38 • Rolling Stone, February 5, 2009 With his third great album this decade, Bruce springsteen tackles love, loyalty – and the ultimate deadline Bringing It All Back Home By DaviD Fricke PhotograPhs By alBert Watson Rolling Stone, February 5, 2009 • 3 9 SPRINGSTEEN he sound is classic amateur ist. His first two albums, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Inno- 1966 – chaotic, jangling guitars, im- cent & the E Street Shuffle, were both re- leased in 1973. patient drumming and crude raging- “At that time, you signed old-fashioned hormone vocal harmonies – and Bruce contracts where you were supposed to make an album every six months,” Spring- Springsteen knows every note by heart. steen says. “But after that, I said, ‘Nah.’ Hypnotized by joy in front of a small ta- Without going into the whole story” – he grins – “obviously there was the perfec- bletop stereo cranked to top volume, he tionism, the self-consciousness and the pursuit of very specific ideas, while you’re dances on the balls of his feet, vigorously strums an imag- forming who you are, what you want to tinary guitar with his right fist and howls along during the write about.” Drummer Max Weinberg remembers chorus – “Baby I-I-I-I!” – in a deeper wild-bear version of Springsteen leading endless E Street re- his old plaintive teenage tenor. • Springsteen, 59, is happi- hearsals for 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and the 1980 double album, The ly singing and playing air guitar with himself – to “Baby I,” River. “Then, generally, everything we re- hearsed would not get recorded – we would a single he made at 16, when he was a guitarist and sing- start rehearsing again in the studio,” Wein- er in a New Jersey garage band, the Castiles. • Earlier that berg recalls, relaxing on a floppy sofa in a small dressing room at his other job, the afternoon, Springsteen is sitting in the wood-paneled liv- Rockefeller Center studios of NBC’s Late ing room of Thrill Hill, a 19th-century farmhouse in cen- Night With Conan O’Brien, where he has been the show’s bandleader since 1993. tral New Jersey that he has converted into a studio. He talks “A lot of the tracks on those records were recorded rehearsals. ‘Streets of Fire’ [on about some of the Sixties echoes – including the Walker Darkness] – it wouldn’t even be legitimate Brothers, Jimmy Webb, the Beach Boys on guably the best of the three in its classic- to call it a demo. None of us had any idea “Heroes and Villains” and the Byrds’ Fifth pop songwriting and intimate lyric force. where it was going.” Dimension – ringing throughout his new They made most of it on days off from their “It was not exciting – it was the opposite album with the E Street Band, Working on 2007-08 shows – Danny Federici played of exciting,” guitarist Steven Van Zandt says a Dream. That gets him reminiscing about keyboards on some tracks before his death of those sessions with a guttural chuckle. the Castiles, his first serious band. Sudden- at 58 last April 17th from melanoma – with One of Springsteen’s oldest friends (Wein- ly, Springsteen bolts upright in his chair. “I Springsteen and producer Brendan O’Brien berg calls him Springsteen’s “consigliere”), have to dig it out before you go,” he says ex- enriching the E Street Band’s natural stam- Van Zandt co-produced those two albums citedly. “I found the actual two-track tape pede in “My Lucky Day,” “What Love Can and 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. with Spring- of our record. I had it put on a CD. It’s back Do” and the opening eight-minute horse steen and the singer’s manager, Jon Lan- at the house. I’ll bring it over.” opera, “Outlaw Pete,” with an abundance dau. “I’m not that disciplined,” Van Zandt And he does, rushing home – Spring- of strings, guitars, choral vocals and sax- admits. “If it’s 10 percent less good if we steen, his wife and E Street singer Patti ophonist Clarence Clemons’ leonine blow- did it in a day instead of a month, I’m cool Scialfa and their three teenage children live in an 18th-century house just down the road – and back. Springsteen doesn’t even bother taking off his bulky winter coat. He “I’ll put ‘tHe rIsIng,’ strides into the glassed-in porch where he demos new songs and made his 2005 solo ‘Magic’ and the new album against album, Devils & Dust, hits “play” and flies back to May 18th, 1966, when the Castiles any other three records we’ve made, recorded “Baby I” and the flip side, “That’s What You Get,” at Mr. Music Inc., a studio in nearby Bricktown. in terms of depth and purpose.” “Well, what could have been a studio back then,” Springsteen cracks after he ing. The result is Springsteen’s most ornate with that. It’s still 110 percent better than plays both tracks. He and singer-guitar- album since 1975’s Born to Run. what anybody else is doing. Bruce under- ist George Theiss wrote the songs, accord- He has already started the new year stood that. But he said, ‘We’re going for 100 ing to legend, while driving to the session. with a Golden Globe for his theme song percent all the time. We’re not compromis- The band cut them in an hour. “I talk to to The Wrestler and is assured an Acade- ing one iota.’ ” George once in a while,” Springsteen says. my Award nomination as well. After his “Yes, there was fear of failure,” Spring- “He got married very, very young. Had a January 18th performance in Washing- steen concedes, surrounded in the Thrill lovely family. Made music. I used to see ton, D.C., at “We Are One,” the free Barack Hill living room by vintage mounted pho- him at the Stone Pony all the time. He had Obama inauguration concert, Springsteen tographs of what he calls “my saints,” in- a great voice.” will play a hotly anticipated halftime set cluding the elder Bob Dylan, the young But the Castiles’ big moment passed that with the E Street Band at the Super Bowl Elvis Presley and the folk-blues singers day in ’66 – their single was never released on February 1st – itself a kickoff for another Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John – while Springsteen, nearly 43 years later, E Street tour, in the spring in the U.S. and Hurt. “This is all repair work, in one way is at a new peak in his career. Working on a Europe. The last time Springsteen wrote, or another. The guys I was interested in – Dream is Springsteen’s third great album recorded and hit the road at this veloci- Dylan, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Bob with the E Street Band in a decade and ar- ty was when he was a new Columbia art- Marley, John Lydon, Joe Strummer – all 40 • Rolling Stone, February 5, 2009 his hometown Springsteen in his backyard in Colts Neck, New Jersey 42 • Rolling Stone, February 5, 2009 Bruce’s retreat Springsteen’s “writing room” contains family photos, the desk on which he wrote many of his albums, gifts from fans, and a collection of hotel keys from tours. “My identity, what people are connecting with – those things are set pretty firmly,” says Springsteen. “At my age, those things aren’t supposed to inhibit you – they are supposed to free you.” Rolling Stone, February 5, 2009 • 4 3 SPRINGSTEEN had something eating at them. Those are hen springsteen rogance that led to thousands of people the forces you’re playing with. And you’re was a young boy, his dying and the country having a complete in the studio trying to figure out, ‘How do mother, Adele, sent financial nervous breakdown. If you do I live with myself?’ him off to sleep every not reckon with your own history, it eats “I’m not worried now about who I am,” night with a story – a you. And if you have that level of authority, he says. “My identity, what people are con- Wrhyme about the ranch hand Cowboy Bill. then it eats us.” necting with – those things are set pretty “She would say it to me before I went to Most of Working on a Dream takes place firmly. I have an audience, of some kind. I bed,” Springsteen says. “It was like our far from newspaper headlines, in darkened also have a world of characters and ideas good night to each other.” He starts the bedrooms, under starlight. There is ecsta- I have addressed for a long time. By now, first verse from memory – “Of all the sy and pleading, promises made and bro- at my age, those things aren’t supposed hands on the Bar-H Ranch, the bravest ken, underneath the bright, clanging gui- to inhibit you. They are supposed to was brave Cowboy Bill” – but can’t re- tars and spiking harmonies in “This Life,” free you.” member the rest. “There were other good “Surprise, Surprise” and the erotic fantasy Springsteen goes quiet for a minute lines. I gotta find out what they are.” “Queen of the Supermarket.” A man and when asked if, even at 16, he had bigger Three weeks later, Springsteen sends a woman count their time together and dreams and a stronger will than the other them in a handwritten fax after his mom their time left in wrinkles and gray hairs guys in the Castiles.