Bruce Springsteen

14/07/2009

In an exclusive interview The Boss reveals how he feels about his legacy – and just what goes into his pre-gig drink

Veteran Radio 1 and 6music DJ Steve Lamacq finds out just what keeps him going

The Boss has gone missing. I look around the backstage compound, surveying the selection of flash chauffeur driven cars which have driven up over the past half an hour and we’re definitely one short. While the E-Street Band have arrived one by one, and are safely ensconced in their dressing room, the man with the cowboy boots is nowhere to be seen.
“Oh he’s on his way,” a passing tour manager tells me, with a shrug and a vague wave of his hand. “He’s just diverted his driver to take him around the town on the way here."
Bruce Springsteen, ahead of tonight’s gig in front of 23,000 hungry Norwegian fans, has gone sight-seeing. Well, he’s only human.

We arrive in Bergen, a fishing port on the west coast of Norway, on a Tuesday afternoon, a good six hours before the first of Springsteen’s two shows here and already there is an unmistakable buzz in the air. I doubt the thunderous appearance of an ancient Norse God would equal this.
Walking to the venue I pass two bars which have hung “Bergen Welcomes Bruce’ banners from their windows while hordes of fans of all shapes and sizes mill around the streets nearby, many wearing T-shirts from previous tours. The following day the local newspaper will dedicate a staggering 14 pages of coverage to the gig.
Not that The Boss takes this for granted. As he walks to the stage on the first night, one of the local crew walks by his side tutoring him on how to speak a few choice phrases in Norwegian, so he can thank everyone for coming in their native tongue.

During the show itself – which lasts three hours and five minutes and finishes at five to midnight – he regularly leaps off the stage to touch flesh with the front rows of the crowd. And all the time he looks like he’s having an absolute ball. When I mention this to Barbara Carr – one of The Boss’ management team – she nods and with a light warmness in her voice, says: “he is….isn’t he”.

What is stunningly clear as well, whether you’re a diehard fan or (like myself) a comparative novice, is that Springsteen has really upped the ante in the Noughties. His current album Working On A Dream is his fifth of the decade – if you include his Seeger Sessions collection – and for the first time in his career he’s started playing big festivals around the world on top of his own headline shows (most recently a hulking Saturday night headlining slot at Glastonbury).

Whether this is, as I suspect, partly because he’s been confronted with his own mortality - the band lost organist and long-time friend Danny Federici to illness last year, following the death in 2007 of one of the Boss’ trusty assistants Terry McGovern - or it’s because he’s on something of a creative roll, is up for debate. But it’s worth remembering that Springsteen turns 60 in September.
You can’t help but feel that he knows he’s running out of time and that he still feels he has more to cram into, not just his life, but his work with The E-Street Band.

As The Boss completes his guided tour of Bergen, myself and producer Mark Hagan from the BBC are ushered into his dressing room. Scanning the small space, there are a few clothes hung on a rail and a couple of settees. But if this was Through The Keyhole, you’d be hard pressed to guess who was about to walk through the door. The only thing which grabs my attention are two piles of A4 paper, bound together with huge paper clips, each of the bundles the size of a large phonebook. These, it transpires are the setlists from previous gigs in Europe over the years. Springsteen refers to them before each gig, so he doesn’t repeat too many of the songs he played on his last visit (is there nothing he overlooks?).

Typically, he makes an understated entrance. And is surprisingly easy to talk to: he’s quite happy for instance to throw his hands up and admit he doesn’t understand what went wrong with Manchester United’s performance in the Champions League Final (his son is an American Red Devil who watched it on TV so he’s surprisingly au fait with Alex Ferguson’s team selection). He’s also enthusiastic and interested when I hand him a CDR of some British bands who I think he might like. What he can’t do however, is put his guitar down. Throughout the interview – commissioned by BBC 6Music – he sits on the edge of the settee, strumming away, as if somehow he’s using it to help him channel the answers he’s searching for.

He looks fit, rugged and relaxed – with just a hint of blue collar cragginess. Everything about him is solid. Like he was hewn from rock. I mention that it seems like a good time to be back on tour – especially given that there’s a new wave of bands who sound like they’ve been influenced by him, and he lists a string of groups he likes, including American outfit The Gaslight Anthem (who his son turned him onto). But however supportive and appreciative he is of these groups, he saves most of his admiration for his own E-Street Band.
“It’s playing better than it’s ever played before. The breadth and depth of the material we have and the knowledge and craft we’ve built up….and the enjoyment we get out of it. Because you get to a certain point and you realise it’s finite, nobody’s going to be doing it forever.”
“And we’re getting audiences now that are going to outlive us. We’ve seen a lot of teenagers and kids in their twenties on this tour.”

Faced with this disparate crowd, Springsteen has been delving into all corners of his back-catalogue on these recent dates. New tracks from the latest album like the nine-minute cowboy epic Outlaw Pete, rub shoulders with Badlands, Rosalita, The River and The Ghost Of Tom Joad. “The show has to provide a series of functions. One is to entertain, but also we try to reflect a little of what’s going on out there. We’re very conscious that back home we’re in some hard times…millions of jobs gone…so we try to tell a bit of good news and a bit of bad news.
"We try to be funny, we try to lift you emotionally and spiritually and basically I try and reflect what I experienced through rock and roll myself. Rock and Roll educated me. It provided inspiration to be creative, so we try to go out and have that same touch.”
So if he’s realised that the audience are going to be there after he’s gone, and he’s pleased that part of his legacy will be a wave of groups he’s influence, does that mean he’s scared of hitting the big SIX O? He laughs, his croaky card-players laugh: “You know it doesn’t seem that bigger deal anymore. You know I may head straight for the bar when the day comes but I think because the band is so vital right now, it’s a link to when I was 25 or 35. That thing which sustains you – and hopefully sustains other people – is so rich and so healthy right now that although you see the effects of the clock…y’know we’ve lost members and friends…but internally when you go 1-2-3-4 (intro-ing a song) it gets cut off.”

An hour later, Springsteen returns to the stage for his second Bergen show, revved up and raring to go again. As we’d shaken hands before leaving him, he’d ordered a homemade milkshake from one of his assistants (his pre-gig warm-up drink, the recipe of which may or may not include rocket fuel or industrial quantities of sugar). The second night show features a smattering of cover versions plucked from the memories of his youth; snapshots of his influences including a show-closing finale of Twist And Shout. And then he’s gone. The band fly home to America that night on a private jet hired from the basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters. Why? Because, apparently, the Globetrotters plane has more leg room! As we retire to a local bar, which (I jest you not) has a Springsteen tribute band playing next door,  I imagine The Boss somewhere above us, asking the pilot to take a detour for one last look at the fjords.