Spin Magazine - December 2007 - Features (Page 65)

E Street, 2007, from left: Danny Federici, Max Weinberg, Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan, Clarence
Clemons, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, Steven Van Zandt, Gary Tallent
Well, you used to kiss Clarence onstage a lot. No homoerotic undercurrent there.
The Chassagne-Butlers, ²⁰⁰⁷
The Scialfa-Springsteens, ¹⁹⁸⁴
“I’M DRAWN TO BANDS WHERE
THERE’S AN ACTIVE COLLECTIVE
IMAGINATION BETWEEN THEM
AND THE AUDIENCE.”
>BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
>BUTLER Not enough artists build it up the right way. You start with the guys,
then get their girlfriends to come. That’s how you get the loyalty.
>SPRINGSTEEN I want people to look onstage and see themselves. That idea
of the band as a representative community—all the bands I like have some ele-
ment of that. It’s thrilling when you see that communication. Pop records are
fun—[Rihanna’s] “Umbrella” I can enjoy tremendously—but what I’m drawn to
are bands where there’s an active collective imagination going on between them
and their audience. That’s what I love about Arcade Fire—the first time I saw
you guys, I thought, “There’s a whole town going on up there, a whole village
onstage.” There’s an imagined world you’ve made visual in front of your fans’
eyes, and it’s a really lovely thing.
What other younger bands strike you that way? And how does what you’re
listening to inform your own music?
>SPRINGSTEEN We started out as a boys’ club, and that lasted until 1984, when
Patti [Scialfa, Springsteen’s now-wife] joined. She always teases me, because
she says on the first night she played with us, she came into my dressing room
wearing a frilly blouse and asked, “How’s this?” And I said, “Why don’t you just
pick something out of there?” and pointed to my suitcase on the floor filled
with T-shirts. So we made the transition, but it was a slow one. We were trying
to move away from the dude party. When we started out, we played to a lot of
audiences full of young guys, which I always said was the result of a homoerotic
undercurrent, obviously. But as time passed, they brought the girls.
>SPRINGSTEEN I have three teenagers, plus I’m a curiosity buyer. My oldest son
listens to a lot of political punk, like Against Me! And I’ve gotten into bands that
have a bigger pop sound, like Apples in Stereo and Band of Horses—it’s very
dark, romantic music. As for how it informs what I do, everything that goes in,
comes out.
>BUTLER I got this box set called Goodbye, Babylon that’s old field recordings
from churches from between 1902 and 1960. Régine and I listened to that a ton
when we were making Neon Bible.
That’s actually another thing you two have in common: a lot of Catholic imagery.
>BUTLER I grew up in Houston, but not in a super-religious family. My mom’s side
is Mormon, my dad’s is from New England—it’s-good-that-people-don’t-kill-each-
other-but-we-don’t-really-believe-in-anything types. But the whole megachurch
thing was really pervasive in Texas.
>SPRINGSTEEN I think what feels Christian about your music is that it’s apocalyptic