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It Ain't Over until the Boss-man Sings

Thanks to Bobby Muller, I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce Springsteen on Monday. Bobby and I got to sit in on a practice session of Bruce & The E Street Band for the Vote For Change tour. It was pretty much the greatest thing ever. They were practicing in the empty Convention Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I am, quite frankly, speechless. Greatest. Day. Ever.

This entry was posted on September 29, 2004 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Remembered.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “It Ain't Over until the Boss-man Sings”

  1. anne Says:
    September 29, 2004 at 1:50 pm

    did you read his interview with jann wenner, republished from rolling stone and in the ny times and salon.com? fantastic interview.

    http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/28/springsteen_interview/index.html

    one part that stuck out for me:

    Your audience invests a lot in you, a very personal investment. There is nothing more personal, in some ways, than the music people listen to. I know from my own experience how you identify and relate to the person singing. You have put your fingerprints on their imagination. That is very, very intimate. When something cracks the mirror, it can be hard for the fan who you have asked to identify with you.

    Pop musicians live in the world of symbology. You live and die by the symbol in many ways. You serve at the behest of your audience’s imagination. It’s a complicated relationship. So you’re asking people to welcome the complexity in the interest of fuller and more honest communication.

    The audience and the artist are valuable to one another as long as you can look out there and see yourself, and they look back and see themselves. That’s asking quite a bit, but that is what happens. When that bond is broken, by your own individual beliefs, personal thoughts or personal actions, it can make people angry. As simple as that. You’re asking for a broader, more complicated relationship with the members of your audience than possibly you’ve had in the past.

  2. Mary Helene Says:
    September 30, 2004 at 10:24 pm

    “Pop musicians live in the world of symbology.” I’ve always been curious at the anger people displayed when they visited us when we were living overseas as diplomats and we didn’t fit their image of what we should be, when the embassy wasn’t what they thought it should have been. They insisted rather on believing that we were hiding it from them. or lying! Amazing. But this is the clue: we were living in a world of symbology. As are priests. (and they turn out, many of them, not to be as holy as we thought they should be.)

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