From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life.
An outgrowth of having a long career is that I have a lot of interesting things around that I get to revisit, and someday get to the place where they become something that I want to do next.
You ask for your audience's investment in your music; you're in a relationship with them. And their relationship with the E Street Band is separate from whatever else I might do. I like the idea of us being something that people rely on.
If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it.
Anyone who's grown up or lived on the Jersey Shore knows the place is unique.
All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records, but if you were a kid, you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful.
This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.
But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention.
The star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention.
I was looking for some way to put my music to some service on a nightly basis. You go into a town, you play a little music, you leave something behind. That idea connected us to the local community. It was a very simple idea, but it really resonated with me.
But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.
I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. I got the chutzpa or whatever you want to say to believe that if I write a really good about it, it's going to make a difference.
I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
There is something about the melody of 'Thunder Road' that just suggests 'new day.' It suggests morning; it suggests something opening up.
When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.
I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.
I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety, which all would have been very familiar to my pop, you know? Except it was a part of himself he was trying to reject, so I got caught in the middle of it, I think.
I don't think people go to musicians for their political points of view. I think your political point of view is circumstances and then how you were nurtured and brought up.
Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.
I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.