The ones who go off the rails are the ones obsessed with some abstract idea
of “staying on top.”
>SPRINGSTEEN I read that I was finished two or three different times over the
past 40 years. You put out a record or two that may not be people’s favorite,
but in a way, that ebb and flow is healthy, because you don’t end up chained
to the numbers. No one who’s been around hasn’t gone through that. Green
Day: classic example. They had some popularity, so I’m sure they had to go
through that whole “You sold out the punk crowd.” Then they didn’t have the
popularity and had to go through “You failed.” I took some satisfaction in how
they handled all that.
But in today’s climate, is it even possible to have that ebb and flow? It doesn’t seem
like there’s the same luxury to fail and learn and develop. Bands are hyped up and
then immediately torn down.
>SPRINGSTEEN I don’t envy young musicians, because I think it is harder. In the
’70s, there was less media. A guy from a radio station could come down to a club
where you’re playing for 30 people, and if he liked you, you’d hear your record on
the radio as you drove out of town. You were left to build your audience, piece by
piece. One thing we learned was stage presence—how to lead a band and how to
play and how to be exciting to people who haven’t seen you before. I’m not sure
how available that is these days.
>BUTLER Did you mostly play regionally, or did you do cross-country tours in
the early days?
>SPRINGSTEEN We did cross-country tours, but no one in the band had ever
been on a plane until we had a record deal—that’s how provincial and contained
our thing was. One hour out of New York and you might as well have been in
the Midwest.
Now that Arcade Fire have had two well-received albums, do you get the sense,
Win, that people have their knives out for you?
Encore!: Performing together in Ottawa, October ¹⁴, ²⁰⁰⁷
>BUTLER Yeah, but you have to understand, people who are obsessively online
are a pretty small demographic compared with the people who come to our
shows. The flip side of all this is, the Velvet Underground would have never been
unheard-of if they were around today. There’s a certain level of success that’s
easier to attain now, because people can hear the music. The problem is that
attention spans are a lot shorter.
>SPRINGSTEEN The bottom line is, the knives will come out all the time. So what?
You’ll write your good songs, you’ll play your good shows, you’ll have a certain
amount of success, and in between, you will be toasted.
“I READ THAT I WAS FINISHED
TWO OR THREE TIMES OVER
THE PAST 40 YEARS. THAT EBB
AND FLOW IS HEALTHY.”
>BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
the music of other generations, there’s a tendency to pull away. But when that
space opens up, people look back for influence. Now, if you go back to when we
had our last blasts of megapopularity, 1985, who remembers that? If you’re 25,
you were two then. So whatever baggage came with that is in the past for most
people, and you’re just left with the music.
>BUTLER I think Nebraska and Born to Run were the first I bought, but there’s
no chronological order in which I heard your music, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Because I remember getting into the Clash and going back and reading NME
articles about what sellouts they were for having acoustic guitar on a song or
something, and it’s like, how can people think this way? But being able to bypass
that and just hear the music is great.
>SPRINGSTEEN You’re no longer imprisoned by your times, and there’s an
enormous amount of freedom in that, the most freedom we’ve ever had. I’m
not competing with anyone—I don’t put a record out and think it has to go up
against 50 Cent.
>BUTLER Most artists I really respect, at some point, had some kind of com-
mercial failure or something that allowed them to continue to really be an artist.
A knock on the dressing room door: Someone’s waiting for Bruce. More
to the point, 20,000 people are waiting for Bruce.
Springsteen offers to have the E Street Band learn “Keep the Car Running”
so Butler and Chassagne can join them onstage to perform it tomorrow night.
Butler is flattered…but politely declines. He and Chassagne are flying back to
Montreal, and after nearly a month on the road, a night in their own bed proves
the more attractive prospect. “Plus,” Butler says, “Bruce’s die-hard Jersey fans
who’ve been seeing him for 30 years would’ve just been like, ‘ Who the hell are
those dudes?’”
Five days later, however, Butler and Chassagne make good on a rain check,
joining the E Street Band in Ottawa for “State Trooper” and “Keep the Car Run-
ning.” Fans can be heard screaming “Holy shit!” in shaky camera-phone videos
posted to You Tube, a sentiment echoed widely once news broke the next day.
(Butler was hoping they could do the Clash’s “Straight to Hell.” “There’s so much
commonality between Joe Strummer and Bruce, especially in that song, talking
about someone’s experience in Vietnam,” Butler says later, back home in Montreal.
“But there’s no way to learn that song in 30 minutes.”)
Though Arcade Fire have played with superfans David Byrne and David
Bowie before, performing on Springsteen’s stage, with Springsteen’s band, for
Springsteen’s crowd, was a new experience. Butler takes it all in stride. “It’s fun
being a tourist in someone else’s world,” he says. “But we come from a very
different place.”

MORE AT SPIN.COM For wild interviews with fans at a New Jersey Springsteen concert, check out the video at spin.com/decembercover