You're always in a box, and you're an escape artist if you do what I do - or if you're a creative person, period. You build your box, and then you escape from it. You build another one, and you escape from it. That's ongoing.
This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.
I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.
'Darkness on the Edge of Town' came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs.
The release date is just one day, but the record is forever.
The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
At the time, there was a great disagreement over 'The Wild and the Innocent,' and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn't do it, and they basically said, 'Well hey, look, it's going to go in the trash can.' That's the record business, you know.
I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.
I was real good at music and real bad at everything else.
In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.
I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.
I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.
I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.
My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that.
Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield.
The wonderful thing about rock music is even if you hate the other person, sometimes you need him more, you know. In other words if he's the guy that made that sound, he's the guy that made that sound, and without that guy making that sound, you don't have a band, you know.
When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.
The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.
Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don't have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don't deny anything, I don't advocate anything, I just live with it.
I think politics come out of psychology.
I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.
After 'Born to Run,' I had a reaction to my good fortune. With success, it felt like a lot of people who'd come before me lost some essential part of themselves. My greatest fear was that success was going to change or diminish that part of myself.
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
Yeah, my son likes a lot of guitar bands. He gave me something the other day which was really good. He'll burn a CD for me full of things that he has, so he's a pretty good call if I want to check some of that stuff out... The other two aren't quite into that yet.
I was an insecure young man. So my need for total dedication from the people I was working with was very great. Those things were tempered as time passed by.
For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in; my intelligence was elsewhere.
I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.
When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records.
I'm always in search of something, in search of losing myself to the music.
I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. I got the chutzpa or whatever you want to say to believe that if I write a really good about it, it's going to make a difference.
It's always felt natural, because I'm generally very comfortable with people.
I suppose when you do it correctly, a good introduction and a good outro makes the song feel like it's coming out of something and then evolving into something.