The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [135]
How do you think all of this will affect your songwriting?
I really think that the next official Guns n’ Roses record, or the next thing I do, at least, will take some dramatic turns that people didn’t expect and show the growth. I don’t want to be the twenty-three-year-old misfit that I was. I don’t want to be that person.
Who do you want to be?
I guess I like who I am now. I’d like to have a little more internal peace. I’m sure everybody would.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
by James Henke
August 6, 1992
The music scene has changed a lot since you last released an album. Where do you see yourself fitting in these days?
I never kind of fit in, in a funny kind of way. In the Seventies the music I wrote was sort of romantic, and there was lots of innocence in it, and it certainly didn’t feel like it was a part of that particular time. And in the Eighties, I was writing and singing about what I felt was happening to the people I was seeing around me or what direction I saw the country going in. And that really wasn’t in step with the times, either.
Well, given the response to your music then, I think you fit in pretty well during the Eighties.
Well, we were popular, but that’s not the same thing. All I try to do is to write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it. And I guess I feel that if what I’m writing about is real, and if there’s emotion, then hey, there’ll be somebody who wants to hear it. I don’t know if it’s a big audience or a smaller audience than I’ve had. But that’s never been my primary interest. I’ve had a kind of story I’ve been telling, and I’m really only in the middle of it. . . . I want to sing about who I am now. When I was young, I always said I didn’t want to end up being forty-five or fifty and pretending I was fifteen or sixteen or twenty. That just didn’t interest me. I’m a lifetime musician; I’m going to be playing music forever. I don’t foresee a time when I would not be onstage somewhere, playing a guitar and playing it loud, with power and passion. I look forward to being sixty or sixty-five and doing that.
You mentioned the ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ tour as marking the end of one phase of your career. How did the enormousness of that album and tour affect your life?
I really enjoyed the success of Born in the U.S.A., but by the end of that whole thing, I just kind of felt “Bruced” out. I was like, “Whoa, enough of that.” You end up creating this sort of icon, and eventually it oppresses you.
What specifically are you referring to?
Well, for example, the whole image that had been created—and that I’m sure I promoted—it really always felt like, “Hey, that’s not me.” I mean, the macho thing, that was just never me. It might be a little more of me than I think, but when I was a kid, I was a real gentle child, and I was more in touch with those sorts of things.
It’s funny, you know, what you create, but in the end, I think, the only thing you can do is destroy it. So when I wrote “Tunnel of Love,” I thought I had to reintroduce myself as a songwriter, in a very non-iconic role. And it was a relief. And then I got to a place where I had to sit some more of that stuff down, and part of it was coming out here to L.A. and making some music with some different people and seeing what that’s about and living in a different place for a while.
How’s it been out here [in Los Angeles], compared with New Jersey?
Los Angeles provides a lot of anonymity. You’re not like the big fish in the small pond. People wave to you and say hi, but you’re pretty much left to go your own way. Me in New Jersey, on the other hand, was like Santa Claus at the North Pole [laughs].
What do you mean?
Hmm, how can I put it?