportunity to come out and just in my own small way add a little bit to their daily experience to how they’re seeing this time we spend here together. That’s been my job, you know? The recklessness and carelessness that you see from the current administration toward life itself is a disgrace. It’s a true disgrace and it’s very insulting to all those who have gotten sick and who have passed away. It’s a very sad state of affairs because really your job is to comfort those people. Comfort your citizens, comfort your neighbors, comfort your friends. Let them know those who died are irreplaceable. Let them know the nation is weeping for them and that the nation cares about them from the top down. Then do your best to solve the thing as well as you can. But that’s been missing. That’s a voice that’s been missing and the voice of the value of life is missing from our daily political discourse. So it’s been very sad and I suppose it is something that gets addressed in our record and maybe some folks will find it comforting.

Chris: I feel everybody on this planet is precious, no matter if you’re 9, 99 or 109. Hey, I wanted to ask you, was it a hard decision for a 15-year-old Bruce Springsteen to join the Castiles? Was that hard when Mr. Theiss came over the house and asked you?

Bruce: No, it was a happy decision because I just got thrown out of another band that I was in because my guitar was too cheap and it really hurt my feelings and I didn’t even want to tell it to my mother because I knew how hard she scraped to get the money to buy the guitar.

Chris: Is that the Kent guitar?

Bruce: Yeah, the Kent. I just couldn’t tell her that I got thrown out of the band because my guitar is too cheap. So when George came over and asked me I picked up that same guitar and I walked over to Center Street, walked into the little shotgun house and played what I knew, which wasn’t much but it was enough to get the job as lead guitarist.

Chris: Well done. I get a kick out of the Castiles publicity photo at the Freehold Courthouse underneath the monument. Was that your first ever publicity photo, and what was that day like? That must have been exciting for you guys to get a photo taken?

Bruce: It was. We were getting pictures taken of the band – I believe it was a photographer of some sort, though I don’t remember who and we went and posed around town and those were our professional pictures.

Chris: Were you anxious – I hope I look good in the photo? I wonder where I’m going to be placed in the band here?

Bruce: There wasn’t any anxiety about that, we were young! You look great when you’re young, as simple as that. Everybody had their outfits and we looked like a young garage band.

Chris: Is it true or is it an urban legend that you and Mr. Theiss wrote the songs that you recorded in Brick in the car on the way down to the recording studio? I might be wrong for feeling this way, but I love “Baby I,” I love those songs.
I’m going to give Lenny Kaye a call. Those songs belong on the “Nuggets” compilations.

Bruce: I don’t remember how they got written honestly. I thought we rehearsed them which means we would have had to have written them before we went. I seem to recall a rehearsal of those songs before we went to the studio so we might have been finishing them on the way down as far as lyrics and thing go, that sounds more like it.

Chris: With the movie, it’s almost like a Marvel movie, don’t leave before the credits are over because you’re going to miss something special. Is that Mr. Theiss’ guitar you have at the very end with the speaker actually in the guitar?

Bruce: That is it.

Chris: It sounds great when you play it.

Bruce: It didn’t sound that bad after all, did it?

Chris: Mr. Bruno, he’s in this movie.

Bruce: Yes he is.

Chris: And he plays a song.

Bruce: Just by accident. This is my cousin so I invited him over so he ended up being in it by accident.

Chris: Did he teach you your first chords on guitar?

Bruce: Yes he did.

Q; He was onto something sir. Hey, did the Castiles open for the Broadways. Was that the Castiles?

Bruce: Yes we did.

Chris: We spoke about this once a few years ago, can you tell me about that? From the surface, I can’t imagine two different groups than the Castiles, teenagers, the Broadways, Leon Trent was an MP in the (Navy). That must have been some show.

Bruce: My recollection was it was a black and white crowd. It was at the Surf and Sea, or the Tradewinds somewhere in Sea Bright, and the only thing I remember is that we played and when we came off stage, we opened for them, and then they got up on stage and the first thing we heard was. We were, Jesus Christ, the sound system is feeding back on these guys and we ran back to the stage to try to fix the sound system. When we got to the stage we realized it was the lead singer hitting this high note before the show started.
He was in front of the mic going ahhhhhhh, holding it for 60 seconds, and then he would go “I want to be with you” and then he would go into the song. It’s really hilarious but it was my biggest memory from playing with the Broadways.

Chris: Oh my God, I think that was Mr. Billy Brown who went on to sell a million records himself with the Moments and Ray, Goodman and Brown.

Bruce: Yes it was.

Chris: People come from all over the world to see places in Asbury Park where yourself and Southside and all the guys played. You’re starting to see a stirring of interest in the West Side musicians. (The Asbury Park Historical Society, the Asbury Park Museum, and Springwood Avenue Rising) just had a dedication of the house where Fats Waller wrote “Honeysuckle Rose” in Asbury Park and there’s a new mural at the Turf Club of everybody who played the Turf Club. What’s your feeling of people coming over the tracks a little bit and learning about the history of the West Side?

Bruce: It’s great. People forget in the ’60s Springwood Avenue was a thriving, thriving, thriving community with lots of music, lots of good music that came in through the Orchid Lounge and it was a very, very thriving Black community filled with Black culture. So some attention on who was there and who came out of there, it’s about time.

Chris: Back to the E Street Band, the movie suggested you guys were going to tour, and the tour was going to start in Italy. I guess that didn’t come to pass?

Bruce: That was our fantasy at the time.

Chris: It’s tragic how that worked out. What was the thinking about bringing in the 1972 songs. They’re stylistically a little bit different, but they’re not that different and it works so well here. What was the thinking about bringing in the songs from then.

Bruce: I guess I came across them when I was working on a “Tracks 2” and I said these three songs are interesting, maybe I’d like to hear the band play them. Because we cut one by accident for a Record Store Day. We cut “Janey Needs a Shooter” and then when I went behind the board and heard it I said we can’t give this way, this is part of an album. It was the first cut we did for “Letter to You” and after that I said maybe there’s a few others that would take the same sort of treatment so I found a couple of others that I liked and we just played those and they came out great, you know? The combination of the lyrics from the day and melodies from the day and the energy and maturity of the band from now, turned into a nice thing.

Chris: Yeah. The idea of recording and writing the songs, it strikes me that might be something you might stick with for future possible E Street Band recordings? Letting the guys get more involved in the creation process.

Bruce: That’s something that’s been going on for a long time, but it usually goes on behind the scenes. If you look at the film you’ll see Steve working on the arrangement back in 1978 and then you see him doing it in 2020. It’s the same sort of business that’s been going on for every album for as long as the guys have been there. It’s a very regular process that the film captures and that’s how the E Street Band works in the studio. So, it is a good process. I wouldn’t mind coming up with another record where we tried to do a similar thing. Get one down, short and quick, and see what happens.

Chris: These songs are going to sound glorious once you guys are able to go out and play.

Bruce: Yeah, it’s going to be great.

Chris: Oh, the party you’re throwing in Jersey, are the E Street Band members going to be invited to that, too, and the 50,000 people?

Bruce: Well, I would hope so.

Chris: Now I saw in the AARP interview we’re all going to stop off at Jersey Freeze on the way up to the show.

Bruce: That’s right, we’ll be a caravan.

^{Compiled by: Chris Jordan via Asbury Park Press.}

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Chris Jordan Interview for Asbury Park Press