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All right. Let me think here.
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Downloaded from
YTS.MX
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First thing... Everybody, hey.
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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX
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Stop.
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And the bass, like...
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You feel real good about
the way this one has come out?
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Yeah, I like it. You know, I like it.
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Which is always a hard thing to do.
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There's a lot of things, you know,
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that I would do differently,
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and I hear differently now.
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But in general...
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I think it's an honest record,
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and that's basically
what I was trying to make.
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After Born To Run,
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I wanted to write
about life in the close confines
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of the small towns I grew up in.
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In 1977, I was living on a farm
in Holmdel, New Jersey.
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It was there that I wrote most of the songs
for Darkness On The Edge Of Town.
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I was 27
and the product of Top 40 radio.
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Songs like The Animals' It's My Life,
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00:03:41,192 --> 00:03:43,127
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place,
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were infused with
an early-pop class consciousness.
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That along with my own experience,
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the stress and tension of
my father's and mother's life
27
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that came with the difficulties
of trying to make ends meet,
28
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influenced my writing.
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I had a reaction to
my own good fortune,
30
00:04:02,246 --> 00:04:04,315
and I asked myself new questions.
31
00:04:06,984 --> 00:04:10,988
I felt a sense of accountability
to the people I had grown up alongside.
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00:04:13,257 --> 00:04:15,926
I began to wonder how
to address that feeling.
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All of this led to the turn
my writing took on Darkness.
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00:05:04,608 --> 00:05:07,611
That was a sort of a big...
35
00:05:07,711 --> 00:05:10,781
it's a reckoning
with the adult world,
36
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with a life of limitations
and compromises.
37
00:05:16,253 --> 00:05:18,189
But also...
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00:05:18,289 --> 00:05:24,195
a life of kind of resilience,
and commitment to life.
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00:05:25,462 --> 00:05:27,498
You know, to...
40
00:05:27,598 --> 00:05:29,099
you know,
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to the breath in your lungs.
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00:05:31,635 --> 00:05:35,139
How do I keep
faith with those things?
43
00:05:35,239 --> 00:05:37,174
How do I honor those things?
44
00:05:37,274 --> 00:05:41,946
Darkness was a record
where I set out to try to understand
45
00:05:42,046 --> 00:05:43,480
how to do that.
46
00:06:24,688 --> 00:06:28,325
We'd had Born To Run in 1975.
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That was the biggest hit...
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00:06:31,462 --> 00:06:34,665
that any of us had
any connection to ever.
49
00:06:34,765 --> 00:06:36,500
The success
we had with Born to Run
50
00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:38,002
immediately made me ask,
51
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"Well, what's that all about?
52
00:06:40,738 --> 00:06:43,107
"What is that...
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"You know, what's that mean for me?"
54
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The success brought me an audience.
55
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It also separated me
from all the things
56
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I had been trying to make
my connections to my whole life.
57
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And it frightened me because
58
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I understood that what
I had of value was at my core,
59
00:07:07,197 --> 00:07:10,734
and that core was rooted
into the place I had grown up,
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the people I had known,
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00:07:12,803 --> 00:07:14,638
the experiences I'd had.
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00:07:14,738 --> 00:07:18,075
If I move away
from those things into a sphere of...
63
00:07:18,175 --> 00:07:20,377
of just...
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00:07:20,477 --> 00:07:22,379
freedom as pure license,
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to go about your life as you desire,
without connection,
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that's where a lot
of the people I admire
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00:07:29,420 --> 00:07:31,689
drifted away from
the essential things
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00:07:31,789 --> 00:07:33,190
that made them great.
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And more than rich,
and more than famous,
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and more than happy,
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I wanted to be great.
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The success at that particular moment
was so dreamlike.
73
00:08:03,988 --> 00:08:07,758
All of the rock-and-roll dreams
that I had held as a kid
74
00:08:07,858 --> 00:08:09,860
had finally come true.
75
00:08:10,995 --> 00:08:12,830
All of the sudden the band was noticed
76
00:08:12,930 --> 00:08:16,400
and that's when we really
started building a following.
77
00:08:16,500 --> 00:08:18,936
And everything was going good.
78
00:08:19,036 --> 00:08:22,639
We were so excited about
that type of success.
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We thought we made it.
80
00:08:26,443 --> 00:08:31,048
We were finally
in the studio making records.
81
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We got it made now,
this is going to happen.
82
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Then all of a sudden
things stopped.
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00:08:46,897 --> 00:08:48,766
There were
two clouds that hung over
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the writing and recording of
Darkness On The Edge Of Town,
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and one was just the success that we had.
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Let's face it -
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you're one thing one day,
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and then all of a sudden
you're post-Time and Newsweek,
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00:09:02,679 --> 00:09:03,680
post-Born To Run.
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00:09:03,781 --> 00:09:06,450
Everyone looks at you
different than what you were.
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00:09:06,550 --> 00:09:10,387
You were a struggling artist one day,
now you're a real success story.
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00:09:14,224 --> 00:09:16,160
I enjoyed it
plenty along the way,
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tried to accept the things
that had happened to me
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but not let them distort
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00:09:19,930 --> 00:09:22,933
my idea about who I was
or what I wanted to do.
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00:09:23,033 --> 00:09:26,303
I had to disregard
my own mutation.
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00:09:27,004 --> 00:09:28,539
That was the cloud of success.
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00:09:30,007 --> 00:09:33,210
The other was the lawsuit
that I ended up in with Mike.
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00:09:36,447 --> 00:09:41,218
January of 1976,
events had occurred
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that had led to a fracture
in the relationship
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00:09:43,787 --> 00:09:46,623
between Bruce and
his former manager, Mike Appel.
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00:09:46,723 --> 00:09:51,228
We signed a publishing
and production contract, originally.
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00:09:51,328 --> 00:09:53,263
It was customary
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in the business
when an artist gets a record deal
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to give away half his publishing,
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to EMI, Blackwood Music,
April-Blackwood Music,
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00:10:02,673 --> 00:10:03,841
whoever it might be.
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00:10:03,941 --> 00:10:06,176
He gave it to me
and it was a good thing he did
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00:10:06,276 --> 00:10:08,312
because he ended up
getting it all back.
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00:10:08,412 --> 00:10:11,148
That wouldn't
have happened elsewhere.
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00:10:11,248 --> 00:10:14,885
There was a bit something old-school
about what was going on.
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00:10:14,985 --> 00:10:20,090
The contract that these music moguls
would sign with these kids,
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00:10:20,190 --> 00:10:22,392
you know, Bruce had signed
that very contract.
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00:10:23,494 --> 00:10:26,964
When a law firm represents
a Bruce Springsteen,
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00:10:27,064 --> 00:10:29,166
the only way they can
get out of the contracts
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00:10:29,266 --> 00:10:31,201
is to claim that they're unconscionable.
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00:10:31,301 --> 00:10:34,171
The whole thing ends up
being a lot of stupidity,
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00:10:34,271 --> 00:10:38,175
there is no unconscionable anything,
and everything's just nonsense.
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How could you be getting the best deal
for Bruce Springsteen
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00:10:41,845 --> 00:10:44,615
as his manager if you're already
his producer and his publisher?
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00:10:44,715 --> 00:10:48,819
Once you start along that path,
it's hard to extricate yourself
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00:10:48,919 --> 00:10:51,855
from that legal mess that you're now in.
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00:10:51,955 --> 00:10:53,824
You know, you're being pushed along,
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00:10:53,924 --> 00:10:56,160
and you may not like
where you're being pushed,
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00:10:56,260 --> 00:10:59,296
but nevertheless you're being pushed.
You have to take a stand.
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How are you getting out of your contracts
if you want to get control?
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00:11:07,237 --> 00:11:12,342
With regard to the legal situation,
the actual initial court order
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00:11:12,442 --> 00:11:15,579
was that Bruce couldn't go in the studio
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00:11:15,679 --> 00:11:20,651
with a producer not approved by Mike Appel.
130
00:11:20,751 --> 00:11:24,288
In the early stages of that lawsuit
when things didn't go well,
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00:11:24,388 --> 00:11:27,624
his only form of protest over this
132
00:11:27,724 --> 00:11:29,927
was just not to go in at all.
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00:11:30,027 --> 00:11:32,963
The main problem we had initially
was we couldn't record
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00:11:33,063 --> 00:11:36,733
and the reason was I was signed
to Mike's production company,
135
00:11:36,833 --> 00:11:39,469
and that gave Mike the power to decide
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00:11:39,570 --> 00:11:41,538
basically all the essentials about
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00:11:41,638 --> 00:11:43,941
how we recorded, who we recorded with.
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00:11:44,041 --> 00:11:47,444
I was kind of his property in that area
and that's all there was to it,
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00:11:47,544 --> 00:11:49,980
and I couldn't make those decisions
on my own,
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00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:52,549
so therefore we couldn't go into the studio.
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00:11:56,720 --> 00:12:01,758
The initial contracts,
rather than evil, were naive.
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00:12:01,858 --> 00:12:05,462
You wouldn't put that kind of stress
and tension on a relationship.
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00:12:05,562 --> 00:12:08,765
It was bound to be destructive,
so the contracts were naive.
144
00:12:10,701 --> 00:12:12,336
The litigation that was going on,
145
00:12:12,436 --> 00:12:15,672
we weren't really a part of it,
but certainly were affected by it.
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00:12:15,772 --> 00:12:18,375
We were all broke, nobody had any money.
147
00:12:18,475 --> 00:12:20,444
We were all going day to day.
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00:12:22,646 --> 00:12:24,314
It wasn't a lawsuit about money,
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00:12:24,414 --> 00:12:26,383
it was a lawsuit about control,
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00:12:26,483 --> 00:12:30,887
who was going to be in control of my work
and my work life.
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00:12:30,988 --> 00:12:33,624
Early on I decided that
that was going to be me.
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The bottom line was
it would be my ass on the line,
153
00:12:40,364 --> 00:12:44,368
and I was gonna control where it went
and how things went down.
154
00:12:44,468 --> 00:12:48,038
That for me was what the lawsuit
was about.
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00:12:48,138 --> 00:12:51,008
If I don't go in the studio,
I don't go in the studio.
156
00:12:51,108 --> 00:12:54,244
I don't go in under somebody else's rules.
157
00:13:22,072 --> 00:13:26,043
If I can't go in the studio and make the
music I want to make, I won't make music.
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We played live,
we survived playing the live shows
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00:13:29,413 --> 00:13:32,316
as best we could,
but things got very, very difficult.
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00:13:34,618 --> 00:13:39,289
What it came down to is you can lose the
rights to your music, the ability to record...
161
00:13:40,657 --> 00:13:43,093
you can lose the ownership of your songs,
162
00:13:43,193 --> 00:13:44,861
but you can't lose...
163
00:13:48,098 --> 00:13:49,933
that thing, that thing that's in you.
164
00:14:07,718 --> 00:14:13,156
Not being able to return to the studio
after the Born To Run record,
165
00:14:13,256 --> 00:14:15,992
was just heartbreaking.
166
00:14:19,196 --> 00:14:23,600
You hear a lot of talk about family,
bands being family, teams being family.
167
00:14:23,700 --> 00:14:26,002
At that time, it really was that,
168
00:14:26,103 --> 00:14:30,207
because what we had truly
were our relationships
169
00:14:30,307 --> 00:14:32,175
and the music that Bruce was writing.
170
00:15:21,057 --> 00:15:23,360
During that time, we rehearsed every day
171
00:15:23,460 --> 00:15:25,362
at Bruce's house in New Jersey.
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00:15:26,029 --> 00:15:27,898
We could play until all hours of the night.
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00:15:27,998 --> 00:15:30,600
It was far enough and big enough
and away from other houses,
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00:15:30,700 --> 00:15:33,503
that we could make all the noise we wanted.
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00:15:36,406 --> 00:15:38,909
When he went through that lawsuit,
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00:15:39,009 --> 00:15:41,011
those things don't have to be...
177
00:15:42,012 --> 00:15:45,115
They don't have to be horrible things
that happen to you,
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00:15:45,215 --> 00:15:46,817
there's things that happen to you
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00:15:46,917 --> 00:15:48,952
and then there are catalysts
for something else.
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00:15:52,022 --> 00:15:57,461
My sense of his reaction to this roadblock
in his career
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00:15:57,561 --> 00:16:00,397
was that determination, that will,
182
00:16:00,497 --> 00:16:03,567
that desire to do it his way,
183
00:16:03,667 --> 00:16:05,302
became even greater.
184
00:16:05,402 --> 00:16:09,105
Maybe his way of working it all out
was to write songs.
185
00:16:15,278 --> 00:16:17,914
While there was a lot of pain
because I was sorting out
186
00:16:18,014 --> 00:16:20,116
what happened between Mike and I,
187
00:16:20,217 --> 00:16:24,554
it was also a time of refinding myself
and freedom.
188
00:16:24,654 --> 00:16:25,889
Freedom...
189
00:16:25,989 --> 00:16:30,193
the freedom I found
back where I felt like I belonged.
190
00:17:13,570 --> 00:17:15,338
Maybe horns here?
191
00:17:15,438 --> 00:17:19,109
Bruce had been away for a year
since he made Born To Run,
192
00:17:19,209 --> 00:17:21,011
a big record to live up to,
193
00:17:21,111 --> 00:17:22,746
it's like the clock was ticking.
194
00:17:22,846 --> 00:17:25,882
I believe the plan was to do Darkness
fairly quick.
195
00:17:25,982 --> 00:17:28,485
These days two or three years
goes by between records,
196
00:17:28,585 --> 00:17:31,221
and people don't think about it much,
but in those days
197
00:17:31,321 --> 00:17:34,357
we had to make two records in the first year
that I had a contract,
198
00:17:34,457 --> 00:17:36,526
and another record shortly after that.
199
00:17:36,626 --> 00:17:40,463
Two or three years in between records then,
you disappeared.
200
00:17:40,564 --> 00:17:43,533
And I read many, many articles
"Whatever happened to...?"
201
00:17:43,633 --> 00:17:45,802
You know, you're dead, flash in the pan,
202
00:17:45,902 --> 00:17:48,638
and for all I knew, that might have been true.
203
00:17:52,075 --> 00:17:55,078
The stakes were even higher,
in certain respects.
204
00:17:55,178 --> 00:17:56,680
What was this guy gonna do next?
205
00:17:59,549 --> 00:18:01,985
The future was pretty cloudy.
206
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:05,889
You know, we had one success.
207
00:18:05,989 --> 00:18:07,824
A lot of people, that's all they have.
208
00:18:07,924 --> 00:18:10,961
If I'd had that one success,
I'd have went back to Asbury Park
209
00:18:11,061 --> 00:18:15,332
millions of dollars in debt
rather than the other way round.
210
00:18:15,432 --> 00:18:16,666
You didn't know...
211
00:18:18,168 --> 00:18:20,870
that this may be the last record
you'll ever make.
212
00:18:20,971 --> 00:18:25,508
Everything I'm about, and think about,
I gotta get it out now,
213
00:18:25,609 --> 00:18:28,678
on this record,
because there's no tomorrow.
214
00:18:29,646 --> 00:18:32,349
There's just this moment.
215
00:18:34,050 --> 00:18:36,019
One, two, three, four!
216
00:18:52,802 --> 00:18:54,604
In June of 1977,
217
00:18:54,704 --> 00:19:01,244
Bruce's situation with his former manager
was decided conclusively.
218
00:19:01,344 --> 00:19:05,181
He got control of his music
and ultimately his career,
219
00:19:05,281 --> 00:19:07,050
and it was probably, in my view,
220
00:19:07,150 --> 00:19:09,419
the defining moment of his young career,
221
00:19:09,519 --> 00:19:13,023
because he had withstood
the rigors of someone
222
00:19:13,123 --> 00:19:15,859
literally trying to take his future away.
223
00:19:17,494 --> 00:19:21,064
These were the things that
I would have fought to the death for
224
00:19:21,164 --> 00:19:25,669
because without them, at that time,
I felt I had no life.
225
00:19:25,769 --> 00:19:27,737
So I knew I was gonna take...
226
00:19:27,837 --> 00:19:31,074
whatever it was,
I was gonna take it the whole way.
227
00:19:31,174 --> 00:19:32,575
And...
228
00:19:33,610 --> 00:19:36,312
And that you're fighting a friend,
which is...
229
00:19:37,213 --> 00:19:38,581
I wish it on nobody.
230
00:19:39,849 --> 00:19:42,819
The loss of Mike's friendship
was a terrible loss.
231
00:19:44,254 --> 00:19:47,357
I mean, I don't think our working relationship
232
00:19:47,457 --> 00:19:50,827
would have continued the way it had,
you know, but...
233
00:19:50,927 --> 00:19:54,664
but the friendship
was tremendously enjoyable.
234
00:19:54,764 --> 00:19:56,633
When we see each other now,
235
00:19:56,733 --> 00:19:59,402
I still enjoy being with him very much.
236
00:20:00,937 --> 00:20:05,442
I called Jon Landau and I said,
"I feel it's silly, this acrimony
237
00:20:05,542 --> 00:20:07,711
"that's still lingering in the air."
238
00:20:07,811 --> 00:20:09,412
He said, "Mike, come on up."
239
00:20:09,512 --> 00:20:13,149
I came up and I sat with him for an hour
or whatever it was,
240
00:20:13,249 --> 00:20:14,384
chatting and...
241
00:20:14,484 --> 00:20:18,822
He said, "I'll get a hold of Bruce, I'm sure
he'll want to get together with you."
242
00:20:18,922 --> 00:20:21,057
And we did. We had a great dinner.
243
00:20:21,157 --> 00:20:24,527
And that's commitment
you can't find anywhere.
244
00:20:27,163 --> 00:20:29,532
Had I stayed right to this day,
245
00:20:29,632 --> 00:20:32,235
that would not have been
the best thing for Mike Appel
246
00:20:32,335 --> 00:20:36,406
because I have very strong artistic ideas
247
00:20:36,506 --> 00:20:39,476
about songwriting and songs
and lyrics and riffs,
248
00:20:39,576 --> 00:20:42,078
and they may have conflicted with Bruce.
249
00:20:42,178 --> 00:20:45,982
And in the end you have to say,
"Mike, who's the artist?"
250
00:20:54,758 --> 00:20:57,494
Finally, when we went back into the studio
to start recording
251
00:20:57,594 --> 00:21:00,196
what would become the
Darkness On The Edge Of Town album,
252
00:21:00,296 --> 00:21:01,898
it was a sense of...
253
00:21:01,998 --> 00:21:05,034
we can finally start working on this thing
254
00:21:05,135 --> 00:21:10,840
with the proper production team
of Bruce and Jon Landau.
255
00:21:10,940 --> 00:21:15,278
When we sort of got together
and started talking about Darkness,
256
00:21:15,378 --> 00:21:17,881
I had vaguely assumed that we would
257
00:21:17,981 --> 00:21:20,683
in some way pick up from where we left off.
258
00:21:20,784 --> 00:21:23,686
I think even us,
as well as the record companies,
259
00:21:23,787 --> 00:21:25,255
after Born To Run...
260
00:21:26,322 --> 00:21:31,060
felt the next record would sort of
follow in the same footsteps,
261
00:21:31,161 --> 00:21:34,531
and propel us a little further along.
262
00:21:34,631 --> 00:21:36,332
That would seem like formula to me.
263
00:21:36,432 --> 00:21:39,969
He wasn't planning to write
the next Jungleland
264
00:21:40,069 --> 00:21:41,604
or the next Backstreets.
265
00:21:41,704 --> 00:21:45,308
I think that was one moment,
he was in another moment.
266
00:21:45,408 --> 00:21:48,478
One, two, three,
267
00:21:48,578 --> 00:21:49,913
four.
268
00:22:02,692 --> 00:22:05,929
One, two, three,
269
00:22:06,029 --> 00:22:07,430
four.
270
00:22:16,706 --> 00:22:19,075
It was quite experimental
271
00:22:19,175 --> 00:22:21,678
that we didn't go into that record
272
00:22:21,778 --> 00:22:26,349
with an absolutely specific idea of...
273
00:22:26,449 --> 00:22:28,718
what we wanted from it,
274
00:22:28,818 --> 00:22:31,554
and how we were gonna get there.
275
00:22:32,822 --> 00:22:34,424
I remember him telling me
276
00:22:34,524 --> 00:22:37,594
he really wanted to downsize the scale,
277
00:22:37,694 --> 00:22:40,563
that big sound of Born To Run.
278
00:22:45,401 --> 00:22:48,004
Suddenly everything got very sparse.
279
00:22:48,104 --> 00:22:51,975
Where the Born To Run album
had this sort of...
280
00:22:52,075 --> 00:22:55,612
our take on the quote-unquote
"wall of sound",
281
00:22:55,712 --> 00:22:59,549
now you had this vast cinematic landscape.
282
00:23:07,724 --> 00:23:11,094
I love the wily lone wolf image
283
00:23:11,194 --> 00:23:13,663
that I get when I hear that record.
284
00:23:13,763 --> 00:23:16,466
The record maintains that kind of ominous...
285
00:23:17,967 --> 00:23:21,804
...potentially hopeful feel throughout,
it doesn't break that focus.
286
00:23:21,905 --> 00:23:27,043
One phrase that we would use to discuss
287
00:23:27,143 --> 00:23:29,946
the sound of the record,
288
00:23:30,046 --> 00:23:32,015
as it evolved,
289
00:23:33,383 --> 00:23:36,185
was the sound picture.
290
00:23:39,022 --> 00:23:44,127
What kind of picture
was the sound of the record suggesting?
291
00:23:46,396 --> 00:23:48,831
We did want a certain feeling of loneliness,
292
00:23:48,932 --> 00:23:55,004
a certain unglamorized,
to mix languages, sound.
293
00:23:56,506 --> 00:23:58,541
There was no "sweetening",
294
00:23:58,641 --> 00:24:02,779
you know, a lot of overdubs,
especially strings and horns.
295
00:24:02,879 --> 00:24:07,550
We didn't want any sweetening, we wanted,
you know, coffee black.
296
00:24:20,296 --> 00:24:23,766
That was pretty much what I was after,
a leaner sound,
297
00:24:23,866 --> 00:24:25,568
an angrier sound,
298
00:24:25,668 --> 00:24:28,037
I wanted to toughen up the songs.
299
00:24:28,137 --> 00:24:30,506
When you're first making records,
300
00:24:30,606 --> 00:24:35,712
you so think that you need this
big production, this big sound.
301
00:24:35,812 --> 00:24:38,548
So I think Bruce was a little futuristic
302
00:24:38,648 --> 00:24:40,850
in saying, you know, let's just be simple.
303
00:24:42,819 --> 00:24:46,255
I wanted the record to have a very...
304
00:24:46,356 --> 00:24:48,157
relentless...
305
00:24:49,158 --> 00:24:50,093
feeling.
306
00:24:50,193 --> 00:24:59,969
Nothing is forgotten or forgiven
when it's your last time around
307
00:25:03,506 --> 00:25:07,577
I got stuff running 'round my head
308
00:25:08,544 --> 00:25:15,118
that I just can't live down
309
00:25:27,697 --> 00:25:29,532
We're very preoccupied with parts.
310
00:25:29,632 --> 00:25:32,235
On Born to Run
Bruce wrote all those parts,
311
00:25:32,335 --> 00:25:34,670
the way to get it just the way he wanted,
312
00:25:34,771 --> 00:25:36,873
was to focus on each individual part.
313
00:25:44,580 --> 00:25:48,551
We had these very, very set arrangements
on Born To Run.
314
00:25:51,020 --> 00:25:53,322
Darkness was a bit more freewheeling.
315
00:26:11,207 --> 00:26:13,910
We just simply didn't rehearse anymore.
316
00:26:14,010 --> 00:26:18,314
I would give the guys the chords,
317
00:26:18,414 --> 00:26:20,216
count into the song,
318
00:26:20,316 --> 00:26:24,654
and before they could come up with parts,
they'd have to play.
319
00:26:26,756 --> 00:26:28,691
So the first two or three takes,
320
00:26:28,791 --> 00:26:32,195
you didn't get people recording,
you got people playing.
321
00:26:36,966 --> 00:26:38,868
Very often I didn't have the words.
322
00:26:38,968 --> 00:26:41,671
I remember Badlands,
I think I had "Badlands".
323
00:26:54,083 --> 00:26:57,887
Bruce was at that time
a tremendous rewriter,
324
00:26:57,987 --> 00:27:00,456
alternate verses, alternate endings,
325
00:27:00,556 --> 00:27:02,758
always created choices for himself.
326
00:27:07,463 --> 00:27:08,564
All right.
327
00:27:12,268 --> 00:27:13,669
I had that riff.
328
00:27:14,537 --> 00:27:17,273
So I would count it off.
329
00:27:17,373 --> 00:27:19,642
And then I would sort of imagine...
330
00:27:19,742 --> 00:27:21,711
I'd imagine a verse in a...
331
00:27:23,846 --> 00:27:25,381
you know, A and a B section,
332
00:27:25,481 --> 00:27:27,183
I wouldn't have any lyrics yet.
333
00:27:27,283 --> 00:27:30,319
I was just following
whatever worked musically,
334
00:27:30,419 --> 00:27:32,255
whatever felt exciting musically.
335
00:27:37,727 --> 00:27:40,796
Well, it was the first real
E Street Band record,
336
00:27:40,897 --> 00:27:43,432
I think in many ways his first two albums
337
00:27:43,533 --> 00:27:46,135
were solo records.
338
00:27:52,542 --> 00:27:53,843
Stop, stop.
339
00:27:54,177 --> 00:27:58,314
How do you capture that great live thing
in the studio...
340
00:27:59,749 --> 00:28:01,150
was still a bit of a mystery.
341
00:28:01,250 --> 00:28:07,523
In the '70s, somebody decided
that all ambient sound was bad.
342
00:28:07,623 --> 00:28:10,159
Everything was carpeted,
everything was dead,
343
00:28:10,259 --> 00:28:12,895
nothing was allowed to breathe,
344
00:28:12,995 --> 00:28:15,097
we wanted to capture
the sound of the band live.
345
00:28:15,198 --> 00:28:19,202
But studios created this
completely unnatural environment,
346
00:28:19,302 --> 00:28:24,207
with not a hint of any reverberant sound
coming off of anything.
347
00:28:24,307 --> 00:28:27,310
And if you listen to a lot of records
from the '70s,
348
00:28:27,410 --> 00:28:31,814
the deadness on them,
I find it makes my skin crawl.
349
00:28:43,392 --> 00:28:45,194
We didn't know how to get any sounds.
350
00:28:45,294 --> 00:28:47,863
That was our main problem,
our problem all along.
351
00:28:50,700 --> 00:28:52,435
This way it maintains...
352
00:28:58,107 --> 00:28:59,675
Nothing seemed to be working.
353
00:28:59,775 --> 00:29:01,344
We were just babes in the woods,
354
00:29:01,444 --> 00:29:03,879
trying to figure out how to make a record
355
00:29:03,980 --> 00:29:08,851
that sounded, you know, like live,
like we hear in our heads,
356
00:29:08,951 --> 00:29:13,155
but not really knowing the technology
or having the wisdom
357
00:29:13,256 --> 00:29:14,757
to figure it out.
358
00:29:20,630 --> 00:29:24,267
The drum sound on Darkness,
that was quite a fiasco.
359
00:29:24,367 --> 00:29:28,037
We literally spent weeks in the studio
just trying to get drum sounds.
360
00:29:30,306 --> 00:29:33,909
An incredible amount of discussion
and intention
361
00:29:34,010 --> 00:29:37,013
devoted to the subject of Max's snare sound.
362
00:29:49,492 --> 00:29:51,427
He would be sitting next to me.
363
00:29:51,527 --> 00:29:55,298
Max would be out there
and he'd say, "Again."
364
00:29:55,398 --> 00:29:58,100
And then Max would hit it
and all Bruce would say
365
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:01,537
over and over and over again, "Stick!"
366
00:30:01,637 --> 00:30:04,640
That means he could hear the stick
on the drum.
367
00:30:04,740 --> 00:30:08,844
It got to a place where we were
analyzing this so carefully
368
00:30:08,944 --> 00:30:11,213
that everything sounded like...
369
00:30:11,314 --> 00:30:14,950
"Stick!" That just sounds like
you're hitting it with a stick.
370
00:30:15,051 --> 00:30:18,087
"Stick!" I mean hours.
371
00:30:19,388 --> 00:30:22,191
We put the drums every place
you could put them in that building.
372
00:30:22,291 --> 00:30:25,194
We put the drums in the elevator.
373
00:30:25,294 --> 00:30:29,198
You would hear the whole reverb of
this whole big stairwell,
374
00:30:29,298 --> 00:30:30,466
which made no sense at all.
375
00:30:30,566 --> 00:30:32,935
I was waiting for a phone call
376
00:30:33,035 --> 00:30:36,405
to come back to the studio
and start work again
377
00:30:36,505 --> 00:30:39,308
while they're ten hours a day
hitting a drum
378
00:30:39,408 --> 00:30:41,477
trying to make it sound like a drum.
379
00:30:41,577 --> 00:30:43,479
It was pretty sad, really.
380
00:30:43,579 --> 00:30:49,218
The problem was this,
I fantasized these huge sounds.
381
00:30:49,985 --> 00:30:54,423
And so we went to pursue them,
but they were always bigger in my head.
382
00:30:55,224 --> 00:30:56,959
And so we constantly were chasing
383
00:30:57,059 --> 00:31:01,397
something that was
somewhat unattainable.
384
00:31:01,497 --> 00:31:05,434
The thing that I didn't understand was
a fundamental equation at the time,
385
00:31:05,534 --> 00:31:07,737
which was if you get big drums,
386
00:31:07,837 --> 00:31:09,905
the guitars sound smaller.
387
00:31:10,005 --> 00:31:12,942
If you get big guitars,
the drums are gonna have...
388
00:31:13,042 --> 00:31:16,579
Something has to give,
there's only so much sonic range,
389
00:31:16,679 --> 00:31:18,280
but we didn't know this at the time,
390
00:31:18,381 --> 00:31:21,917
we just assumed
everything could sound huge.
391
00:31:42,638 --> 00:31:47,743
Well, in those days, our process
was to rehearse a song in the studio,
392
00:31:47,843 --> 00:31:50,012
lay it down - in other words, record it -
393
00:31:50,112 --> 00:31:53,382
and once it became at all coherent,
394
00:31:53,482 --> 00:31:55,785
go back into the control room to listen to it
395
00:31:55,885 --> 00:31:59,088
and to start honing it individually
and collectively.
396
00:31:59,188 --> 00:32:03,859
And in those days it was about as much
the live performance of the take,
397
00:32:03,959 --> 00:32:05,428
something special about it,
398
00:32:05,528 --> 00:32:08,531
so when you sat down
it wasn't just by rote,
399
00:32:08,631 --> 00:32:10,599
you were going out to create magic.
400
00:32:16,939 --> 00:32:20,142
You just interpreted the songs more
in your own way
401
00:32:20,242 --> 00:32:25,848
and the sound reflected that
because it was much more stark.
402
00:32:25,948 --> 00:32:27,316
There was less saxophone.
403
00:32:37,193 --> 00:32:40,729
The sax became a bit of an issue
on that record.
404
00:32:41,530 --> 00:32:44,233
Take Born To Run and say
the basis of the record
405
00:32:44,333 --> 00:32:47,169
was Brill Building and Phil Spector
406
00:32:47,269 --> 00:32:50,206
and urban popular music.
407
00:32:50,306 --> 00:32:52,675
When we went to
Darkness On The Edge Of Town,
408
00:32:52,775 --> 00:32:56,378
it was a little more heartland, rural.
409
00:32:56,479 --> 00:32:59,515
And so I then said how do I use the sax,
410
00:32:59,615 --> 00:33:01,550
which is a very urban instrument?
411
00:33:01,650 --> 00:33:06,622
How do I integrate what Clarence is doing
into this context?
412
00:33:08,190 --> 00:33:13,128
He had definite ideas about certain solos
and certain songs.
413
00:33:30,446 --> 00:33:32,915
He would direct me by telling me a story
414
00:33:33,015 --> 00:33:35,251
and then he would hum it or sing it.
415
00:33:35,351 --> 00:33:37,019
"Like this, big man."
416
00:33:50,833 --> 00:33:52,835
I remember we had mastered the record
417
00:33:52,935 --> 00:33:56,472
with no sax solo on Badlands,
it was just a guitar solo.
418
00:33:58,541 --> 00:34:02,244
But at the end of the record
I didn't think we had enough saxophone,
419
00:34:02,344 --> 00:34:05,481
took the guitar out
and Clarence played over that.
420
00:34:05,581 --> 00:34:08,484
It would have been a terrible mistake
to leave that sax solo out.
421
00:34:08,584 --> 00:34:12,054
Its presence is so strong in the places
where it appears
422
00:34:12,154 --> 00:34:15,057
that it feels like the sax
is on much more of the record
423
00:34:15,157 --> 00:34:16,759
than it actually turned out to be.
424
00:34:30,573 --> 00:34:33,008
We recorded a lot of music.
425
00:34:33,108 --> 00:34:36,078
Reels and reels and reels of tapes
and songs,
426
00:34:36,178 --> 00:34:40,182
and it went on for days and days and days,
just recording songs.
427
00:34:40,282 --> 00:34:42,952
He was very prolific, it was like he exploded.
428
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:48,490
Born To Run, there were only nine songs.
Eight made the album.
429
00:34:48,591 --> 00:34:51,026
On Darkness there were 70 songs.
430
00:34:51,126 --> 00:34:53,195
That was a big difference.
431
00:34:53,295 --> 00:34:58,000
If you think about that,
somebody sculpting eight songs,
432
00:34:58,100 --> 00:35:02,071
and then all of a sudden,
the next album they're writing 70 songs.
433
00:35:02,171 --> 00:35:04,540
Basically, the first good ten songs you write,
434
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,176
you put them out, that's your record.
435
00:35:07,276 --> 00:35:10,479
That process would end...
436
00:35:10,579 --> 00:35:11,747
forever.
437
00:35:11,847 --> 00:35:13,182
And never came back.
438
00:35:13,282 --> 00:35:16,185
I would say Bruce would write five songs
to get one song.
439
00:35:16,285 --> 00:35:20,022
There was a lot of multi-versions
of all kinds of things.
440
00:35:20,122 --> 00:35:22,157
We were always pulling things apart.
441
00:35:22,257 --> 00:35:25,628
I had like a big junkyard of stuff
as the year went by.
442
00:35:25,728 --> 00:35:27,296
If something wasn't complete,
443
00:35:27,396 --> 00:35:31,333
I just pulled out the parts I liked, like
pulling the parts you need from one car,
444
00:35:31,433 --> 00:35:33,669
putting them in the other car
so that car runs.
445
00:36:24,753 --> 00:36:27,156
Bruce to this day has notebooks,
446
00:36:27,256 --> 00:36:29,825
and he's always diddling and always writing,
447
00:36:29,925 --> 00:36:31,960
and very aware of things around him.
448
00:36:32,061 --> 00:36:36,832
Magical notebook, an endless stream
of songs coming out of it.
449
00:36:37,700 --> 00:36:39,435
What are you looking in this book for?
450
00:36:39,535 --> 00:36:42,938
The only thing that can come out of
this book is more work.
451
00:36:53,248 --> 00:36:55,484
After the sessions, you know,
452
00:36:55,584 --> 00:36:58,587
Bruce would say, "Let's go to the book,
I got more songs,
453
00:36:58,687 --> 00:37:00,889
"let's go through them."
454
00:37:00,989 --> 00:37:03,125
So we'd sit at the piano,
455
00:37:03,225 --> 00:37:07,162
he'd open up a book of, you know, ideas.
456
00:37:07,262 --> 00:37:09,631
You know? And he'd have...
457
00:37:09,732 --> 00:37:11,600
25 ideas in there.
458
00:37:41,663 --> 00:37:44,099
And you know that's the truth, baby.
459
00:38:12,227 --> 00:38:14,763
You know, you'd go,
"Hey, what a great song,
460
00:38:14,863 --> 00:38:16,999
"we're gonna use that, right?"
461
00:38:17,099 --> 00:38:21,336
And then he'd go, "No, I don't know
if that's gonna make it."
462
00:38:21,436 --> 00:38:24,606
Ideas that I was interested in
concentrating on
463
00:38:24,706 --> 00:38:26,809
would have been diluted
at that moment
464
00:38:26,909 --> 00:38:31,313
if I had made more of a miscellaneous
grab bag of music,
465
00:38:31,413 --> 00:38:33,916
no matter how entertaining it was
at the time.
466
00:38:47,763 --> 00:38:52,935
You realized after a while that the albums
were made up of songs
467
00:38:53,035 --> 00:38:54,670
that had an emotional thread,
468
00:38:54,770 --> 00:38:59,608
not a collection of what the artist would think
469
00:38:59,708 --> 00:39:01,677
was gonna play well on the radio.
470
00:39:11,954 --> 00:39:15,157
Those songs wound up being cut later
471
00:39:15,257 --> 00:39:16,525
on The River album.
472
00:39:16,625 --> 00:39:20,696
We went back to those
and pulled some of those out.
473
00:39:20,796 --> 00:39:23,332
And some of them had to wait for
the Tracks album.
474
00:39:40,249 --> 00:39:43,352
It's really hard to write a really good song.
475
00:39:44,519 --> 00:39:46,255
For him to write good songs,
476
00:39:46,355 --> 00:39:48,190
possibly could have been hit songs,
477
00:39:48,290 --> 00:39:50,859
and to not put them out, put 'em aside,
478
00:39:50,959 --> 00:39:56,498
an enormous amount of discipline
and willpower to do that, you know?
479
00:40:00,369 --> 00:40:02,070
It's a bit tragic...
480
00:40:03,205 --> 00:40:04,473
in a way...
481
00:40:04,573 --> 00:40:08,143
'cause he would have been one of
the great pop songwriters of all time.
482
00:40:45,314 --> 00:40:49,117
Steve always had a great ear for,
and still does,
483
00:40:49,217 --> 00:40:50,752
loves the...
484
00:40:50,852 --> 00:40:52,788
the classic sort of pop,
485
00:40:52,888 --> 00:40:55,490
a lot of the things that ended up on Tracks.
486
00:40:56,391 --> 00:40:59,094
Enormous amount of The River
and Darkness outtakes,
487
00:40:59,194 --> 00:41:01,630
were probably some of his favorite things.
488
00:41:01,730 --> 00:41:05,534
And he was a big aficionado...
The three-minute pop single for Steve.
489
00:41:16,878 --> 00:41:18,246
I think part of what...
490
00:41:18,347 --> 00:41:20,449
what pop promised
and rock promised
491
00:41:20,549 --> 00:41:22,851
was the never-ending now, you know,
492
00:41:22,951 --> 00:41:27,456
the always "No, no, no, it's about living now.
493
00:41:27,556 --> 00:41:30,759
"Right now you need to be alive, right now."
494
00:41:47,542 --> 00:41:50,712
Those three minutes, it was all on,
495
00:41:50,812 --> 00:41:54,783
you know, it was all of a sudden
you were lifted up
496
00:41:54,883 --> 00:41:59,621
into a higher place of living
and experiencing,
497
00:41:59,721 --> 00:42:04,493
and there was this beautiful
ever-present now.
498
00:42:11,366 --> 00:42:13,001
He just can do anything.
499
00:42:13,101 --> 00:42:15,604
He can write anything for anybody.
500
00:42:15,704 --> 00:42:19,107
And he just very much
took that for granted.
501
00:42:19,207 --> 00:42:21,543
Which is how a lot of our poppier stuff
502
00:42:21,643 --> 00:42:23,512
ended up not being released.
503
00:42:23,612 --> 00:42:25,814
I mean, one great example which I think
504
00:42:25,914 --> 00:42:28,350
would have fit on
Darkness On The Edge Of Town,
505
00:42:28,450 --> 00:42:30,452
was a song called Because The Night.
506
00:42:30,552 --> 00:42:32,754
I was recording Patti Smith at the time
507
00:42:32,854 --> 00:42:35,857
as well as doing Bruce Springsteen
because I wanted to be a record producer.
508
00:42:35,957 --> 00:42:39,728
So I started producing the record
in between Bruce's stuff.
509
00:42:39,828 --> 00:42:42,831
And one day we were at the Nevada Hotel,
me and Bruce,
510
00:42:42,931 --> 00:42:44,132
and he said...
511
00:42:45,333 --> 00:42:48,336
"Hey, man, how are you doing with Patti?"
512
00:42:48,437 --> 00:42:50,072
I said, "I don't have the song
513
00:42:50,172 --> 00:42:52,908
"that's gonna make everybody
listen to the album."
514
00:42:53,008 --> 00:42:55,177
He said, "You mean
you don't have the single."
515
00:42:55,277 --> 00:42:57,946
I said, "That's right, I don't have the single."
516
00:42:58,046 --> 00:43:00,849
He said, "Well, what are you gonna do?"
517
00:43:00,949 --> 00:43:06,321
I knew that I wasn't gonna finish the song
because it was a love song,
518
00:43:06,421 --> 00:43:11,259
and I really felt like I didn't know
how to write them at the time.
519
00:43:11,359 --> 00:43:15,030
There was so many of them out there,
I figured I'd do something different.
520
00:43:15,130 --> 00:43:18,500
And also a real love song
like Because The Night,
521
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:20,035
I was reticent to write.
522
00:43:20,135 --> 00:43:24,806
I think I was too cowardly
to write it at the time.
523
00:43:25,807 --> 00:43:28,110
But she was very brave,
524
00:43:28,210 --> 00:43:30,545
she had the courage.
525
00:43:31,413 --> 00:43:33,348
I was in my apartment and I was
526
00:43:33,448 --> 00:43:37,252
having a long-distance romance
with Fred Sonic Smith,
527
00:43:37,352 --> 00:43:38,954
who later became my husband.
528
00:43:39,054 --> 00:43:43,191
He was supposed to call me
and I waited for him to call me for hours.
529
00:43:43,291 --> 00:43:46,728
I thought,
"Well, I'll listen to that darn song."
530
00:43:47,596 --> 00:43:50,165
It was so accessible,
531
00:43:50,265 --> 00:43:53,034
it had such an anthemic tone,
532
00:43:53,135 --> 00:43:55,470
it was in my key,
533
00:43:55,570 --> 00:43:57,839
and I kept letting it loop and play.
534
00:43:57,939 --> 00:44:01,009
And I still tried to resist it,
but I filled in the blanks,
535
00:44:01,109 --> 00:44:03,578
and in the blanks it tells the story
536
00:44:03,678 --> 00:44:07,349
of me waiting for Fred to call
and of my love for Fred.
537
00:44:23,498 --> 00:44:27,135
Fred did call about three in the morning,
538
00:44:27,235 --> 00:44:29,771
and I wasn't mad at him, though,
539
00:44:29,871 --> 00:44:31,606
because by the time he called
540
00:44:31,706 --> 00:44:33,842
I had written my share of the lyrics
541
00:44:33,942 --> 00:44:37,612
of my one and only hit song.
542
00:44:39,948 --> 00:44:44,219
You know, she took it, and she turned it
into this really beautiful love song.
543
00:44:44,319 --> 00:44:48,223
I have to thank Jimmy for recognizing
what was in the song,
544
00:44:48,323 --> 00:44:51,626
and then for her for the intensity
and the personalness,
545
00:44:51,726 --> 00:44:54,362
and the deep love that she put in,
you know.
546
00:44:54,462 --> 00:44:57,365
Her working on it has been
a tremendous gift to me.
547
00:44:57,465 --> 00:45:01,836
I know that there were a lot of brilliant songs
that were written
548
00:45:01,937 --> 00:45:03,638
that just didn't make the album.
549
00:45:03,738 --> 00:45:06,841
They would have altered the picture.
When you look at Darkness,
550
00:45:06,942 --> 00:45:10,212
the person's not really attached to
anybody else in that record.
551
00:45:10,312 --> 00:45:12,314
There are no love songs on that record.
552
00:45:12,414 --> 00:45:16,651
The two biggest songs that
were written for the Darkness album
553
00:45:16,751 --> 00:45:18,687
and recorded by us,
554
00:45:18,787 --> 00:45:21,957
Fire and Because The Night...
555
00:45:24,526 --> 00:45:26,127
didn't make it onto the album.
556
00:45:26,228 --> 00:45:27,862
One thing about Bruce,
557
00:45:27,963 --> 00:45:31,866
is I think if he thought something
was going to be a hit,
558
00:45:31,967 --> 00:45:36,938
and he didn't want to be represented
by that hit,
559
00:45:37,038 --> 00:45:38,607
he'd just leave 'em off the record.
560
00:45:38,940 --> 00:45:40,775
Bruce was going for something,
561
00:45:40,875 --> 00:45:44,312
and like on Born To Run
he had something in his head.
562
00:45:44,412 --> 00:45:48,283
And until he got that thing in his head
563
00:45:48,383 --> 00:45:49,985
on tape,
564
00:45:50,085 --> 00:45:53,455
he'd just keep going and going and going.
565
00:46:12,307 --> 00:46:16,378
Everybody put in their two cents
about the music and the production,
566
00:46:16,478 --> 00:46:19,614
and maybe where something
should be or shouldn't be.
567
00:46:19,714 --> 00:46:21,182
And there would be a lot of times
568
00:46:21,283 --> 00:46:24,085
where Jon and Bruce and maybe Steven
would huddle up.
569
00:46:29,190 --> 00:46:30,258
But it's like...
570
00:46:32,994 --> 00:46:35,664
There were a lot of people
in the control room.
571
00:46:35,764 --> 00:46:37,966
You have a producer, Jon Landau,
572
00:46:38,066 --> 00:46:40,135
you had the artist who's also a producer,
573
00:46:40,235 --> 00:46:41,770
Steve Van Zandt...
574
00:46:41,870 --> 00:46:43,338
so I held back.
575
00:46:43,438 --> 00:46:46,608
I'm looking at the piano fader on the console
576
00:46:46,708 --> 00:46:49,511
and Steve was looking at the guitar fader,
577
00:46:49,611 --> 00:46:52,213
everybody kind of wants
to lean over the engineer
578
00:46:52,314 --> 00:46:54,816
and push themselves up
to hear a little more.
579
00:46:54,916 --> 00:46:58,586
That made for, at times,
580
00:46:58,687 --> 00:47:00,689
some pretty funny discussions.
581
00:47:00,789 --> 00:47:03,892
Sometimes some pretty tense discussions.
582
00:47:03,992 --> 00:47:06,428
Probably more tense discussions
than funny.
583
00:47:17,172 --> 00:47:18,773
All right?
584
00:47:39,294 --> 00:47:40,995
Steve is generally...
585
00:47:41,096 --> 00:47:43,465
"It's my way or it sucks!"
586
00:47:45,033 --> 00:47:49,170
It's like "Hey, man,
this is a major tragedy. Stop!"
587
00:47:49,270 --> 00:47:52,707
It's like, "We're fucking this whole thing up
right now."
588
00:47:52,807 --> 00:47:55,744
A transition was taking place at that point.
589
00:47:55,844 --> 00:48:00,215
And everybody would be finding
what role to play.
590
00:48:00,315 --> 00:48:02,917
I was just doing what a friend does.
591
00:48:03,017 --> 00:48:04,119
You know?
592
00:48:04,219 --> 00:48:07,188
I'm just gonna give you my opinion,
you know.
593
00:48:07,288 --> 00:48:12,093
And try and discover
what it is you wanna do.
594
00:48:18,466 --> 00:48:21,569
The basis for our situation in the studio,
595
00:48:21,669 --> 00:48:26,174
Jon is a formalist for the most part,
596
00:48:26,274 --> 00:48:28,676
he's kind of a pop formalist,
597
00:48:28,777 --> 00:48:31,446
and he is all roots and gospel and soul,
598
00:48:31,546 --> 00:48:35,950
but they were also
well-performed, well-sung,
599
00:48:36,050 --> 00:48:37,485
well-played records.
600
00:48:37,585 --> 00:48:41,389
Steve likes things trashier and noisier,
601
00:48:41,489 --> 00:48:45,026
he's the garage guy, you know.
602
00:48:45,126 --> 00:48:49,831
And so I tend to like things
in the middle somewhere.
603
00:48:49,931 --> 00:48:51,966
It was just two varying opinions.
604
00:48:52,066 --> 00:48:54,335
I enjoyed them both.
605
00:48:54,436 --> 00:48:59,607
I didn't want any one person
having too much control
606
00:48:59,707 --> 00:49:02,877
over the direction the music was taking.
607
00:49:02,977 --> 00:49:05,146
So...
608
00:49:05,246 --> 00:49:07,682
I would Yin-Yang a little bit, you know.
609
00:49:08,583 --> 00:49:11,453
It was just the way that I played it, you know.
610
00:49:11,553 --> 00:49:14,289
So I think Jon probably entered originally
611
00:49:14,389 --> 00:49:18,693
thinking we were gonna work like we worked
Born To Run.
612
00:49:18,793 --> 00:49:21,830
And that was already something.
I was into trying something else now.
613
00:49:23,031 --> 00:49:24,432
Throughout our work life,
614
00:49:24,532 --> 00:49:28,169
there's been a variety of moments
where he goes, "Oh."
615
00:49:28,269 --> 00:49:30,738
He grasps that idea
and he shifts,
616
00:49:30,839 --> 00:49:34,442
and he finds some very constructive
and helpful way
617
00:49:34,542 --> 00:49:39,113
to help me move on, on what I am doing,
what I am trying to do, you know.
618
00:49:39,214 --> 00:49:43,284
It's an amazing...
It's been one of his great talents.
619
00:49:43,384 --> 00:49:47,856
And it's probably been an enormous reason
why we've been together
620
00:49:47,956 --> 00:49:49,791
and so productive for so long.
621
00:49:51,493 --> 00:49:56,931
I think that a lot of this album had to do,
ultimately,
622
00:49:57,031 --> 00:50:00,068
with Bruce's own personal growth
623
00:50:00,168 --> 00:50:06,674
and trying to come to terms with his idea
of what it meant
624
00:50:06,774 --> 00:50:08,276
to be a man.
625
00:50:09,143 --> 00:50:13,014
So I was trying to write music
that both felt angry
626
00:50:13,114 --> 00:50:15,116
and rebellious,
627
00:50:15,216 --> 00:50:17,852
yet that also felt adult.
628
00:50:17,952 --> 00:50:22,690
That was a big thing
that shaped that record.
629
00:50:37,839 --> 00:50:41,042
A couple of different things
came together at a certain time
630
00:50:41,142 --> 00:50:44,746
to form my approach
towards a record.
631
00:50:44,846 --> 00:50:48,316
The explosion of punk during '77,
632
00:50:48,416 --> 00:50:51,152
which actually I felt quite a bit for,
633
00:50:51,252 --> 00:50:55,423
I felt some similarity in spirit somewhere.
634
00:51:05,300 --> 00:51:10,171
I started to listen to country music,
which I hadn't really done before.
635
00:51:10,271 --> 00:51:13,141
For the first time I really connected with
Hank Williams.
636
00:51:13,241 --> 00:51:18,346
What I liked about that
was country music tackled the...
637
00:51:18,446 --> 00:51:20,381
adult concerns.
638
00:51:22,183 --> 00:51:26,120
One of the elements that was so striking
between Born To Run and Darkness,
639
00:51:26,220 --> 00:51:28,456
on Born To Run
you had the character saying,
640
00:51:28,556 --> 00:51:31,092
"Baby, we were born to run,
we're gonna get out."
641
00:51:31,192 --> 00:51:34,429
In the ensuing three years between
Born To Run and Darkness
642
00:51:34,529 --> 00:51:37,465
it was made painfully clear
you can't just run away.
643
00:51:38,499 --> 00:51:41,235
He was starting to have some conversations
with Jon Landau,
644
00:51:41,336 --> 00:51:43,972
I think helped a great deal.
645
00:51:44,072 --> 00:51:48,142
He kinda was drawn back to
a more solid sort of time,
646
00:51:48,242 --> 00:51:51,646
that John Wayne character
in The Searchers sort of thing.
647
00:51:51,746 --> 00:51:55,049
"I know who I am, I know right from wrong"
648
00:51:55,149 --> 00:51:57,452
sort of clarity
649
00:51:57,552 --> 00:52:01,255
that I think we all search for.
650
00:52:03,725 --> 00:52:05,326
Darkness On The Edge Of Town,
651
00:52:05,426 --> 00:52:08,463
it's a meditation on
where are you going to stand?
652
00:52:08,563 --> 00:52:11,599
With who and where
are you going to stand?
653
00:52:13,201 --> 00:52:17,805
Tonight I'll be on that hill
'cause I can't stop
654
00:52:17,905 --> 00:52:22,710
I'll be on that hill with everything
I got
655
00:52:22,810 --> 00:52:28,516
Lives on the line where dreams are found
and lost
656
00:52:28,616 --> 00:52:33,521
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost
657
00:52:33,621 --> 00:52:36,824
For wanting things that can only be found
658
00:52:36,924 --> 00:52:40,261
In the darkness
In the darkness on the edge of town
659
00:52:40,361 --> 00:52:42,830
It builds to that one big moment...
660
00:52:51,506 --> 00:52:53,608
That was the only answer I had at the time.
661
00:52:53,708 --> 00:52:58,279
Not forsaking your own inner life force.
662
00:52:58,913 --> 00:53:01,282
You know, how do you
hold on to those things?
663
00:53:01,382 --> 00:53:03,584
How do you hold on to those things?
664
00:53:03,685 --> 00:53:05,453
How do we keep those things?
665
00:53:05,553 --> 00:53:08,122
How do we do justice and honor
to those things?
666
00:53:08,222 --> 00:53:13,861
That was the question that that record
asked over and over and over again.
667
00:53:14,829 --> 00:53:18,266
Adam Raised A Cain -
how do we honor our parents?
668
00:53:18,366 --> 00:53:21,969
Promised Land -
how do we honor the community
669
00:53:22,070 --> 00:53:23,337
and where we came from?
670
00:53:23,438 --> 00:53:27,575
Factory - how do we honor the life,
you know,
671
00:53:27,675 --> 00:53:31,446
of our brothers or sisters and parents?
672
00:53:31,546 --> 00:53:36,017
For some reason that was something
that really mattered to me and...
673
00:53:37,752 --> 00:53:39,053
it mattered to me a lot.
674
00:54:10,985 --> 00:54:13,087
Life is no longer wide open.
675
00:54:13,187 --> 00:54:17,091
Adult life is a life of a lot of compromise.
676
00:54:18,526 --> 00:54:22,897
And that's necessary, there's a lot of things
that you should be compromising on.
677
00:54:22,997 --> 00:54:26,334
And there are essential things
where you don't want to compromise.
678
00:54:26,434 --> 00:54:28,770
So, figuring those things out.
679
00:54:33,374 --> 00:54:36,778
What's the part of life
where you need to compromise to...
680
00:54:36,878 --> 00:54:39,981
whatever, to pay your bills, to get along,
681
00:54:40,081 --> 00:54:44,852
to feed your kids,
to make your way through the world?
682
00:54:44,952 --> 00:54:46,354
And what's the part of life
683
00:54:46,454 --> 00:54:50,391
where there's a part of yourself
you can't compromise with,
684
00:54:50,491 --> 00:54:51,793
or you lose yourself?
685
00:55:44,078 --> 00:55:45,313
That's it.
686
00:55:45,413 --> 00:55:47,248
Factory...
687
00:55:47,348 --> 00:55:49,083
this was just the...
688
00:55:49,183 --> 00:55:52,987
the paradox of earning your living and...
689
00:55:54,188 --> 00:55:58,159
and getting life from a place
that also takes...
690
00:55:58,259 --> 00:55:59,660
takes a lot out of you,
691
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:03,764
which is just something I saw as a kid
when my dad lost his hearing.
692
00:56:03,865 --> 00:56:07,635
As a child,
I went in to bring him his lunch,
693
00:56:07,735 --> 00:56:10,104
he was working in a plastics factory
at the time.
694
00:56:10,204 --> 00:56:12,874
The machines were whirring and whirring,
huge machines,
695
00:56:12,974 --> 00:56:15,643
and he was cutting
big, long pieces of plastic.
696
00:56:15,743 --> 00:56:18,412
These days people
would be wearing those big headsets,
697
00:56:18,512 --> 00:56:20,314
but in those days, people didn't.
698
00:56:20,414 --> 00:56:25,219
And he didn't even see me for minutes
because the noise was so great.
699
00:56:25,319 --> 00:56:29,991
His back was to me and I was saying,
"Dad, Dad."
700
00:56:30,091 --> 00:56:32,593
But he couldn't hear me
because the machines were so loud.
701
00:56:32,693 --> 00:56:36,430
He stopped for a moment
and I walked around the side.
702
00:56:36,530 --> 00:56:38,699
Handed him the lunch bag.
703
00:56:38,799 --> 00:56:40,635
He nodded his head and...
704
00:56:41,636 --> 00:56:43,738
I walked out.
705
00:57:07,895 --> 00:57:10,631
I go back to most of my writing
before Greetings
706
00:57:10,731 --> 00:57:14,101
and it all appears simply terrible to me.
707
00:57:14,201 --> 00:57:17,405
You know, you're still writing
a lot of bad words.
708
00:57:17,505 --> 00:57:20,975
You know, you're writing a lot of bad verses.
709
00:57:21,075 --> 00:57:23,711
So, try and learn how to write well.
710
00:57:23,811 --> 00:57:27,715
But your artistic instinct
711
00:57:27,815 --> 00:57:31,452
is all you...
is what you're going on.
712
00:57:31,552 --> 00:57:34,755
Your artistic intelligence
hasn't been developed yet.
713
00:57:34,855 --> 00:57:39,460
Hopefully that increases and develops
over a long period of time,
714
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:43,831
which gives you an ace to play
down the road as you get older.
715
00:57:43,931 --> 00:57:46,834
At the time I'm going on artistic instinct.
716
00:57:47,568 --> 00:57:50,938
And that's a wide open game, you know,
717
00:57:51,038 --> 00:57:54,875
so I'm following all kinds of paths,
and all kinds of roads,
718
00:57:54,976 --> 00:57:58,245
and all I'm going is, "That doesn't feel right.
719
00:57:58,346 --> 00:58:01,349
"That doesn't feel right."
That's how I'm judging.
720
00:58:01,449 --> 00:58:02,984
Lights out tonight
721
00:58:04,285 --> 00:58:05,820
And you're all alone
722
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:07,888
Didn't save that one.
723
00:58:08,723 --> 00:58:11,225
Baby's on the street,
you're getting pushed around
724
00:58:13,394 --> 00:58:15,763
That was my opener for that one.
725
00:58:15,863 --> 00:58:17,598
Lights out tonight,
trouble in the heartland
726
00:58:17,698 --> 00:58:20,701
There it is, finally.
I don't know how many pages in.
727
00:58:31,012 --> 00:58:34,348
Racing In The Street,
I'm sure there's a million verses on that.
728
00:58:36,050 --> 00:58:38,786
There was one where there was no girl.
729
00:58:38,886 --> 00:58:40,755
There was no girl in it.
730
00:58:45,893 --> 00:58:49,864
The continuance of the story
of the two guys in the first verse.
731
00:58:49,964 --> 00:58:52,733
I asked two people what they thought.
I asked Obie Dziedzic,
732
00:58:52,833 --> 00:58:57,071
Obie is one of my earliest fans,
and she said, "I love the one with the girl."
733
00:58:57,171 --> 00:58:58,639
Right.
734
00:58:58,739 --> 00:59:00,775
And I asked Steve.
735
00:59:00,875 --> 00:59:04,545
Steve says, "Oh, the one with the girl in it."
736
00:59:04,645 --> 00:59:06,080
I said, "Really?"
737
00:59:06,180 --> 00:59:08,582
I thought he was gonna go for the other one.
738
00:59:08,682 --> 00:59:11,018
He said, "Yeah, that's what happens in life.
739
00:59:11,118 --> 00:59:14,789
"Two guys are pals,
then the girl comes along,
740
00:59:14,889 --> 00:59:16,590
"and that's it."
741
00:59:22,430 --> 00:59:27,068
When I inserted the relationship
in the last verse,
742
00:59:27,168 --> 00:59:31,939
it made sense of the journey
that the guy is taking.
743
00:59:34,608 --> 00:59:39,747
A lot of the songs deal with
my obsession with the idea of sin.
744
00:59:39,847 --> 00:59:42,149
What is it? What is it in a good life?
745
00:59:42,249 --> 00:59:45,252
'Cause it plays an important place
in a good life also.
746
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:48,055
How do you deal with it?
747
00:59:48,823 --> 00:59:50,724
You don't...you don't get rid of it.
748
00:59:51,826 --> 00:59:54,261
How do you carry your sins?
749
00:59:54,361 --> 00:59:58,299
That's what the people in
Racing In The Street are trying to do.
750
01:00:16,450 --> 01:00:19,120
Well, the work ethic
that surfaced on Darkness
751
01:00:19,220 --> 01:00:20,855
was actually even more intense
752
01:00:20,955 --> 01:00:23,891
than anything that had gone on before.
753
01:00:23,991 --> 01:00:26,160
This was our lives.
754
01:00:26,260 --> 01:00:28,896
I mean, this was everything to us.
755
01:00:28,996 --> 01:00:33,567
There was no wives, or families
or girlfriends that mattered that much.
756
01:00:33,667 --> 01:00:36,170
So we were there all the time.
757
01:00:40,040 --> 01:00:43,944
It was a mission. Better or worse we were
messianic in our approach, you know,
758
01:00:44,044 --> 01:00:46,847
it was like, "This music
is going to save the world!"
759
01:00:48,649 --> 01:00:51,652
This thing ain't nine to five.
This thing is 24/7.
760
01:00:51,752 --> 01:00:54,955
Being that I didn't have a life,
that was easy for me.
761
01:00:55,055 --> 01:00:57,858
You know, everybody else
had to suffer with me.
762
01:00:58,759 --> 01:01:01,495
It was both self-indulgent
763
01:01:01,595 --> 01:01:04,665
and the only way we knew how to do it.
764
01:01:04,765 --> 01:01:06,800
I can't even tell you
765
01:01:06,901 --> 01:01:09,436
how long we spent
766
01:01:09,537 --> 01:01:10,638
on that record.
767
01:01:10,738 --> 01:01:12,973
Because I don't really know,
it's kind of a blur.
768
01:01:13,073 --> 01:01:16,043
But the obsessive-compulsive part
of my personality,
769
01:01:16,143 --> 01:01:20,414
was such that I would be driving you crazy
just because I could.
770
01:01:20,514 --> 01:01:22,583
I was a dangerous man to be around.
771
01:01:24,652 --> 01:01:28,689
One of those, "You'll look back on this
one day and it will all seem funny."
772
01:01:28,789 --> 01:01:31,859
It's starting to seem funny now.
At the time...
773
01:01:31,959 --> 01:01:35,563
there was no humor there at all.
774
01:01:49,276 --> 01:01:51,245
There was downtime in the studio.
775
01:01:51,345 --> 01:01:54,715
You'd finish a take
and you gotta capture the moment.
776
01:01:54,815 --> 01:01:57,184
Sometimes you gotta break the tension.
777
01:02:00,921 --> 01:02:05,826
Well, the guys would, I suppose
in their attempt to ridicule me,
778
01:02:05,926 --> 01:02:09,363
would bet on my whims of the day
and where they might go.
779
01:02:09,463 --> 01:02:12,800
What songs are gonna get on,
what songs are gonna get thrown out today?
780
01:02:12,900 --> 01:02:15,369
What songs are gonna get brought back in?
781
01:02:15,469 --> 01:02:18,205
How long are the songs gonna be?
782
01:02:27,381 --> 01:02:29,950
They had to find a lot of ways to get out
783
01:02:30,050 --> 01:02:31,986
from underneath my oppressive hand.
784
01:02:44,832 --> 01:02:47,368
Jimmy Lovine, when it came time to mix,
785
01:02:47,468 --> 01:02:50,938
he lost his mojo in the middle of Darkness
somewhere,
786
01:02:51,038 --> 01:02:53,774
we just couldn't mix the record.
787
01:02:57,344 --> 01:02:59,480
We had nothing but chaos going on.
788
01:03:00,281 --> 01:03:03,450
At some point I got a call from Jon saying,
789
01:03:03,550 --> 01:03:06,487
"Hey, Charlie,
we're having a bit of a problem
790
01:03:06,587 --> 01:03:11,959
"locating anything in between
dull and shrill."
791
01:03:13,060 --> 01:03:14,962
I had never mixed anything before.
792
01:03:15,062 --> 01:03:18,132
I wasn't actually a mixer,
I was a record producer.
793
01:03:18,232 --> 01:03:22,036
Comes into the studio
and he starts listening.
794
01:03:23,037 --> 01:03:25,873
And he has an idea about
what we're doing wrong.
795
01:03:25,973 --> 01:03:31,378
He had all these different ideas of
how to make everything really...present.
796
01:03:31,478 --> 01:03:35,215
It had a certain rawness to it
that I responded to
797
01:03:35,316 --> 01:03:36,517
as a listener.
798
01:03:36,617 --> 01:03:39,320
So Charlie sits down and he starts to mix.
799
01:03:39,420 --> 01:03:41,355
I believe it was Prove It All Night.
800
01:03:41,455 --> 01:03:43,257
Got the drums up, got the bass up.
801
01:03:43,357 --> 01:03:44,725
Bruce listens.
802
01:03:46,427 --> 01:03:47,561
"That's fantastic."
803
01:04:03,811 --> 01:04:08,515
I took Jon aside, I said, "Look, I don't hear
any problems with the recordings.
804
01:04:08,615 --> 01:04:12,152
"It doesn't sound to me like there ought
to be any problem with the mixes,
805
01:04:12,252 --> 01:04:13,987
"but get yourself a real mixer."
806
01:04:14,088 --> 01:04:16,023
Jon sort of... He didn't...
807
01:04:16,123 --> 01:04:17,491
Not much of a response.
808
01:04:17,591 --> 01:04:20,294
He said, "What are you doing
tomorrow night?"
809
01:04:20,394 --> 01:04:23,697
Now, when Chuck comes back,
Bruce is sort of ready for him,
810
01:04:23,797 --> 01:04:26,400
and Bruce starts getting
more and more particular.
811
01:04:26,500 --> 01:04:28,602
I came back the next night and he says,
812
01:04:28,702 --> 01:04:31,338
"I'll tell you a little something
about this song.
813
01:04:31,438 --> 01:04:33,374
"Here's what I want you to do.
814
01:04:33,474 --> 01:04:35,376
"Imagine you're in a movie theater.
815
01:04:35,476 --> 01:04:38,879
"On the screen is the two lovers
having a picnic.
816
01:04:38,979 --> 01:04:41,215
"And then the camera...
817
01:04:42,416 --> 01:04:47,287
"shock-cuts to a dead body.
818
01:04:47,388 --> 01:04:50,791
"Every time this song
comes up on the album," he says,
819
01:04:50,891 --> 01:04:52,826
"this song is that dead body."
820
01:04:56,663 --> 01:04:59,566
That was an amazing experience
in and of itself,
821
01:04:59,666 --> 01:05:03,837
to hear somebody talk about their music
in that way.
822
01:05:03,937 --> 01:05:06,039
It was a brilliant set of cues.
823
01:05:06,140 --> 01:05:08,375
He didn't tell me what to do with the music,
824
01:05:08,475 --> 01:05:11,445
he told me what he wanted the thing
to feel like.
825
01:05:11,545 --> 01:05:15,249
One of Chuck's specialties
and what I always loved him for was...
826
01:05:15,349 --> 01:05:17,284
Chuck was into just the feel.
827
01:05:17,384 --> 01:05:20,254
Does it make you feel what the artist
wanted you to feel?
828
01:05:20,354 --> 01:05:24,825
He understood how to build a sound picture.
829
01:05:29,696 --> 01:05:31,732
It's not an ordinary-sounding record.
830
01:05:31,832 --> 01:05:34,835
It captures the band in its leanest.
831
01:05:36,537 --> 01:05:38,972
You hear in the aural environment
832
01:05:39,072 --> 01:05:42,509
things struggling to make a place
for themselves.
833
01:05:42,609 --> 01:05:46,880
It's not a grand, smooth open space.
834
01:05:46,980 --> 01:05:50,083
It's a harder and darker space.
835
01:05:55,222 --> 01:05:58,892
You hear the dynamic of the players
836
01:05:58,992 --> 01:06:01,595
fighting for space inside the music.
837
01:06:01,695 --> 01:06:03,430
If you get the voice too high,
838
01:06:03,530 --> 01:06:07,601
it always feels like much ado about nothing.
839
01:06:07,701 --> 01:06:09,336
You can't get it way out in front,
840
01:06:09,436 --> 01:06:14,308
you gotta get it just so that it's
some kind of intelligible.
841
01:06:20,747 --> 01:06:23,016
So when all hell is breaking loose,
842
01:06:23,116 --> 01:06:24,885
there's that strain...
843
01:06:24,985 --> 01:06:26,987
as a mixer to keep the...
844
01:06:27,087 --> 01:06:30,958
to keep the voice tucked in.
845
01:06:38,866 --> 01:06:41,268
So that you feel like you could...
846
01:06:42,970 --> 01:06:47,441
understand the words
if you wished to try hard enough.
847
01:06:56,350 --> 01:06:59,186
Charlie, essential to the team,
848
01:06:59,286 --> 01:07:01,588
came and saved our asses,
849
01:07:01,688 --> 01:07:03,957
literally was the white knight on that record.
850
01:07:08,962 --> 01:07:12,332
Sometimes you wondered if the end
was ever going to actually happen
851
01:07:12,432 --> 01:07:15,002
because you'd record 50 or 60 songs,
852
01:07:15,102 --> 01:07:20,073
and I guess then
Bruce would collate all his thoughts,
853
01:07:20,173 --> 01:07:24,077
and try to decide what the story was.
854
01:07:24,177 --> 01:07:27,814
When I did my running order for that album,
855
01:07:27,915 --> 01:07:31,251
I don't know if any of the songs
that wound up on the album
856
01:07:31,351 --> 01:07:33,253
were the ones that I would have picked.
857
01:07:33,353 --> 01:07:36,757
Nobody knew until the end, really,
how it was gonna turn out.
858
01:07:36,857 --> 01:07:38,592
I don't think Bruce or Jon did.
859
01:07:38,692 --> 01:07:40,494
There was only room for so many.
860
01:07:40,594 --> 01:07:44,498
But there was a couple that
you kinda thought at least
861
01:07:44,598 --> 01:07:46,366
that were definitely in there.
862
01:07:58,912 --> 01:08:01,682
The Promise was an amazing song.
863
01:08:01,782 --> 01:08:04,017
And we probably...
864
01:08:04,384 --> 01:08:06,653
spent three months on that song.
865
01:08:10,123 --> 01:08:13,026
Bruce cut that song every way possible.
866
01:08:13,126 --> 01:08:14,962
It just was, you know...
867
01:08:16,363 --> 01:08:19,533
unheard of not to put a song that great
on the record.
868
01:08:21,134 --> 01:08:24,171
It's a song about fighting and not winning.
869
01:08:24,271 --> 01:08:26,807
It's just about the disappointments
at the time.
870
01:08:26,907 --> 01:08:30,143
It could have went on the record
if we'd have finished it,
871
01:08:30,243 --> 01:08:34,081
because it actually fit
in the temper of the record
872
01:08:34,181 --> 01:08:36,116
now that I look back on it.
873
01:08:36,216 --> 01:08:38,819
But I felt too close to it, you know,
874
01:08:38,919 --> 01:08:42,623
I felt I didn't have the distance,
I couldn't judge it myself at the time.
875
01:08:49,896 --> 01:08:52,332
This was the beginning of
876
01:08:52,432 --> 01:08:55,836
Bruce being very meticulous about
the sequencing as well.
877
01:08:55,936 --> 01:08:58,238
He would have sequences made up.
878
01:08:58,338 --> 01:09:00,407
He would have four or five sequences
879
01:09:00,507 --> 01:09:02,643
and he'd listen to them
all the way through.
880
01:09:02,743 --> 01:09:04,678
We always were concerned
with our cornerstones,
881
01:09:04,778 --> 01:09:06,947
first and last cut on both sides.
882
01:09:07,047 --> 01:09:09,249
Everything happens between those spaces.
883
01:09:09,349 --> 01:09:12,119
But that was our narrative device.
884
01:09:12,219 --> 01:09:14,788
Gotta remember, Bruce and myself
885
01:09:14,888 --> 01:09:19,626
shared a feeling that we were
always making an album.
886
01:09:19,726 --> 01:09:21,294
To me...
887
01:09:28,368 --> 01:09:30,470
There's not any one element that's not a cut.
888
01:09:38,378 --> 01:09:43,383
After the year of recording,
listening to all the stuff that we had,
889
01:09:43,483 --> 01:09:45,686
I stripped the record down to its...
890
01:09:45,786 --> 01:09:48,522
really its barest and most austere elements.
891
01:09:49,656 --> 01:09:54,828
And I decided I wanted something
that felt like a tone poem.
892
01:09:54,928 --> 01:09:57,597
And I didn't want any distractions from
893
01:09:57,698 --> 01:10:02,836
this is the narrative and the stories
that I was telling.
894
01:10:02,936 --> 01:10:05,906
And also I wanted to have a sort of...
895
01:10:06,006 --> 01:10:07,974
apocalyptic grandeur.
896
01:10:08,542 --> 01:10:13,780
In the darkness on the edge of town
897
01:10:25,292 --> 01:10:30,130
Born To Run and Darkness,
they're the beginnings of the story.
898
01:10:30,230 --> 01:10:32,499
I'm beginning to tell the story that I...
899
01:10:33,300 --> 01:10:36,436
that I tell for most of the rest of my work life.
900
01:10:56,456 --> 01:11:00,293
He came down to my house, he said,
"What should I bring?"
901
01:11:00,393 --> 01:11:05,031
I said, "Just bring some changes of clothes
so we can get several looks."
902
01:11:05,132 --> 01:11:09,803
He came in with a crumpled-up
paper supermarket bag.
903
01:11:09,903 --> 01:11:14,241
And it was some flannel shirts
and some jeans and some T-shirts,
904
01:11:14,341 --> 01:11:18,111
and, you know, that was his wardrobe
for the shoot.
905
01:11:18,812 --> 01:11:22,816
We'd just moved into this house,
an old house in Haddonfield, New Jersey,
906
01:11:22,916 --> 01:11:25,285
with that flowered wallpaper and everything,
907
01:11:25,385 --> 01:11:27,454
you know, the cabbage roses.
908
01:11:27,554 --> 01:11:30,157
"Let's just do some test shots."
909
01:11:31,391 --> 01:11:33,293
That very first day,
910
01:11:33,393 --> 01:11:36,897
some of the test shots that we did
up in the bedroom
911
01:11:36,997 --> 01:11:39,332
with the cabbage-rose wallpaper
912
01:11:39,432 --> 01:11:42,803
ended up being the cover for
Darkness On The Edge Of Town.
913
01:11:43,603 --> 01:11:46,273
Incredibly revealing.
914
01:11:47,007 --> 01:11:48,542
Very revealing.
915
01:11:48,642 --> 01:11:52,412
Very stripped down,
kind of like what I thought the record was.
916
01:11:53,213 --> 01:11:54,815
And...
917
01:11:56,449 --> 01:11:59,186
they were also very blue-collar at the time
918
01:11:59,286 --> 01:12:01,321
which is what the record was.
919
01:12:01,421 --> 01:12:03,089
It was just like...
920
01:12:04,925 --> 01:12:10,664
"Yeah, that's my story,
that's the character in my story."
921
01:12:31,952 --> 01:12:36,156
When we finally got to perform on
the Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour
922
01:12:36,256 --> 01:12:38,859
after the record was finished,
923
01:12:38,959 --> 01:12:40,961
it was almost like a wave of relief
924
01:12:41,061 --> 01:12:44,297
that we had been able to withstand
925
01:12:44,397 --> 01:12:47,901
the pressure of not recording,
926
01:12:48,001 --> 01:12:51,471
of not being able to do what Bruce wanted,
927
01:12:51,571 --> 01:12:54,908
it's amazing to me how he was able to
withstand it and never crack
928
01:12:55,008 --> 01:12:57,110
and never really show at all
929
01:12:57,210 --> 01:12:59,946
how disturbing the whole thing
must have been.
930
01:13:02,616 --> 01:13:04,517
There's a moment where, like,
931
01:13:04,618 --> 01:13:09,122
I guess I assessed my strengths
and my weaknesses, you know?
932
01:13:09,222 --> 01:13:12,158
And I'm glad it happened, you know.
933
01:13:12,259 --> 01:13:15,528
I don't got one regret about...
934
01:13:16,329 --> 01:13:20,667
about one second of the past three years.
935
01:13:21,501 --> 01:13:23,169
Because I learned a lot from it.
936
01:13:24,337 --> 01:13:27,207
You can hear it on the record, I hope.
937
01:13:45,759 --> 01:13:49,963
The Darkness album and tour
was such an important part of...
938
01:13:50,063 --> 01:13:53,600
the Bruce Springsteen, E Street Band story,
939
01:13:53,700 --> 01:13:58,104
because in my view it really seemed like
the first time that...
940
01:13:58,204 --> 01:14:00,674
it is possible to do it your own way.
941
01:14:01,308 --> 01:14:04,377
And there was a ferocity in the band...
942
01:14:05,278 --> 01:14:07,881
when we finally went out
and started playing again,
943
01:14:07,981 --> 01:14:10,417
that perhaps wasn't there earlier.
944
01:14:11,518 --> 01:14:15,655
It was just an absolutely
take-no-prisoners approach.
945
01:15:08,908 --> 01:15:12,412
The first time I saw Bruce was in 1978.
946
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:16,016
I'd never seen anything like that,
it was shocking.
947
01:15:16,116 --> 01:15:21,054
I was surprised that you could be
in such a large venue
948
01:15:21,154 --> 01:15:24,157
and still feel that you're having
a personal experience.
949
01:15:29,129 --> 01:15:32,832
You come out there in that dark
and you make that magic,
950
01:15:33,933 --> 01:15:37,137
you pull something that doesn't exist
out of the air,
951
01:15:37,237 --> 01:15:39,973
doesn't exist until any given night
952
01:15:40,073 --> 01:15:42,542
when you're standing in front of
your audience.
953
01:15:42,642 --> 01:15:44,878
And nothing exists in that space
954
01:15:44,978 --> 01:15:48,014
until you go, "One, two, three, four..."
955
01:15:49,482 --> 01:15:54,020
Then you and the audience together
manifest an entire world,
956
01:15:56,122 --> 01:15:57,690
an entire set of values,
957
01:15:57,791 --> 01:16:00,393
an entire way of thinking about your life
958
01:16:00,493 --> 01:16:02,028
and the world around you.
959
01:16:05,765 --> 01:16:08,301
And an entire set of possibilities.
960
01:16:14,908 --> 01:16:16,443
That can never be taken away.
961
01:16:21,014 --> 01:16:24,117
Bruce is a man with a vision
962
01:16:24,217 --> 01:16:27,687
and at the same time he's a person
in search of a vision.
963
01:16:30,290 --> 01:16:35,895
And every one of these albums
is a search for that vision of now.
964
01:16:35,995 --> 01:16:39,866
That's what ups the ante
and makes some of these records...
965
01:16:39,966 --> 01:16:43,336
what made them so difficult
966
01:16:43,436 --> 01:16:48,541
was they weren't done
until they had advanced his vision.
967
01:16:56,015 --> 01:16:58,017
First thing... Everybody, hey.
968
01:17:27,280 --> 01:17:29,249
Felt very weak in those days.
969
01:17:29,349 --> 01:17:32,986
You know, couldn't do much of
what I wanted to do.
970
01:17:34,888 --> 01:17:37,790
You had your friends
depending on you
971
01:17:37,891 --> 01:17:40,360
and you couldn't really take care of them,
972
01:17:40,460 --> 01:17:44,964
I always prided myself
as a good bandleader and...
973
01:17:45,064 --> 01:17:48,234
But you were more than that in those days.
974
01:17:48,334 --> 01:17:52,005
The guys were my soldiers,
you know, and...
975
01:17:53,473 --> 01:17:58,978
You know, there was a time when I felt like
I'd failed them in some way.
976
01:18:17,063 --> 01:18:19,732
So, deep despair...
977
01:18:19,832 --> 01:18:22,902
and yet resilience, you know?
978
01:18:23,002 --> 01:18:26,172
Trying to find something.
Deep despair and resilience.
979
01:18:36,683 --> 01:18:38,117
And determination.
980
01:18:39,319 --> 01:18:42,388
I think that's why the song
still reaches people, you know.
981
01:18:42,488 --> 01:18:47,293
It's filled with deep despair,
resilience, determination,
982
01:18:47,393 --> 01:18:49,362
assessment of limitations,
983
01:18:49,462 --> 01:18:52,165
desire to transcend those limitations
984
01:18:52,265 --> 01:18:54,834
in the way that you can.
985
01:18:54,934 --> 01:18:56,436
And then the last verse is...
986
01:19:09,482 --> 01:19:12,919
So, talking to myself there, obviously,
you know.
987
01:19:13,019 --> 01:19:15,822
I had kind of a big fight and...
988
01:19:17,056 --> 01:19:18,658
But...
989
01:19:18,758 --> 01:19:24,397
you know, it was always more than
just my own circumstance
990
01:19:24,497 --> 01:19:26,466
at the time of the lawsuit.
991
01:19:26,566 --> 01:19:28,368
It was...
992
01:19:28,468 --> 01:19:32,305
It's was just kind of the fight
you have with yourself your whole life.
993
01:19:32,405 --> 01:19:35,475
It was always about the bigger conversation
for me.
994
01:19:35,575 --> 01:19:38,111
And that was the important conversation.
995
01:19:38,211 --> 01:19:40,313
And when you get to the end of the song...
996
01:19:46,586 --> 01:19:47,754
You know...
997
01:19:52,592 --> 01:19:58,197
So you had to lose your illusions,
you know, lose your illusions.
998
01:19:59,032 --> 01:20:05,204
While at the same time holding on
to some sense of possibility.
999
01:20:06,806 --> 01:20:09,842
But, more so, your illusions of adult life
1000
01:20:10,810 --> 01:20:13,046
and a life without limitations,
1001
01:20:13,146 --> 01:20:16,182
which I think everyone dreams of
and imagines at a certain point.
1002
01:20:16,282 --> 01:20:20,453
The song that needs to be sung
is the song about, well,
1003
01:20:20,553 --> 01:20:25,091
how do you deal with...
deal with those things
1004
01:20:25,191 --> 01:20:28,194
and move on to a creative life,
1005
01:20:29,329 --> 01:20:32,165
a spiritual life, a satisfying life,
1006
01:20:32,265 --> 01:20:34,167
and a life where you can just
1007
01:20:34,267 --> 01:20:37,070
make your way through the day
and sleep at night,
1008
01:20:37,170 --> 01:20:39,706
that's what most of those songs were about.
78219
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