Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen Read Online Free PDF Page A

possibilities. You have to let the audience search it out for themselves. You can’t say, ‘Here it is. This is exactly what I mean’ and give it to them. You have to let them search.”
    Despite his reluctant, withdrawn manner off-stage, Springsteen brings a sense of drama with him on stage. It’s not the staged theatrics of an Alice Cooper, but the strong sense of a powerful, charismatic performer. He has the same cold, intent, determined, uncompromising stance that Dylan brings on stage.
    Wearing a white undershirt (not a T-shirt) and black pants that underscore the street roots of his music, Springsteen, also wearing dark glasses that make his music all the more mysterious, attacks the microphone with a sudden barrage of words, retreats like a prizefighter to a neutral corner as the band plays, then returns for another assault.
    On the second number, he picks up an electric guitar and later, more in the style of Elvis than Dylan, points the neck to the ceiling and twists his way across stage. It was done more in the sense of relieving tension in his music than, as Elvis would have done, to elicit shrieks from female fans.
    Springsteen’s no sex symbol. He’s more a challenger, a stimulator of thoughts and emotions.
    Despite the many Dylan comparisons, it was Presley who first pushed Springsteen toward music. He remembers seeing Elvis on theold Ed Sullivan television show. Springsteen was just nine at the time, but asked his mother for a guitar. She got him the guitar but also made him take lessons which he hated so much he ended up discarding the guitar.
    It wasn’t until the Beatles arrived in 1964 that he picked up the guitar again. This time he taught himself how to play. Within six months he had formed his first band.
    “Before that I didn’t have any purpose. I tried to play football and baseball and all those things. I checked out all the alleys and just didn’t fit. I was running through a maze. Music gave me something. It was a reason to live.”
    Over the next few years, Springsteen was in and out of several bands, eventually moving from school dances to bars, clubs and even a couple of cross-country tours. He played the Fillmore West in San Francisco when he was 18 and auditioned for Fillmore Records while on the coast but was turned down. He was signed by Columbia in 1972.
    “I never got into being discouraged because I never got into hoping,” he said with a laugh. “When I was a kid, I never got used to expecting success. I got used to failing.
    “Once you do that, the rest is easy. It took a lot of pressure off. I just said, ‘Hell, I’m a loser. I don’t have to worry about anything.’ I assumed immediately nothing was happening.
    “But that’s not the same,” he said, pausing to emphasize the difference in concepts, “as giving up. You keep trying, but you don’t count on things. It can be a strength. Because I know some people who sweat out winning so much it kills them. So in the end, they lose anyway. They win, but they lose.”
    He’s now looking forward to recording his third album and expanding his band (it now includes organ, piano, saxophone, guitar, bass, drums) with more horns. Unlike most of his songwriting contemporaries, he prizes the music as much as the lyrics.
    “You’ve got to work on the different levels,” he said.

Ed Sciaky
    WMMR, November 3, 1974
    Ed Sciaky, of WMMR Philadelphia, was one of the first disc jockeys to champion Springsteen; the impact of that support in what would become the career-long fan stronghold of Philly can’t be overestimated. For this, one of their many on-air chats, Sciaky was surprised not only that Bruce actually showed up at the studio the day after a Tower Theater show, but that he also brought along several others members of the band. On the one hand, Springsteen isn’t so much forthcoming in this setting; on the other, he’s clearly relaxed and enjoying himself. With plenty of goofing around, he even does an on-air