WHY BRUCE IS BOSS

“Aging gracefully in rock is about the hardest thing to do, but Bruce looks awesome. I get the feeling he’s interested in not just the music, but how he fits into the right-now. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have embarrassing missteps. He’s not going to come out with a rock opera. He’s not going to do Trans, like Neil Young, or a hip-hop record. ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’—you feel like you’ve heard him sing that before, but you haven’t. And right when he hits the chorus, you’re like, ‘Fuck, yeah!’ He gives cinematic scope in a song. ‘Jungleland’ is a great example: I want to know more about the Magic Rat. That’s how I came up with the idea of having characters I can revisit in songs. Or ‘Rosalita’— Sloppy Sue and Weak Knees Willie. I want to know more about them. He’s funny, too: ‘You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right.’ When we played with him at Carnegie Hall [last April], he put his arm around me and said, ‘Thanks for holding it down out there, brother.’ The sweetest words I’ve ever heard.”

Craig Finn
THE HOLD STEADY
and puts things in a very religious context, like Roy Orbison. Roy Orbison is the
king of romantic apocalypse. What’s the song title? “It’s Over.” Doesn’t get more
apocalyptic than that. I think if the end of days is present in your music, however
it got in there, you’re involved in a spiritual world.
>BUTLER To me, that darkness is always present in some way or another. That’s
what I love about Motown—no matter how happy a song is, there’s some element
grounded in the actual world.
>SPRINGSTEEN “Ball of Confusion.” “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” Put those things
on. “Darkness on the Edge of Town” I wrote in 1978. I think it also has to be part
of your psychological nature. I grew up Catholic, and I suppose I go back to that
for so much imagery in my music over the years. I was always interested in the
spiritual battleground; it’s just what fascinates me. Like, hey, where’s the place
you lose your soul, and how do I get there without falling in? I was always drawn
to that, and it’s shot through all my music, including this record. Even something
like “Your Own Worst Enemy,” where I use this pop, Pet Sounds production, is
all about self-subversion.
>BUTLER One of my favorite songs of yours is “State Trooper” [from 1982’s
Nebraska]—we’ve covered it before, and it’s just a fucking dark song. Even
just driving here today on the New Jersey Turnpike, there’s a sense of place, of
something real, and that in itself has a spiritual component to it.
“THAT’S WHAT I LOVE ABOUT
MOTOWN. NO MATTER HOW
HAPPY A SONG IS, IT’S GROUNDED
IN THE ACTUAL WORLD.”
>WIN BUTLER
>SPRINGSTEEN Robert De Niro said once that what he likes about acting is that
he gets to step into other people’s shoes without the real-life consequences. Art
does allow you to do that, to go right up to the abyss and look in, hopefully
without falling in.
Isn’t falling in a particular hazard, given your line of work?
Matt Berninger
THE NATIONAL

“Springsteen is just one of those people you always trust. Aside from the fact that he has written some unbelievably moving, epic works of rock’n’roll, you feel like no matter what, he’s going to deliver. Dylan is a genius, but sometimes you get the sense he’ll just do whatever he wants, while a Springsteen show is a totally satisfying, huge, amazing, powerful event. You never get the sense he wishes he were somewhere else. When people pay to see your show, you have to respect that and give it your all. He’s still moving forward and trying things—half the songs on Magic are as good as Born to Run. And somehow, he just feels like a normal guy trying to figure stuff out. It’s not polished. He doesn’t have the answers. He gets into the awkward, creepy parts of desire and insecurity, and when he talks about something, you actually think that’s what he feels and believes.”

>SPRINGSTEEN On any given day. I feel like that’s what Arcade Fire was built to
hold off, that falling in. There’s a furious aspect to the performance, and that’s
why people come out—you’re recognizing the realities of people’s emotional lives
and their difficulties, you’re presenting these problems, and you’re bringing a
survival kit. The bands that do that forge intense, intense relationships with their
audience, and to me, that was always the core of the best rock’n’roll.
But aren’t a lot of people cynical about that sort of quasi populism at this point?
So many bands give lip service to the idea of forging this intense connection that
it has become a cliché in its own right. It’s easy to mistake honesty for pandering,
and vice versa.
>BUTLER I don’t think rock has anything to do with populism. My grandpa led a
big band, and if you look at Irving Berlin or that type of songwriting, it’s so much
more sophisticated than rock, which offered physicality and an opportunity to
express visceral, raw emotion. He hated rock—he even thought jazz combos were
a cop-out, musically—but I remember being at his house when I was 16, and you
were on TV and he said, “I don’t like the music, but I get why people do.” Here’s
this 90-year-old dude, set in his ways, and he’s like, “You know what, I totally get
it.” Your music becomes a bridge.
>SPRINGSTEEN To do it right, you have to hold two contradictory ideas in your
mind at once before you play: You’ve got to go, “Okay, I’m going to go out in 20
minutes and do one of the most important things I can think of in the world,”
and, “It’s only rock’n’roll; I hope we have a good show and people go home
happy.” I always try to keep both of those things in my head, and populist or
not, my business is proving it to you. Our thing is to find that place where we’re
communicating and holding people, preferably by the throat.
>BUTLER Part of the reason I got you this Orwell book is there’s a line in it: “In a
time of universal deception, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” And another:
“It is the first duty of intelligent men to restate the obvious.”