Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen by Unknown Page A

that gripped you?
    “Wooly Bully.” I can’t even remember how big I was. First record I ever bought, I think, was “Jailhouse Rock.” I always worshipped Phil Spector. About 1963 I was 13. I didn’t start playing until I was 14, I remember digging all the songs but remember that I had to go back as I startedreally getting into it, go back, dig out all the old singles and stuff and see what I’d missed.
    The only stuff I caught was the English explosion, man, like the Beatles. That was when I was 16, 17, 14, and 15. That’s when that happened. I was into it. Manfred Mann, man, I was nuts about those guys. Paul Jones was one of my favourites, and I dug the Animals, the Stones, I dug the Searchers, I dug, of course, the Beatles.
    Do you consider yourself the future of rock ’n’ roll, as you have been described?
    Hey, gimme a break with that stuff, will you? It’s nuts, it’s crazy. Who could take that seriously? The guy was sorta saying I wasn’t just like a mixture of past influences, that I was like doing my own thing. CBS took this, promoted it real heavy, and I was like “SENSATIONAL!” Cheap thrill time!
    You know, it was a big mistake on their part. They probably don’t realise it, they probably think they’re right and I’m nuts, you know. But it was a very big mistake, and I would like to strangle the guy who thought that up if I ever get hold of him.
    Because the idea of taking that quote and blowing that thing up like that, that’s a bunch of jive. The future ain’t any damned thing. Who was gonna swallow that? This is me. Who the hell wants to read stuff like that?
    Just like suicide tactics. Crazy, crazy, crazy stuff to do. You wanna kill somebody off? It’s like I said earlier—you gotta fight out from underneath something all the time. Who CARES, anyway? A kid in his chair—he couldn’t give a damn what the future is or anything!
    You know, he DON’T CARE about that kind of stuff, don’t even pay attention to, it’s just business like what it amounts to is, Jon Landau [one of the producers on the
Born to Run
LP] wrote a great article—with his heart—and on that level it was very, very encouraging to me.
    At the time we weren’t doing so good, and it helped me out with the record company. But what they did with it was, like, a cheap publicity trick, and I resent it very much, that they used that quote.
    I guess good intentions were intended but it was a D-R-A-G, the whole episode was a big drag for me, and still is. I mean, who wants to come out on stage and be the future every night? Not me.
    You know, let somebody else, let the guy who thought up using it in the ad, come out and do it! You know? See how he likes it. It was likeanother big, big mistake, right up there with the New Dylan thing. Same calibre.
    Taking a wide view of the rock scene before you came into it with any strength with albums, do you think rock needed you, or someone, to revitalise the music scene?
    I don’t think about it. I’ve lived on a pretty personal basis. It’s as simple as that, you know. I don’t know why anybody needs it. People always moan and moan—rock this, rock that, and everybody’s all saying: hey, that’s supposed to be cool.
    To say everything stinks is supposed to be right. Well, it’s affected the musicians, I’m sure it has. I never felt that way. I always felt it was always very real. I know what it did to me, and it still does. I know when it happens to be right, and when I put it on a record, I go NUTS! You know, I love it.
    It’s a reason to live, helps people out. Now a lot of the new music hasn’t done that. In fact, you know, it’s like … I don’t know why, I wish I knew why. It just hasn’t done that.
    You mean heavy rock?
    Yeah, I could do with hearing some good new stuff. The Move had a single out once which was great, great song, and there are good records that still come out, but a lot of them get lost in the shuffle. A lot of them don’t get a chance. That