For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn’t do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn’t fit in; my intelligence was elsewhere.
It’s always felt natural, because I’m generally very comfortable with people.
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.
Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.
You can’t be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you’re gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation.
You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.
I was the only person I’d ever met who had a record contract. None of the E Street Band, as far as I know, had been on an airplane until Columbia sent us to Los Angeles.
It’s a fairytale so tragic there’s no prince to break the spell. I don’t believe in magic, but for you I will.
I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that’s the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up – either religious or social laws – become meaningless.
Dancing in the dark. Does fortune wait or just the black hand of fate, It’ll take your God filled soul. Fill it with devils.
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.
I had tried to go to college, and I didn’t really fit in. I went to a real narrow-minded school where people gave me a lot of trouble, and I was hounded off the campus – I just looked different and acted different, so I left school.
I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns.
Your spoken voice is a part of it – not a big part of it, but it’s something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what’s otherwise difficult music.
I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you’re 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life – certainly by the time you’re 18.
Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair. The night’s busted open. These two lanes will take us anywhere.
For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in.
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.
After ‘Born to Run,’ I had a reaction to my good fortune. With success, it felt like a lot of people who’d come before me lost some essential part of themselves. My greatest fear was that success was going to change or diminish that part of myself.
Just sitting around waiting for my life to begin, while it was all just slipping away.