2021-03-22 Stone Hill Farm, Colts Neck, NJ

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

Info & Setlist | Venue

Former President Barack Obama continues his talk with his friend Bruce Springsteen on an eight-episode podcast series, Renegades: Born In The U.S.A., exclusively for Spotify. On this date, the sixth episode is made available: "Wrestling with Ghosts: American Men"; Bruce and Barack open up about their complicated relationships with their fathers and what it means to be a man. This episode features a partially-broadcast acoustic performance of "My Father's House".

Renegates: Born In The U.S.A.

Renegades: Born In The U.S.A.

Trailer

Potus Barack Obama voice over: How did we get here? America as divided as it's been in our lifetimes. And how can we find our way back to a more unifying American story? That was the topic of so many of my conversations last year - with family, with friends. And one of those friends was Mr. Bruce Springsteen…

Potus Barack Obama: The same issues that you struggle with have been issues I’ve struggled with.

Bruce Springsteen: Well, the political comes from the personal.

Potus Barack Obama voice over: So we decided to set up a microphone and get into it… It took us to the distance between the American Dream and the American Reality…

Bruce Springsteen: There is a dread in the air and in the idea of the American Dream that hadn’t been present previously…

Potus Barack Obama voice over: Race and class in America…

Potus Barack Obama: I popped him in the face and broke his nose.

Potus Barack Obama voice over: Our difficult relationships with our fathers…

Bruce Springsteen: My dad never really spoke to me through to the day he died…you know? He truly didn't know how…

Potus Barack Obama voice over: We even ditched the Secret Service for a joyride in Bruce’s Corvette.

Potus Barack Obama: [car engine ambient noise] I’m in trouble… But you know what? There are times you just gotta do…

Bruce Springsteen: You gotta do what you gotta do…

Potus Barack Obama: You gotta do something…

Potus Barack Obama voice over: We found some answers, learned a few things, had some laughs and a few drinks.

Potus Barack Obama: We’ll be able to edit out a bunch of what Bruce said.. But you know…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: All my stuff, clearly is gold.

Bruce Springsteen: Just leave my guitar playing…

Potus Barack Obama: [Laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: [Laughs]

Potus Barack Obama voice over: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Outsiders: An Unlikely Friendship

Potus Barack Obama: Like a lot of people, the year 2020 stirred up a whole lot of emotions in me. For three years, I’d had to watch a presidential successor who was diametrically opposed to everything I believed in. And witnessed a country that seemed to be getting angrier and more divided with each passing day. Then came a historic pandemic, along with a slip-shot government response that rained hardship and loss on millions. And forced all of us to consider what’s really important in life.And in the middle of all this – there were the nationwide protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd. Yet just another tragic reminder of just how powerfully racism continues to stain so many aspects of American life. And all that was before the world witnessed a violent mob – spurred on by lies and wild conspiracy theories – storm the U.S. Capitol where I’d once served. How did we get here? How could we find our way back to a more unifying American story? That topic came to dominate so many of my conversations last year – with Michelle, with my daughters and with friends. And one of the friends just happened to be Mr. Bruce Springsteen. On the surface, Bruce and I don't have a lot in common. He’s a white guy from a small town in Jersey. I’m a black guy of mixed race born in Hawaii with a childhood that took me around the world. He’s a rock n’ roll icon. I’m a lawyer and politician – not as cool. And, as I like to remind Bruce every chance I get, he’s more than a decade older than me. Although, he looks damn good. But over the years, what we’ve found is that we’ve got a shared sensibility. About work, about family and about America. In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys trying to understand this country that’s given us both so much. Trying to chronicle the stories of its people. Looking for a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America. And what we discovered during these conversations was that we still share a fundamental belief in the American ideal. Not as an airbrushed, cheap fiction or as an act of nostalgia that ignores all the ways that we’ve fallen short of that ideal, but as a compass for the hard work that lies before each of us as citizens to make this place and the world more equal, more just and more free. Plus, Bruce just had some great stories. So we added a participant to our conversations: a microphone. And over the course of a few days at the converted farmhouse and property that Bruce shares with his amazing wife Patti along with a few horses, a whole bunch of dogs, and a thousand guitars – all just a few miles from where he grew up – we talked. We kicked things off by identifying why we both felt like outsiders as kids. And not surprisingly, the conversation then shifted to what has been the central dilemma of America since its founding – the issue of race.

Potus Barack Obama: Alright, by the way I’m sorry I was late, everybody.

Farmhouse Staff: This is for you, sir.

Potus Barack Obama: Well, I like how y’all just put a little whiskey there just in case.

Bruce Springsteen: We keep that there permanently [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Just as a—

Bruce Springsteen: It just sits there while you’re recording if something happens [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. You go, “Man, I need that.”

Bruce Springsteen: You need it, you go get it.

Bruce Springsteen: Question: How do you like to be addressed?

Potus Barack Obama: Barack, man. Come on, dude.

Bruce Springsteen: Just checking! [laughs] I want to get it right.

Producer: You’re here… You’re on. Can I put a lav mic on you?

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, yeah that makes sense. When was this studio built?

Bruce Springsteen: We built this about… eight years ago, maybe?

Potus Barack Obama: I love this place, man.

Producer: All right, good to go?

Potus Barack Obama: All right, let’s do it…

Bruce Springsteen: Go, go, go.

Potus Barack Obama: So, we’re sitting here in…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] The great state of New Jersey. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: The great state of New Jersey with one of New Jersey’s prodigal sons…

Bruce Springsteen: That’s about right. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: The boss, my friend: Bruce Springsteen. And we’re–we’re in a studio— just to paint a picture here, we’ve got… How many guitars you got up in here?

Bruce Springsteen: We’re looking at the house of a thousand guitars right now— [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: We–I haven’t counted them all. But there are guitars everywhere. There is a ukulele, a banjo…

Bruce Springsteen: So if we get moved to make music, we—

Potus Barack Obama: I’ve been known to sing—

Bruce Springsteen: We got the instruments at hand.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] It’s good to see you, my friend.

Bruce Springsteen: It’s good to see you also.

Potus Barack Obama: And—

Bruce Springsteen: It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Potus Barack Obama: I was trying to remember the first time we actually met, and it probably was in 2008.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: During the campaign.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: You came to do a concert with us. Was it in Michigan or Ohio?

Bruce Springsteen: I have… I have no recall. But, uh… [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: But I remember, uh, your family was with you.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: And I remember thinking, “He’s very low key, even maybe a little bit shy.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And I liked that in you. So I thought, “I hope I get a chance to talk to him at some point.” But because it was in the middle of the campaign, we were rushing around. And… so, you know, we had a nice chat, but—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: It wasn’t like we had a deep conversation.

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: And we had a–a number of those sort of interactions: you know, you performed at the inauguration, came by the White House, you know, I run for re-election, you do some more stuff.

Bruce Springsteen: We had a nice dinner or two.

Potus Barack Obama: We had–we had a great dinner at the White House where we sang—

Bruce Springsteen: I played the piano, and you sang. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Well, I don’t know about that. But we all sang—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] That’s right—

Potus Barack Obama: Some broadway tunes. And some Motown.

Bruce Springsteen: Oh, yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And some classics.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: And there was, uh… there were libations involved.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: There was drinking—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Yeah, that was good.

Potus Barack Obama: And then I said, “Well, he’s not as shy as I thought, but he just has to loosen up a little bit.”

Bruce Springsteen: I don’t know if I would say that’s most people in my business, but the shyness is not unusual. If you weren’t quiet, you wouldn’t have so desperately searched for a way to speak. [laughs] You know.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: The reason you–you have so desperately pursued your work and your language and your voice is because you haven’t had one. And you understand, you realize that, and you feel the pain of being somewhat voiceless, you know.

Potus Barack Obama: And so the performance then becomes the tool, the mechanism—

Bruce Springsteen: It becomes— it becomes the mechanism from which you express the entirety of your life.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Your entire philosophy and code for living, and that was how it came to me. And I felt previous to that I was pretty invisible, and there was a lot of pain in that invisibility.

Potus Barack Obama: And see, the kind of thing that you just said here – is how we became friends. Because after a few drinks, and maybe in between songs, you’d say something like that, and I’d say, “Aw, that makes sense to me.” And, uh, those are some deep waters—

Bruce Springsteen: And I think that—

Potus Barack Obama: –above the stillness there. And so, and I think, uh, we just grew to trust each other and have those kinds of conversations on an ongoing basis, and once I left the White House we were able to spend more time together and, you know, little sympatico.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, I feel like I recognize those things in you.

Potus Barack Obama: Yes.

Bruce Springsteen: And, uh… So I felt really at home around you.

Potus Barack Obama: And the other part of it was Michelle and Patti hit it off.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And Michelle was very pleased in the insights you had…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: About your failings as a man.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Oh, yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And after we would leave a dinner, or a party, or a conversation, she’d say, “You see how Bruce understands his shortcomings and has come to terms with them—”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Sorry about that. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “…in a way that you have not? Uh, you should spend some more time with Bruce. Because he’s put in the work.” And so there was a little also of…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] I got you.

Potus Barack Obama: Of the sense that I needed to get coached—

Bruce Springsteen: I got you—

Potus Barack Obama: In how to be a proper husband.

Bruce Springsteen: It's been my pleasure. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know, and I tried to explain: Look, he’s ten years older than me. He’s– he’s– he’s been through some of this stuff. I’m still, I’m still, uh, you know, in– in training mode, uh… Despite the fact that we come from such different places and obviously had a different career path, the same issues that you struggle with have been issues I’ve struggled with. The same joys and doubts. You know, it turns out there’s a lot of overlap.

Bruce Springsteen: Well, the political comes from the personal.

Potus Barack Obama: Well, look, in the same way that a musician is looking for a way to channel and work through pain, demons, personal questions. You know, that was certainly true for me in terms of getting into public life.

Bruce Springsteen: But you gotta have two things going, which is very difficult. One, you’ve got to have the egotism to believe that—

Potus Barack Obama: The megalomania—

Bruce Springsteen: The megalomania… OK, you know, to believe that you have a voice and a point of view that is worth being heard by the whole world. [laugh]

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: All right? [laugh]

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: By the whole world. So you, on one hand you need that type of megalomania, and yet on the other hand… for it to be true… for it to have the kind of impact that you’ve had… you’ve— you’ve— you’ve… you’ve got to have the tremendous empathy for other people, you know.

Potus Barack Obama: And it’s a– it– it– it’s a hard trick to pull off. You– you start off with ego—

Bruce Springsteen: Right—

Potus Barack Obama: But then at some point you empty out and become a vessel for—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: The hopes and dreams and…

Bruce Springsteen: At your best…

Potus Barack Obama: Stories…

Bruce Springsteen: At your best, yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: That, uh, that you’ve heard from others, and you just become a conduit for them. We’re– we’re actually talking, and I actually just left delivering the eulogy for my friend, John Lewis, one of the giants of the civil rights movement, uh, and somebody who was probably as responsible for making America a better, freer, more generous place, and making our democracy live up to its promise. And… the first time I met John, he came to speak at Harvard where I was going to law school, and um… after he spoke, I came up to him. And I said to him, “You are one of my heroes. You… helped me find my sense of who I at least wanted to be–

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, that’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: In this huge, complicated, contentious, multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious place called America.”

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. The funny thing is to come at it from that vantage point is to come at it from the vantage point of the outsider.

Potus Barack Obama: That’s exactly right…

Bruce Springsteen: You know…

Potus Barack Obama: This is going to be interesting, because I’m going to have to figure out why you thought you were an outsider. I know why I was an outsider.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I– that I could explain, but a nice Jersey boy doesn’t have to be an outsider.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know what I mean? He can be an insider.

Bruce Springsteen: I don’t think it’s something that you choose. I think it’s something that is innate within you. I had a very, very strange upbringing. You know, I grew up in a small town, very provincial.

Potus Barack Obama: Let’s just get on the record here.

Bruce Springsteen: The great town of Freehold, New Jersey.

Potus Barack Obama: Freehold, New Jersey.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: Population?

Bruce Springsteen: 10,000.

Potus Barack Obama: 10,000.

Bruce Springsteen: 1,600 of whom work at the Karagheusian Rug Mill — including my dad. My mom was the main breadwinner. My father worked when he could, but was… he was pretty mentally ill. My father had a, since he was quite young, he suffered from schizophrenia, which we didn’t understand at the time, but it made life at home very difficult and it made him holding on any kind of job very difficult. So we had that in the house that was… that sort of made our house different from others, I’d say. You know?

Potus Barack Obama: So… my upbringing on the surface looks completely different.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: I’m born in Hawaii—

Bruce Springsteen: Strange. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Hawaii’s a long ways from Freehold, New—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Everywhere!

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah. It’s in the middle of the Pacific… I am the product of a mom from Kansas: a teenager when she had me, and a college student who had met my father, who was an African student at the University of Hawaii. You know, my grandparents are basically Scotts-Irish. And the Irish were outsiders for a long time.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. My grandparents were old school Irish people.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And they were… very, very provincial: quite backward, quite country people, and we all lived in one house: my parents, my grandparents and myself.

Potus Barack Obama: Grandparents on your dad’s side or mom’s side?

Bruce Springsteen: My grandparents on my dad’s side. I was brought up from the Irish side of my family, and they were just as eccentric as— as you would— as— as American Irish could be, you know. And started me off when I was a very young child on simply being different from everybody else. I had an emotional displacement.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah. [Ambi of beach and guitar strumming] You know, I tell a story about how my grandfather used to take me to the beach and that’s where he’d go down there and play checkers and he’d drink beers, Primo Beer. I–I still have–

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Memories of that–that little bottle of Primo Beer that had King Kamehameha’s picture on the front of it.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And, uh, the tourists would come up and they’d see me, and they’d, you know, this is when I’m like three, four, five years old. They’d say, “Is he Hawaiian?”

Potus Barack Obama: And my grandfather would say, “Yeah, he’s the grandson of King Kamehameha.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And they’d be taking pictures, and…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] I like that.

Potus Barack Obama: And, you know, it’s a nice story in the sense of my grandfather enjoyed pulling the wool over their eyes. But it’s also a story of the fact that I wasn’t easily identifiable. I felt like an outsider. There was visible proof that I wasn’t like everybody else. And—

Bruce Springsteen: And this is the city you were in? What— what city?

Potus Barack Obama: Honolulu. Honolulu, Hawaii, which is this little jewel in the middle of the ocean…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: That is made up of all these immigrants who come from all these different places. You’ve got Japanese and Chinese, Portugese who’ve come over, you know as seamen, and you’ve got the native Hawaiians who, like many indigenous peoples, find themselves decimated by disease. And so, you got that base culture that’s beautiful and powerful, and– and I’m looking around as a kid and none of them really look like me.

Potus Barack Obama: So you’re growing up in Freehold.

Bruce Springsteen: My grandparents, they allowed me freedoms as a child that really… children shouldn’t have. Because my grandmother had lost her daughter in a traffic accident at five years old.

Potus Barack Obama: Hmm.

Bruce Springsteen: I was the next child that came along. I was given complete license—

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: To do whatever I wanted to do.

Potus Barack Obama: So what were you doing, man? I mean, you just tearing up, tearing up Freehold? Just running rampant?

Bruce Springsteen: Exactly! At five years old.

Potus Barack Obama: Up and down the streets? Terrorizing the population—

Bruce Springsteen: I was… I was literally— I was doing things, I was given so much license. I was getting up later than all the other kids. I was going to bed later than all the other kids. I didn’t fit in– school, immediately when I went to school—

Potus Barack Obama: ‘Cause you didn’t like all these rules all of a sudden.

Bruce Springsteen: And I did not like the rules. If you don’t have a working parent, and school presents to you a set of rules, you’re not prepared for them. You know? I said, “OK, what do I want to do? I want to find my way in, you know. I need to find my way into my town. I got to find out who my people are.” And it wasn’t until I discovered music and– and found a way to process identity and to process my own identity, and to find a way to speak and to have some impact in how to be heard that I began to feel at home where I lived.

Potus Barack Obama: When I heard your music, I caught that sense of emotional displacement, and it was a reminder that, in a lot of ways in America, we all have started off in some fashion as outsiders. I guess I– my question is… what’s the makeup of Freehold?

Bruce Springsteen: The shore was a lot of Irish/Italian and previous to the Southern African Americans, who were bused up every summer to work in the fields outside of town.

Potus Barack Obama: What kind of fields were they?

Bruce Springsteen: Potato. So, I grew up in a bit of an integrated neighborhood. I had Black friends when I was really young. But, there were a lot of rules.

Potus Barack Obama: Whose house you go to…

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right, and whose you can’t—

Potus Barack Obama: Whose you can’t—

Bruce Springsteen: Who you can’t have in your house.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And whose house you shouldn’t be in.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm…

Bruce Springsteen: And—

Potus Barack Obama: That’s before you even start talking about dating or—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. You’re a child on your bicycle.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And you’re aware of– of all of these unspoken rules.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm…

Bruce Springsteen: And, uh, Freehold was your typical, small, provincial, redneck, racist little American 1950s town. You know? It was a town that suffered a lot of racial strife right around ‘65, ‘67, ‘69— You know ‘69, right?

Potus Barack Obama: So when you got the Newark riots and…

Bruce Springsteen: Literally, the day of the Newark riots there was rioting in Freehold, New Jersey, a little town of 10,000 people. They brought in the state troopers, and there was a state of emergency in this–

Potus Barack Obama: How old were you at that point?

Bruce Springsteen: I was… 17 maybe… you know? I was in high school.

Potus Barack Obama: So… so when you write “My Hometown”—

Bruce Springsteen: Right…

Potus Barack Obama: You talk about redneck.

Bruce Springsteen: Sure.

Potus Barack Obama: And that has a particular set of connotations, you know, in the same way that in the African American community we can say certain things about ourselves.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Uh, you know,… you’ve got to feel a certain comfort and love for a community to be able to describe it in terms that…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: An outsider, you might get into a fight.

Bruce Springsteen: I got you.

Potus Barack Obama: Right?

Bruce Springsteen: Of course!

Potus Barack Obama: How do you think about that?

Bruce Springsteen: Well, A: these were the people I loved… with all of their limitations, all of their blessings, all of their curses, all of their dreams, all of their nightmares. These were the people that I loved. And that was, like a lot of other small American towns in the 1950s and it’s where I grew up. So this particular song I wrote in… 1984. And it was just a re-visitation of my life as a young child. The town that I’d grown up in at the time was really having a tough time, you know. Factories were gone. When you went down our little main street you saw boarded up businesses and the town sort of was dead on arrival, you know. And so this was just something that came out, you know. Let me– let me run you a little bit of it… Is there a pick around anywhere? [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: [sings] I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand… Into the bus stop to pick up a paper… for my old man… I’d sit on his lap in that big old Buick… and steer as we drove through town… He'd tousle my hair and say "Son, take a good look around… This is your hometown… This is your hometown… This is your hometown… This is your hometown”…
The event that started the race rioting that we had in town at the time was a shooting at a stop light.
[sings] Two cars at a light on a Saturday night… In the backseat there was a gun…
A car full of white kids with a shotgun firing into a car full of Black kids. A friend of mine lost his eye.
[sings] Troubled times had come to my hometown… In my hometown… In my hometown… In my hometown…
And then just— the town sort of just— the town’s just shutting down.
[sings] Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores… Seems like there ain’t nobody…
This was– I guess I wrote this in the ‘80s, and I knew in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s this is what I knew I wanted my subject matter to be, for who I was going to be and what I was going to write about. This is what made sense to me. I wanted to stay home. I wanted to live here. I wanted to be sort of surrounded by the people that I knew and tell my and their story, you know?
[sings] This is your hometown… [hums]
There was a– there’s a generational element to this song ‘cause where– the song is set with a boy sitting on his father’s lap, and this father’s saying, “This is your hometown and everything in it.”

Potus Barack Obama: Good and bad.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. You are a part of the general flow of history, and as such what is happening and what has happened is partly your responsibility. You know? You are tied in historically to the good and the bad things that have happened, not just in our little town, but in our country, and as an active player in this moment in time you have some power to acknowledge these things and perhaps do something about them in some small way. And I still love to sing it today. It’s just… And everyone in the audience recognizes these things. It becomes more, it’s more than an act of nostalgia.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: People always sing, “My/your hometown…” They always sing that verse with me, and I always get a sense that they know the town they’re talking about isn’t Freehold, it’s not Matawan, it’s not Marlboro, it’s not Washington, it’s not friggin’ Seattle. It’s the whole thing.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: It’s all of America, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: It’s a good song.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s a great song.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: So you had these riots in Freehold, what happens? Because in a lot of parts of the country, places like Newark, Detroit… they never really recover, right? But how does it– how does it play out in the immediate aftermath of—

Bruce Springsteen: Where it played it more like Newark was less Freehold than Asbury Park… Asbury Park really suffered from its riots, you know? And they were a long time coming and justified, and the Black population of that town was totally underrepresented in the city government and it was just… it was that moment in time. But Asbury really didn’t come back for a long, long time. It’s obviously had a resurgence over the past ten years, but some of those issues— not some of those issues– most of those issues still remain unresolved on the west side of town. So you would say, “How much did that really change? I’m not so sure.” Freehold, what did I see get better? Not very much, you know. Now, it was a much smaller event, you know. Freehold’s main street is three blocks. You know—

Potus Barack Obama: So some stores get torn up, some folks get arrested, but the guts of the town doesn’t really get impacted that much…

Bruce Springsteen: No, no, no.

Potus Barack Obama: And did your family talk about it? Do you remember talking about it? Did you talk about it with your friends?

Bruce Springsteen: Less than talking about it, I’m experiencing it in high school where my Black friends, there’s a moment where they won’t speak to me.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm…

Bruce Springsteen: I said, “Hey…” “I can’t talk to you right now… right now, I can’t speak—”

Potus Barack Obama: It’s interesting that he said, “Right now.”

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: He’s sending you a signal, “Right now, you just– we need to let this lie.”

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: Doesn’t mean we can’t have a conversation later.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: But not today, you know? And there was a lot of flat out fighting between white students and Black students, you know. So, high school became a microcosm of what was, of what happened in Freehold, Newark, Asbury. Those tensions became very real in ‘68, ‘67, which is when I was… I was really in high school. And, uh, so that was kind of where I– I personally experienced it the most, you know, was uh–

Potus Barack Obama: Just the dynamic in school.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, it was Freehold Regional High School. It was a totally integrated high school, and your– it was filled with mostly working class kids, a few that were a little better than that but not so much. What happened is immediately after grammar school, if they didn’t want— if people didn’t want to send their children to integrated schools, well you went to the—

Potus Barack Obama: Catholic school—

Bruce Springsteen: The Catholic high school.

Potus Barack Obama: And that’s true pretty much in cities all across the country.

Bruce Springsteen: And that’s, you know— my parents wanted me to go to, I think it was Trenton at the time. I said, “Trenton? I going to ride a freaking hour on the bus every day?” [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Plus you’re not going to class anyway, so it didn’t matter!

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] That’s right!

Potus Barack Obama: ‘Cause you’re going to be a Rock n’ Roll star!

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Which raises an interesting question. So, right around this time you’re starting to get serious about music, and it’s shortly thereafter you start putting your bands together and—

Bruce Springsteen: This is.. 1964 is when I picked the guitar up, and I’m playing it all through high school.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: We started… we had a band in 1964. So you had The Rolling Stones and you had The Beatles, but very shortly you also had Sam & Dave and you had Motown, you know, and you learned how to write from the great Motown songwriters. You learned how to perform from Sam Moore from Sam & Dave.

Potus Barack Obama: So, if there aren't African American artists who are helping you to discover Rock n’ Roll. They’re certainly African American-influenced artists that are opening this door for you.

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely, of course. We had a band that… to play down what was called– what is Route Nine, which was South of Freehold. You had to know some Soul music because it was called “Greaser territory.” Greasers were the guys with ¾ length leathers, sharkskin suits, ties, hair slicked back, pointy black shoes, nylon see-through socks. All of it taken from the Black community. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And that was the style for Greasers?

Bruce Springsteen: Yes, including the music that they loved.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: So when you went south on Route Nine you had to be able to play Soul music and Doo-wop music or else you wouldn’t survive on a Friday and Saturday night. You just wouldn’t survive.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Everybody is like, “Who are these folk?”

Bruce Springsteen: You know, that was just the nature of Rock n’ Roll and Rhythm and Blues played by our little band in those days, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: And how are you processing that?

Bruce Springsteen: As a young musician, you know, you were immersed in… in music and–and in the African American culture that inspired the music that you loved. You know, high school was very strange because the Black kids in my high school were both envied and were also– suffered tremendous prejudice against them at the same time. You know? I mean—

Potus Barack Obama: What were they envied for?

Bruce Springsteen: The young guys– the way they dressed…

Potus Barack Obama: They looked sharp.

Bruce Springsteen: Everybody tried to dress!

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: You know, we used to go to Springwood Avenue to this place called Fishes. That was where the clothes were. You know? And so it was a strange imbalance that was, uh, difficult to sort of… to sort through, you know.

Potus Barack Obama: It makes me think, though, ‘cause Spike Lee makes a movie, “Do the Right Thing.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And…

Bruce Springsteen: Great picture.

Potus Barack Obama: Great picture. One of the protagonists, who he plays, a guy named Mookie.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And he’s working for this Italian guy and his sons who are trying to run a small business, a little pizza joint. And one of the sons is a sweet kid, loves the African American community that they’re serving. And the older one is cynical and more blatantly racist. And at one point, Mookie, who despite not working real hard is insightful about the neighborhood he’s living in, he starts asking the racist older brother—

Potus Barack Obama: “Who’s your favorite basketball player?”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “Magic Johnson.” Who’s your favorite movie star? Eddie Murphy. Who’s your favorite rockstar? Prince.

Potus Barack Obama: Prince. Wrong, Bruce. Prince.

Potus Barack Obama: “So why is it that you’re always using the N-word? When all these folks, you’re always talking about how much you love them.” And I always thought that was a– such a brilliant and simple way to capture something that’s always been true and complicated about America, which is this notion of Black folks are the other, they are demeaned, they are discriminated against, looked down upon, and yet the culture is constantly appropriating and regurgitating and processing the style that arises out of being an outsider and knowing the blues. [laughs] And–and having suffered these scars, and having to, you know, live on Mother wit and make stuff up out of nothing. And Rock n’ Roll is a part of that process. I’m wondering, whether as a teenager that’s something that you’re even processing, or is it something that you kind of just think, “You know what? This music’s cool, and I like it, and it moves me in some way.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, no, I think that if you were a teenager in the ‘60s, you were processing all this intensely.

Bruce Springsteen: You couldn’t be a teenager in the ‘60s and not be aware that race was… race was the fundamental issue of the day. You know? In America, you know, we have loved Black people and brown people when they’re entertaining us, but when they want to live next door we remain a tribal society, you know? It’s part of our tragicness that continues, obviously, to this day, you know. And… I don’t think… I don’t think it’s ever been more… more essential a subject as it is at this very moment… umm… I think, “Why is it so hard to talk about race? Why am I… Why am I pausing here?” [laughs] You know? Um, to talk about race you have to talk about your differences. Talk about race you have to talk about, um, to some degree, the… um… deconstructing the myth of the melting pot, which has never fundamentally been true. Admitting that a big part of our history has been plunderous and violent and rigged against people of color. We’re ashamed… ashamed of our collective guilt. We would have to admit and to grieve for what’s been done. We would have to acknowledge our own daily compliticity, and to acknowledge our group membership in that we are tied to the history of uh…of racism, of that racism.

Potus Barack Obama: Of a great wrong.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, you know.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: Those are all hard things for people to do. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Well, you know… it… the interesting thing for me has been how, in part because my upbringing was so unusual, I had to figure this stuff out. But it wasn’t right in my grill on a day-to-day basis in the same way. There were no riots in Hawaii.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: There was no other side of town where Blacks had to live. So I’m absorbing this, and I’m experiencing my share of day-to-day ignorance and slights, right? I still remember, I played tennis. I’m 11, 12 years old, and I still remember, you know, they used to put the seedings up for the tournaments that you’d play in. And I was not a great player but I was good enough to be in some tournaments, and I remember running my finger down to see where my name was on the seeding, and the tennis pro, who was basically the coach of the tennis team at this high school, he says, “Better be careful. You might rub off on the chart, and make it dirty.” [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: OK.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah. This is probably ‘74, ‘75. I still remember. I turned to him and I said, “What did you say?” And it was an interesting moment of being an 11 or 12 year old talking to a grown man…

Bruce Springsteen: Really?

Potus Barack Obama: … and watching him process and calculate what he should do. And then him saying, “I’m just joking” iIs what he said.

Bruce Springsteen: Who were your friends at this time? What were—

Potus Barack Obama: So, so, the interesting thing is, so, my best friends ended up being a bunch of misfits and outsiders themselves. Kids like you, who were, maybe, a little bit emotionally displaced. I realized that my best friends in high school, who are – to this day – some of my best friends, all of them came from broken homes.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: All of them, economically, was at the lower end of the totem pole relative to the other kids in the school. And one of the unifying things was basketball. We all became huge basketball fanatics, and sports became the place where a Black kid and white kid could meet on equal terms and be part of a community that wasn’t free of race, but was an arena in which issues of who’s up, who’s down, status, you know, all that it came down to who could play.

Bruce Springsteen: Where did your mom fit in all of this, though?

Potus Barack Obama: She… infused me with a basic sense of who I was and why I was blessed to have this beautiful brown skin I had and to be part of this grand tradition.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And some of it, she romanticized. But you know, she would bring me these kid’s versions of the biographies of Muhamed Ali and Arthur Ashe —

Bruce Springsteen: And you’re like 10 or 11 or 12 at the time—

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, 10 or 11 or 12. So I think instinctually she understood I need to inoculate him early from what might be coming. You know, she gave me enough of a foundation of confidence. I was loved, cherished and special, and being Black was something to be proud of and to be cherished and special. And, in fact, the very struggles that Blacks in America were going through were part of what made Black folks special. Because they had, in some ways, been fortified by suffering. And they had experienced cruelty, and as a consequence could help all of us transcend that.

Potus Barack Obama: We started the conversation talking about us both, in some ways, feeling like outsiders, and part of my politics, part of a lot of the speeches I’ve made in the past has always been to claim America as a place where you don’t have to look a certain way, you don’t have to come from a certain family, you don’t have to have a certain religious background. You just have to have fidelity to a creed — a belief. You know, folks sometimes ask me what’s one of my favorite speeches of the speeches I’ve given, and it may be the speech I gave on the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: Starting in Selma—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s a great speech…

Potus Barack Obama: It was… at a time when you were seeing this ramp up of criticism. Not just of me, but of progressives as “un-American,” “not real Americans,” “Don’t love America.” And… I thought it was a good moment to capture a different idea of America. I thought that anniversary, me being down with John Lewis, and by the way, George W. Bush — a whole bunch of folks celebrating this moment in our history. You got on one side outsiders: Black students and maids and laborers and busboys.

Potus Barack Obama: And on the other side: the power of the state.

Potus Barack Obama: And there’s a standoff. This historic clash of two ideas of America. On one side, you’ve got the idea that, “No, America is just for certain people who have to be and look a certain way.” And on the other side, led by this 25-year-old kid in a trench coat and a knapsack, this idea “America’s for everybody.”

Potus Barack Obama: In fact, what makes America, “America,” is all the outsiders and all the misfits and the folks who try to make something out of—

Bruce Springsteen: Out of nothing.

Potus Barack Obama: Nothing. So that became the theme of my speech. I started talking about, “Let me tell you about America. We’re Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea. We’re the pioneers and the farmers and miners and the entrepreneurs and the huxters — that’s our…”

Potus Barack Obama: We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South…

Potus Barack Obama: “…We’re the ranch hands and cowboys” and then a part that I know you’ll like: “We’re the storytellers, writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness… …and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told. We’re the inventors of Gospel and Jazz and Blues and Bluegrass and Country and Hip-Hop and Rock N’ Roll, and our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom. Right? We are Jackie Robinson, enduring scorn and spiked cleats and pitches coming straight to his head, and stealing home in the World Series anyway. And we are the people Langston Hughes wrote of who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long,” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.” That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others. We respect the past, but we don’t pine for the past. We don’t fear the future; we grab for it. America is not some fragile thing. We are large, in the words of Whitman, “containing multitudes.” We are boisterous and diverse and full of energy, perpetually young in spirit. That’s why someone like John Lewis at the ripe old age of 25 could lead a mighty march.

Potus Barack Obama: That’s what John fought for. That’s what you sing about, and that’s what those kids out there are organizing for.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: All right?

Bruce Springsteen: Amen.

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original. Presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our editorial assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Additional mixing from Valentino Rivera. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodriguez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight Development and Operations Coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music supervision by Search Party Music. From the great state of New Jersey – special thanks to John Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn, and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess, and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia – thanks to Kristina Schake, Mackenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristen Bartoloni , and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the U.S.A.

Anna Holmes: And thanks again to our sponsors Dollar Shave Club and Comcast.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

American Skin: Race In The United States

Potus Barack Obama voice over: Talking about race isn't always easy. Which is why Bruce and I couldn't cover what was on our minds in just one session. We know that bridging America’s racial divide is going to require concrete policies to address the ongoing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. But it also requires each of us – in our workplaces, in our politics, and our place of worship – and in a million daily interactions to make more of an effort to understand each other’s realities. Not to mention our own unspoken attitudes. As a lot of us have learned – whether from a childhood like mine of growing up different or a lifetime partnership like Bruce had with ‘The Big Man’ Clarence Clemons. Whether from the great old protest songs or the new kinds of protests movements across the country. That kind of reckoning can be uncomfortable. Even or – maybe especially – when it's with the people we love.

Potus Barack Obama: We talked about racial tension in Freehold, but when you start what becomes the E Street Band…

Bruce Springsteen: Right…

Potus Barack Obama: This was a integrated band. How intentional was that? Or was it a matter of just, “Man, I’m trying to get the best musicians I can. This is the sound I want…”?

Bruce Springsteen: The integrated aspect of the E Street Band obviously was when I saw Clarence. Clarence was just great. He just had a sound that raised the roof. He was just one of the greatest sounding sax players I’d ever heard.

Potus Barack Obama: Was he older than you?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, Clarence was about eight years older than I was—

Potus Barack Obama: OK, so he’s already… he’s well into his 20s.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: He’s been around. He’s seen some things.

Bruce Springsteen: Well he was a ah… he almost went into pro football, and he’d been to college and he had some experiences already and ended up somehow an itinerant sax player on the edges of Asbury Park playing in the Black clubs at the time, you know? And uh… walked into the club one night, walked up on stage, stood to my right, started playing. I said, “There’s something about him and I together.” You know? We struck up a friendship, started to play with the band and people started to come and respond. And eventually the band developed, it was for a year or two into…into it being three white guys and three Black guys.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And that was around ‘74 I think. And—

Potus Barack Obama: Which nobody would know today, by the way.

Bruce Springsteen: Nope. And—

Potus Barack Obama: And I mean… And I didn’t know that cause look, I hate to date ya brother, but Born to Run I was still—

Bruce Springsteen: You were a child. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I was in high school so… [laughs] So I didn’t know that, you know, you got half Black, half white band. Like I knew the Average White Band was all white—

Bruce Springsteen: Well…

Potus Barack Obama: Those are some Scottish guys. And those guys can jam by the way.

Bruce Springsteen: Yes, they could. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Loved. Loved them. They’re outstanding. You knew Earth, Wind and Fire were all Black guys. But part of the reason that I wouldn’t necessarily known that is, not only did you not have obviously the Internet and video but music was still pretty… there it was categorized.

Bruce Springsteen: Very much! And we had a primarily white audience.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: You know?

Potus Barack Obama: And and and… Clarence isn’t on the cover of TIME Magazine, right?

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: So it’s Bruce Springsteen looking all with his curly hair looking…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama:… with his bandana and all that. You know, how was the power balance inside the band? Because I’m assuming every team, any group has some dynamics, and Clarence on the one hand is very… he’s a…an iconic figure in the E Street Band but he is also still a side man and you are still the frontman. You know, I always used to talk about how I did notice early on when Black folks did start appearing in, you know, bigger roles.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: They were still always like – the second guy, right?

Bruce Springsteen: It’s a funny thing because it was a dynamic that both… it both happened naturally and we contrived together at some point, you know, Clarence and I. And… There was a moment when I say, “Hey C, ya know, tomorrow night when I go to the front of the stage and I play this, come on up with me and play it next to me.” And we took those steps the next night.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s like a buddy movie on stage.

Bruce Springsteen: And the crowd went crazy..

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm.

Bruce Springsteen: There was an idealism in our partnership where I always felt our audience looked at us and saw the America that they wanted… wanted to see and wanted to believe in. And this became the biggest story I ever told. I’ve never written a song that told a bigger story than Clarence and I standing next to each other on any of the 1,001 nights that we played. He leant his power to my story, like I said the story that we told together, which… was about the distance between the American Dream and the American Reality.

Potus Barack Obama: But part of what you’re describing also though is… he provided something to you – personally – and to the band that helped capture what would end up being your sound, your…ah spirit. But what you’re also saying though is that its… some level, look, here’s an older Black man that’s been hustling out there for a long time—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah… different life experience.

Potus Barack Obama: He’s gotta— He’s gotta— He’s gotta hook up with a young white teen—

Bruce Springsteen: A little skinny white kid, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Who is less experienced than him. Now, it works out beautifully for the both of you.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: But… you know, there’s also complications, right? To that whole relationship. And I don’t know if you guys ever talked about it.

Bruce Springsteen: He had to give a little more than I had to give in the sense that once our keyboardist and drummer left, it left Clarence as… he was the only Black man in the room a lot of the time.

Bruce Springsteen: He had to swim in white culture for most of his work life—

Potus Barack Obama: Right—

Bruce Springsteen: You know?

Potus Barack Obama: I actually wrote about this in my first book. Those friends of mine that I was talking about who had been friends of mine at school, they’re white, Hawaiian, Filipino. I’m making friends with these older Black kids who were taking me to parties on the base, and I tell the story about inviting those guys along. And we get out to the party. And I look over at those guys, and they are cool but they are also experiencing for the first time in their lives what I have to go through a bunch.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Where they’re the only white guys in the room.

Bruce Springsteen: [scoffs]

Potus Barack Obama: Or non-Black guys in the room. Right?

Bruce Springsteen: This happened to us on the Ivory Coast. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah–

Bruce Springsteen: We went and it was during the Amnesty International Tour and we came out to a stadium of entirely Black faces.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And we stand there for a moment, and Clarence comes over and he says, “Well…now you know how it feels.”

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Did he say that?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: How’d the concert go?

Bruce Springsteen: And we started to play… And it was about sixty seconds of everybody just kind of staring at each other’s eyes… …and then the place exploded [laughs] … exploded! It was simply the most generous audience we’ve ever played in front of to this day. But Clarence… it was difficult for him and it was painful for him at different times and we did talk about it usually on evenings when, for some reason or another, we were reminded of it, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Such as…

Bruce Springsteen: Um… Well Clarence and I went out one evening to a local club – a friend of his. And I was watching the band. And the next thing I see is Clarence is at the front door and there’s a scuffle going on. I go up and… And uh Clarence has got a couple of guys pinned down and the owner has got a guy pinned down and everybody breaks apart and the owner obviously throws them out. On the way out, one of the guys says, the n-word. You know? Um… he was funny, you know, Clarence. He had been around. He was a pretty wordly guy, but… disappears. And I go out in the parking lot looking for him because I don’t know where these other guys have gone. I don’t know where he might have gone. And he was just standing on… near the hood of a car… just… and he looked at me, I remember he said, “Brucie, why’d they say that? I play football with those guys every Sunday.” Same people. Says, “Why’d they say that?” And… rather than saying, you know, “Well, they’re assholes.” Or er er er I just said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s about.” You know –

Potus Barack Obama: Where’s it come from?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: And— And— And— why… Why would you pull that out? Because the same thing happened to me. Listen, when I was in school, I had a friend. We played basketball together. And one time we got into a fight and he called me a coon.

Bruce Springsteen: [groans]

Potus Barack Obama: Now first of all, ain’t no coons in Hawaii, right?

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know… it’s one of those things that where he might not even known what a coon was— what he knew was, “I can hurt you by saying this.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] And I remember I popped him in the face and broke his nose and we were in the locker room.

Bruce Springsteen: Well done. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And suddenly blood is pouring down. And it was just reactive—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: I said, “What?” And I popped him. And he said, “Why’d you do that?”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And I explained to him – I said, “Don’t you ever call me something like that.” But the point is that what it comes down to is… an assertion of status over the other - right? The claim is made that “no matter what I am—

Bruce Springsteen: Right….

Potus Barack Obama: I may be poor. I may be ignorant. I may be mean. I may be ugly. I may not like myself. I may be unhappy. But you know what I’m not?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: I’m not you.” And that basic psychology that then gets institutionalized, is used to justify dehumanizing somebody, taking advantage of ‘em, cheatin’ ‘em, stealin’ from ‘em, killin’ ‘em, raping ‘em. Whatever it is, at the end of the day it really comes down to that. And in some cases it’s as simple as, you know, “I’m scared I’m insignificant and not important. And this thing is the thing that’s going to give me some importance.”

Bruce Springsteen: When I first saw you, you sort spoke to a broad sense of American hopefulness. And there was something in Clarence’s presence of that quality, and it’s what
made our band so powerful when we came to your town at night. We addressed all these issues. We didn’t speak necessarily directly about them–

Potus Barack Obama: But you’re telling stories that…

Bruce Springsteen: But there was something…yeah. And that partnership was… it was just real, you know? I was at his bedside when he took his last breath and… he was such a strong figure for me. Um… But um…

Potus Barack Obama: You miss him.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Potus Barack Obama: You loved him.

Bruce Springsteen:C – It was 45 years of your life you don’t… you know, you don’t uh… it’s never something that comes again. You know? It… 45 years. And the only thing we never kidded ourselves about was that race didn’t matter. We lived together. We traveled throughout the United States, and we were probably as close as two people could be. Yet at the same time, I always had to recognize there was a part of Clarence that I wasn’t ever really going to exactly know and ah… it was a relationship unlike any other that I’ve ever had in my… ever had in my life.

Bruce Springsteen: After George Floyd’s murder, I started reading James Baldwin and this passage always stuck with me: “White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other. And when they have achieved this, which will not be tomorrow and maybe never, the Negro problem will no longer exist for it will no longer be needed.”

Potus Barack Obama: Necessary.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah. The legacy of race is buried… but it’s always there, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s… depending on the community you’re in, how far near the surface it is, is not always clear. And I think a lot of Black folks always talk about how what’s hardest is not dealing with a clansman. That you know. [scoffs] That you can figure out. You are prepared and you are geared up. What cuts is people who you know aren’t bad people, and the fact that that card is still in their pocket and that… at some unexpected moment it might be played…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: …is heartbreaking.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Because that’s where you realize, “Oh, this is a deep, big piece of business” and it’s not a matter or not using racial epitaphs and it’s not just a matter of, you know, voting for Barack Obama. That’s why that movie— Did you see the movie Get Out ?

Bruce Springsteen: I did.

Potus Barack Obama: So when the father who turns out to be crazy…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right? Starts saying, “Man, I’d vote for Obama a third time!” I mean that’s part of the point that…that line is making.

Bruce Springsteen: And this is a moment when it feels… as a country we’ve got to have that conversation, you know? If we want to create a more honest and adult and noble America. And one that’s worthy of its ideals, and on the day that John Lewis was…was buried is certainly not a day you can be cynical about the possibilities of America.

Potus Barack Obama: No—You know that… But I think John embodied… this very particular brand of courage, right? It was a courage and trust in the redemptive power. The ability to say, “Here I stand. Do your worst. I believe that at some point there is a conscious that will be awakened. That there is a force in you that will see me.” Right? And he never gave up that hope… And this summer to see the protests that were taking place…

Potus Barack Obama: I told John and I said this in the eulogy, “John, these are your children. They might not have known it…”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: “But you helped give birth to that sense of right and wrong in them. You helped infuse them with that… expectation that we’re better than we are.” You know, my mother used to say sometimes if I wasn’t acting right, she said, “Listen, I don’t necessarily care if you believe in what I’ve told you to do…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: But if you do it often enough—” [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah… [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “That’s who you’re going to be.” And I think there’s a little bit of an element of young people saying, “You’ve told us this is who we’re supposed to be. That all people are equal and we treat everybody with respect and–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: …and you’ve told it to us often enough that maybe you didn’t even believe it but we do now believe it. And we’re going to force you to adapt your behaviour, your policies and your institutions and your laws to what you told us was true. Because you may have been painting a fantasy to make yourself feel better, but we believed it. And now we’re going to try to make it true. And that’s why as long as protests and activism doesn’t veer into violence, my general latitude is – I want and expect young people to push those boundaries and to to test and try the patience of their parents and their grandparents. And you know uh… I… I remind young activists that I meet with, I said, “Look, if you want my advice about how you can get a law passed or get enough votes to put in power people, I can give you some practical advice. But that doesn’t necessarily mean um that that should be your goal. Sometimes your goal may just be to…

Bruce Springsteen: Stir shit up. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Stir shit up. And— And— And— open up new possibilities.

Bruce Springsteen: How do you hold the same country that sent man to the moon with being the same country of Jim Crow? You don’t make peace with that obviously, but… how do
you sort of hold that being the same America?

Potus Barack Obama: I think that… it is… partly because we never went through a true reckoning, and so we just buried one huge part of our experience and our citizenry in our minds.

Bruce Springsteen: Now you mentioned a reckoning hadn’t taken place, so here we sit today where it feels like a reckoning is being called for - you know? Is the country ready to deconstruct its founding myths, its…its mythic stories, its mythic history? Or is it prepared to consider reparations? Do you think we’re at that place right now?

Potus Barack Obama: So if you ask me theoretically, “Are reparations justified?” The answer is yes. There’s not much question. Right? That the wealth of this country, the power of this country, was built in significant part, not exclusively maybe not the even majority of it, but a large portion of it was built on the backs of slaves.

Bruce Springsteen: The White House—

Potus Barack Obama: They built the house that I stayed in for a while. What is also true is that even after the end of formal slavery, and the continuation of Jim Crow, the systematic oppression and discrimination of Black Americans resulted in Black families not being able to build up wealth, not being able to compete, and that has generational effects. So if you’re thinking of what’s just, you would look back and you would say, “The descendants of those who suffered those kinds of terrible, cruel, often arbitrary injustices deserve some sort of redress, some sort of compensation — a recognition.

Bruce Springsteen: How do you as president, knowing all of the above–

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: …push or prepare the nation for something that feels, as you say, “so justified” or not?

Potus Barack Obama: Well… And so, this then brings us to “Could you actually get that kind of justice? Could you get a country to agree and own that history?” And my judgment was that as a practical matter, that was unattainable. We can’t even get this country to provide decent schooling for inner-city kids. And what I saw during my presidency was that the politics of white resistance and resentment. The talk of welfare queens and the talk of the undeserving poor… And the backlash against affirmative action… All that made the prospect of actually proposing any kind of coherent, meaningful reparations program struck me as politically, not only a non-starter, but potentially counterproductive. And it's perfectly understandable why working-class white folks, middle-class white folks, folks who are having trouble paying the bills or dealing with student loans… or you know, don't have healthcare. Where they feel like government has let them down. Wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of a massive program that is designed to deal with the past but isn't speaking to their future.

Bruce Springsteen: You’re saying we live in a country where we could do that for bankers on Wall Street, but we can’t do it for a part of the population that’s been struggling for so long…

Potus Barack Obama: Well, I promise you white folks dont like that either… But even though I was convinced that reparations was a non-starter during my presidency. I understand the argument of people I respect like Ta-Nehisi Coates. That we should talk about it anyway. If for no other reason to educate the country about a past that too often isn't taught… and let's face it, we’d rather forget.

Potus Barack Obama: And it goes back full-circle to everything we’ve been talking about. The bridge between America as it is -

Bruce Springsteen: [off-mic] Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: - and as we mythologize it to be. The only way that you can bring those two things together is to do an honest accounting and then do the work. I’m not willing, and I know you’re not either, to abandon the ideal because the ideal is worthy.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: But the ideal, this more perfect union of ours, is far from where the reality has been.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And so there’s some who argue, “Let’s just get rid of the ideal.” I think you need a North Star, you need some place to point to—

Bruce Springsteen: I’m completely with you on that.

Potus Barack Obama: But what I also think is you can’t get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are.

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely.

Potus Barack Obama: First thing is to get your current coordinates.

Bruce Springsteen: And I think, what I’ve been shocked about recently, is finding our current coordinates. [chuckle] We’re not quite as… as…

Potus Barack Obama: As firm? Fixed?

Bruce Springsteen: As firm as I thought they were, you know? [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You thought we already… we’d already…we’d already passed some of those landmarks?

Bruce Springsteen: The marching with the polo shirts with your tiki torches.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: I thought that that was kind of over, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, you thought— you thought we weren’t debating Nazism anymore? [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, that sort of—

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] You thought that was settled back in ‘45.

Bruce Springsteen: Those little things, you know? [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: I had been led to believe like—Well…you know. So to find out that these are not just, you know, meandering veins in our extremities but that continue to be…In our… running through the heart of the country. That… that’s a call to arms and, you know, let’s us know obviously how much work we have left.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, I always say to people, “I believe in the upward, forward trajectory of humankind.”

Bruce Springsteen: I’m with you on that.

Potus Barack Obama: But I do not believe that it is a straight and steady line.

Bruce Springsteen: It’s very crooked.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] You are zigging and zagging—

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN : [laughs] That’s right—

Potus Barack Obama: and you go backwards and you do some loops—

Bruce Springsteen: The arc of - the arc of history, was that it? [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: The arc of the moral universe, as long it bends towards justice but not—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Not in a straight line.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Not in a straight line.

Potus Barack Obama: You can bend down. And that’s been true throughout our history.

Potus Barack Obama: We talked about civil rights.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. [strums guitar]

Potus Barack Obama: We talked about Rock n’ Roll, music and social change and-

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Lightning round: Best protest songs.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs and strums guitar]

Potus Barack Obama: Huh. So, top 3, or 4 or 5, how many you can think of—

Bruce Springsteen: I would say “Fight the Power,” Public Enemy.

Potus Barack Obama: That is a great song.

Bruce Springsteen: I would say “Anarchy in the U.K.” The Sex Pistols. Or “God Save the Queen.”

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: That’s a— those are great protest songs.

Potus Barack Obama: Maggie’s farm is a great protest song—

Bruce Springsteen: Fabulous! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [singing] I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

Bruce Springsteen: You sound good. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [singing] I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “A Change is Gonna Come”—

Bruce Springsteen: Oh yeah I, I love it —

Potus Barack Obama: Sam Cooke.

Bruce Springsteen: Beautiful.

Potus Barack Obama: That song can make me cry.

Potus Barack Obama: There’s something about when he starts singing.

Bruce Springsteen: The historical pain that’s in it. And yet the elegance and generousness of his voice.

Potus Barack Obama: And Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit.”

Bruce Springsteen: Boom, to the top of the list. You know?

Potus Barack Obama: You know what’s a great protest song?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah?

Potus Barack Obama: Although people don’t think of it as a protest song.

Bruce Springsteen: Go ahead–

Potus Barack Obama: “Respect” Aretha Franklin.

Bruce Springsteen: Fabulous. One of the best.

Potus Barack Obama: [singing] R E S P E C T, right? I am… that’s a protest song.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] That is one of the best.

Potus Barack Obama: She was saying to every man out there—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “Get your act together”

Bruce Springsteen: That is one of the best. That’s for sure.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s not— you know… It’s not a lecture.

Bruce Springsteen: No. I think my favorite protest songs are the ones that capture… captured spirit more than any particular - a particular diatribe or a dogma.

Potus Barack Obama: No, that doesn’t— that doesn’t work.

Bruce Springsteen:You know, that that that doesn’t work. But um…

Potus Barack Obama: HWell here’s a good example. “41 shots” is about a very specific event that happened, and by the way we should remind everyone what happened. You know, it’s a sign of our age that although the story sadly has been repeated—

Bruce Springsteen: Many times—

Potus Barack Obama: Many times since then. A lot of folks might not remember exactly what happened.

Bruce Springsteen: Well, Amadou Diallo was an African immigrant who, in a case of mistaken identity, was stopped by the police. He was in his vestibule of an apartment building. He went to reach for his wallet and was shot nineteen times — forty one total shots being fired by the officers who were acquitted.

Potus Barack Obama: And— And— And— important for context, these officers were in plain clothes.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: So, Diallo doesn’t even necessarily know why these four guys are telling him to stop and suggesting that they somehow got business with him.

Bruce Springsteen: Possibly not. But…but where the song came from was… this incident occurs and I start to think about it and I go, “OK, skin. Skin is destiny.” It’s like what a privilege it is to forget that you live in a particular body.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: White people can do that. Black people can’t do that. So, that was what was at the center of that piece of music. And the rest was addressing our mutual fear of one another. It all starts with fear. Hatred comes later, but it all starts with fear. Everything that we’ve got going in our systemic racism we have here in America today, where does it come from? People are scared. What are they scared of? Demographic change. They’re scared of the country becoming some place where Black and brown voices become louder, more influential, more powerful, more equal.

Potus Barack Obama: Losing status.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, losing status. That’s a big part of what we have. I’m gonna— Maybe play a little bit of this… should I?

Potus Barack Obama: Go ahead, man

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah?

Potus Barack Obama: Let’s get a little sample.

Bruce Springsteen: Alright.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] 41 shots… And we'll take that ride… Across this bloody river… To the other side… 41 shots… Cut through the night… You're kneeling over his body… in the vestibule. Praying for his life… Is it a gun…

Potus Barack Obama: Did you get any kind of reaction after you wrote that?

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] There was some booing. We took a lot of heat from the police after… for several years after that. There were some police officers giving us the New Jersey state bird, which I always felt was a result of not listening to it [laughs] … really. You know?

Bruce Springsteen: [singing and strumming] 41 shots…

Bruce Springsteen: So if you listen to it, it’s… it never felt fundamentally controversial. It wasn’t a diatribe. It wasn’t a finger pointing song particularly, you know? It just tried— it tried to tally up the human cost in what we all pay for in blood of those kinds of killings and murders that go on day after day. I mean this song is 20 years old. This song is 20 years old.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] Is it a knife? Is it a wallet? This is your life… It ain't no secret… It ain't no secret… No secret, my friend… You can get killed just for living… You can get killed just for living… You can get killed just for living… in your American skin… 41 shots…

Bruce Springsteen: This is what we’re paying in blood for not having sorted through…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] 41 shots…

Bruce Springsteen: These issues.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] 41 shots…

Bruce Springsteen: For not having come to terms with - with one another.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] 41 shots… 41 shots…

Bruce Springsteen: It just goes on.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] 41 shots…41 shots…

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio, Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions, Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Amazing Grace: American Music

Potus Barack Obama voice over: I’ve often said that what makes America exceptional isn’t our wealth or size or skyscrapers or military power… It's the fact that America’s the only nation in human history that's made up of people of every race, religion and culture from every corner of the globe. And that we’ve had faith in our democracy, our common creed to blend this hodge podge of humanity into one people. Nothing symbolizes this truth more than our music. The way that generations of Americans stitch together every imaginable tradition – from African rhythms to Irish ballads – to create something entirely new. Whether it was Jazz or the Blues, Country or Rock n’ Roll. At the same time, our music’s often been a mirror into the fault lines of American society. And what gets played and who gets paid and the songs of those who have been relegated to the margins of society and in the songs of those insisting that their truths finally be heard. It's got a power to reshape social attitudes and make connections between people when mere words – even in good speeches – aren’t enough.

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] Further on up the road.. . Dern nah dern nah .. .Someone's gonna hurt you like… [sings] Wait, we gotta get it on the right key. I got… I gotta get to your key.

Bruce Springsteen: Let me hear where you're at.

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] Further on up the road… Further on up the road… [sings] Fur…

Bruce Springsteen: [sings] Further on up the road…

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] Further on up the road… You been laughing, pretty baby. Someday you’re gonna be cryin’. [sings] Further on up the road… [laughs] You… [laughs] I forget that last line. Uhh. Sounds alright though.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: So, music.

Bruce Springsteen: You ready?

Potus Barack Obama:Yeah, I’m… I'm ready man.

Bruce Springsteen: So you're in Hawaii, you're a teenager… During what? The ‘70s?

Potus Barack Obama: ‘70s.The ‘70s.

Bruce Springsteen: You're a teenager in the ‘70s. What is the music that is catching your ear as you are becoming interested in music… Which is I would guess is around 14 er?

Potus Barack Obama: First album I bought with my own money – Talking Book, Stevie Wonder. I would sit with a banged up little old turntable, kind of plasticky looking turntable.

Bruce Springsteen: Sure, yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: I got myself some earphones so my grandparents would not complain.

Bruce Springsteen: Yep.

Potus Barack Obama: And I would sing along to every Stevie Wonder song for… hours.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, Hawaii was a place where you had Top 40. Casey Kasem was on.

Potus Barack Obama: Now I'm… I'm 10, 11 years old. You're listening to the radio and there’s songs that I end up just getting really attached to… You know you got a 10-year-old saying, [sings] Let's get it on… [sings]

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] Ahhhh baby!

Bruce Springsteen: [sings] We're all sen–

Both: [sings] … sensitive people…

Potus Barack Obama: [sings]…with so much to give. And you think… Yeah, and you know, your grandmother would hear. “What, what, what are you singing?”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: There's another song by Billy Paul–

Potus Barack Obama: Me and Mrs. Jones.

Bruce Springsteen: Huuuuuge. [skats] I don’t know how it went.

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] Mrs. Jones Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] We both know that is wrong, but it's much too strong. [sings]

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] I mean, you know you're like 11, 11 years old.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Joni Mitchell came out with Court and Spark.

Bruce Springsteen: Great record.

Potus Barack Obama: I was like 11, 12 years old.

Bruce Springsteen: Beautiful record, yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: [sings] Help me, I… [sings]

Both: - [sings] think I'm falling in love with you. [sings]

Potus Barack Obama:Yeah. That's…that's pretty… I don't know what that feeling is, but it seems fascinating.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] We love our lovin' (lovin')…fades out ]

Potus Barack Obama: So the interesting thing was… that you had Top 40–

Potus Barack Obama: And you had these crossover artists like Earth, Wind and Fire…

Potus Barack Obama: Uh, but then there was other kinds of music that was much more – I wont say segregated but identifiable as Black or white.

Potus Barack Obama: Like I loved Ohio Players or Parliament. That was not something you might find in some of my white friend’s music library. Ah,and some of them might be into heavy metal and if I got into a car with them…

Potus Barack Obama: And they turned that thing all the way up– you know that could be a little painful for me.

Potus Barack Obama: So even though Top 40… it was integrated at least in Hawaii. Underneath, you can still see these distinctions uh between whose music was whose …

Potus Barack Obama: When you decided you were gonna to be a rock n’ roll star…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: at the age of 15…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: or around there…

Potus Barack Obama: It made sense if you're going to be rock n’ roll story going to play the guitar.

Bruce Springsteen: Well, ah guitars were cheap. So that helped. My first guitar was $18.00.

Potus Barack Obama: Cheaper than piano.

Bruce Springsteen: Much cheaper than a piano, much cheaper than the drums.

Potus Barack Obama: Is that right? Drum set was more expensive.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. So, I could actually work a job, which I did. I painted house, tarred roof, did some lawn work, saved up $18.00, bought a cheap guitar at the Western Auto Store in Freehold, NJ. So, my cousin Frankie had…was starting to play the guitar a little bit and he taught me a few chords and sent me home with a folk music book that had all the chords in it. So, for about a month or so I was strumming my way through folk music classics. You know, Greensleeves, and If I Had a Hammer. And shortly after that, somebody taught me to play Honky Tonk. Honky Tonk, that's right.

Bruce Springsteen: Then I started to learn some Beatles… I learned Twist and Shout. You know… [sings] Shake it on baby! [sings] And you know, I just started getting up in my room and closing the door…

Potus Barack Obama: Practicing…

Bruce Springsteen: And just screaming my head off and strumming the guitar and standing in front of the mirror.

Potus Barack Obama: Did you folks say anything? It's like what, what? What are you yelling about?

Bruce Springsteen: Keep it down! You know the usual stuff.

Potus Barack Obama: Keep it down… [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Keep it down, man! Keep it down! And my mother was supportive. My father was kinda, like yeah, “What what's…what's going on now? I don't know what's this kid up to now I don't understand it,” you know? And then I grew my hair and he really didn't understand that and and… but it was the course thousands if not millions of other kids were taking that exact same course at that exact same moment. So, the miracle is there's a million kids who pick up a guitar. You know, a certain amount of those kids learn how to strum a few chords. Certain amount of those kids learn how to play, play a few songs. Few of those get into a little local band. Few of those getting a little local band that makes a demo. And then a few of those get into a little local band that makes a record. And then a few of those get a local band that makes a record, and it sells a few copies. And then even fewer of those make a record, get into a band where they have a short career. And fewer of those get in, and they have a band where, like they make somewhat of a regular living. And then one night I was at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame and I was standing between George Harrison and Mick Jagger singing something. And I said, “OK? One of these [laughs] is standing tonight between George Harrison and Mick Jagger.” [laughs]

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: It was both simple and complicated for me. One, it was the only thing I deeply desired to do. Two, it was an essential element in building an identity as a man, as an American, as a human being. When I hold a guitar, I don't feel like I'm holding anything. It's just a part of my body, you know. It's just another appendage. That's how it feels, you know. When I strap it on it, it's like that feels like my natural state. And I also built a philosophy about performing. I'm gonna give my best to bring out the best in you. And I'm going to send you home with a sense of community and a set of values that may sustain you past the concert. You know, I always make a joke. “I want to come out on stage and change your life.” Except it's not really a joke. That is my purpose at night.

Potus Barack Obama: It's your ministry.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: I took my job seriously. I believe that I am involved in a ridiculous but noble profession–

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: at the same time. And…and that I know music had an impact on me, that changed my life, changed who I thought I was, changed who I became. I know that this is possible. I have an opportunity. God has given me the opportunity to come out at night and to have that kind of impact on some individual crowd member. If I can do that, that's worth being on the planet for. You know, that's… that's something worth living for.

Bruce Springsteen: I was a creature Top 40. First music I heard was my mother playing Doowop and Rhythm and Blues on the radio in the morning as I was eight or nine years old as a child. So, and then you had to have, you know, you had the other hits of the day, which were Beatle hits and Rolling Stone hits and ah eh…

Potus Barack Obama: And where does… where does Dylan fit in in terms of how that influences you?

Bruce Springsteen: Eh Bob was funny though…

Potus Barack Obama: 'Cause 'cause he's pulling in…

Bruce Springsteen: He, he had hits.

Potus Barack Obama: But he had hits but he's pulling from some different.. He’s he’s he's pulling from Woody Guthrie and he's pulling from…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, I mean I didn't. I didn't know or learn anything about that till I was 30. I never listened to Bob's early acoustic records.

Potus Barack Obama: That's interesting.

Bruce Springsteen: I only listen to Hwy 61, Subterranean Homesick Blues. I played his electric material, and it wasn't until I got little in my late 20s and 30s that I went back and heard his acoustic music. And then went back and heard Woody Guthrie. So, I came to those forms late.

Potus Barack Obama: Fairly late.

Bruce Springsteen: Then came the country music in my late 20s and 30s. Looking for other solutions than Rock music provided. Rock music was a great music of there was some class anger in it and that agreed with me. Ah,then there was a beautiful romanticism and melodies, a lot of energy. But as you were getting older, it didn't address your adult problems–

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: So I went to Country music. Country music was great, incredible singing and playing, but it was rather fatalistic.

Potus Barack Obama: Hmm.

Bruce Springsteen: You know? So, I said well, “Who's trying to play? Who..Where is a music of hope? And when you went to Woody Guthrie– Woody was doing and and Bob, you know… They were spelling out the hard world that you lived in, but they were also providing you somehow with some transcendence and some… and some actionable solution to societal and your own personal problems. You could be active. That drew my attention because I was now a relatively big rock star. I was interested in maintaining ties to my community. I was interested in giving voice to both myself and folks in my community. I was also interested in being active to a certain degree, taking some of what I was earning, putting it back into the community. And that was it was 1980 and… I started to play This Land Is Your Land. That and through Born in the USA, was when what we were going to do, both as a band, a bit as a social unit, and as an entertainment unit, and how we were going to blend all these things together. And that was where I found my full satisfaction and that's how I put all the pieces together.

Potus Barack Obama: So, I like Bruce how you’re talking about blending it all together. Putting the pieces together. Cause you know that's been the essence of all great American musicians. And and you know, that's one of the reasons why Michelle and I thought it was so important ah during the course of our presidency – At a moment when the country felt so divided, ah to really put an emphasis on these music series that we did.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, we would have a Motown night. But also a Country music night.

Potus Barack Obama: Or a Fiesta Latina. Or a Broadway tunes night. Or a Gospel night.

Potus Barack Obama: Part of what we would do is draw musicians from various traditions to be a part of something that wasn’t traditionally part of something they played. You know, you’d have the Country music singer ah in a Gospel concert. Or we’d have an R&B singer ah singing Rock to… to emphasize and underscore how all these traditions in fact do blend together once you start ah breaking down some of these silos and categories that we carry around in our heads.

Potus Barack Obama: Now Bruce, as you and Patti will testify some of the best music to happen in the White House happened… off camera during some of our parties. That was some fun.

Bruce Springsteen: Well, we're at a few and all I can say is they were historical and…

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And they're not gonna see another one like that at the White House for a loooong time.

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: They will not… We had… we, we had some, some amazing moments. All right, let's, let's set the stage here. I am in my last month of my presidency. There was something I specifically wanted to do for the staff that had been with me for the entire journey. And had gone through ah a really remarkable but grueling process. So, we get this idea. Maybe we can just do something small and quiet and private - 100 people. And maybe Bruce will be willing to come in and just do a quick concert. And ah you show up and we got like… about ten guitars sitting over there on a rack–

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And you got the piano. And Patti says to me, “Yeah, I don't really know what he's going to do…” ‘Cause you hadn't really done–

Bruce Springsteen: I'd never done it before.

Potus Barack Obama: …the whole thing for her either.

Bruce Springsteen: I’d never done it for anybody. I only did it for a few hours in this room–

Potus Barack Obama: Yes, so…

Bruce Springsteen: Before I came down.

Potus Barack Obama: So, so your wife shows up with you and she says–

Bruce Springsteen: She has no clue. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “I don't really know what it is, but there's something going on here.”

Bruce Springsteen: You know, I got the invitation and I said, “Well, I am not - not gonna put the band together and make a big noise.” And you know so, I said, “Well, I'll go down and play some acoustic songs.” So I said, “Well, what could I do to make that a little different? Well, I’ll read from my book and I'll play a few songs.” So, I came in here and I started to read from the book and play a few songs. And I realized reading from the book…was a little stilted because ah the way you write for your book is not the
way you speak.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah. The written word is different.

Bruce Springsteen: And so I started to paraphrase all writings in the book as if I was just telling a story, and I literally spent a couple hours for two days in this studio and we came down.

Potus Barack Obama: And you essentially ended up doing – What would you say, maybe?

Bruce Springsteen: 90 minutes of the show–

Potus Barack Obama: Maybe 90 minutes of…

Both: What became the Broadway show.

Potus Barack Obama: I get up on stage afterwards and I say, “Dude, you, you gotta… you gotta do that for some other people.

Bruce Springsteen: I–

Potus Barack Obama: I..I can't be this greedy where we’re the only ones who get to hear this?”

Bruce Springsteen: I have to give you credit because the two of you were sitting right in front of me and I was thrilled to be there, honored to be playing for you. And you got up afterwards and you came… you were the first one on stage and you just kind of came over and leaned down into my ear and you said, “Hey look…I..I know you did this just for us, but this ought to be a show somewhere or something, you know.”

Potus Barack Obama: You got, you gotta share this.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] And then one thing led to another - We said, “Well, I need a really small space because I need complete quiet for this to work out as we had in the East Room. And we went out and we found a little…that tiny theater 900 seats on Broadway and ah…

Potus Barack Obama: You end up having to work a real job.

Bruce Springsteen: I ended up being there for five nights a week at 2 hours and 20 minutes a sho– 2 hours and 20 minutes a night. One of the best times in my life.

Bruce Springsteen: Are you a shower singer?

Potus Barack Obama: Absolutely.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I sing in the shower. I sing outside of the shower.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I am unembarrassed about singing. Umm, my daughters and my wife sometimes roll their eyes.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I have been known to have been scolded by my staff–

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: For doing some air guitar stuff on Air Force One.

Bruce Springsteen: I'm sorry, I'm sorry I missed that. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And they're worried that the journalists are seeing…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Joe here is probably somebody who's kind of warned me off that.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Well, the, the reason I ask is 'cause, you did a pretty damn nice version of Al Green - Let's Stay Together. Am I right there? Is that the one?

Potus Barack Obama: Listen here's the story– We’re in the Apollo, the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: It's a fundraiser for me.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: At which Al Green has performed. But - as is always true - I don't get to see the act 'cause they've got me somewhere else. I'm getting there late after the performance.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: So, I'm sitting backstage with Valerie Jarrett. And I'm like, “Man. I missed Al Green!” And so, I start singing backstage. [sings] I….So in love with you. [sings] A couple of the sound guys. Smart alecs say, “Mr. President. Why don't you sing that on stage?”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, baby. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And I said, “Well, you don't think I will do that?”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And Valerie says, “Uh, don't do that.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: 'Cause she, she's the surrogate for Michelle in these circumstances.

Bruce Springsteen: I got you.

Potus Barack Obama: And I probably wouldn't have done it were it not for the fact that I think I was on my 5th event that day

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And I was a little loopy.

Bruce Springsteen: Good for you.

Potus Barack Obama: I was a little tired.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And Al Green was still there. He was sitting up in the lower seats.

Bruce Springsteen: Oh man.

Potus Barack Obama: So I got up and I said, “Ah, Al was here. I’m sorry I missed him.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And then I looked to see if the stage guys were watching. And I burst out into song.

Bruce Springsteen: What I really want to ask you about, of course, is Amazing Grace because that really that shook the whole country. And how on that day, did you come to decide to ah to sing that song?

Potus Barack Obama: That's an interesting story I ah… First of all, that day was a magical day that began in grief. Or, or we had anticipated would begin in in grief, but it turns out that's also the day in which the Supreme Court hands down the ruling saying that it is unconstitutional to not let lesbians and gays and LGBTQ–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Partners get married, so that's a joyful moment. But we are traveling down to Charleston after this young… this young white man who's been filled with hatred–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Guns down a Bible study class that had welcomed him in.

Bruce Springsteen: Jesus.

Potus Barack Obama: And uh, I actually had met the Pastor, Reverend Pinckney, in previous visits to South Carolina. He had two little girls that were a little younger than Malia and Sasha. And uh, and this was coming on the heels of just, it seemed like every three months some mass shooting.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And I would go after each of these mass shootings - And sometimes Michelle would go with me - although it was at a certain point became difficult for Michelle to just do this. And I would spend a couple hours with a family.

Bruce Springsteen: Hmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Who just had their child or their father or their brother, or their son gunned down senselessly for no reason. And I had…I had thought that after Newtown when 20, 6-year-olds had been gunned down in this fashion by a deranged young man - who had basically an arsenal in his house. I thought all right, well, Congress is gonna do something about this. And the most angry I think and disappointed… the closest I ever came to just losing hope about this country was probably after efforts for modest gun safety laws were defeated - weren't even really, never even really got called up in the Senate. After 20 children had been slaughtered like that. The only time I saw a Secret Service person cry while I was speaking– was at Newtown. So, so it happens again, and I say as soon as it happens - In addition to making a statement from the White House - I say, “You know, I'll want to go to the funeral, but I don't want to speak. I don't have anything left to say. I feel like I've used up all my words.”

Bruce Springsteen: Mmhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Nothing I've been able to say. Whether making practical, rational arguments, emotional arguments, I've shown anger in speaking about this. I’ve shown sorrow and nothing seems to have any impact. I'm out of words. And of course, they ask that I speak, and I concluded alright, it was part of the job… I don't have the luxury, but I was stuck. I had nothing to say. It just so happened at the time I was corresponding with a friend, Marilynne Robinson, who's a wonderful author, wrote Gilead and…

Bruce Springsteen: Uh huh.

Potus Barack Obama: And uh - one theme that she writes about is grace. And we have been writing about grace and just talking about the notion of…The notion of grace as a recognition that we are fundamentally flawed and weak and confused. So, we don't deserve grace, but we get it sometimes.

Bruce Springsteen: Mmhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And just as, just as she had been writing this, or we've been writing to each other about this, the families of the slain in Charleston during the shooter’s arrange… arraignment…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Say we forgive you.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And it didn't click right away. I'm still thinking, “I don't know what to say.” My head speechwriter Cody Keenan. I tell him. “Dude, you know, I don't know what's going to work here.” He gives me something that is not, you know, it just doesn't meet the moment.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Not because it's his fault. It's 'cause he's gone through the same thing I have. We've done this too many times. We were…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: We're out of… So, I'm sitting there about 10:00 o'clock at night. And I'm just stuck and there's I don't know what it is that I'm going to say tomorrow. This is going to be the next day. I think Marilynne’s letters just sort of sitting on a desk and I… I just.. I see the word grace and somehow, I start singing to myself. [sings] Amazing Grace… Right?

Bruce Springsteen: Hmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And I thought about the families who said, “We forgive you.” And I thought ummm… Well, maybe I can work with that. Suddenly, I write the speech in 10 minutes, maybe 20. Right? I mean the whole… I mean the eulogy. I… I just… it all just pours out of me.

Potus Barack Obama: And you can see me pause…for a moment.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s interesting cause it's a moment where you just say, “Will words be enough?” And it would have been, but I thought the music, the song, the leap of faith, involved… Particularly because I know that it wouldn't sound like a professional singer. It would sound like somebody– just one other guy in the choir. That in some fashion, that's the thing that would be the grace note. That that would be the thing that drew people out.

Potus Barack Obama: And part of the reason I think that it somehow met the moment was because not only is it a beautiful song. But it also captures this unifying element in America represented in its music. You’ve got an old world English hymn that has been used by everybody. In every church, all across this country. White churches, Black churches, the Black Gospel tradition has transformed it. And it spoke then to the fact that underneath, even a tragedy like this, there's something that is there for all of us. Something that we share.

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Born to Run: The Loss of Innocence

Potus Barack Obama voice over: What does it mean to be an American? The stories and habits of mind that bind us together as a people. For most Americans growing up in the ‘50s, the answers were pretty simple. We were hardworking and freedom loving. Rugged individualists with a can-do spirit. We opened up the frontier and built mighty industries and allowed everybody to get their piece of the American Dream. We were on the right side of history; having defeated Hitler and liberated Europe. We now stood sentinel against a godless, totalitarian communism - to make the world safe for democracy. We watched the same TV shows and listened to the same radio programs. We loved Westerns and baseball, hotdogs and apple pie, fast cars and Fourth of July parades. That’s the story we told ourselves anyway. But it wasn't the whole story. It left a bunch of stuff out. Whether it was the continuing discrimation against brown and Black people. Or all the ways that women were still expected to stay in their place. Or some of the ugly realities of our foriegn policy during the Cold War. Bruce and I came of age as young people were challenging a lot of America’s most cherished myths about itself. The result was a growing bitter divide in the country. A political and culture war that in a lot of ways we’re still fighting today. But before we got in the heavy stuff, I got behind the wheel of the vintage Corvette that Bruce keeps in his barn. And we went for a little joy ride. One that didn't make my Secret Service details all that happy. For us, it was a symbol for our shared all-American love affair with the open road…

Potus Barack Obama: Uh oh.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s alright, you’re alright.

Potus Barack Obama: I don’t want to—

Bruce Springsteen: Just give it some gas.

Potus Barack Obama: Oh.

Bruce Springsteen: You got to give it gas.

Potus Barack Obama: Come on, Bruce.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah gas.

Potus Barack Obama: There we go.

Bruce Springsteen: All you need is gas… And as you pull it back, give it a little juice.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Come on!

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] AHHHHH HAAAAAAA!

Potus Barack Obama: It’s time for us to go!

Potus Barack Obama: You know what? Should we go somewhere?

Bruce Springsteen: Do we have to stay on the farm or can we go off the farm?

Potus Barack Obama: Can I go off the farm?.. I know the Secret Service is scrambling right now.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] How’s that baby feel?

Potus Barack Obama: I’m in trouble, but you know what? There are times where you just got to do—

Bruce Springsteen: You gotta do what you gotta do.

Potus Barack Obama: You got to do something, man.

Bruce Springsteen: Ahhh! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah buddy!

Bruce Springsteen: Ohhhhhhhhhhh!

Potus Barack Obama: This is the ticket right here.

Bruce Springsteen: You’re going to take it, going right in here.

Potus Barack Obama: Right, this one right here?

Bruce Springsteen: Yup. Ahhhh ha! Had to do it!

Potus Barack Obama: Had to do it!

Bruce Springsteen: Had to put the foot down. That’s a classic, man. We’ll remember that one. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Come on, man!

Bruce Springsteen: We’ll remember that one.

Potus Barack Obama: Shoot!

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Had to try that out!

Bruce Springsteen: Great ride, brother B. Great ride, brother B.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s just… we got rolling and I thought…

Bruce Springsteen: I tried to get him to go to Freehold, but… [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: People, I know we’re late. It’s Bruce’s fault.

Bruce Springsteen: It is.

Potus Barack Obama: Ugh… Ah everybody set? Everybody’s ready… I assume. OK. So a theme in a lot of your songs, a theme in a lot of Rock n’ Roll, is this idea of the open road and traveling–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: out of where you’ve been and..and towards the horizon–

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: and maybe not knowing where it is that you’re going—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: And that’s tied to ideas of freedom, and it’s tied to ideas of remaking yourself.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Shedding your skin, freeing yourself from your past and your constraints. Uh and engaging in the act of recreation, self-invention.

Bruce Springsteen: The act of driving the car is… it’s a…it’s a direct, aggressive act upon the world, you know?

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And that was just funny because I did not drive until I was 24.

Potus Barack Obama: Really?

Bruce Springsteen: Didn’t drive the car.

Potus Barack Obama: Huh.

Bruce Springsteen: Hitchhiked everywhere I went from 14 to 24.

Potus Barack Obama: You didn’t— You didn’t— You didn’t uh think to yourself, “Man, I need to try to get some wheels”?

Bruce Springsteen: Ugh…

Potus Barack Obama: Did you not have a license? Or you just didn't have a car?

Bruce Springsteen: I did not have a license and I did not know how to drive.

Potus Barack Obama: Let me just say— Can I just interrupt to say it is a good thing that you ended up being a rockstar.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: ‘Cause otherwise it seems to me like you’re kind of a shy… you know, not that well adjusted kid, man.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I mean…Shhhh… Like I wasn’t a big car guy but shit I was gon’— I was gonna to get my license—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Not me!

Potus Barack Obama: I was going so I could get out on the road.

Bruce Springsteen: Well, I was out on the road but—

Potus Barack Obama: You’re hitchhiking!

Bruce Springsteen: I was out on the road with just me and my thumb. And for about, literally, the 10 years from when I was 14— I had two albums out. I was still hitchhiking myself around. I didn’t have a car.

Potus Barack Obama: What are you doing with girls, man?

Bruce Springsteen: They got cars! You know. They had cars or - I mean, you have to understand I’m going all the way from Asbury Park to… Sea Bright, which is Freehold. It’s a total about 15 miles, you know, I’m not going anywhere.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: I don’t have a trip to go on. Except my first actual trip, which was a trip to California… I took in… …it was a ‘48 Chevy similar to the one that’s in my garage over there. And… it was just me and another guy, and we lost all the guys behind us who were the drivers. They were in a station wagon with a mattress in the back sleeping and resting and driving. They got lost in Nashville. There’s no cell phones. We can’t call somebody to find out where they are. Those days when somebody was lost that was it. You weren’t going to hear them again until you got to California, and we were going to California thousands of miles away. So, we had three days to make it to a gig we had in Big Sur. To make it in three days you cannot stop driving. So the nightfall came and my buddy said, “Hey, it’s your turn.” [laughs] “You’re going to get us killed, man, I can’t drive this freakin’ — I can’t drive a car I can’t drive this freaking truck.” He says, “If we don’t drive, we don’t get there in time. If we don’t get there in time, we don’t get paid. If we don’t get paid, we don’t have any money because it’s taken us all our money to get across the damn country.” So, I got behind the wheel.

Bruce Springsteen: Four-speed manual, gearshift, big ol ‘48 Chevy flatbed with all of our equipment piled in the back. Right?

Both: [Laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: How— How many times did you strip the gears?

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Oh, many. All you hear was erghhh, erghhh erghhh erghhh erghhh.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: So finally, “Hey, man, I can’t handle this.” Yeah, so the guy says, “Wait a second, I got an idea.” He gets in the driver’s seat… He puts it into first. Gets us rolling. “Let’s switch seats.” We switch seats! And…

Potus Barack Obama: You drive in first.

Bruce Springsteen: I’m drivin’…I didn’t…No, I’m driving as long as the truck is going, now I can go from first to second to third–

Potus Barack Obama: Oh okay. Got it.

Bruce Springsteen: You know? I’m alright shifting in between those gears.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: So we… I may drive 100 miles at a pop like that. You know?

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Because out in the middle of the country–

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: You can do that! You know? And I did that! I did it for two days and that was how I learned how to drive.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: But no— I— I… My own experience outside of what I’ve written in song was a lot more tentative when it came to driving. You know?

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: I didn’t have all— I got all these cars in this garage now, you know, you were just tearing up the highway in my Corvette. But ah I..I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t fix a car if it broke down. But I knew what they were about. Right? I knew what they symbolized—

Potus Barack Obama: Escape.

Bruce Springsteen: Right. I knew the statement they made. You know, this was a moment when A). America still felt very, very big. Very big. And the road was romantic. But it was also, I was very interested in… in writing music using classic American images and reinventing them for what at that time were the ‘70s. The ‘60s, yeah the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry alright, cars and girls, cars and girls. I don’t want to write about cars and girls because I want to write classic Rock n’ Roll music. And so I took those images and I… the main thing I did is I used those images, but I filled my songs with the dread that was in the air during the ‘70s… During the Vietnam War. The country was no longer innocent. The country was no longer wide open. Ah… it was an age, a new age of limits. Gas crisis – lines at the…at the stations. So, I… uh… I presented all of my characters in the context of those same images but in a new American age. How did they resonate? Much darker. Where were people going? They weren’t sure where they were going. Who were they becoming? They weren’t sure who they were becoming. All of these ideas I had to place in those cars with my characters and try to get them to sort them out.

Potus Barack Obama: So for me part of the essential aspect of being an American is getting out of where you are. Now, where I am is paradise — in Hawaii, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, you want to get out. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: So, you’re somehow thinking, “Man, I gotta get out in the open road.”

Bruce Springsteen: And you’re on an island! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: The road only goes so far! I remember the first… the first time that I visited the mainland of the United States.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: It was my… my mother and my grandmother decided it was time for me to see it. And so the two of them, me and my then 2-year-old sister.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: We fly first to Seattle, which is where my mom had gone to high school. We take the Greyhound bus down to San Francisco–

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: L.A. Then take the train to Arizona… Kansas City up to Chicago… Rent a car, go to Yellowstone…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: My mother didn’t drive. She didn’t have a license.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: My grandmother drove but she's starting to go a little blind.

Bruce Springsteen: OK.

Potus Barack Obama: So, I remember being put in the front seat at around twilight so that I can direct my grandmother [laughs] properly as we’re hitting some of these turns in the road.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And, you were talking about the country being so big, I mean I remember looking out a Greyhound buses and looking out of trains–

Bruce Springsteen: Sure.

Potus Barack Obama: and looking out of car windows… Just miles of corn or miles of desert, or miles of forest, or miles of mountains and just thinking, “Man, imagine where you can go. You can go anywhere and by implication you can do anything and be anybody.” Right? And that first road trip, which I still remember. And, you know, we’d stop at Howard Johnson’s. All the excitement was… the ice machine. And… you know… uh… your mom or your grandma springin–

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: for a can of soda. And if you were really lucky, a couple of them had a little pool in the back.

Bruce Springsteen: Loved it.

Potus Barack Obama: And if if if there was a pool that was…

Bruce Springsteen: Heaven on Earth!

Potus Barack Obama: That’s… That was it.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] You were living.

Potus Barack Obama: That was luxury.

Potus Barack Obama: This is ‘72, so this is in the middle of the Watergate Hearings. Every night…

Potus Barack Obama: My mom would turn on a little black and white set that was in the motel.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And we’d sit there and I’d be watching Sam Ervin and—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Danny Inouye… we were very proud because Danny Inouye was on the committee–

Bruce Springsteen: Hawaiian, yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And he was the senator from Hawaii.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Um…A World War II hero.

Bruce Springsteen: Right!

Potus Barack Obama: Only had one arm. And uh that probably was somewhat formative of my politics, right? Because my mother is saying you know the whole time, “What do you expect? The guy was a McCarthyite!” You know. But that set of memories I never lost.

Potus Barack Obama: And it was–

Bruce Springsteen: Nice memories.

Potus Barack Obama: And it was consistent with my own sense that as much as I loved Hawaii, I was going to have to go on some sort of journey in order to find out who I was. I remember when I was in college, you know, I got an old beat up Fiat — terrible car.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And I’d just go driving. It was broke in the shop probably once every ah two weeks, but it zipped around when it was working. Five-shift. And ah I remember it breaking down on highways between L.A. and San Francisco, and me having to hitchhike with truckers and, you know, get off on the Clover Leaf.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: It’s pouring down rain and and you don’t have a cell phone, you don’t have any money. Maybe you got a little bit of change, you got to find a pay phone and see if you’re going to be able to get a friend of yours who’s in town to come pick you up and trying to look around to see what street you’re on. But at each juncture… At each juncture there was always that sense of… Which I do think is a sense is essentially American, of you go on the road to discover like Ulysses, like— like—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. Your hegira. It’s a trip to discover your soul.

Potus Barack Obama: You— You are finding out what you are made of.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. Who you are.

Potus Barack Obama: And it’s full of surprises and adventures, but what’s also true is that you get on the road and then at a certain point what you realize is, “Yes, you can remake yourself. Yes, you can find yourself. But at the end of the day, you still have this longing for a home and a place.” And the tension of America is this sense of – We want to remake ourselves and and and reinvent ourselves and be free, but we also want a neighborhood and there’s a loneliness to the road that…

Bruce Springsteen: Oh man.

Potus Barack Obama: The darker side of the road is that that drifter, that lonely, unrooted, unmoored–

Bruce Springsteen: Well that…

Potus Barack Obama: place.

Bruce Springsteen: And that we were talking about the other day about masculinity and icons. Those were the icons that were being sold to us: Western heroes. They were lonely. They were never fathers, never husbands, always passing through. Potus Barack Obama: Yeah those cowboys, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood—

Bruce Springsteen: Always passing through—

Potus Barack Obama: Shane…

Bruce Springsteen: High… Plains… Drifter.

Potus Barack Obama: High Plains Drifter.

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Drifter, you know? And the ultimate example of this is in John Ford’s “The Searchers”– When you have John Wayne, who’s a misanthrope . He has a series of violent skills that he can use to impact and preserve the community, but he can’t join a community. There’s this profound scene at the end of “The Searchers” where John Wayne finds Natalie Wood after the whole movie– Brings her back to the family, the whole family runs inside the house, the door closes and John Wayne is in the doorway and the door and community itself closes on him and he is left walking off into the desert. And that’s the final shot of the film. As a young man, I felt like this a lot and I tried to live that out well into my 30s until literally I was driving across the country with a friend of mine, and we’d taken several trips, I’d been across the country a bunch of times by now. Always enjoyed it, I said, “If I had the blues, man, those miles could just… I’d just roll those blues away, you know?” But I got to California and ah… I felt terrible. I felt like I wanted to get in the car and go back. But then I knew but if I did that I’d want to get in the car and come back again. I truthfully didn’t want to stop moving… And something felt really broken inside of me. And that’s when I called a friend, I called John, I said, “I’m having some real problems.” He got me a number. And I went into a gentlemen’s office I’d never seen before in my life in Beverly Hills or the Pacific Palisades, somewhere in L.A. I looked at him. It was a little ol’ man with white hair and a mustache. There was an empty chair. I sat down in it and I just broke out and cried for ten minutes. And… it was these two chickens coming home to roost the desire to quote, in theory, be free but the deep need now at my age for roots, family, a real home, a spiritual home, the need to stop running. To claim, to make choices, I’m going to be with you for my life. I’m going to live here during my life. I’m going to work this job during my life. And these are the things I’m committed and I’m committing myself to: our love, our endeavours, our place. I ran into a moment in my life when I needed to make those choices in order to live on and to have a life… to have a life… you know? Eh ah my life changed on that day and shortly later I got married, ah didn’t work out the first time. But shortly there after that I met Patti and built a home and realized, “Hey, I still go out there on the road, I hit the motorcycles out there once in a while, you know, a couple thousand miles and come back.” And uh now ah, I don’t feel much like it anymore. Though you and I could jump in that Corvette and go to Route 66 though Michelle and Patti might kick our asses. Right? [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah… I don’t know how far we’d get.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know, look ah… that idea of being domesticated–

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Is something that part of the American character, particularly American male character, is taught to resist.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And yet, contrary to the song of a great American master, we’re generally not born to run.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Ah, most of us are born to run a little bit and go back home.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: Uh and ah… And so for me, Michelle and Chicago… Chicago first became my home and then Michelle became an embodiment of that connection I had made to a place and a community. And the interesting thing is by virtue of finding that place, I was then actually able to understand Hawaii as also my place.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Because now I could see ah how uh all the various parts of me fit together.

Potus Barack Obama: So one of the things we talk a lot about, Bruce, is… What is it that is essentially American? What’s uniquely American? And and you and I, we’ve talked about this, you through your music, me through my politics, you know, part of what we’ve been trying to do is to define a vision of this country and our part in it, our place in it. Do you remember a moment when you just thought, consciously, “I’m an American, and and and that is part of my identity.”?

Bruce Springsteen: I think ugh… my first recollection of it would be at 8 A.M. every morning at Saint Rose School. I pledge allegiance to the flag…

Potus Barack Obama: Of the United States of America.

Bruce Springsteen: Of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Facing the flag. You’ve got your hand over your heart. That, I think, is when I first identified myself and thought there was a sacredness about being an American.

Potus Barack Obama: For me… Another big moment… was… The space program… And the reason it was especially important was because the Apollo program… when the capsules land with those parachutes in the middle of the Pacific…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: They get brought to Hawaii.

Potus Barack Obama: So I remember, one of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders with one of those little American flags you’re talking about.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And… I guarantee you that we were probably so far back and where the capsule and the astronaut… My grandfather would be like, “Yeah! That’s ah… Neil Armstrong waved at you.” [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Exactly.

Potus Barack Obama: And I’m sure that wasn’t the case, but… in your memory you thought, “I’m a fellow countryman of that guy who was just in space.”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: “That’s what we do.”

Potus Barack Obama: And then for me, the interesting thing was at 6 I go overseas. Ironically, one of the one of the ways that I became strongly patriotic was being outside the country. ‘Cause now you realize what we have. So, my mother would explain that where we’re living in Indonesia, this is a military government, but in America you elect people–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And everybody has a voice. Now, now it was mythologized, it was idealized how she portrayed it, but you start getting this idea of, “Alright, we are this experiment in Democracy where everybody has got a voice and nobody is better than anybody and nobody is worse than anybody. And when you’re living in a country, at the time, Indonesia, you still had scurvy and rickets and polio and you try to explain to your friends over there, “You know, back in the states we take care of those people.” And you know there was a sense of superiority.

Bruce Springsteen: Total exceptionalism. Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And exceptionalism that got us in all kinds of trouble, but as a kid…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: It made you feel as if, “I’m glad I was born under this flag.”

Bruce Springsteen: “I’m a part of.”

Potus Barack Obama: “That I’m a part of.” Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, I mean as a child you know, you simply thought you were living in the greatest place on Earth. And ah, first disturbance… I think of that would’ve been the ‘Duck and Cover drills. With the nucle—you know…

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, I missed those.

Bruce Springsteen: The first sense of dread and paranoia. And I remember being 13 during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. And people were really scared.

Potus Barack Obama: And they should’ve been because—

Bruce Springsteen: The world was going to blow up.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] Let me tell you, when you look at the history of how that went down… that was… a close call.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. Then a little later on, you started having the cultural revolution and… it’s funny because I’ve… as we’ve been talking about the Space Program, I became a real Space Program buff as I got older.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: But in 1969, I was a 19-year-old kid playing in a bar in Asbury Park the night that they landed on the moon. And we were like…“Fuck the moon landing, man.”

Both: [Laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: It’s the man!

Bruce Springsteen: It’s a trick of the man!

Potus Barack Obama: It’s the man!

Bruce Springsteen: And we don’t want to have anything with it. At nine o’ clock we’re playing this fucking guitars and that’s all there is to it. [Laughs] So the place… [Laughs] the place had about 50 people in it. 25 wanted to watch the moon landing on television—

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And all we did was stand on stage. They had the little black and white TV. The moon landing would start. People would run up to the to the band and go, “Play some damn music, man!” And then we started to play and everybody around, “Shut the… fuck up, boys.” [laughs] And finally, I had a bass player that was a bit of a techie and he said, “You guys are freaking roobs, man. I quit. I’m watching the moon landing.” [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: In the middle of the set?

Bruce Springsteen: In the middle of the set!

Potus Barack Obama: And he was right.

Bruce Springsteen: And he was right!

Potus Barack Obama: Come on, man.

Bruce Springsteen: I know, he was right. He walked off and that was the end of it, man. [laughs] I look back on you know and we were all idiots at the time, but uh it was… it was funny.

Potus Barack Obama: So how’d— How did you do… There’s a little bit of a generational gap for the two of us here because I see the counterculture at the tail end of it. It’s already kind of washin’ away.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Uh but, the break in… ‘67 and ‘68 once you start getting the Vietnam protests and—

Bruce Springsteen: The Civil Rights Movement.

Potus Barack Obama: The Civil Rights Movement. There’s a BIG shift right there. How is that feeling to you?

Bruce Springsteen: I think there was a period of… of real disillusionment, you know? Um… I remember, I was a young— ‘65, 15, ‘66, 16, I felt like an outsider anyway because of the life that I’d chosen. And I kind of..I played my part in a cultural… eh countercultural community partly because I was young. I wasn’t really— I was kind of a faux hippie. I wasn’t really a hippie. I always kept one foot in sort of a blue collar world and…and one foot in a countercultural world, and I never truly belonged completely in – in either of them. You know? But, you did get a feeling that the system was fixed and prejudice towards a lot of its citizens.

Potus Barack Obama: Now you were of Draft age–

Bruce Springsteen: I was.

Potus Barack Obama: So, w-what happened?

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Was there a Draft number or…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, yeah… What happened to me was ah… I, My aunt pulled some strings and got me into a community college.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: So, I had one year of being in the community college.

Potus Barack Obama: Right. So, you got a college deferment.

Bruce Springsteen: I met a guy in New York City. Wanted to sign me to a record label deal. 19. Thought I died and went to heaven. I said, he said, “You got to quit school if you’re serious about this.” I had no problem quitting school whatsoever. Glad to. [laughs] “But if I do…”

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: “I’m going to be drafted.”

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: “No worries. I have it completely fixed, you know. It’s not a big deal…”

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: OK. Go home. I tell my parents, “I’m quitting school. Music is what I want to do with my life.” They gave me their blessing even though reluctantly, and I quit school and about few months, two or three months later I got my draft notice in the mailbox. [laughs] This would’ve been 1969.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, so this is just right in the thick of it.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, so I said, “I’ll get my man on the line in New York.”Um, I was never able to get him on the phone again.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Never answered another call of mine.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, did not did not answer.

Bruce Springsteen: Not another call. So… believe it or not, me and two other guys from my band get drafted on the exact same day. All three of us.

Potus Barack Obama: In the band?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. All three of us are going on the bus to Newark. Bright and early we all meet in the parking lot outside of the Asbury Selective Service Office. Everybody is lined up. It’s about 80% young Black guys from Asbury Park, maybe 20% white guys who— you know, just young blue collar guys, factory workers, just guys who weren’t in college.

Potus Barack Obama: The guy… the guys who get drafted.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. Boom, we’re all the bus. We’re going up. Some guys have got some tricks up their sleeves. You know, one guy had a big body cast on that he confided into me was not completely authentic.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: So… [laughs] So, so… I know one thing and one thing only. I’m going to Newark and I’m coming home. Whatever that takes, that's what I’m going to do. For a variety of reasons, 1.) I don’t believe in the war and in 1969 not many people did anymore.

Potus Barack Obama: Mmm.

Bruce Springsteen: 2.) I’d seen my friends die 3.) I didn’t want to die. So… we get there and I pull out every trick I have in the book. I am… I’m signing I’m signing the papers…I’m totally screwing up the papers, as far as they know I am…

Potus Barack Obama: Mentally deficient—

Bruce Springsteen: A gay, drug-taking [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You name it.

Bruce Springsteen: Ah, guitar playing…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Ah brain concussed, which I was. I had been in a terrible motorcycle accident about seven months before and I got a brain concussion. And at the end of the day, you walked down a long hall and it’s a long day — particularly if you’re pulling a bunch of bullshit, [laughs] which is exactly what I was doing.

Potus Barack Obama: And at that point, the guys… they they’ve seen every trick. It’s not like you’re original—

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: At 19 you’re not thinking of anything new that they haven’t seen a 100 times.

Bruce Springsteen: You know… so I’m expecting… you know you go down a long hall. It’s an empty hall. There’s a guy at a desk. He looks up at you and says, “Sorry Mr. Springsteen, you’ve been rejected from the Armed Services.”

Potus Barack Obama: Did you crack a smile or did you look sober and sad?

Bruce Springsteen: Very sober and sad. [laughs] I said oh.

Potus Barack Obama: “Why?”

Bruce Springsteen: And he said, “You can leave this way.” So I left. I went out the door and it was me and a bunch of the guys that were on the bus, well I don’t know what they did but they got out too. And there was a party on the freaking street in Newark, New Jersey, [laughs] with a bunch of guys who were glad that they just got out of the…

Potus Barack Obama: What happened to the other guys in the band?

Bruce Springsteen: Everybody got out.

Potus Barack Obama: Interesting.

Bruce Springsteen: And I got out on the 4-F, which was for ah the brain concussion. You know? The other guys got out on mental deferments for pulling stunts that were [laughs] as outrageous or more than what I was pulling. And these were the times, you know? This is… I had no doubt that I was not going to go.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, the interesting thing for me was… because there was not an active war as I’m entering into being a teenager.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: As a result, um controversies around Vietnam are not formative in my head.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Right? I know them as history, but I don’t experience them. By the time I became president, I think something very valuable had happened and I think this was a hard learned lesson from Vietnam. The American public had come to recognize and revere the service of our troops even those who were critical of certain aspects of U.S. Military interventions.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And you know, when you hear stories from the Vietnam era, you know as I’ve listened to you talking about the Draft and Vietnam and you losing friends and… and just the way the country was being torn apart around that war. Um you know, I remember talking to friends who did go and come home and discover that they were called baby killers and spat on and they became somehow the objects of particularly young people’s rejection of that war when in fact they were kids who were expressing their patriotism, duty.

Bruce Springsteen: Soldiers at the time, I know a lot of the Vets, and they were ignored and and and mistreated for a long time as symbols of quote “The only war America has ever lost.”

Potus Barack Obama: And that, I think was an important maturing of America.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: In..in in being able to distinguish between policies made by men in suits in Washington versus the professionalism and sacrifice and–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Courage shown by those who actually fought.

Bruce Springsteen: This was a major thing. This was the first time… In… in my remembered life that I felt the country had lost its way.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Completely lost its way. Through the loss of my friends and my own experience, you know, ah it was… the loss of innocence.

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Every Man for Himself: Money and the American Dream

Potus Barack Obama voice over: Benjamin Franklin – who did pretty well for himself in his day – is quoted as saying that, “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it…The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filing a vacuum, it makes one.” Wise man, Mr. Franklin. Growing up in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, my family and Bruce’s didn't have a lot. And didn’t expect a lot when it came to money. But we had enough. American society wasn't so stratified then. Life was still a struggle for a lot of people, and the doors of opportunity were too often closed for women and people of color. But thanks to strong unions and government investment, upward mobility wasn't a myth. Hard work just didn't deliver financial stability and the promise of a better life for your kids, it also provided people with a sense of dignity and self worth. It's something that Bruce and I have both spent a lot of time thinking about: how the American economy changed, how America became more unequal, and how in the chase for the almighty dollar we lost some of the values of community, solidarity, and shared sacrifice that we are going to need to make us whole once again.

Potus Barack Obama: Part of your story about the draft is you suddenly realize there’s a class basis to this entire thing. Where… How is it that the kids who are going to college don’t have to go? And and and this is part of what separates World War II, that Greatest Generation, from the Vietnam Generation is suddenly that sense of, “We are gonna hook it up so that the privileged don’t have to make sacrifices for bad decisions being made in Washington.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And I think there’s a consciousness of that injustice that ends up disillusioning people as well.

Bruce Springsteen: At that age, we just took that for granted.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: That hey… We’re not up there, we’re down here. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: And we’re playing by the rules of down here.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: You know? And if we want… If we don’t want to go, there are street prescriptions that you’re going to have to follow to get out, and it’s going to involve some crazy-ass shit, you know? And uh that was, you know, that nobody could afford the doctor’s notes or the this… or the that…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Or or or getting back…getting into college. I barely got in the first time. I don’t even remember feeling aggrieved by it at the time.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, You— You don’t feel some class resentment.

Bruce Springsteen: No, no, you didn't…

Potus Barack Obama: You’d just be like, “Yeah, of course the rich kids are going to have a different deal than I.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah! Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Now… Do ya… But you don’t think of that raising questions about the whole myth of the American Dream and upward mobility and anybody could make it?

Bruce Springsteen: I think, you know, you lost your faith in life, liberty and the pursuit of meaning for all. You lost your faith in that. And there was a little bit of, “Ooooh, it’s a little every man for himself. You know?” The economic picture in Freehold, in my childhood, 1950s was a very, very different picture than the economic picture that runs across the country today. If you were middle class in Freehold or if you were the wealthiest people in Freehold, there was a street you lived on. I remember it was called Brinckerhoff Avenue. It was the widest, tree-lined street in town. And to— To find poverty, you had to really look for it. It was there, usually in the communities of color, but the difference of income equality felt so much less that it never… eh those ideas never entered your mind. I know my parents who lived hand to mouth. You know, I mean spent all the money they had this week until they had money next week and then spent all of that— I mean literally we all lived that way. We never thought of ourselves as struggling or… We were clothed, we had food, you know, and uh… we had a roof over our heads though our home was pretty funky but…

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: But… it was— It sat there in the midst of other homes that it wasn’t that dramatically different.

Potus Barack Obama: It wasn’t like you were ashamed of the house or you thought, “Man, we need to get like fancier curtains or—”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, ahh in our house I did have a little bit of that going.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Because for some reason, I lived in one of the oldest houses in town and for some reason ahhh…For some reason… Our house was… it got pretty dilapidated. You know? But even then… I didn’t, I never thought of myself as a… as a poor kid. I lived in the middle of a middle-class neighborhood.

Potus Barack Obama: Part of what you’re saying though is if you’re growing up as a kid there and you’re looking around, you think, “Alright, I’m pretty much on par with everybody else.”

Bruce Springsteen: With Bobby Duncan down the street or with you know with Richie Blackwell over here…

Potus Barack Obama: Yes, and maybe his dad runs the bank uh whereas my dad, you know, works at the bank or works in the factory.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: But… I don’t feel as if I am somehow on the outside looking in.

Bruce Springsteen: No, you don’t feel like you’re a— You don’t feel like you’re victimized or a victim, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Right, right.

Bruce Springsteen: Ah you’re aware of some class differences, of course. But it… it it seems much less dramatically than people are aware of it today.

Potus Barack Obama: But did— But did you have folks in the neighborhood, whether friends of yours or kids who said, “Man, you know, I’m getting out of here because I’m going to make a lot of money. You know, I’m gon get that new latest, you know, Chevy, and that’s a sign…that's a marker of that I’ve made it.” Just this notion that you needed to make a certain amount of money or have a certain amount of stuff because if not then you were… you were a failure or you were going backwards or you hadn’t been ambitious enough. Was there any of that kind of sensibility?

Bruce Springsteen: In my experience, it’s a much more modern phenomenon. You know?

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: I don’t remember that being the huge, huge topics of conversation in high school. Er everybody wanted to make a living and uh–

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: If you were going to do really well, you were going to go to college.

Potus Barack Obama: Right. That—That that was a marker.

Bruce Springsteen: Big marker. Huge marker. Huge–

Potus Barack Obama: If you went to college, that indicated something a little bit different.

Bruce Springsteen: You were special.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm.

Bruce Springsteen: You know? But that changed dramatically in the United States in the ‘70s, certainly the ‘80s.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: Gilded Age of the ‘80s.

Potus Barack Obama: So— So— Well, fast forward a little bit, and I’m in middle school and then high school in the ‘70s. And I see all this through the lens of my grandparents who I lived with most of the time. And they are Depression Era, World War II era folks.

Bruce Springsteen: Right, as my grandparents were.

Potus Barack Obama: And we lived ah… in an apartment in Honolulu. Maybe 1,200 square feet? I remember as an adult going back to the apartment and just thinking, “Yeah you know, this is… really modest.” But at the time I never, ever thought about, “Wow, I don’t have much.”

Bruce Springsteen: No…

Potus Barack Obama: And I didn’t consider… the world foreclosed to me because I was not wealthy.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And my grandparents, they wanted me to go to college and and sacrificed for me to go to prep school that more or less assured, unless I got kicked out for drinking…

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: That I’d get to college.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I’m— I’m saying all this, you know… I mean not, I mean—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: I mean we sound like these old guys—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] It’s terrible. It’s so bad.—

Potus Barack Obama: “Man, I used to walk to school barefoot,” and blah blah blah.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] It’s so bad.

Potus Barack Obama: But but but I think you and I had the same sense that this shift took place. It's right around the ‘80s.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Early ‘80s. Right after Reagan gets elected,you know he breaks the air traffic controller’s union. We’ve got stagflation.

Bruce Springsteen: Right. And you have the beginning of the kind of media that “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” introduce, which brings the culture of materialism into everyone’s home, 24-hours-a-day and suddenly they’re being told, “You are not good enough unless you have this.”

Potus Barack Obama: “This stuff.” This is right around the time I moved to New York. And New York was coming out of bankruptcy. But Wall Street is surging, right? And this is when the movie ‘Wall Street’ comes out and ‘Greed is Good.’

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Michael Douglass in the high collars.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm. And and and the—

Both: And the huge cell phones.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] The size of a backpack!

Potus Barack Obama: And—

Potus Barack Obama: Manhattan in ‘81, ‘82, ‘83 is this good perch to watch this shift in culture. It was sort of the epicenter of it. And as you said, it is suddenly in your face. Look, you you.. You know, it’s a little bit like ah that ah David Mamet play, “Glengarry Glen Ross”–

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Where you got a bunch of salesmen. The guy says ah, “First place, ah you get a Cadillac. Ah second place, steak knives. Third place, you’re fired.”

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right?

Bruce Springsteen:That’s right.. thats…

Potus Barack Obama: There’s suddenly that sense of “Hey—” You know…

Bruce Springsteen:The… Merciless!—

Potus Barack Obama: “You you.. you are either going to win or you are going to lose in this capitalist game, and you don’t want to be on the back side of that thing.” What I saw then in my peers, because I did go to college, the shift in terms of young people thinking, “If I don’t get to Wall Street or a white shoe law firm to punch my ticket, then I could start slipping down the scales.”

Bruce Springsteen: Let me give you a ‘for instance’… my kids are going to school. Nice little co– school from across the street from my house. I go for first day of parents–

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: introduction.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Ah, I sit down. The first thing is the headmaster gets up and he says, “Now, I don’t want you parents worrying that when your child has its first day at Bear Stearns…”

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] This is the opening salvo.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: My kid is only 4! [laughs] You know? But that was… that was what was in the air at that point of time…

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, you can— you can feel it. That anxiety and when I told people that I was going to work as a community organizer, the— the— the notion that…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know, having graduated from this college that I would be taking an occupational path that nobody could really even understand what it was, made no sense. Now, you know, this is all happening again the backdrop of manufacturing moving offshore, unions getting busted, CEOs in the ‘50s and ‘60s are making maybe thirty times—

Bruce Springsteen: Right—

Potus Barack Obama: What the average guy or gal on the assembly line are making. Now, he’s making 300 times.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: So part of what happens is when suddenly in the 1980s… uh you have a politics, you know Ronald Reagan describing government being the problem. “Let’s cut taxes, let’s cut public services.” It also means cutting public jobs, cutting union jobs, and that meant… you know, the combination of manufacturing going away and public sector jobs going away, decimates the the opportunity for Black men, in particular, but also Black women to get work. And just as they’re finally about post-Civil Rights Movement you know cracking open the door to get—

Bruce Springsteen: Right—

Potus Barack Obama: Some of these jobs that previously had been banned to them, the rug gets pulled out from under. So there’s a real shift in how capitalism operates and people’s wages really are stagnating and the inequalities really are getting greater. So so this is just—

Bruce Springsteen: And the middle class—

Potus Barack Obama: A change in mindset there is an actual reality—

Bruce Springsteen: Is now getting squashed.

Potus Barack Obama: Yes.

Bruce Springsteen: You know?

Potus Barack Obama: They’re getting squeezed.

Bruce Springsteen: And so… the question is, or one of the questions is… were the ‘40s and ‘50s, and somewhat ‘60s, just a break in between two Gilded Ages?

Potus Barack Obama: And the answer is… a lot of its yes.

Bruce Springsteen: Alright, so I wrote this in 1982 or I guess ‘81. This is “Atlantic City.”

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night… And they blew up his house, too.. Down on the boardwalk, they're getting ready for a helluva fight… Gonna see what those racket boys can do… Now there's trouble busing in from out of state…

Bruce Springsteen: In the early— In the ‘80s, there’s a dread in the air.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen:Really— Maybe you can trace it back to the end of the Vietnam war, and— and… But there’s a dread in the air and in the idea of the American Dream that hadn’t been present previously because ehh I… I wrote a very strange album in the early ‘80s called Nebraska—

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, beautiful.

Bruce Springsteen: It was this very quiet record that dealt with all of these issues at that moment, you know? Now, I’m writing about these things when I’m not that conscious about them. You know? I mean I’m… I’m… I’m following what I’m feeling in the air.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] Well, I got a job and tried to put my money away… But I got debts that no honest man can pay… So I drew what I had from the Central Trust… And I bought us two tickets on that Coast City bus… Well, now, everything dies…

Bruce Springsteen: And that’s just what I started to do. That and the combination of my father’s life, my experiences in Freehold where I sort of saw what happens when there there’s some union problems and suddenly the factory is moving down South and everybody is unemployed, sort of set— And and the cost that— that… And the cost that was paved by the families in town and my own, moved me in writing the direction that that that I became. And really, like I said, I didn’t… I didn’t write it with the idea of being socially conscious or or with any sort of awareness. I was just telling stories that I was feeling at the time. You know?

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] We're going out where the sand's turning to gold… So put on your stockings, baby, 'cause the night's getting cold… And everything dies, baby, that's a fact… But maybe everything that dies someday comes back…

Potus Barack Obama: Alright, so here’s— here’s— here’s, I guess, a question for both of us, which is… We start off not thinking a lot about money, but thinking, in your case, about music and your art, and I’m deliberately saying I’m not taking that path.

Bruce Springsteen: Now, that’s a big choice to make coming out of the kinds of schools you came out of and given the opportunities—

Potus Barack Obama: Right—

Bruce Springsteen: That you would’ve had, how did you come to make that choice?

Potus Barack Obama: You know, part— part of it was I think because my mom was a little bit of a freethinker.

Bruce Springsteen: Oh, yeah, Yeah, you’re right.

Potus Barack Obama: And she wandered around becoming an anthropologist—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Went into development work. You know, so I guess, you know, she was not all that practical to begin with and kind of a romantic. And I’m sure she got— put little bit of that into me. But part of it…you know, was… a recognition that the American Dream had never been fully available to Black folks. When I thought about what I should aspire to…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: It wasn’t… “Man, let me be Jay Rockefeller.”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: It was… “Look at John Lewis.”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: “Look at Dr. King. Look…look at these folks who out there tryin’ to make the world better and open up opportunities for people.” So… so partly cause of my own need to figure out who I was as a…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Black American, that path looked to me like it was something necessary for me to do. My salvation was there.

Bruce Springsteen: But that’s… that’s an interesting word, “salvation.”

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, well—

Bruce Springsteen: Because… it it turns what you’re doing into a redemptive exercise.

Potus Barack Obama: Right. And that’s what it was for me.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: I find myself in Chicago working with folks who are going through these struggles and asking these questions, and and in a very concrete way trying to figure out; how am I work and how am I going to get my kid work and how am I going to get my kid into college, uh or at least into a trade, what’s happening to the value of my house, right? They’re going through this stuff and I’m seeing it in concrete terms. And that does become redemptive for me because now my story merges with theirs—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: And the larger American story. And if I can— If I can figure out to help that community that I’ve now become a part of, and as it turned out my wife, my future wife, grew up in…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Maybe I can redeem a piece of America, too, and make it my own. Right? That that becomes my mindset. And and so—

Bruce Springsteen: Those ahh ahh… are fundamentally my own motivations. And there’s a deeper question of where that comes from cause it’s a response to something.

Potus Barack Obama: We’re trying to figure out how do we feel whole… and make the world around us…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: feel whole, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Well put.

Potus Barack Obama: But the interesting thing is… Michelle, partly because she was very clear about who she was, loving parents, you know, family, community, she doesn’t feel like she needs to get redeemed. She feels like, “I just need some money.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: So… So when I met… When I meet her, she is driving a Saab—

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And she’s joined a wine club.

Bruce Springsteen: Okay.

Potus Barack Obama: You know..She, from her perspective initially, she punched her ticket.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And… Ah, I remember the first time, you know, she invites me to a party with a bunch of her, you know, friends and… and they’re all these young professionals. I am very much the misfit, you know, because at the time I… one of my responses to this era…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: I guess I left this part out, was I went in the opposite direction.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: I was… I had—

Bruce Springsteen: You refused– [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I had like three shirts. I had one plate. And I lived in these scruffy looking ah…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Apartments and all of my furniture was, you know, scavenged from out of the street.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Milk crates… I knew that… that there laid temptation. Like if I went down the path of starting to want stuff…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: That that was a hamster wheel you never got off of.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: So, I’m with all these young professionals. They’re looking all like ah you know, Richard Gere in American Gigolo kind of—

Bruce Springsteen: That was the look! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And ah… And I walk in, and I got kind of a— I had one sports jacket that didn’t quite fit me right—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: That I’d gotten off some discount store. Ironically, I do think it was part of my power as a politician. People could sense that Michelle and I had lived through and understood what it was like to have a whole bunch of student loans to pay, what it was… what it was like to have some credit card debt and what it was like to have to say no to things. And it wasn’t an act, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And I guess the question, you know I’m interested in how you dealt with it, was you started off chasing music, but…

Bruce Springsteen: Uh uh I dealt with it really… very simply—First… [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: But by the time you are 27, 28, 30, there— there comes a point—

Bruce Springsteen: I was 30.

Potus Barack Obama: What… what’s the point where you suddenly, “Shit, I’m rich.”

Bruce Springsteen: 30…I would..32, 33, what happened was I signed so many bad deals that for ten years after I recorded… I was… pretty broke, you know? [laughs] But then, several things happened. One, the in… the live concert industry began to become very–

Potus Barack Obama: Lucrative.

Bruce Springsteen: Lucrative. And ah, we went out and play a lot of shows, and I had finally paid off most of my my debts from all my stupid mistakes, and suddenly I came home one day and and and I said, “I’m rich!” – in the course of one tour. I went from I had $20,000 grand in the bank when I started, I’d spent all my money in 1980. That’s almost ten years after I signed my record deal. That’s what I had to my name. And I came home at the end of that tour with a lot more than that and and I said, “Oh my god. As far as I’m concerned, I’m rich.” Second thought, “I hate myself!”

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Because now I’m in a trap! You know before that..Ya know I’m— Now I’m— Now I’m there you know, and… and so my first luxury was the luxury of ignoring my money. But I remember I bought one new thing. I bought a $10,000 dollar Chevrolet Camaro. Every time I got in it, I felt like I was driving in solid gold Rolls Royce and I was embarrassed.

Potus Barack Obama: You didn’t feel good about it.

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: You felt self conscious about it.

Bruce Springsteen: Very self conscious.

Potus Barack Obama: Well, the other thing is it runs contrary to your brand.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: In terms of who you are thinking about both your audience and your subject.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah! And who I who who who I feel like, you know? So, I don’t want to… I don’t want to settle for that. I want that wholeness that you were talking about.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s what I’m after.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: You know?

Potus Barack Obama: Redemption.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s correct. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Salvation.

Bruce Springsteen: So I was very, and I consider myself healthily, skeptical when I started to change station.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: You know? And—

Potus Barack Obama: Even as this whole atmosphere because it just accelerates, right? I mean all through the ‘80s into the ‘90s—

Bruce Springsteen: Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Potus Barack Obama: You know, it is not only… are you making more and more money, but the temptations of how to spend your money become more and more lavish. And your peers, you know, folks in your musical stratosphere uh are not quite as restrained in terms of how that money is being spent.

Bruce Springsteen: Ahhh everybody… Everybody has a different attitude about it. And I don’t you know really judge anybody, all I know is what—

Potus Barack Obama: I’m just wondering, I know I know— I’m not saying you judge them—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: What I am saying though is during this period how are you… how are you thinking to yourself…

Bruce Springsteen: How am I processing it all?

Potus Barack Obama: “Why am I not buying a huge mansion?” Or–

Bruce Springsteen: I am thinking that, and I don’t have the answer, which is a big problem because I got to a place where I said, “I want a home.”

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm.

Bruce Springsteen: “A home is a part of that wholeness.”

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: “I can’t find one. I can’t get one. I can’t buy one.” Right? And I realized, “Oh, I get it. I get it. I get it. I can’t buy one because I don’t deserve one…you know? Ahh a car. Why do I feel bad in it? “I don’t deserve it.” Why don’t I have a partner and a home life and children and satisfactions of my own? “Well, I don’t deserve any of those.” When I finally made some money, it forced me to interrogate myself about who I was… Ahhhh, I was very conscious about remaining at least… I remained physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually a part of the community that I came from. That was really important to me. I stayed in New Jersey. I hung out in the same bars. I played in the same bars on the weekends when I could, you know. I had the same group of friends, and I probably took it to an extreme. But looking back on it, I would rather have taken those things to an extreme than gone the other way. I’m I’m interested in the story I want to tell, and I know that that story and my very self is inexplicably connected to the community, the people and the place that I came from.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And if I sever that connection…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: I’ve lost something, and I’ve lost something essential. So I’m skeptical moving forward, very, very carefully and tiny steps by tiny steps until, I I remember, I bought a a house in in in the most exclusive community in this little part of New Jersey.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And I felt terrible about it.

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Right? I go. First night I’m in that house I’m like, “What the fuck!? Have I lost my fucking mind?!”

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: “Have I gone crazy!? What am I doing in this place!?” You know? But what I realized was, looking back on it now, if you drove by the house, it’s a nice lawn and it’s a nice sort of upscale, middle-class house. We raised our kids in it for 30 years.

Potus Barack Obama: Right. But it’s not the Hearst Castle.

Bruce Springsteen: No! It’s not. And— And— And so…. And I realized that part of it, it was a big house, but what did I hope to do? Fill it. That was why I got it. I got it to fill.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: To fill that wholeness that I was searching for.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: You know?

Potus Barack Obama: You know, I know it's true for you Bruce and certainly true for me that you know, we’re always questioning in this culture… “Ah am I losing touch? Am I falling prey to this huge consumer engine that's being.. You know, fed to us every single day?” “Ahhh am I forgetting what’s important?” And and that requires you sometimes to step back and reflect and and and maybe um, get that perspective. You know, last year, my Christmas present to Michelle… we were in Hawaii and I arranged for us to have a dinner on the top deck of this hotel overlooking Waikiki. Left the girls behind. Some friends arranged this Hawaiian trio.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Played some songs.

Bruce Springsteen: OK. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know? Had the the … had the torch light.

Bruce Springsteen: It sounds good! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: It was a good set up. Watched the sun go down. I was quite pleased with myself.

Bruce Springsteen: Oh, well done.

Potus Barack Obama: That best part of the evening, right at the beginning, we started tracking all the places that we had stayed over the 20 years that we had been coming to Hawaii.

Bruce Springsteen: Ohhh.

Potus Barack Obama: Starting with the first when we slept on my grandparent’s couch.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Then the second we got actually a motel room, it was like five miles from the beach. [laughs] And then we moved to a legit hotel that had a pool in the general vicinity of the beach. Then we went to like a Sheraton, you know, and and and this is over the course of 10 years—

Bruce Springsteen: You’re gettin’ there! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And then there was a place, you know, with the girls and there was a separate room that’s sort of like ah a junior suit I think is what they called it.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: So that you can close the door, and the kids outside so that it’s possible a little bit of privacy—

Bruce Springsteen: Very nice. Yes, very nice! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: When you go on vacation with your spouse.

Potus Barack Obama: You can track, sort of, our economic status, right, over the years–

Bruce Springsteen: Okay.

Potus Barack Obama: …through our vacations. You can almost see every place that we had stayed, but the pleasure of it was reminding ourselves that we were just as happy in each of those places. The constant was our time together, and the setting really had not made any difference.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Initially, there had been a little burst of excitement, “Oh you see they got the little shampoos in the..in the bathroom—”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know, then you go to a place that actually has like a robe, you know like, “Man, try on the robe.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] A robe…

Potus Barack Obama: This is something.” Right? After that initial moment, it was still the sunset that mattered and you holding hands. It was still the sound of the girls laughing as they were running after each other in the sand. It was the free stuff that had nothing to do with the places you were staying at.

Bruce Springsteen: Those are the elements of joy.

Potus Barack Obama: That was what made you whole.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Right? And— And I think communicating that as part of our politics, our stories, our songs reminding ourselves of that is how you then get to the point where you can build a coalition to actually change the policies.

Bruce Springsteen: This is a… ready? Here we go. This is “Used Cars”. “Used Cars” was a song, it probably captured the feeling of my family life, my childhood and my neighborhood as good as anything that I’ve ever wrote. The thread bareness of a lot of our lives. Ah, because all I remember was when… when my dad drove in that driveway with that new used car [laughs] it may have been a freaking Lincoln Continental brand new off the show floor was how excited we got. And looking back at it now, you know… I guess there’s a happiness and a sadness to it, but anyway this is “Used Cars.”

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] My little sister's in the front seat with an ice cream cone… Ma's in the backseat sittin' all alone… As my Pa steers her slow out of the lot for a test drive down Michigan Avenue… Now my Ma she fingers her wedding band… And watches the salesman stare at my old man's hands… He's tellin' us all 'bout the break he'd give us if he could but he just can't… Well if I could I swear I know just what I'd do… Now mister the day the lottery I win I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again… Now the neighbors come from near and far… As we pull up in our brand new used car… I wish he'd just hit the gas and let out a cry and tell 'em all they can kiss our asses goodbye… Mister the day the lottery I win I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again…

Potus Barack Obama: There’s the very real economic inequalities that have arisen that have to be fixed.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And…

Bruce Springsteen: If we don’t fix those, the country is going to fall apart.

Potus Barack Obama: Well well… Because when folks lose that sense of place and status, when suddenly steady work alone isn’t enough for you to support your family or to be respected when you have con…chronic insecurity. Tho–There’s a bunch of policy stuff that has to be fixed.

Potus Barack Obama: But the policy fixes are going to come in part because the country starts telling a different story about what’s important. That shift that we were talking about in the ‘80s, that “Greed is Good”, that never really went away.

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: It accelerated. And… the argument between conservatives and liberals, left and right, a lot of times the argument had to do with how much redistribution, you know, how much taxes there should be, ah but never really got to some of the core issues about… why is it that we’re measuring ourselves just with how much stuff we got? And is there a way for us to think about that differently because if… if we’re thinking about it differently, then now it becomes easier for those who have a lot to maybe give some up [laughs] in order to make sure that those who have a little have enough—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right. You know, I think that… there’s been this rush of information, of a certain life-distort–life distorting information…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Alright? And… it’s not going away. Ever. So… it’s going to call on people for both, as I said, have interpretive abilities that possibly generations before us did not need to have. But they’re going to have to make decisions about what’s valuable. What’s truly deeply valuable.

Potus Barack Obama: And and and I guess that’s…that’s the point I’m…I’m trying to get at is… there..there’s a story, a collective story we tell about what do we value.

Bruce Springsteen: There it is.

Potus Barack Obama: And… A part of what I tried to do in my political career, part of what I’m trying to do post-politics is… tell a story that is counter to the story that has been told that says, “The American Dream is defined by you ending up on top of that pyramid that’s gettin’ steeper and steeper, and ah the more people below you, the better off you are” because and and this sounds—

Bruce Springsteen: And that’s become the prime story where I don’t believe that was the prime story 40 or 50 years ago.

Potus Barack Obama: Exactly. Our expectations and taste in terms of what it means to have made it have shifted, um and then obviously it’s in our politics, right? Ah which is how you get somebody like a Donald Trump elected because he represents in the minds of a lot of folks…

Both: Success.

Bruce Springsteen:I guess so.. Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Right? Everything is gold plated. You got.. You got the big plane with the big name. And you got the buildings with your name on it, and…and and you know, you’re going around firing people and that must be… And particularly for men, that is a sign that you have succeeded, right?

Potus Barack Obama: And one of the things that I never understood is why people would want an individual success and the exclusion of other people. You know there's entire communities that are premised on living behind a gate, cut-off from the larger community. Isolated. Maybe resented by neighbors. And and that just always felt lonely to me. Felt empty. You know, eh it's like ah Citizen Kane sort of rattling around in his big mansion, you know muttering about Rosebud. But that is the attitude of so many in power. That's that’s the model of success. That is the end point of the culture we so often promote. The good news is it’s actually a place where I think you can see a convergence, a potential convergence among the religious impulses that are in the church and, you know, are oftentimes thought of as conservative…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And the… the the spiritual impulses of a lot of young progressives who say, “Look, you know, I want to preserve the planet. I believe in sustainability. I believe in equality.” Ah, you know there is a spiritual dimension to our politics and how we define success and our connection to each other and status in our society that is… is… is out there waiting to be tapped and…and and and that’s, I think, a big part of the work we got to do to to make America feel whole again.

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Wrestling with Ghosts: American Men

Potus Barack Obama voice over: A topic that comes up between Bruce and I all the time is the message American culture sends to boys about what it means to be a man. It's a message that for all the changes that have taken place in our society hasn't really changed all that much since we were kids: the emphasis on physical toughness and suppressing your feelings, having success defined mainly by what you own and your ability to dominate. Rather than on your ability to love and care for others. The tendency to treat women as objects to possess rather than full fledged partners and fellow citizens. The more we talked, the more obvious it became how these narrow distorted ideas of masculinity contributed to so many of the damaging trends we continue to see in the country. Whether it is the growing inequality in our economy or our complete unwillingness to compromise on anything in our politics. And maybe, Bruce and I realized, we’re more attuned to these issues because of the complicated relationships we both have had with our fathers; flawed role models that we spent much of our lives coming to terms with.

Bruce Springsteen: You know, my dad was the kind of guy where I can remember one day I..I brought him a video camera. I said, “Dad, I want you to tell me the story of your life.” It lasted for five minutes. [laughs]

Both: [laugh]

Bruce Springsteen: And… And he said basically nothing, you know. He simply was a… he was an unknowable man and… and… I have to believe with a great pension of secrecy. And I believe he got this from his father, and the only thing I knew about my grandfather was he disappeared for periods of time and returned home.

Potus Barack Obama: And nobody knew where he went?

Bruce Springsteen: No, no, no, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Or what he was doing?

Bruce Springsteen: It was..It became a part of his life and my father carried on that tradition of secrecy about his own life. Really, when I think about it, well my father disappeared for a day a week and he was always on his own, and my mother was at home with us and I couldn’t tell you where he went or what he did during that particular period of time. And… it was something that was handed down and something I had to work hard not to emulate.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, the interesting thing for me was not having a… my own father in the house. I have a stepfather for a while. Ah…

Bruce Springsteen: How long did…did you have the stepfather?

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah well… you know, I lived with him probably for four years ah from the age of 6 to 10. And he was a kind man, treated me well, taught me how to box and… Ah and then um—

Bruce Springsteen: What happened, what happened to him?

Potus Barack Obama: Well, he’s Indonesian. We moved to Indonesia. We lived there for four years. At the age of 10, my mom, who’s worried about my education, decides, “Okay, I need to send Barry,” that was my nickname back then, “I need to send him back to Hawaii so he can get an American education.” And so I come back to live with my grandparents in the States, and by that time my mother’s marriage to my stepfather is already fraying a little bit. You know, they— they separate amicably. And ah, shortly thereafter, he actually has a liver ailment and dies very young.

Bruce Springsteen: Ohhh…

Potus Barack Obama: Um and I remember sobbing, you know, when he died.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: Even though…

Bruce Springsteen: Well, if you cried when he died—

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, he had an impact… One of the things of not having a… a father in the house was also… not seeing someone who had a craft or a trade or a profession that looked like something that I should emulate or do.

Bruce Springsteen: How old is your grandfather?

Potus Barack Obama: You know, he’s… he’s relatively young. Um I mean he was probably— because my mom was only 18 when she had me so he’s probably 45 when I’m born, which means that when I’m 10… ah certainly by the time I’m a teenager he’s probably not much older than I am now. Although he looked a whole lot older.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: He lived a whole lot older, right? And some of that is generational.

Bruce Springsteen: And you’re having to look towards a 55-year-old white man you know—

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, who just doesn’t— there's…there’s… there was nothing in him, and I loved him deeply and I still see parts of him in me, but there was nothing in him that I said, “Oh, that’s what I should be.” And he was somebody who at the end of the day wasn’t satisfied with his life.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Because he had big dreams that were never really fulfilled.You know, he was— He was the kind of guy that would um…when I was 10, you know, on the weekends he’d sit down and he…he would’ve drawn out like the kind of house he would love to build.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And… And he’d make sort of architectural drawings that he had looked up in some magazine on how to do it.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: With great detail but the house never got built.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And my grandmother was a practical one who, you know, she had worked her way up from being a clerk to becoming a— a vice president of the local bank, and ended up being our primary breadwinner in the family, which was – for that generation a source of resentment.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, that was like my mom—

Potus Barack Obama: But it was unspoken. But I— But I say all this just because to get back to what we were talking about earlier, there wasn’t really any obvious role models out there for me to follow. And the fact that I was in Hawaii where there were almost no African American ahh men you know, meant that you really had to piece this thing together on your own. So now as.. As..as a teenager, I’m trying to figure out, “Alright, what does this mean…ah to be a man?” It means you got to be an athlete. Right? And so, basketball becomes my obsession. It means you got to chase girls, successfully or not. [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: I’m not doing good so far but go ahead keep going. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right? You got— You got to do that. Um… how much beer you could consume?

Bruce Springsteen: Oh man.

Potus Barack Obama: How… You know, how high you could you get?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: How were you in a scrap?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Right? And that was sort of what the culture told you was how you became manly. Right? And..and and if you didn’t have a father in the house, then a lot of it you’re picking up just from popular culture. Right? So you’re watching James Bond movies or you’re watching, in my case, you’re watching Shaft and Superfly and, especially, athletes. That becomes the model of cool and strength—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. All of those things I think you’re right. I mean, if I could’ve done any of those things you listed I would never have become a rockstar!

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Never! People in my line of work were people who couldn’t do any of those things, so they had to find an alternate route.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] To getting girls—

Bruce Springsteen: To do those things! To get the girls. To get loaded. To dominate. I mean, you know, and really, you know … I had a…I had… the arc of my work life was a little funny because I was at my most popular, I feel, when I had an image that was least like myself, you know?

Bruce Springsteen: I had a very alpha-male image…

Bruce Springsteen: Right in the middle of the Reagan-era ‘80s.

Potus Barack Obama: The Boss.

Bruce Springsteen: Right. And that view of the United States as something powerful and domineering was resurgent…

Bruce Springsteen: So, it’s funny how I look and see, in my own way, I f–pursued that archetype myself. I mean what’s more domineering than coming out in front of a stadium of 50,000 people. It’s…it’s gla—

Potus Barack Obama: With some drums and some… smoke. [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: That’s–It’s gladiatorial, alright? [laughs] It’s a gladiatorial experience on some level.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: So, I can’t deny the aspect of that…that played upon me and that I took satisfaction in.

Potus Barack Obama: The interesting thing is the degree to which that hasn’t changed that much. Um…

Bruce Springsteen: No…

Potus Barack Obama: You read articles, I talk to my daughter’s friends about boys growing up, and so much of popular culture tells them that the only clear, defining thing about being a man, being masculine, is you excel in sports and…and sexual conquest. And and that—

Bruce Springsteen: And violence.

Potus Barack Obama: And violence, right? Those are the three things, and— and and violence, if it’s healthy at least, is subsumed into sports.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Later, you add to that definition: making money. Right? How much money can you make? And… there were some qualities of the traditional American male… that are absolutely worthy of praise and worthy of emulating. That sense of responsibility, meaning you’re willing to do hard things and s–make some sacrifices for your family or for future generations, right?. The Greatest Generation showed that again and again. And that handling your business… that sense of responsibility… of being an adult.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Alright. Um…But there is…there is a bunch of stuff in there that we did not reckon with and— and now you’re seeing with MeToo… part of what we’re dealing with in terms of ah you know…women ah still seeking equal pay, part of what we’re still dealing with ah in terms of domestic abuse and violence. Um… There was never a full reckoning–

Bruce Springsteen: No…

Potus Barack Obama: Of what our dads… who our dads were, what they had in them…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: How we have to understand that and talk about that. What lessons we should learn from it. All that kind of got buried.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, but we sort of ended up being just ‘60s–

Both: versions…

Bruce Springsteen: Of our dads.. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right? And—

Bruce Springsteen: Carrying all the same— sexism.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah— Yeah, carrying all the same baggage. All the same. All the same anger, all the same pent up frustrations—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: All the same messages. And there was one other thing that I know you can relate to that was part of it… was… you don’t show weakness–

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: You don’t show emotion, you don’t talk too much about how you’re feeling.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: You know? “I’m handling my business.”

Bruce Springsteen: Now, I had that tempered by having a father who was pretty seriously mentally ill, and so in high school I began to become very aware of his weaknesses even though his outward presentation he was kind of a bulky guy, he was kind of bullish and…and totally confirmed, you know, to that archetype.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Alright? But… things went pretty wrong in the last years of high school and in the last years that I lived with him at our house. And uh… my father was a funny guy. There was something in…in his illness or in who he was that involved a tremendous denying of..of of his family ties. And this created enormous problems for me as I got older because I couldn’t make a family connection. I always remember him complaining that if he hadn’t had a family he would’ve been able to take a certain job and gone on the road, but it… it was a missed opportunity. And he sat there over that six-pack of beers night after night after night after night and that was his answer to it all, you know? So… we felt guilt. You know… And that was my entire picture of masculinity until I was way into my 30s where I began to sort it out myself because I couldn’t establish and hold a relationship, I was embarrassed simply having a…a…a woman at my side. I just… I just couldn’t… I couldn’t find a life with the information that he’d left me, and I had..I was trying to over and over again.

Bruce Springsteen: All the early years I was with Patti, ahhh er if we were in public I had a… I was very, very anxious. And… I could never sort…sort that through and I realized, “Well, yeah, these are the signals I got when I was very young that a family doesn’t strengthen you, it weakens you. It takes away your opportunity. It takes away your manhood.”

Potus Barack Obama: “It… it it neuters you.”

Bruce Springsteen: “It neuters you.” Exactly.

Potus Barack Obama: “Constrains you.”

Bruce Springsteen: And this is— this is what I carried with me for a long, long time. And I lived in fear of that neutering and so that meant you live without… without the…the love, without the companionship, without a home. And you have your little bag of clothes and you get on that road and you just go from one place to the next.

Potus Barack Obama: “And you’re free.”

Bruce Springsteen: You think you are.

Potus Barack Obama: That’s the notion.

Bruce Springsteen: Right. You think you are. And I thought I was.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm.

Bruce Springsteen: For a long time I thought I was until I tried to have something… [laughs] beyond what was allowed. You know…Beyond what I was allowing myself. And… you don’t notice it when you’re in your 20s. Right around 30, something didn’t feel quite right. Did you have to deal with that at all?

Potus Barack Obama: You know…. So, there’s some stuff that’s in common and…and then there’s stuff that tracks a little differently. So, my father leaves when I’m 2.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And I don’t meet him until I’m 10 years old when he comes to visit in a month in Hawaii.

Bruce Springsteen: What brought him to visit you eight years after he left? And then for–

Potus Barack Obama: So— So the story is… My father grows up in a small village in the west… northwestern corner of Kenya. And my father goes from herding goats to gettin’ on a jet plane and flying to Hawaii and traveling to Harvard and suddenly he’s an economist—

Bruce Springsteen: Right, right. Unbelieve— unbelievable.

Potus Barack Obama: And… in that gap, in that leap from a…a really rural, agricultural society to suddenly him trying to pretend he’s sophisticated, man-about-town, ah you know, I think something was lost there. Something slipped. And so… Although, he was extraordinarily confident and charismatic and, by all accounts, could sort of run circles around people intellectually…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Emotionally, he was scarred and damaged in all kinds of ways that…I… Er ah I can only retrace from the stories that I heard later because I didn’t really know him. Anyway, when he’s a student in Hawaii, he meets my mother. I am conceived. I think the marriage comes after the conception.

Bruce Springsteen: Okay.

Potus Barack Obama: But then he gets a scholarship to go to Harvard and he decides, “Well, that’s where I need to go.” He’s willing to have my mother and me go with him, but I think there’s cost issues involved and they separate. But they stay in touch. He goes back to Kenya, gets a government job and he has ah another marriage and another set of kids.

Bruce Springsteen: When he comes back to visit you, he has another family—

Potus Barack Obama: He’s got another family. You know, I think he and his wife are in a bad spot.

Bruce Springsteen: I see.

Potus Barack Obama: I think… I think what he’s probably coming back for is to see my mother who still sees him when he was at that point in his life where everything was a possibility. And I think he was probably trying to court my mother to come back and have her grab me and all of us move back to Kenya, and my mother, who still loved him, was wise enough to realize that’s probably a bad idea. But I did see him then for a month. And… I don’t know what to make of him.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Because he’s very foreign. [laughs] Right? He’s got a British accent and he’s got this booming voice and he takes up a lot of space. And everybody kind of defers to him because he was just a big personality.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And um… He’s tryin’ to sort of tell me what to do.

Bruce Springsteen: Oh… ho ho.

Potus Barack Obama: You know? He’s like, “Ana,” that’s what he’d call my mother. Her name was Anne. He–“Ana, I think that boy…He’s watching too much t–television. He should be doing his studies.” And… you know so, I wasn’t that happy that he had showed up.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And I was kind of eager for him to go.

Bruce Springsteen: Ah.

Potus Barack Obama: Because I…I had no way to connect to the guy. You know, the guy is… you know, he’s … the guy is a stranger who’s suddenly in our house. So, he leaves. I…I dont…I never see him again. We…we..we write. When I’m in college and I decide, “If I’m going to understand myself better, I need to know him better.” So I write to him and I say, “Listen, I’m going to come to Kenya. I’d like to, you know, spend some time with you.” He says, “Ah yes. I think that’s a very wise decision you come here.” And um… And then I get a phone call probably about six months before I was planning to go… or a year before… planning to go and ah he’s been killed by a car accident. But two— two— two things that I…I discovered later or or understood later. The the first was just how much influence that one month that he was there had on me–

Bruce Springsteen: Amazing…

Potus Barack Obama: In ways that I didn’t realize. Right?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: So, he actually gave me my first basketball. So…So–

Bruce Springsteen: WOW…

Potus Barack Obama: I’m suddenly obsessed with basketball but—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: How’d that happen, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: Um, I remember that he… the…one thing we did together he decided to take me to a Dave Brubeck concert. Now, this is an example of why I didn’t have much use of the guy because, you know, you’re a 10-year-old American kid–

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And some guy wants to take you to a Jazz concert.

Bruce Springsteen: Take Five— you’re not goin’–[laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Take Five! So I’m sitting there and… I kind of don’t know what I’m doing there. It’s not till later that I look back and say, “Huh. I become one of the few kids in..in my school who becomes interested in Jazz.” And… when I got older my mother would look at how I crossed my legs or gestures—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And she’d say, “It’s kind of spooky.” But…but the second… The..the second thing that I learned was… in watching his… his other male children – who I got to know later when I traveled to Kenya and met some of them. I realized that, in some ways, it was probably good that I had not lived in his home. Because much in the same way that your dad had…was struggling with a bunch of stuff, he was struggling with a bunch of stuff and… it created chaos and destruction and anger and hurt and…and longstanding wounds in them that I just did not have to deal with.

Bruce Springsteen: Well I think what’s fascinating is the impact he had on you in one month. That’s in one month.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: The thing that happens is… when we can’t get the love we want… from the parent we want it from… how do you… how do you create— How do you get the intimacy you need? I can’t… I can’t get to him and I can’t have him. I’ll be him. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll be him… I’m way into my 30s before I even have any idea that that’s… that’s my…my method of operations. I’m on stage. I’m in workman's clothes. I never worked a job in my life.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Played freaking guitar my whole life [laughs]. I got twenty or thirty extra pounds on me from hitting the gym. My dad was a beefy— a beefy guy. Where’d that come from? You know… Why do I spend hours lifting up and putting down heavy things with no particular, for no particular reason whatsoever? Right? [laughs] My entire body of work, everything that I’ve cared about, everything that I’ve written about draws from his life story. Not necessarily my own, secondarily. Primarily from his. You know, I thought I went down a lot of roads that did not lead me where I wanted to be. I don’t think I got to where I wanted to be as a man until Patti was in my life and schooled me on some things I needed serious schooling on, [laughs] you know?

Bruce Springsteen: Here is where I was lucky. 32, I go into a hardcore analysis. I don’t have my children until I’m 40, so I’m eight years into looking into a lot of these things because what I found out about that archetype was it was fucking destructive in my life.

Potus Barack Obama: [Laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: You know? It drove away people I cared about. It kept me from knowing my true self. And… I realized, “Well, if you wanna..wanna to follow this road, go ahead. But you’re going to end up, you’re gonna end up on your own, my friend. You know? And if you want to invite some people into your life, you better learn how to do that.” And there’s only one way you do that. You’ve got to open the doors and that archetype doesn’t leave a lot of room for those doors to be open because that archetype is a closed-man. Your inner self is forever secretive and unknown, you know stoic, ah silent, ah not revealing your feelings. Well, you got to get rid of all of that stuff if you want something. If you want something… if you want a partnership. If you want a full family who you are going to allow and give the kind of sustenance and nurture and room to grow and be themselves and find their own full lives. You better be ready to let a lot of that go, my friend. Let me add to the pain of that with this— [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] Last night I dreamed that I was a child… Out where the pines grow wild and tall… I was trying to… make it home through the forest… Before the darkness… darkness falls…

Bruce Springsteen: There was a point where…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] I heard the wind rustling…

Bruce Springsteen: I started to realize… you know…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] through the trees…

Bruce Springsteen: That you wear a cross to bear, you know, my dad…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] And ghostly voices…

Bruce Springsteen: You know, never really spoke to me through until the day he died.You know, he truly didn’t know how.

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] I ran with my heart pounding…

Bruce Springsteen: He truly did not… He didn’t have… He just didn’t have the skills at all it seemed…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] calling me in the night…

Bruce Springsteen: And once I understood how ill he was it… it— you know, it makes up for a lot of it… But it doesn’t matter so much to a 6-year-old boy or a 8-year-old boy or a 9-year-old boy…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] Shining 'cross this dark highway…

Bruce Springsteen: You’re not going to have an understanding of what your father is suffering with…

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] where our sins lie unatoned…

Potus Barack Obama: You end up wrestling with ghosts. Um–

Bruce Springsteen: I guess that’s… that’s what we all do.

Potus Barack Obama: And… ghosts are tricky because if… if— if you are measuring yourself against someone who is not there then… you know, in some cases I think people uh whose fathers aren’t there and their mothers are feeling really bitter about their fathers not being there… Ah what they absorb is just… how terrible that guy was and you don’t want to be like that guy.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: In my mother’s case, she took a different tact, which was she only presented his best qualities—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s interesting—

Potus Barack Obama: And not his worst. And… in some ways that was beneficial because I never felt as if I had some… flawed inheritance–

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Some kind of something in me that would lead me to become an alcoholic or an abusive husband or–

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Any of that. Instead what happened was…I… I kept on thinking, “Man, I got to live up to this.” Right?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And so as I got older I think part of what happens to me— You know, Michelle always wonders sometimes, “Why is it that you just feel so compelled to just do all this hard stuff? I mean, why don’t you— what’s this hole in you that just makes you just feel so driven?”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And… I think part of it was kind of early on feeling as if, “Man, I got to live up to this. I got to prove this. Maybe the reason he leaves is because he didn’t think it was worth staying for me and no– I will show him that… you know, he made a mistake not hanging around cause…cause I was… I was worth investing in.”

Bruce Springsteen: You’re always trying to prove your worth.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah…

Bruce Springsteen: A lifetime journey of trying to prove your worth to…

Potus Barack Obama: Somebody that’s not there.

Bruce Springsteen: Somebody that’s not there anymore.

Potus Barack Obama: And— And and who may not have been thinking about you, not because anything to do with you, but because he’s confused and he’s lost and he’s damaged in various ways, right?

Bruce Springsteen: But like you say, “We end up wrestling with ghosts.” The trick is… you have to turn your ghosts into ancestors.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Ghosts haunt you. Ancestors walk alongside of you and provide you with comfort and a vision of life that’s going to be your own. My father walks alongside of me as my ancestor now. It took a long time for that to happen.

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Finding Home: Fatherhood

Potus Barack Obama voice over: For all of our outward success, Bruce and I both agree that the most important anchor over the years has been our families. We were lucky enough to find remarkable, strong, independent women to push us and challenge us and ground us, and call us out on our B.S… Women who helped us become better versions of ourselves and forced us to continually re-examine our priorities. Michelle and Patti also gave us the single greatest gift of our lives; the chance to be fathers. To experience the joys and trials and profound humility of being husbands and dads. We spent some time trading notes about what wives and kids continue to teach us, what values we want to pass on, what examples we want to set and what kind of country we want to leave behind for them to inherit.

Potus Barack Obama: We’re now dads.

Bruce Springsteen: Oh yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And ah h-how did that change you? How m-much on the job training did you still have to do?

Bruce Springsteen: Ooof.

Potus Barack Obama: Was there still a lot of stuff you had to work out before you kind of got to the point where you said, “Alright, this is the kind of dad I want to be?”

Bruce Springsteen: The problem that I had was I didn’t trust myself for a long, long, long time with someone else’s feelings. All you have is faith to go on. If you take a baby step, you’ll be able to take another one. Where did that faith come from? It comes out of the love in your life. My case: Patti was an enormous source of love in my life and a deep well of faith for me. Gave me the faith in myself to risk parts of myself that I’d never risked before and say, “Hey, I think I’m there at a place where I can… I can hold this down and let the chips fall where they may.” If it all crumbles and comes apart and winds up in ruin, then that’s what happened. You know? But if it doesn’t, what if it doesn’t? Then what am I going to do? [laughs] What if suddenly I find myself with a family and with a long standing love? Who… who am I then?” All of these things came into question way before being a dad…You know Patti and I, we were just together and we were just loving… loving each other. That was… that was our business of the day: To build something. I’m…35, 36 years old. That’s getting up there, you know? And deep inside I want to have a family, and I felt like I got to be honest with her. I said, “Patti, I-I don’t… I don’t know if I can make this.” And she said, “Well, we’ll see.”

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: You know? She says, “It’s okay if we take it a day at a time.” And so we did. I came home one night. I think I was away for a few days. And… I walked in the room, she said, “Oh! By the way, I’m pregnant.” … That’s what it sounded like. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Crickets.

Bruce Springsteen: Crickets.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And… we’re on the bed. She tells me. I look away and she doesn’t know exactly how I’m going to respond, but there’s a mirror on the inside of the door and she
says, “Hey, I just saw you smile.” [laughs] That was it! Many smiles later here we sit, you know? [laughs] My boy about to be 30 years old.

Potus Barack Obama: It moves, man.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, well—

Bruce Springsteen: Your oldest— how old is she…

Potus Barack Obama: Malia is… Malia is 22.

Bruce Springsteen: 22.

Potus Barack Obama: Sasha is 19. So, I meet Michelle uh, while I am working at a law firm for the summer. She’s already a lawyer. She’s younger but had gone straight through school. I’d taken my diversion into community organizing after college so… so I’m an older law student. I’m 28. She’s 25. And she comes from a comp-completely orderly family and they had a big extended family beyond that. Michelle and I always talk about how part of the attraction that we had for each other, in addition to her being very attractive…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhm.

Potus Barack Obama: And funny and smart as a whip, was that in me she saw some things that had been missing in her childhood, which was adventure, the open road…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: A bunch of risk taking, uh traveling the world and… And so that appealed to her. I looked at her and her family and I thought, “Oh, you know, well they seem to know how to set this up.” Right? I-I…I had a vision of…of wanting to make sure that my kids were in a place of love and I liked the idea of… not necessarily a big family, but…but a… ah extended family. Like there was…there was a community of people—

Bruce Springsteen: Very nice—yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Who were all part of their lives, right? And Michelle’s family was very much like that. And Michelle, she wasn’t shy. You know pretty early on she just says, “Look, I really value my career but the thing I really want to be is a mom…

Bruce Springsteen: Oooh.

Potus Barack Obama: You know? And I really care deeply about family.” That very first summer that we were together, I thought to myself, “This is somebody I could see spending my life with.” It didn’t mean it was gonna be…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, that I’d have the wherewithal to go ahead and commit. And so when I come back, ah I’m graduating from law school, I live in her apartment, which is
upstairs from her parent’s apartment. Her father had died in the interim. He had some health issues. I had flown back and…and been with her during that time. And… I think from her perspective she maybe saw that I’m not a guy who was going to be afraid to be there for her when she needed it. So by the time we get there— Look, once you come back to a city and you’ve moved in in her place, now the clock has to be ticking ‘cause it’s like well—

Bruce Springsteen: You were there. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “What are you doing here?” And I did not have a big panic about it. There was a part of me and this goes back to our earlier conversation about just being a man in a culture that says, in comedies, in television, in popular culture, it’s always like, “Man, you’re gonna get—”

Bruce Springsteen: Of course. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “They got their hooks in yet.”

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: “You gotta try to wriggle free and are you ready to—”

Bruce Springsteen: I’m surprised you didn’t have a bigger issue with that given your history.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah!

Bruce Springsteen: Your familial history. I really am–

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah! I was under no illusions that the family life I would have would be one in which… I could sit back and just be the lord of the manor…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And… have her doting on me—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, from the top I knew that wasn’t going to happen with Patti—

Potus Barack Obama: Fixing my meals and… Yeah. I…That just was not going to be…

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: An option.

Bruce Springsteen: I found, with Patti, she was trying to define for me a broader sense of maleness and of masculinity — a freer sense of it. And that…that scared me.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: That… I’ve met someone who can change me.

Potus Barack Obama: Mmmm.

Bruce Springsteen: And who can assist me in changing myself. That’s a great influence to allow into your life. But you realize that if you don’t do that, you are not going to have a full life, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah— no—

Bruce Springsteen: It’s a catch 22.

Potus Barack Obama: Maybe because in my family it was my mother and my grandmother who were the adult figures that I both relied on most and respected most that it was natural for me to see women as my equals, as my friends, as my partners in work…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah—

Potus Barack Obama: Or play, and it also meant that the kind of relationship where a woman is just batting her eyes at me and telling me how wonderful I am… I’d get bored. Right? Or I just couldn’t take that seriously because well that certainly wasn’t who my grandmother was and that wasn’t who my mother was. Ah, uh I expected to be challenged. I expected to be questioned. Uh and my… the women I found most interesting, most attractive were women who interested me because of how they thought. I’m not saying I wasn’t paying attention to how they looked, but—

Bruce Springsteen: Sure.

Potus Barack Obama: The-Their ability to make me laugh, their ability to make me see something I hadn’t seen before, ah their ability to force me into asking questions about who I was and what I wanted…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: What I expected. All that was something I naturally gravitated towards. And I… I don’t know. I liked the idea of having something kind of hard.

Bruce Springsteen: Hey, very similar to ah Mizz…. my red-headed gal here.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, absolutely.

Bruce Springsteen: Patti went with a lot of guys…

Potus Barack Obama: Yes.

Bruce Springsteen: And she left a lot of broken hearts.

Potus Barack Obama: A lot of broken hearts out there.

Bruce Springsteen: In…in in in her trail.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And I was… I was around. [laughs] I said, “Damn, she’s living like I live.” In the ways she was approaching her relationships and she didn’t like to get tied down. She didn’t want— She had the leash, you know? [laughs] And..And that I found… I found that attractive about her…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And I found that like… “You know what? I-I need somebody with that kind of power.”

Potus Barack Obama: This is somebody who is my equal and that I am always going to think highly of and e-e-even when I’m mad…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Even when we’re in an argument I’m going to say, “Yeah, but she’s something.” You know? She’s–

Bruce Springsteen: Period. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Period. Full stop, right? Because— Because to me, at least, if you didn’t have that, then you wouldn’t weather the storms. If you’re going to have a family, if you aren’t choosing a partner who you had confidence is going to pass on strength and values and common sense and smart to your kids… And when I looked at Michelle I could say she was sui generis. I didn’t know anybody like her. I thought even if the marriage didn’t work out I would always admire and respect her, and so having been with her I would have…I would never regret that. So we— You know yeah, I asked her to marry me at… that, that summer when…when I had moved in. And–

Bruce Springsteen: And how old were you then?

Potus Barack Obama: So I was 31. And so then… um we had this nice stretch of about three years…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Where she was doing her thing in her career. I was doing mine. And then we started trying to have kids. Took a while. Michelle had a couple miscarriages…

Bruce Springsteen: Ooh.

Potus Barack Obama: And we had to kind of work at it. And when Malia was finally born, we were more than ready to be parents, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Oooh.

Potus Barack Obama: Because there had been this six year stretch in which…

Bruce Springsteen: I got ya.

Potus Barack Obama: Probably for about half of it, we’d been trying, so…so there was no surprise to it. There was no, “Are you sure?” But I had no doubt the minute I saw that little creature…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Oh, man.

Potus Barack Obama: With those big eyes looking up at me, I said, “My goodness. I will do anything for you.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] I know.

Potus Barack Obama: And when the second one came, when Sasha showed up, I felt the exact same way, you know, and the love of being a father was not something I had to work on…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] Oh no, that’s implicit.

Potus Barack Obama: It was physical, it was emotional, spiritual, you know… The attachment to my children I felt entirely and completely. And I…and I thought to myself, “Okay. If the baseline is unconditional love. I’ve got that.”

Bruce Springsteen: It’s something I hadn’t… We had an incident where Patti was a few months pregnant. She had some bleeding. So, we go to the doctors, go in the office. I’m standing there and suddenly I realize, “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do in the world, right now, if somebody says there’s a lion in the hall can you please go and get him out [laughs] of the building for now… there is a bear… there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to have Patti and the baby be alright…

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: It was–

Potus Barack Obama: Visceral.

Bruce Springsteen: It was visceral. And it was my first acquaintanceship with unconditional love. There was a fea— I felt a fearless love for the first time in my life. First time in my life. I didn’t— I never knew I’d be capable of even feeling that. All I want to do right now is be the man that my wife and Evan was just born first… and my son
needs.

Potus Barack Obama: You just didn’t want to disappoint them.

Bruce Springsteen: You don’t want to disappoint them—

Potus Barack Obama: And the idea of disappointing…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Your family and and not… not being there and doing right, you just… you couldn't…I could not abide. I thought, “Ugh, this would… this would be…”

Bruce Springsteen: And I think that was the question, “Am I capable of not disappointing?”

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: I wasn’t sure. You’re never completely sure I suppose…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: But after the children were born and you start to find the resources that you have inside you that you didn’t know they were there… That is a gift you get from your children and from your wife. You–your acknowledgment of a new self. And the realization of your manhood. It was hu–huge. You know, I woke up. I felt as someone, not necessarily someone different, but someone so much further down the road than I thought maybe I’d ever get.

Potus Barack Obama: This is one place where I do think the idea of what it means to be a man changed in a real way. By the time I had Malia, it wasn’t just that I was completely absorbed and fascinated in love with this bundle of joy and this woman who had gone through everything [laughs] to give me this joy. There was I think a sense that, oh dad should want to spend time with their kids and should want to—

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm. Ideally. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Burp ‘em and change diapers.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: An–And I took the night shift.

Bruce Springsteen: So did I. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Because I was the night owl.

Bruce Springsteen: So was I. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And there’d be some breast milk in the freezer.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I had a set of instructions and midnight…and two o’ clock in the morning I’d be patting them on the back…

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And feeding ‘em and—

Bruce Springsteen: I loved all of that—

Potus Barack Obama: And putting ‘em on my laps and they’re staring up at you and I’m reading to ‘em and talking to ‘em—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, I used to love going to—

Potus Barack Obama: Playing music for ‘em.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: And I think the joys of that were something that, you know, in the same way that…for a long time men couldn’t see the delivery, right? I mean like that was like taboo.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…they wouldn't let you in.

Potus Barack Obama: I-I completely loved that and the timing was good because Malia was born. She’s a fourth of July baby.

Bruce Springsteen: Wow.

Potus Barack Obama: The state legislature was out. I was already in the state legislature at that time. The law school was out. I was teaching law at the time. I could put my law practice on hold. So, I just had all this time to just wallow in it.

Bruce Springsteen: That's good.

Potus Barack Obama: And then Sasha was born. She was a summer baby, same kind of thing. Now here here… here’s the one thing I– I had to wrestle with and and Michelle challenged me with. And and the challenge of fatherhood for me was the nature of my work was exhausting, all absorbing and often took me out of town. The emotion… emotional investment in fatherhood was never hard for me. There’s nothing I enjoyed more than just hanging out with my kids. Listening to them as they ge-got older, started having their own little insights and the discovery of the world…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] The reacquaintance with wonder that they provide. Looking at a leaf…or a snail…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Or asking questions about why this and why that—

Bruce Springsteen: Sure.

Potus Barack Obama: All that stuff. Eh ah… loved children’s books, loved children’s movies. Eh ah…I was all in.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: The only thing I didn’t love, you know, children’s pizza—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I always thought it was a little bit… [laughs] We used to…They like that lil’… Those little flat cheese pizzas that don’t have anything on them. But…but what I was going to say though is eventually it wasn’t summer. And eventually, I’ve got to go down to Springfield, Illinois, a three-hour drive for the state legislature. And when I get back, I’ve got town hall meetings I’ve got to do—

Bruce Springsteen: Right—

Potus Barack Obama: And I’ve got… And then eventually I’m running for office and then you know..I’m gone for five days at a time. And from Michelle’s perspective, in which family was not just a matter of love, was not just a matter of being present when you are there, but was a matter of no physically being present because you’ve made choices and organized your life so that you can be with your family more.

Bruce Springsteen: Right. So you had your children… let me say, young in your work life.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: Alright, I had my children relatively late in my work life.

Potus Barack Obama: You we–You were sufficiently well established that you could set your own terms—

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely, I—

Potus Barack Obama: You’d be like if I don’t want to tour right now I don’t have to tour.

Bruce Springsteen: I had already gone to the top of the hill and over the other side. You know?

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: I was like… I had a certain kind of success I wasn’t going to have again and didn’t expect to have it again, wasn’t pursuing to have it again. I was happy now, I’m going to be a working, playing musician, and I had all that out of the way really before Patti and I got together, you know?

Potus Barack Obama: That’s interesting. Yeah, no that makes sense.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, so I was at a point in the life where the relationship and the family had really become a-a priority and I could give myself to it because of where I was.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And also, you’re a musician— Musicians create their own schedule if you’ve had a certain amount of success.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: You get up when you want to. You go in the studio when you want to. You put your record out when you want to. You go where you want to go. You come home when
you want to come home. You can say, “I’m going to go away for three days, I’m going to go away for three months.” But if you know, when I go away for three months it’s bad when I come back.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: When I go…when I go away for three days, it’s okay when I come back. I better start going away for three days!

Potus Barack Obama: It’s a better— It’s the better choice.

Bruce Springsteen: We figured out things like, “Well, whenever you’re away for more than three weeks, that’s bad.” Now for a touring musician, that’s not much. But all we knew was that when we passed a certain point it wasn’t good for our relationship.

Potus Barack Obama: Mhmm.

Bruce Springsteen: We started…whoops… split into other and separate lives. Anything that’s going to keep–add to my stability I want as a part of my life. The things that are
destabilizing my life I don’t want those as a part of my life now because they will poison me.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And they will poison my beautiful love here, you know? And so we slowly figured all this out together.

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And you know through making some mistakes…And you’re king on the road. Everybody just wants to say, “Yes!”

Potus Barack Obama: And you’re not king at home.

Bruce Springsteen: No, “how can I do this for you?”—

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: “What can I do to make you happier? What can I give? Oh ohh wha… My house! Here, take my house! My Girl–Take my girlfriend!” You know… [laughs] It’s just like everybody’s, “What can I possibly give to you the man who writes the songs that the whole world sings?” [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah…

Bruce Springsteen: So you’re out there and you’re going, “Ah, ahh eh this isn’t so bad…I mean what you know. ” But, when you come back you are not king.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: You are the chauffeur! You are the short order cook in the morning you know. And the thing is you’ve got to be at the place in your life where… and you love it.

Potus Barack Obama: What you’re saying about… your schedule though and and where you were in your career, that is a difference. Because essentially we have kids and within the span of two or three years I am suddenly being catapulted— I mean look Sasha was, when I ran for the U.S. Senate, Sasha is only 3 years old.

Bruce Springsteen: Wow.

Potus Barack Obama: When I’m sworn in as a U.S. Senator, Sasha is 4 and Malia is 8. Something like that. Three years later, I’m President of the United States, and in the interim for a year and a half I’ve been on the road not for three week spans but for…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: Big chunks of time.

Potus Barack Obama: And it was hard.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, the burden I-I put on Michelle was enormous.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Because she was still— Look it wasn’t even as if I was working for money that would allow her to take a break. She was still working, initially full-time and then part-time when I started running for President. Here’s you know, smart and accomplished woman who has her own career that she now has to adjust to my… my-my crazy ambitions.

Bruce Springsteen: You know…

Potus Barack Obama: I’m missing the girls terribly. The first six months of me running for President I was miserable because I was missing that family bad. And we got through that only by virtue of Michelle’s heroic ability to manage everything back home and the incredible gift of my daughters loving their daddy anyway.

Potus Barack Obama: What I didn’t anticipate was the fact that I get to spend much more time with my kids once I’m President.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Because now, I’m living above the store.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I have a 30-second commute. And so I just set up ah ah a rule: I'm having dinner with my crew at 6:30 every night unless I’m, you know, traveling. Ah, but my travel schedule..was.. is very different now because people come to see you.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And… so unless I was overseas, I’m gon’ be home at 6:30 for dinner.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And I’m going to be sitting there and I’m going to be entirely absorbed with stories about the annoying boys and the weird teacher and the drama in the cafeteria, reading Harry Potter and tucking them in and listening to whatever music they’re now listening to—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: And that actually was my lifeline. Right? In, in an occupation in which I’m dealing daily with mayhem, chaos, crisis, death, destruction…

Bruce Springsteen: God bless…

Potus Barack Obama: Natural disasters, right? And…and so I always say that the degree to which Michelle and those girls sacrificed and lifted me up kept me going…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Prevented me from either getting cynical or despairing. Reminded me why I was doing what I was doing and…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And spurred me on because this…It better be worth it, what I accomplished, this job, this work…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Is worth the time that I’ve spent away from them and..and the birthday parties or the soccer games or the whatever that I’ve missed. You know, eh ah that better…that better count.

Potus Barack Obama: What do you think you learn being just a dad? We talked a little bit about being a husband but…

Bruce Springsteen: I know it was tough being President, but let me explain to you how hard it is making an album. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Making an album is pretty hard.

Bruce Springsteen: I’m making a dumb joke.

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Listen, making an album—

Bruce Springsteen: I had you for a minute though. I had you going for a minute!

Potus Barack Obama: Making an album is…is pretty hard!

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: But it does seem a little more fun sometimes.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] I think so.

Potus Barack Obama: A little more fun. The ah…What— What did you learn from being a dad?

Bruce Springsteen: From being a dad… Ah, so the hardest thing that I had to learn how to do was to be still. I had some habits I wouldn’t give up. Old musician habits. Partly it was the schedule I liked to keep. I liked to stay up till three or four in the morning, get up at twelve in the afternoon. And for the first several years of our children, Patti was kind of… she kind of letting me do it. I was picking up, ‘cause the kids were still babies so I was taking the night shift…

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: If they cried at night or something happened at night I was awake. And I would… And so when the morning came around, the late morning came around, she kind of pick up… But as the kids grew older, there was a lot more morning work than there was night work.

Both: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And I was kind of enjoying that. And she just came over to me and she says, “You know, you don’t have to get up. But if you don’t, you’re going to miss it.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well, the kids are at their best in the morning, that's when they’re the most beautiful. It’s when they have reawakened from a night of dreams. They’re at their most gorgeous at that moment in the morning and you’re never gonna see it.” Okay, I’m thinking I don’t want to miss that. [laughs] You know? So I said, “What am I going to do?” She says, “You’re going to make breakfast.” I said, “I don’t know how to do anything. [laughs] I only know how to strum that freaking box.” [laughs] Try to put me any place else and I’m no good to anybody. She said, “Well, you’re gonna learn.” I got pretty good at it. I got pretty good at eggs. I got pretty good at…. Like I said, I became a pretty good short order cook. If– I could get a job at one point anywhere at any dinner from say from six to noon and I’d be alright.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] You know… And uh… And she was right about the children. If I saw them in the morning, it was almost like I had seen them for the entire day. And if I missed them in the morning, you could never quite make up for it for some reason. That was presentness. One, I was not my father, I didn’t have to chase that ghost or worry about that anymore. That was a part of my past. Ah two, be present in this world wherever you are at any given moment. Be present in their lives. I used to think like… if somebody interrupted me while I was writing, “What the— holy smokes! Do you know the great thoughts I’m thinking right now?”

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] “This might’ve been the greatest American song, ever.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] “It could’ve been!”

Potus Barack Obama: “Had you not walked in here.”

Bruce Springsteen: “I’m being— that’s right! I’m being…I’m being ah.” So I… that’s where I started, alright?

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] And where I ended up was I realized, “Oh wait, wait… songs, yeah yeah. A good song is there forever. Music is there in my life forever. Children– gone.”

Potus Barack Obama: They grow up.

Bruce Springsteen: So, those were the… those were initial things I picked up from fatherhood.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, man.

Bruce Springsteen: What about yourself? What’s…what's the biggest lesson you learned from becoming a parent?

Potus Barack Obama: You know… Michelle figured out much earlier than I did that kids are like plants. They need sun, soil, water, but some of ‘em are oaks, some of ‘em are pines, some of ‘em are willows and some are bamboo and…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Those seeds of who they are and the pace and ways in which they’re gonna unfold are just uniquely theirs. I think I had a notion with Malia and Sasha there was sort of a way of doing things, and what, you know, Michelle figured out earlier than I did but I also ended up learning, was each one is just magical in their own ways. They–A branch is going to sprout when it’s going to sprout. [laughs] And a flower is going to pop when it’s going to pop.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And… You just…ah roll with that unfolding, that unfurling of who they are being comfortable just discovering them as opposed to feeling as if you’ve got— as if… as if it’s a project, right? And sometimes you watch, there’s a term now, “helicopter parents” right?

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Which…But that idea of, “Okay, I approach this the way I would approach some powerpoint [laughs], you know, ah project I’ve got to check every box—”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: “I gotta be… you know, this is when my kid’s has to be doing this.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: “And this is when they…” You know, thinking of it more as just throw a bunch of stuff at them, be with ‘em, play with ‘em, teach ‘em values. Ah you know…We we… We were good about saying to the girls things like, “Ww-We’re not going to sweat you on your grades…”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: “But we are going to sweat you on, did you put in some effort?”

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely.

Potus Barack Obama: Right? “We’re not going to… We’re not going to give you a hard time about making a mistake, but we will give you a hard time if you’re lying about making a mistake…”

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Or… “If you mistreated somebody…” Right? Eh, so you know you put some guardrails around…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Them in terms of values, but otherwise… And I think this was particularly important because they were growing up in the White House, they had more than enough expectations and eyeballs on ‘em.

Bruce Springsteen: Jesus. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: You know, Secret Service following them around…

Bruce Springsteen: Oh my god. At that age too.

Potus Barack Obama: I mean I remember— Look, we’d go… Ah when… Malia or Sasha would have a playdate, Secret Service had to go to the house of the person they were visiting—

Bruce Springsteen: Oh man.

Potus Barack Obama: And check everything out

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And the poor parents, you know. So we’d have to make friends with the parents and say, “Listen, sorry about the intrusion.” And when they went to the mall or to the movies, you know, they’ve got somebody—

Bruce Springsteen: Oh boy.

Potus Barack Obama: Walking behind—

Bruce Springsteen: They handled it with such grace.

Potus Barack Obama: They did! And so, given all that, the last thing I wanted to do was to make them feel as if they have to be something.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: As opposed to just being themselves. I still measure myself…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And I still fall back on a lot of those attitudes about what does it mean to be a man…

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: And if I had a son, I suspect I would have been tougher on him in some ways and I’m wondering for you with your boys, how conscious you had to be.

Bruce Springsteen: You know, I’d learn the great word in my house was “No.” We— we— “We don’t go outside of our comfort zone. We don’t talk about our feelings in this way. Ah we don’t cry over these things.” And I realized at a very young age, I had taught my oldest son to say no to the things… the things that he needed. And he was quite young, I remember I came to him… he might have been 8 or 9, he was still pretty young. But I remember going into his room one day and saying, “Evan… I think I’ve taught you a very bad lesson, and I would like to apologize to you for doing that. I think I’ve taught you to not need me because I’ve been afraid of what that meant as your, as your father. And that’s something I really… need to apologize you for and I need to tell you I need you. I need you so badly in my life. So, so dearly as my son…that I would like to try to connect with you in a way that…that that that I hadn’t been doing. You know?” And I realized that was gonna take a lot of work. And so when I was working, instead of thinking, “Oh, I’m so busy now thinking great thoughts I don’t want to be disturbed…” I stopped any time he came in or any of the children came into my room. I stopped working. The only way to teach them that “no” wasn’t the answer was for me to start saying, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.” Over and over and over again.

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}

Finding Home: Fatherhood

Potus Barack Obama: Bruce and I closed out our conversations with a return to where we started, asking ourselves: “What will it take to restore faith in America’s promise?” “How to tell a new, unifying story about the country that is true to our highest ideals while at the same time doing an honest accounting of where we fall short?” It’s not an easy thing to do in these cynical times, especially when we’ve got a thousand different media outlets and internet platforms that figured out you can make lots of money fanning people’s anger and resentment. Somehow though, some kind of way, we both believe that such a story is still there to be told and that folks across the country are hungry for it. We are convinced that for all our disagreements, most of us long for a more just and compassionate America. An America where everybody belongs. We started exploring that spirit with the tale of an unlikely gift that a stranger gave to me on the campaign trail. And with Bruce explaining the story behind one of his most popular and misunderstood songs.

Bruce Springsteen: Tell me, when…when did you think you first might wanna…want to run for President? I mean…

Potus Barack Obama: Uh oh. [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: What was your ambition? [laughs] What made… [laughs] What made you want to do that? [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Somebody must’ve dropped me on my head.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: I-t it traces back to everything we’ve been talking about…Ah this idea of bringing America into alignment with its ideals and that had been my work, that had been my purpose. If you’re…if you're doing it right, running for President is not actually about you. It is about… finding the chorus, finding the…the collective. Um early in the campaign I-I go to South Carolina and I go to this town called ah Greenwood. The reason I go there is because I was desperate for the endorsement of this state legislator and she said, “I’ll give you the endorsement if you go to this town.”

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: “My town.” I said, “Yeah.” Turns out it’s an hour and half from the nearest…

Bruce Springsteen: Okay.

Potus Barack Obama: Large city and it’s at a time I’m down in the polls and we get there and it’s pouring down rain, and ah there’s a bad article about me in the New York Times. And you know, everybody is talkin’ about how you know, “It looks like he was all flash and”– Finally get there and… It’s this little maybe a park center or something. And I walk in and I’m damp, I’m in a bad mood, and suddenly uh as I’m going around shaking hands with everybody you hear this–

Potus Barack Obama: “Fire it up!”

Bruce Springsteen: “Ready to go!”

Potus Barack Obama: “Ready to go.”

Potus Barack Obama: It turned out it was this [laughs] w-wonderful woman named Edith Childs.

Potus Barack Obama: She was like ah…a part-time private detective… [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Okay… [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And she had a…You know, she had a great smile and she had you know… a pretty flamboyant ah dress and hat on, and ah apparently she made a habit of saying this chant.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: of “Fired up, ready to go.” And… and I had thought at first, “This is crazy.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: But everybody was doing it, so I thought, “Well, I better do it. I’m here anyway,” and suddenly I started feeling kind of good. And…and I-I just enjoyed—

Bruce Springsteen: That’s great.

Potus Barack Obama: The eccentricity of…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Of spirit that she was showing.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: She was just a cheerful spirit.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Right? Suddenly, I’m in a better mood. We’re having a good conversation with a bunch of folks. When I leave, I ask my staff, “Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?” That’s what you discovered when you’re running for President is people would lift you up.

Bruce Springsteen: Sure.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s…it's not… you. You’re channeling their energy. Their hopes. Their power. Ah, their resilience. Now…th- that… What you would also discover is, you’d expect, is that some of those darker strains of American life are there. So you know when I go down to South Carolina, I have that great story with Edith Childs. I also have moments where I’ll go into a diner… And start shaking hands with people and everybody’s —

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: being very fr-friendly, and then you’d get to a table…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And they won’t shake your hand.

Bruce Springsteen: Hmm.

Potus Barack Obama: You know… And then you’ll drive out and suddenly there will be a confederate flag being hoisted by a bunch of protesters. The message isn’t that subtle. [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: Overall though, for every one of those, you got 10—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: 15, 20, 30… moments of…of small glory, you know? There’s no such thing as one way to be an American, and…and that’s why when you see some of the politics that has emerged…

Bruce Springsteen: Crazy… so ugly man.

Potus Barack Obama: when you…When you heard—cause during our campaign, right, you had Sarah Palin wh-who was sort of a prototype and…and.. and a precursor of…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: What was to come. And she’d talk about real Americans and I, obviously, didn’t qualify. And..and when I hear that I say, “You haven’t been around much cause there—”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “Americans come in every shape and every size.”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And that’s the joy of running for President. You know, you visit all fifty states. You meet people of every walk of life and of every station, and there is a running thread among us….errrrr or between us. There’s..there’s this link. There’s this bond. Even you know, conservatives, the liberals, there’s…there’s a certain set of common assumptions, but they get buried very deep. Part of the intensity of our argument is precisely because what we’re arguing about are the contradictions in ourselves.

Potus Barack Obama: And you know, there is one question everybody wants me to ask you: Tell me what was going on through your mind when you were writing, “Born in the U.S.A.”

Bruce Springsteen: Alright, so, Paul Schrader, who—

Both: Directed “Blue Collar.”

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Sends me a script called, “Born in the U.S.A.”

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: Sits on my table. It’s 198…2. I’m writing a song about Vietnam because I have met a vet named Ron Kovic who wrote a book called, “Born on the Fourth of July.” I’ve met a veteran named Bobby Muller. Both of these guys have been sh-shot and confined to wheelchairs, veterans activists. I met ‘em… just strangely. I was driving across the desert and I stopped at a little drug store and I picked up a copy of “Born on the Fourth of July.” Drive the rest of the way to…to L.A. Book in a little motel, this guy in a wheelchair sitting by the pool. A couple of days… finally wheels up to me and says, “Hi, I’m Ron Kovic.” I said… I started to think like “Wait Ron… that sounds familiar to me.” I forget I just read… He says, “I wrote ‘Born on the Fourth of July’.” I said, “My god, I finished reading this book like two weeks ago.” So he invited me to the vet center in Venice, spent the afternoon there, just kind of listening, and learning. That set me off to write something about it. I got the script on the table. I got some verses, and then I look at the script and it says, “Born in the U.S.A.” and I just go “Born in the U.S.A.” [laughs] I was born in the U.S.A., and I says, “Yeah! Yeah! That’s it! That’s it!”

Bruce Springsteen: This is a song about the pain, glory, shame of identity and of place. So it’s… a complex picture of the country. Our protagonist is someone who has been betrayed by his nation and yet… still feels deeply connected to the country that he grew up in.

Potus Barack Obama: Also it ended up being… appropriated as this iconic, patriotic song. Even though that was not necessarily your intentions.

Bruce Springsteen: But I think why the song has been appropriated– One is because it was so powerful, ah two is because its imagery was so fundamentally American. But it did demand of you to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at one time; that you can both be very critical of your nation and very prideful of your nation simultaneously. And that is something that you see… argued about to this very day.

Potus Barack Obama: When you play overseas, what’s different about it? Are you conscious about saying to yourself, “Man, I need to.. show myself as an American Rock n’ Roll balladeer.” Or— or or do you just kind of say, “Look, this is another audience and I’m just going to do me and- and ah—”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: “And and hopefully they respond but maybe they don’t.”

Bruce Springsteen: A little bit of— A little bit of all that, you know. Ah, we have a funny situation where we have two thirds of our audience is in Europe. We have maybe a third of our audience is in the United States, so we have a much bigger audience overseas. And exactly why that is I’m not sure, but I know that people have been fa-fascinated over there in the American story, films, music for a long time. There continues to be just a deep fascination about it. E Street band, we-we project drama, emotional power, rush of freedom, symbolism of equality, community, comradeship, pursuit of good times. We tr-tried to create a sound that felt as big as the country itself. We celebrate what’s best about the country and we criticize the country’s failings. And I think pep…overseas people respect that, you know.

Potus Barack Obama: That— That was the thing that struck me about first coming into office as President… was the degree to which even though… when I entered office, ah America’s standing in the world had dropped pretty precipitously—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah…

Potus Barack Obama: A lot of it having to do with Iraq, um Katrina had hurt our reputation and then we were responsible for triggering a global financial crisis and a Great Recession… So folks were not in a happy place about American policy and the American government. But what people around the world know is this – America isn’t perfect. It has had chronic racial discrimination, it is… violent, it has… ah a safety net that compared to…

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Other advanced countries is lacking. Oftentimes is ignorant [laughs] of the rest of the world. All that stuff. You’ll hear of all these criticisms of the United States… But what everybody around the world also knows is this – That we are the only nation on Earth where we are made up of people who have come from every place… of every faith, every race, every background, every economic station. And what the world is fascinated by is “Can this work?” Right?

Bruce Springsteen: Mmmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Can— can can this experiment…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Where yo-you throw in all of us together… and you set up a democracy where everybody is supposed to have a vote, at least after the Civil War and the post-war amendments… And y-y-you claim that all men are created equal… And if it works, it might be the salvation of all of us.

Bruce Springsteen: I like that.

Potus Barack Obama: And sometimes we may be skeptical that it’ll work, but… in…in the back of their minds what they’re also thinking is, “Man, if they could get it right—

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: “That would be a good thing. The recognition and the dignity of all people, and everybody having opportunity and every child can be President and anybody can make it if you try—”

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: “And if-if-if that were true… Man, that would be great.” You know, e-every so often we’ll actually be who we s-say we are and…and when that happens… the world… feels just a little bit more hopeful. And the converse is when we don’t…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. It’s dark. It gets dark.

Potus Barack Obama: Well because then people say, “Yeah, you know what? The world is what it is. Ehhh eh – “America is acting just like China” or “it’s acting just like Russia” or “it’s acting just like the old ah European empires” or it-it -it turns out that we’re still trapped in this pattern of might makes right and the powerful—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Exploiting the less powerful.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And so…so people suddenly say, “I guess… I guess… I can’t hope for much more in my country either.” And… And…

Bruce Springsteen: I think you’re right. Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: B-b-but when, it’s right. It’s right. And..and and that’s why for all the times we’ve made mistakes, you have always seen us able to recover, and that is why by the way, our culture lives on even during dark times. That’s why the French can have 80% disapproval of… you know, the Iraq invasion and still—

Bruce Springsteen: 50,000 of them—

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Crowd in to a Bruce Springsteen concert—

Bruce Springsteen: Putting their fannies in the seats the next day—

Potus Barack Obama: And singing “Born in the U.S.A.”

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Something we don't— We didn’t talk about was… ah was Watergate, which you know…

Bruce Springsteen: Huge.

Potus Barack Obama: You..you-you were describing how… that Nixon idea of the ‘Silent Majority’ what internally they called the ‘Southern Strategy’, how that for you for the first time you saw a President specifically, explicitly, distinctively try to divide America.

Bruce Springsteen: Well you saw the division, you know, immediately. The town split into – I was describing it this morning as – there were men of the ‘50s, men and women in the ‘50s and folks of the ‘60s. And I got my…my lovely brother-in-law who married my lovely sister in 1968, one the hottest years of the Civil Rights Movement, was always a man of the ‘50s, you know. And he would’ve been a part of the silent, what Nixon was calling, the Silent Majority and, of course, I fell on….I feel on the other side. But it was the first time those sorts of strict divisions were…was deeply noticeable in society and totally tied to the Civil Rights Movement, race, an increasing role of Black voices in society.

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah…you…Look, you’ve got race and to some degree you also have just relationships between men and women are changing too, right?

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely.

Potus Barack Obama: And…And to some extent, that ‘50s guy, that ‘Silent Majority’… that—that… that solidifies. That hardens, right? And…and it continues to to characterize our politics. I mean Ni-Nixon sets the blueprint.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s right.

Potus Barack Obama: Although Nixon himself had gotten some of that from Goldwater—

Bruce Springsteen: But he pushes it hard.

Potus Barack Obama: But Nixon…

Bruce Springsteen: The Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater, and they take that to the bank as…as the way that they’re going to hold onto power and–

Potus Barack Obama: Right.

Bruce Springsteen: And make…make the country work for them.

Potus Barack Obama: Now, part of the reason it works, when I thought about what it meant to be an American, part of it was there was an American culture that we share.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: The monoculture…what it did was it brought people together – except it excluded a big chunk of the country. A chunk of the country was invisible.

Bruce Springsteen: Period.

Potus Barack Obama: And then what happens is that part of the country that had been invisible, restricted to maids, porters, you know, villains, suddenly they say, “You know what…We’re here. We want to be at the center of the story.” And that’s when all heck breaks loose. [laughs] That’s when the ‘Silent Majority’ says, “Well, hold on a second. We..we were ff-eeling pretty good about this shared American story. We understood what it meant…”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: To define ourselves as Americans. You’re saying you want to be a part of that… That’s confusing to us.” Th-the reason it’s important t-to recognize how important that cultural element was is it’s also reflected in the news, right? If there’s a FoxNews when Watergate happens, it’s not at all clear that Richard Nixon ends up resigning—

Bruce Springsteen: Impeached—

Potus Barack Obama: Ah he’d…He would’ve been impeached but he might not have been…

Bruce Springsteen: Right. Left office. Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Left office. And…and that I think is…it's a hard thing to figure out ‘How do we reconstruct that sense of a common bond?’ that you were talking about. That sense of… it’s not blue or red, it’s not black or white, it’s America. How do you recreate that if you have a splintered culture? Th- the reason The Beatles, at some point somebody says, “Beatles are bigger than God or bigger than Jesus…”

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Well, th- the reason is cause they were on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Right? Elvis is on the Ed Sullivan Show. Ah, that was part of that common culture.

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely. And I know there’s been some debate over Elvis recently and ah… as far as cultural appropriation. But—

Potus Barack Obama: Go— Go ahead give me some— Give me the, the Elvis take right now. And I should say, by the way…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Big Elvis fan.

Bruce Springsteen: Okay! Well Elvis, you know, Elvis was part of my childhood, wasn’t part of my teenagehood, was part of my childhood when I was 9. That’s when he… I saw him on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Bruce Springsteen: You forget Elvis appeared as a novelty act initially. You could have mistaken him for… and a certain part of it was - he was a novelty act, you know? He challenged images of masculinity. Dyed his hair, wore makeup, moved, some said, “like a stripper, like a woman,” right? And so, as a child he just capt – was like a cartoon figure. He captured your imagination.

Bruce Springsteen: And so, you know. Immediately went to the mirror and started to shake all around—

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: And, you know, grabbed the broom and started to strum the broom and “Mom, I want that guitar.” And I had that guitar for two weeks and realized it was real and needed to be played. And that was that until The Beatles hit the shore. And I learned that all of the music, particularly the earlier music of The Beatles and The Stones that I’d listened to, came from Black artists. Chuck Berry, ah Arthur Alexander, you know just too many to mention. You know. And so that… So I was sent backwards like that into the African roots— African American roots of Rock music. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Look I-eh… this…this whole issue of… I don’t want to get waylaid, but… and we can pick it back up, this issue of cultural appropriation.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: I have to say I’m not a believer in… ah narrowingly defining who gets to do what.

Bruce Springsteen: I’m-I’m…I’m with you. I’m with you on that.

Potus Barack Obama: I think we steal from—

Both: Everybody, everywhere.

Potus Barack Obama: That’s the nature of humanity. That is the nature of culture. That is how ideas migrate.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: That’s how music gets created. That’s how food gets created. I— I don’t want us to be thinking that there’s this way of— is for that person—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And that way is for the other person.

Bruce Springsteen: I agree.

Potus Barack Obama: I think..i think what’s always been relevant about cultural appropriation is if the Black person who writes the song and who performs it better can’t also perform it and can’t get the record deal. That’s the problem. The problem is not… I’ve got no problem with white artists doing Black music cause I don’t think there’s such a thing as simply, exclusively Black music or white music—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: Or Hispanic music. The…It’s the economics and the power dynamics underneath it, which obviously Elvis was part of. He didn’t create it. But the fact was that you had Black songs being written that the Black performers could not cash in on.

Bruce Springsteen: Now the only thing that could change my mind on… on this is Pat Boone doing Little Richard.

Potus Barack Obama: That’s a problem.

Bruce Springsteen: It’s brutal. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: That’s bad.

Bruce Springsteen: I got a few other questions. Can I go?

Potus Barack Obama: You..you are allowed!

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: Because what the hell. Go ahead…What else…what else you got?

Bruce Springsteen: Alright. Um… Just a…there were just a few fun things, one was your American heroes.

Potus Barack Obama: Oh man! Yeah, we were going to do that.

Bruce Springsteen: Okay, want me to start?

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah, go ahead. What do you got?

Bruce Springsteen: Muhammad Ali.

Potus Barack Obama: Ali is… that’s— that’s— That’s a solid.

Bruce Springsteen: He’s…he's..he’s way way at the top.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs] If we are… working off sports initially, you got to go with Jackie Robinson.

Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely.

Potus Barack Obama: Not only does Jackie Robinson make all of Black America proud to see him compete and excel in the face of the most vicious treatment and threats, but he also changes the hearts and minds of white America through the process. The…the number of white guys of a certain generation who will tell me how that changed them or their dads—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: What it meant for an 8-year-old kid…white kid in the stands to be rooting for a Black guy.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: Music. You ready?

Potus Barack Obama: What do you got?

Bruce Springsteen: Alright. I got my man Bob Dylan.

Potus Barack Obama: Dude, y-you can’t argue with Dylan.

Bruce Springsteen: No! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: And he keeps on going!

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah!

Potus Barack Obama: He— He— He’s a little bit like Picasso in the sense that he will just come up with different phases…

Bruce Springsteen: Just great.

Potus Barack Obama: And he just keeps on cranking out innovation.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And he…he seems to do it for himself…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: As much as for anybody else. He can’t help himself but just…

Bruce Springsteen: No, he’s an artist. He’s doing what he got to do. That’s all.

Potus Barack Obama: He’s this font of creativity.

Bruce Springsteen: I got James Brown.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: No hip hop without James Brown.

Potus Barack Obama: [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Musically, who do you got?

Potus Barack Obama: Ray Charles.

Bruce Springsteen: Without a doubt.

Bruce Springsteen: I believe… I believe you’re right.

Potus Barack Obama: No offense!

Bruce Springsteen: No, no, no.

Potus Barack Obama: To the other one.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] I got you.

Potus Barack Obama: Don’t don’t wanna…don’t wanna, you know, to suddenly be getting a bunch of email…

Potus Barack Obama: Aretha Franklin.

Bruce Springsteen: Boom. Huge hero.

Potus Barack Obama: I…. You know…If-if-if I think about American music that could not come from any place else… you know, when I listen to anything Aretha is singing, I-I- I feel America.

Bruce Springsteen: Who were some of the other Americans that inspire you?

Potus Barack Obama: So not surprisingly what comes to mind first for me is..is Dr. King and Malcom X, ah sort of the yin and yang of the liberation movement ah in this country that helped shape me so much. But sometimes those feel like larger than life figures, and..and oftentimes the..the folks that inspire me most were the less famous ones. Ah, not just John Lewis but Dianne Nash and Bob Moses and Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joseph Lowery, C. T. Vivian, Fred Shuttlesworth. Eh you know, people who ah never achieved that same kind of fame, uh might not have had those same extraordinary gifts and yet because of their doggedness and courage… ah achieved extraordinary things. Um it… They’re..they’re heroes on a human scale.

Bruce Springsteen: This was— I guess… the early ‘60s was ah…that I wanted to mention was, was Ruby Bridges

Potus Barack Obama: Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen: You know, I mean 6 years old. First Black child to desegregate the William Frantz Elementary School in… Louisiana. Goes to school. Federal marshals take her to school alone.

Potus Barack Obama: As part of the White House collection, we were given the opportunity to hang the Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Just outside the Oval Office. So, I’d see it all the time.

Potus Barack Obama: And this painting depicts Ruby, this tiny little thing with pigtails and white socks and, and all you see is the huge bodies of these federal marshals and in the background ah you can see faintly…ah this graffiti scrawled with the N-word on the wall. Ruby came by. She’s about my age now. Um, we stood next to the painting and..

Bruce Springsteen: Really?

Potus Barack Obama: She kind of described the scene—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And how she had felt. And you know, she was a great representative of that kind of quiet heroism that happened so frequently during that era.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: Um, the absolute grace, you know, you could still see it!

Bruce Springsteen: That’s incredible. At 6 years old.

Potus Barack Obama: At 6 years old.

Potus Barack Obama: As we broaden it, Lincoln still…is at the center of…of what I think about as…as as America.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Um, the, the log cabin stuff is not a myth. He is a broke-ass… [laughs]

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, growing up in a… very m-meager, limited circumstances, rough-hewn, n-not much formal schooling, teaches himself essentially by reading the King James Bible and Shakespeare to become one of the greatest American writers of all time.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Has an entire career before… eh anybody knows who he is. Riding circuit in Illinois. Teaches himself enough to pass the bar, become a lawyer, is, is riding around making jokes and telling stories and doing business and making money. And yet somehow there is this deep morality and melancholy and depth that emerges out of him.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: And he… he finally then is, is… is at the crossroads of this central question about America, which is… you know, “Are…are are we going to be a truly free nation or not?”

Bruce Springsteen: Mmm.

Potus Barack Obama: And he grapples with that in the most profound way. And he never… wavers in his hopes but he never takes his eye off the truth, including the truth about himself, right? And…and the, th-the bitterness of war and and the uncertainties and the doubts, and what I’m.. What I’m always struck by is, is the fact that… that he did not break under that strain.

Bruce Springsteen: No.

Potus Barack Obama: And it was an enormous strain. And… and my reverence for him does not mean that I don’t recognize— Look, I… he didn’t necessarily think Black people were equal. He just thought, “I shouldn’t be ah taking bread out of that Black man’s mouth who’s doing all the work. I should do the work and be responsible for my own bread.” So, I don’t over romanticize Lincoln—

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: And I guess part of what I think are…one of the hardest things, whether it’s as an adult in our own individual lives or as a nation – figuring out it is possible for you to see the wrong in people without negating everything about them.

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: It’s possible to to look at our Founding Fathers and say, “Yeah, they were slaveholders” and then also say, “But man, that Declaration of Independence is something.”

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Be-because in the same way I want to be able to… appropriate any kind of m-music I want or any tradition I want or ah any cuisine I want… If it’s good, I want it.

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: I also want to be able to appropriate and claim for myself the example of the good things that other people have done even if they weren’t perfect.

Bruce Springsteen: I like that.

Potus Barack Obama: I-I, I want to be able to read the..the… Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and just revel in its majesty.

Potus Barack Obama: “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk…and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether." With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Potus Barack Obama: I’ll bet that sticks.

Potus Barack Obama: Here’s what makes me optimistic and and and uh see if you agree with me on that because…cause I… since we’re, we’re both… you know, I’m the ‘hope guy’—

Bruce Springsteen: You are.

Potus Barack Obama: You’re… you’re the—

Bruce Springsteen: I thought I was but you’re better than me. [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: No, no, no, no. Come on, man. You’re the rising guy.

Bruce Springsteen: Alright…

Potus Barack Obama: So…So we end on an upnote, right? Which…The question is “What…what makes us think that we can get through this out on the other side with an America that is whole and is true and is better than… then where we’re at right now?” And, and we touched on this, what makes me optimistic is this generation coming up and you saw this even in this election… overwhelmingly… the 35 and under crowd…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: They believe in a unifying story of America. Overwhelmingly, when you look at that younger cohort…

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: Our kids, their peer group, across the country– they believe, almost as second nature, that people are equal.

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: They do not believe in discriminating on the basis of someone’s skin or their sexual orientation or their gender or their ethnicity or their faith. They do not believe in economic order that is so grossly unequal that you can have a handful of people worth more than millions of their fellow citizens. They do not believe in a society that ignores the desecration of the planet. They reject the idea that we have no responsibility at all to future generations—

Bruce Springsteen: Right.

Potus Barack Obama: When it comes to issues like climate change. So… the good news is those are the folks coming up. The question is, “Can we hold this thing together long enough—

Both: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: To…“So that when they are old enough to be in charge—”

Bruce Springsteen: Waiting for the calvary! [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: We have screwed things up so bad that it’s too late?” And— And— And, and you know I have to believe that we can do that. Our job is to help create that bridge for that next generation.

Potus Barack Obama: And and your songs and my speeches or books or this conversation… I think is just to… to let that next generation know, “You’re on the right track.”

Bruce Springsteen: You gotta keep the lantern lit, my friend.

Potus Barack Obama: Yes! Exactly.

Bruce Springsteen: That’s the bottom line.

Potus Barack Obama: Right. That— that— that America is true and real and available to you. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now,

Bruce Springsteen: Mhmm.

Potus Barack Obama: But it’s there.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs] I-I agree. It’s… it’s corny but your children make you optimistic, you know. They- they force you to be optimistic. It’s… it’s their world that you’re handing over now. I don’t want to know a pessimistic parent. If that’s who you are, you’ve done it wrong. [laughs] My children, I say with God’s thanks, are solid citizens [laughs] who’s character at barely the 30-year mark far outstrips my own. [laughs] So they… they humble me and ah… Patti and I we, live in their grace and are thankful.

Bruce Springsteen: Thank you—

Potus Barack Obama: I think we’ve done some good work today, brother.

Bruce Springsteen: We did. Yeah, thank you, brother.

Potus Barack Obama: I learned something.

Bruce Springsteen: So did I. [laughs] Woo!

Bruce Springsteen: [singing] Born down in a dead man's town… And the first kick I took was when I hit the ground… You end up like a dog that's been beat too much… Til you spend half your life just to cover up… I was born in the U.S.A…. Born in the U.S.A…. I got in a little hometown jam… So they put a rifle in my hands… Sent me off to a foreign land… Go and kill the yellow man… I was born in the U.S.A…. Born in the U.S.A…. Come back home to the refinery… Hiring man says, "Son, if it was up to me"… I go down to see the V.A. man He said, "Son, don't you understand?"… I had a brother at Khe Sahn… Fighting off the Viet Cong… They're still there, he's all gone… He had a woman he loved in Saigon… I got a picture of em in her arms… Down in the shadow of penitentiary… Out by the gas fires of the refinery… I'm ten years burning down
the road… I've got nowhere to run, nowhere to go… I was born in the U.S.A…. Born in the U.S.A…. I was born in the U.S.A…. I'm a cool rockin daddy in the U.S.A…

Anna Holmes: Renegades: Born in the U.S.A. is a Spotify Original, presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulsen are executive producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are consulting producers. Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions: Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are executive producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Additional mixing from Valentino Rivera. Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodrigruez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight development and operations coordinator. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music Supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Jon Landau, Thom Zimny, Rob Lebret, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr. We also want to thank: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia, thanks to: Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.

Potus Barack Obama: I think there’s something in there that’s worth listening to! Shoot…

Bruce Springsteen: Something! Somewhere!

Potus Barack Obama: Somewhere.

Bruce Springsteen: [laughs]

Potus Barack Obama: What do you think, guys? Something?

Bruce Springsteen: Somehow.

Potus Barack Obama: We’ll be able to edit out a bunch of what Bruce said but…

Bruce Springsteen: Yeah.

Potus Barack Obama: You know, all my stuff, clearly is gold.

Bruce Springsteen: Just leave my guitar playing.

Both: [laughs]

^{Compiled by David Rodrigruez via: Spotify.}