Read Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen for Free Online

great audience. And we just came from Boston where we got a nice reception up there too. But we actually haven’t ever been in the Midwest at all. I don’t think the records get played out there at all. You can’t concern yourself about too many of those kinds of things. Business is tough enough. You can’t get the music straight, can’t get it clear enough.
    Do you have time to write still? You play an awful lot .
    Now we do “Jungleland,” that’s a new song. We do “She’s the One,” that’s a new song. “A Love So Fine,” that’s a new song.
    Which used to be something else .
    I’ve got about six other things that we’re gonna work on. So there’s time. It manifests itself when it does.
    [
Sciaky asks about other songs Springsteen performs
.]
    We pick up different things. We do different songs all the time. We’ve been doing a Crystals song.
    “And Then He Kissed Me.”
    What else have we been doing? “Spanish Harlem” we’ve been doing.
    “Spanish Harlem” is real good, real good. I half expected you to go into “Rosalita” right after that, but it wasn’t the right place for it .
    Well next time you run up and cue me [
laughter
].
    Bruce Springsteen is here and the phones are just jammed .
    In New Jersey the number is Bigelow 8.
    Please pledge your money so that this struggling rock star can go on to Texas. Have you heard this one, this is a tune called [“If I Was the Priest”] .
    That’s not what it’s called.
    What is it called?
    It has no name. This song I wrote, we did it about four years ago, we did it in the Prince, we did this in the Student Prince, which is a bar we used to play down in Jersey. I wrote it about four years ago. Thought I’d burned every copy. Somebody got a hold of it.
    What we are talking about is it is on the new Allan Clarke album, it’s only available in England .
    But there’s one part that’s great, when the harmonies come in he does these great Hollies harmonies.
    They call it “If I Were the Priest”? You ever going to do that tune?
    No, I wrote it four years ago and we used to play it in the bar. No, we’re not going to do that one.
    But just the fact that this one popped up .
    The harmonies are great. I love the harmonies he put on that.
    There must be a whole raft of old material that you wrote that we never heard .
    Yeah, most of it I burn. It’s things that aren’t really indicative of where I want to be or where I’m trying to go. I think the only stuff they send around now is the material on the two albums.
    Have you had anybody else record any of these tunes? Did I hear about Bowie recording something?
    Supposedly. I haven’t heard it yet. Supposedly he did “Saint in the City” and “Growin’ Up.” The Hollies did “Sandy.” I heard that the other day.
    Where do you put your songwriting as opposed to your performing?
    It’s all in one. It’s all connected. I don’t like to separate it. I don’t reallylike to think of myself as a songwriter or just as a performer. Whatever. I don’t know. That’s a weird question, Ed.
    I think it is part of it. Obviously your material reflects who you are. Your performing is really important to why people have come to appreciate you so much .
    What it does, in performance, things crystallize. To know what I am trying to do and what the band is you have to see it. It’s hard to have a complete understanding just off the record.
    What about when somebody else does your tune?
    It’s hard which is why not too many people have done any of the songs at all. Because they are like fairly personalized numbers and it is hard for people to get a reasonable approach to take towards it. There’s not a whole lot of approaches that can be had towards the songs.
    But a lot of them stand up by themselves. It’s hard to think of them without thinking of you. But I’m sure if somebody else tried to do “Saint in the City” they could do it, because it is a good song .
    For some reason I always imagined