-Welcome, welcome, welcome!
You look awesome, buddy.
Thank you so much for coming back to the show.
-Thank you. -This is not our normal studio
where we normally interview each other.
This place, this is Studio 6A. It's smaller.
But we once played here together, too.
And I'm sure, of course, you remember this.
[ Laughter ] Alright.
I'll refresh your memory. [ Laughter ]
Let me tell you this. -Give me a hint.
-So this is where Conan O'Brien used to do his show.
-Ah! -So we were here one time.
I was a guest on the show with Conan.
And you came on with The Sessions Band, wasn't it?
-Right. Right. -So I was there.
I was so excited to see you and everything.
And I got a knock on my door, on my dressing room door.
And it was you and Patti and you go like,
"Hey, Jimmy." Pardon the impression.
[ Laughter ]
-That doesn't sound like me. -No, no, no, no, no, no!
[ Laughter ]
So you go, "Dude, do you know how to play the spoons?"
And I go, "What? Hi, first of all. Hi.
Oh, yeah, sure. I'll do it." And you go,
"Well, come on, play the spoons with the band for this song."
I go, "Okay, okay, I'll play the spoons."
So you're like, "Yeah, let's get the spoons!"
I go, "Yeah, I'll get the spoons!"
You go, "Spoons!" And I go, "Yeah, spoons!"
I don't even know where am I going to find spoons.
I ran down to the commissary -- true story -- and I go,
"You guys got to give me two spoons
'cause Bruce just asked me to play with him in the band
and I got to do it," and I couldn't even believe it.
You asked me to do it. I was so excited.
And I think we have a clip.
Here I am playing the spoons with Bruce Springsteen.
Take a look at this.
♪♪
I could see it all coming back to you.
-Well, I like that you broke a sweat in about five seconds.
[ Laughter ]
-I was that excited.
-That's how easy it was.
-I'm the first person to break a sweat playing spoons.
-That's right.
-Why spoons? It just fit the sound?
-That's the only band that you could play spoons in,
I believe, and make it sound --
Or you can also -- the washboard.
We've had people come out of the audience for that band --
when they come, they come dressed in their own washboard.
-Bring your own washboard.
-Next time we'll get you the washboard.
-I'll always have one in the dressing room
just in case you ask me.
Congrats on "Letter to You."
The record is -- well, it's a beautiful --
it's a beautiful inspiration to why you wrote this record.
But talk to me about it. How do you get into this?
-I always like music that was where the singer
sounded happy and sad simultaneously,
you know, and I wrote about this a little bit
in the memoir that I wrote,
where I always love The Drifters'
"Saturday Night at the Movies," "Up on the Roof,"
"Under the Boardwalk."
For some reason, the singer
always sounded hopeful, resigned.
Like he had his spirit, but sad at the same time,
and you felt the whole world open up to you.
So those are the kind of songs that I like, you know,
and that I think hit the deepest.
If you're lucky enough
to be able to write one or a small group of them,
and "Letter to You" kind of strikes that balance.
And it's a record I'm really proud of.
I'm proud of the writing and the playing on it.
-It's about people that you have lost,
as well that you've played with,
but also people that you haven't really played with yet.
-Right. -But also, I think
"Letter to You" -- I mean, obviously,
people take their own meaning from a song.
But right now, in these times it was speaking to me,
whereas it could be speaking to you.
-Yeah, a little. You know, its...
Well, its original inspiration was I had a close friend of mine
who was in my very first band,
and he passed away a couple of years ago in the summertime.
I went down and saw him before he died.
And I came back and I -- it was just,
you know, it just sat with me, and that's --
and the song called "Last Man Standing."
I ended up being the last living member
of the first band that I was ever in.
And there's something about I was in a band
that lasted for three years with teenagers.
I mean, that's very, very unusual.
-Right, yeah. -From 1965 to '68,
from when I was 15 to when I was 18, it was the same guys,
the same guys from high school in the same band.
And so -- and it was my entire school of rock.
Every basic lesson that I learned,
I learned in that band -- the beginnings of performing,
how to put a show together,
the beginnings of your writing, everything.
Everything began during those three years
with that band, so that's something that --
and it was a momentous time in American history.
1965 to '68, you know, it was just tumultuous.
And so it was a very, very memorable part of my life.
And so I started to write a little -- some of the songs
were set a little bit in that time period
where I went back a little bit
and thought about what it was like to play in the Elks Club,
the Firemen's Fair, the Union Hall,
in front of the drive-in movies, before the movie stars,
the VFW hall, and all those sort of very definitive
but small gigs that you play when you're just learning
your chops and your way, you know.
So the record sort of stretches from that time period
all the way to now.
Whereas the modern record that I cut with the E Street Band,
who I've been working with for 45 years or so,
and it's about -- part of it's about a life,
a life in music, you know, and it's about the music itself
and the role it plays in people's lives,
the role that it's played in my life.
And it's a bit summational as a record like that, you know?
-Do you remember -- When you were 15,
do you remember the first taste you got of, like, getting on
a stage or performing in front of a crowd or that vibe?
-It was at the Elks Club in Freehold,
and I went in about a month ago just to see
if the room was still there that I first played in.
And they redesigned the inside of it.
So it wasn't recognizable at this point.
But they had a nice little bar downstairs and...
[ Laughter ]
-Did you hop on stage with the band?
-No, it was 35 cents.
You played on Sunday, 35 cents to get in.
There was a room about this size
and there was a circle of --
the bands would set up in a circle,
and every band would play about three songs
then the next band would play three or four or five songs
and the next band would play for a little bit.
And all the bands were playing for free, you know.
And, you know, maybe there was...
It was less than 100 kids there,
but it was an amazing place to kind of start out.
And I remember -- the only thing I remember most is I got up
and I sang "Twist and Shout,"
and I've been singing it ever since.
-Was that your first song you learned?
-That was the first rock song.
You know, the first song I ever learned
was a song called "Greensleeves."
[ Crowd murmuring ] [ Laughter ]
You can hear the reaction from your audience.
[ Laughter ]
-"You guys will hear 'Greensleeves'!
"Please play 'Green--'" Wow!
-Playing "Greensleeves"?!
[ Laughter ]
Damn! -Wow!
We thought that was going to come with the encore.
You're gonna open with "Greensleeves"?
-It was a folk song.
The first thing I had was a big American --
a big book of American folk music.
And so I learned that first because it only had two chords.
And then eventually I made my way to the third chord,
which allowed you to play "Twist and Shout," so...
-Yeah. -[ Laughs ]
-And then the documentary, by the way,
I'm so happy that you did it.
Did you think for a second
that you weren't going to do a documentary
or did you know that you would film this?
-Well, I regretted not filming the band when we were young
because I was superstitious.
And I believed that the magician should not look
too closely at his magic trick, you know?
And so I didn't want to really --
I didn't want to see the band.
Everything was going so well.
I said it can only screw everything up.
So we didn't film a lot when we were younger.
So as we've gotten a little bit older now,
I try to film mostly everything we do.
We get some sort of footage on,
and the documentary for this record
came up just like that.
I just have a filmmaking partner.
Thom Zimny is the director.
I said, "Thom, just come down and film what happens,
you know, just come down and shoot what happens."
And then we start there.
We start with just the basic --
started with just the band learning the songs
and then playing the songs and then listening to the songs.
And then we sort of add tone pieces,
which were sort of me just meandering.
[ Laughs ] -No, no, it's not mean--
-I meander through the film. -You meandering is --
-40 minutes. -No, it's beautiful, trust me.
-But that's how we put it together.
-Do you think that you changed your delivery of your stories
or the structure of your stories from doing all of your Broadway?
-Well, you know, the thing about Broadway was it was --
it really got me deep into the storytelling.
You know, it was really a --
Most of the night was really spoken word
and, you know, and then I'd play a play a song for a little bit
and then speak again, so...
It got me -- That particular show sort of got me thinking
about the whole arc of my life from when I was a kid to now,
and the series of projects started with me
writing a memoir and a Broadway show,
and then to some degree,
the music that's come after it also, you know,
has been a part of just taking a look at where I've been,
what I've done, where I'm at now, you know?
-When you get all the guys together in the room,
you can kind of feel like it's an old gang.
-Well, it is an old gang.
[ Laughter ] -I don't mean that.
-It's a very old gang. -No, no, no.
I don't mean like old. I mean like old buddies, yeah.
-But it is, you know.
I mean, I've been with Steve and Garry and all the guys,
you know, since I was -- once again,
since I was 18, 19, 20, 21 years old.
-Are you the same or I mean, as far as the band,
like, do you have the same dynamics?
Because now and then Max will go like,
"Hey, do you want like -- I think you should do this."
Were you always like that?
-I would say you do have the same dynamics.
I mean, you do sort of play
the same roles with some interesting bits.
Steven assisting me arrange something from 30 years ago
and then him doing the exact same thing,
you know, six months ago, you know?
So your relationships, they're very unusual.
Rock 'n' roll music is the only job in the world
where imagine this -- the people you went to high school with,
the very same people 50 years later,
you're working with those same people.
[ Laughter ]
Those exact same people,
and you've been with them every day since.
[ Laughter ]
So there is no other job in the world where that occurs.
It only occurs in a rock 'n roll band,
and it's only even expected to work out there.
It's no surprise that most bands break up.
I mean, how could you not, really, you know?
-Yeah, it's almost like a social experiment.
"Let's see who snaps first."
-Somebody should figure us out
because we've been pretty lucky with it.
And I have had great guys, and we've kind of prioritized
the life and spirit of the band
above some of our own personal grudges
and our own things that we got against this guy
and he's got against you, you know.
All those things are there,
but we've managed to transcend them in a lovely way
at this point in time.
-I want to show everyone a clip from the documentary.
Here is Bruce Springsteen in "Letter to You."
Take a look at this.
♪♪
-The E Street Band makes me dream,
think, and write big.
When I am amongst my friends,
I allow a certain part of my mind
that seems to be reserved for only them,
to be set free, and I dwell in a house of a thousand dreams.
-More with Bruce Springsteen when we come back, everybody!