The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [136]
I think what happened was that when I was young, I had this idea of playing out my life like it was some movie, writing the script and making all the pieces fit. And I really did that for a long time. But you can get enslaved by your own myth or your own image, for the lack of a better word. And it’s bad enough having other people seeing you that way, but seeing yourself that way is really bad. It’s pathetic. And I got to a place, when Patti [Scialfa, Springsteen’s second wife] and I hooked up, where I said I got to stop writing this story. It doesn’t work.
And that’s when I realized I needed a change, and I like the West. I like the geography. Los Angeles is a funny city. Thirty minutes and you’re in the mountains, where for a hundred miles there’s one store. Or you’re in the desert, where for five hundred miles there’s five towns.
So Patti and I came out here and put the house together and had the babies and . . . the thing is, I’d really missed a big part of my life. The only way I could describe it is that being successful in one area is illusory. People think because you’re so good at one particular thing, you’re good at many things. And that’s almost always not the case. You’re good at that particular thing, and the danger is that that particular thing allows you the indulgence to remove yourself from the rest of your life. And as time passed, I realized that I was using my job well in many ways, but there was a fashion in which I was also abusing it. And—this began in my early thirties—I really knew that something was wrong.
That was about ten years ago?
Yeah, it started after I got back from the River tour. I’d had more success than I’d ever thought I’d have. We’d played around the world. And I thought, like, “Wow, this is it.” And I decided, “Okay, I want to have a house.” And I started to look for a house.
I looked for two years. Couldn’t find one. I’ve probably been in every house in the state of New Jersey—twice. Never bought a house. Figured I just couldn’t find one I liked. And then I realized that it ain’t that I can’t find one, I couldn’t buy one. I can find one, but I can’t buy one. Damn! Why is that?
And I started to pursue why that was. Why did I only feel good on the road? Why were all my characters in my songs in cars? I mean, when I was in my early twenties, I was always sort of like, “Hey, what I can put in this suitcase, that guitar case, that bus—that’s all I need, now and forever.” And I really believed it. And really lived it. Lived it for a long time.
In a ‘Rolling Stone’ cover story from 1978, Dave Marsh wrote that you were so devoted to music that it was impossible to imagine you being married or having kids or a house. . . .
A lot of people have said the same thing. But then something started ticking. It didn’t feel right. It was depressing. It was like, “This is a joke. I’ve come a long way, and there’s some dark joke here at the end.”
I didn’t want to be one of those guys who can write music and tell stories and have an effect on people’s lives, and maybe on society in some fashion, but not be able to get into his own self. But that was pretty much my story.
I tend to be an isolationist by nature. And it’s not about money or where you live or how you live. It’s about psychology. My dad was certainly the same way. You don’t need a ton of dough and walls around your house to be isolated. I know plenty of people who are isolated with a six-pack of beer and a television set. But that was a big part of my nature.
Then music came along, and I latched onto it as a way to combat that part of myself. It was a way that I could talk to people. It provided me with a means of communication, a means of placing myself in a social context—which I had a tendency not to want to do.
And music did those things