NO ORDINARY MAN

Smash Hits name of Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft). But they can imagine watching sports in a bar with Springsteen, which perhaps accounts for why people get a bit overexcited I do not excuse myself from this at the prospect of meeting him (fan accounts of encounters almost always dwell, approvingly, on what an ordinary guy he is. Even if he is shorter than expected).

They think they know Springsteen because, these days, he’s as much an idea, an ideal, as he is a person.

“Sure, that’s true,” he says, of that notion. “You bring with you an entire philosophy, a certain code of living, I suppose. It’s something you pursue. My heroes were people like Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan. These were all people who brought their entire philosophy along with them, created a world that would engulf you and give you you, assist you in different ways of living, different ways of presenting yourself. Those were the artists that always interested me. They always seemed to carry a realisation of what being a musician might mean, could mean, the possibilities of what being a musician could be. That was something I was at least semi-conscious of trying to create.”

And when did he realise he had become an idea in the minds of his public?

“I’m not sure. If you’re doing it right, it’s a byproduct of all your actions and all your choices and what you’ve created.”

It should be noted at this point that Springsteen appears to know exactly what he thinks about every aspect of his life and art and how they interact. I guess that’s inevitable. First, he’s just written a 500page book about those subjects; second, he’s been in therapy for decades; third, he and Landau based their entire relationship on talking at exhaustive length about all this stuff. But, for an interviewer, it’s a bit odd. The most fascinating moments in interviews usually come when you catch a subject by surprise and you can see them deciding what they think about something. With Springsteen, it feels more like he’s searching through his mental hard drive for the relevant file.

That’s not to say his answers are not fascinating (they are) or cursory (they very much are not). When asked what he means when he says his covenant with his audience depends on honesty, he replies without pause, without any ‘errs’ or ‘urrms’: “I guess we come out and deliver the straight dope to our crowd as best we can. It’s coming on stage with the idea: OK, well the stakes that are involved this evening are quite high. I don’t know exactly who’s in the crowd. But I know that my life was changed in an instant by something that people thought was purely junk pop-music records. And you can change someone’s life in three minutes with the right song. I still believe that to this day. You can bend the course of their development, what they think is important, of how vital and alive they feel.

“You can contextualise very, very difficult experiences. Songs are pretty good at that. So all these are the stakes that are laid out on the table when you come out at night. And I still take those stakes seriously after all that time, if not more so now, as the light grows slightly dimmer. I come out believing there’s no tomorrow night, there wasn’t last night, there’s just tonight. And I have built up the skills to be able to provide, under the right conditions, a certain transcendent evening, hopefully an evening you’ll remember when you go home. Not that you’ll just remember it was a good concert, but you’ll remember the possibilities the evening laid out in front of you, as far as where you could take your life, or how you’re thinking about your friends, or your wife or your girlfriend, or your best pal, or your job, your work, what you want to do with your life. These are all things, I believe, that music can accommodate and can provide service in. That’s what we try to deliver.”

I email that answer to a Springsteen-obsessive friend, who blogs about both Springsteen and burgers. She writes back: “It sounds silly, and I try to explain to people, but going to Springsteen shows has shaped a lot of changes in my life. I went to South Africa for a week on my own for four concerts, felt revived, like I could achieve anything. So I left my job and tried to get into journalism, something I’d wanted to do since I was 10. And that’s why I feel like I have to go to Australia [to see Springsteen next year], too, because I need to find that direction again. It’s a funny way to live your life, seeking these highs, living the lows, but ultimately I think I’m better off for it. I really don’t know what I’d do without his music in my life.”

I ask Springsteen if he ever looks at fan sites and messageboards.

“No.” (I bet he does. I really, really bet he does.)

Then is he unaware of the section of his hardcore fan base who complain that his sets are too predictable because he only changes half of a three-hour-plus set from night to night, instead of the whole thing? “I’ve seen that,” he says. “You have to indulge your hardcore fans. It’s really all right.”

You’re more tolerant than I’d be. I’d tell them where to get off. No one else changes their sets like you! They should be grateful!

He doesn’t reply. He just laughs long and hard, his head back, his eyes creasing.

On June 5 this year, as the sun set over Wembley Stadium, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band struck up the sombre opening chords of Tougher Than the

Rest, the 1987 single about the difficulties of adult love that marked his return after Born in the USA had made him the world’s biggest rock star. Stepping up to the front of the stage to duet with him was Patti Scialfa, a member of the E Street Band since 1984, and his second wife — his first marriage, to Julianne Phillips, ended quickly (in the Born to

Run book, Springsteen admits he was wholly unready for it). Three days after performing what might as well be their theme song, Scialfa and Springsteen marked their 25th wedding anniversary.

Her presence changed not just Springsteen’s life, but his work, too. The E Street Band stopped being an all-male preserve, a gang, forcing a change in their behaviour and attitudes. “I think women are, in general, a good influence on growing up, on growing into your manhood,” he says, delicately.

And then when they had children two sons, Evan and Sam, born in 1990 and 1994; and a daughter, Jessica, in 1991 his life was altered even more profoundly. “If I was going to chop my life into sections,” he says, “it would be before the children and after the children, certainly. Just changed my entire worldview. Changed the way I looked at myself. Changed the way I looked at my job. Gave me an entirely separate identity away from my music, which I found to be very fulfilling.”

Before he had children, Springsteen had assumed that whatever he was working on was what everyone around him should be concentrating on. He recalls his bafflement when Jon Landau had his first child, and would suddenly start leaving recording sessions at 6pm, to go and bathe his baby daughter. “I remember thinking . . .” he adopts a puzzled tone, “‘You gotta go home and bathe your daughter? We’re doing A, B, C or D, which I happen to think is the most important thing in the world right now.’ But, of course, it’s not.”

Having children made Springsteen realise that his work wasn’t his life, it was a substitute for life. “I realised that previously I’d expanded my work life so that I’d have something to do during the day, and into the evening. Without it, what am I gonna do? Go home, sit in a chair and watch TV? So I’d expanded the time it took me to do my job. Once the kids came along, I realised, I could squeeze my previous 18 hours of work day into six or eight, without any problems whatsoever. I realised the song is always going to be there there’s always going to be a song in your heart or in your head but kids, they’re there and then they’re gone. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. Once I realised that, I found a tremendous freedom from the tyranny of my own mind.”

You couldn’t say that Springsteen has slowed down, though, especially now the kids are gone. This summer’s tour of European and US stadiums saw him playing some of his longest ever shows, breaking the four-hour barrier with no intermissions, unlike his late-1970s marathons on occasion. Springsteen says he has no problems finding the energy to play them, but it’s not so easy for some of his bandmates. Before Springsteen arrives, his co-manager Barbara Carr mentions that Max Weinberg, the 65-yearold drummer, spends all his time between shows sequestered in his hotel room, the windows blacked out, the gaps between door and frame filled to block out all noise, simply recuperating from the previous gig.

That’s the price the band must pay in order to deliver what Springsteen wants: “I come out on stage to deliver to you the greatest band in the world,” he says. “I still have great pride in what I do. I still believe in its power. I believe in my ability to transfer its power to you. That’s never changed. One of the things our band was very good at communicating was that sense of joy, which I think makes us somewhat unique. Rock bands try to project a lot of different things: intensity, mystery, sexuality, cool. Not a lot of rock bands concentrate on joy, and I got that from my relatives on the Italian side they lived it and they passed it down to me.”

The ambition that drove him to chase perfection 40 years ago when he would spend hours shouting” “Stick” at Weinberg in the studio, insisting he somehow find a way to play his snare drum without the sound of stick hitting the skin being audible is still present.

I ask if, for all his testimonies to the simple power of playing rock ’n’ roll, and how he says he’s happy pitching up for an impromptu set at a local bar with a pick-up band, whether he would have been content if he’d ended up precisely as popular as his friends and contemporaries, Southside Johnny and Joe Grushecky, blue-collar rockers who never transcended the clubs.

“I would probably be an old, disgruntled entertainer,” he says, then chuckles at the very notion that he might not have conquered the world. “I was shooting for the whole show. But I certainly would have made my peace with it. Any time you make your living as a musician, you’re way ahead of the game. You’re way ahead of the game. I always thought, ‘Gee, I’m making a living scratching on a piece of wood. I can’t complain too much’.” In 1975, when he was promoting the

Born to Run album, there was a story Springsteen used to tell interviewers. While he was recording the album in New York, he was staying in a grotty outpost of Holiday Inn, in one of Manhattan’s less salubrious districts. In his room was a mirror, which hung crooked. Every morning, he would dutifully straighten the mirror. And when he returned to his room, the mirror would be askew again. And so, once more, he’d correct it. And again it would slip off centre.

It is, I suggest, a perfect metaphor for a man driven, even when the reasons for his drive, his desperation, might seem unclear to those around him. He smiles. And, rather unexpectedly, quotes Immanuel Kant back at me, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

And then the door opens, and he glides away, no obstacles in his path. ‘Born to Run’ by Bruce Springsteen, published by Simon & Schuster, is out now

He notes that when the fans meet him, one of the commonest responses has been: ‘You’re shorter than I expected’