-Our first guest tonight is a musical legend,
a 20-time Grammy Award winner, an Academy Award winner,
a Tony Award winner, and member of both
the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
His new album, "Only the Strong Survive,"
is available now.
Please welcome to the show, The Boss,
Bruce Springsteen, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome to the show.
I'm so happy to have you here. -Thank you.
Glad to be here. -Last time --
Last time I saw you was backstage at your Broadway show,
which was fantastic. Was that something --
Looking back at it, can you believe now you did it?
Was that ever something you thought you were gonna do?
-We did 236 of them, so, uh, it took 14 months.
About five days of -- five nights a week.
And I loved every night of it, you know?
It wasn't something I thought I'd do
'cause it happened by accident.
You know, I was --
Two weeks before President Obama was leaving the White House,
he asked me to come down and play.
So I said, "Well, I don't want to bring the band.
Too much noise." [ Laughter ]
"I'll go down by myself with my acoustic guitar,
and I'll read something from my book, and I'll sing a song."
So that's -- I spent a couple hours in my studio,
and I worked up about 90 minutes of something.
I went down, and I played in the East Room
to just a couple hundred people.
But it was basically 90 minutes of the Broadway play, you know?
And so he came up to me afterwards, and he said,
"Gee, you know, I'm glad you did that for us,
but that should be a show."
So I said, "It's good presidential advice, you know?"
[ Laughter ]
-And is it true he takes a cut? He took 15%?
-Unfortunately, it was true. That's true.
[ Laughter ]
-I don't know if you remember this,
but we were lucky enough --
I brought my mom to see the show,
and we went backstage,
and you were being very gracious with your time.
And I was very cognizant of the fact that
you're a busy guy, and, wonderfully,
Patty stepped in and said, "Before they leave, Bruce,
you got to take a picture with Seth's mom,"
and this photo is celebrated in our house.
[ Laughter, audience "Awws" ]
-She looks great. -She looks wonderful.
Doesn't she look good? -She looks fabulous.
[ Applause ] [ Chuckles ]
-The thing -- the joke my brother and I always say is,
we've never seen he look that happy in a picture with our dad.
[ Laughter ]
I've never seen a photo of her where her eyes aren't rolling.
[ Laughter ]
This is -- This album, these are,
obviously, soul songs that mean something to you.
-Yeah. It was just a lot of stuff that I liked.
And it was during the lockdown, so I'd made a couple of records.
Made a record called "Western Stars,"
and I made a film with it.
Made a record called "Letter to You"
with The E Street Band, and I made a film with that.
'Cause you couldn't go out on the road.
So, still sitting there with no schedule in front of me,
so I said, "Well, I'd like to --
Let me do something I've never done before.
Let me do something that's centered on my voice
and just singing."
The greatest vocal music, in my opinion, of all time
is gospel music and then soul music.
All the singers came from the church.
So I just dug into my collection of my favorite singers.
Jerry Butler and David Ruffin from The Temptations,
Levi Stubbs from The Four Tops, William Bell.
And I just started to go through music that I found that
I had a good range for and fit my voice pretty well.
And I made one record, I threw it out.
And then, I finally focused on the soul --
the idea of making a cohesive soul-music record.
And so that's what we did.
I really -- I did it for myself.
It was a lot of fun. I hope people enjoy it.
-You know, there's a great --
Sam Moore, from Sam & Dave, is on a couple of the songs.
I know you've sung with him in the past.
-Yeah. -On stage, in concert.
You know, you've sort of given this gift to people.
You know, you did a song with Jack Antonov.
Obviously, you mean a lot to him.
He gets to sing with you.
What's it like for you when you get to sing with somebody
who obviously meant a lot to you in your early days?
-Well, Sam & Dave were gigantic in my musical development,
'cause what most people don't understand,
Sam Moore was an incredible band leader.
And I used to go see Sam & Dave when they played
The Satellite Lounge in Fort Dix, New Jersey,
The Fast Lane in Asbury Park.
These are 200-, 300-seat clubs.
And this was in the late '70s.
They were not --
I don't know if Sam was speaking to Dave at the time.
They weren't getting along,
but they were still incredible, you know?
So incredible that, one night, I stood in the back
of a tiny club that was only half full.
And I knew I was seeing some of the greatest music
in the United States that very moment.
And I just cried, you know?
That -- Just over how good they were.
Just 'cause they were so good.
And so I've known Sam for about 30 years.
And we've sung together on a few things.
And he's a great guy, and probably
our greatest living soul singer right now.
-And is it a quick "yes" when you call up Sam and say,
"Do you want to be on the new album?"
-Yeah, Sam's game to sing. He still loves singing.
He's 86, but still loves to sing.
-You can't -- You wouldn't guess 86 when you listen to it.
-No, no, he's got -- his voice has sustained beautifully.
So he's wonderful.
-And you're going back on tour, as well?
-E Street Band. -E Street Band.
-Coming back on the road. -Unbelievable.
-February 1st. [ Cheers and applause ]
Thank you. -Now are you --
You know, I'm always -- every time I've been
lucky enough to see you live, you know, I cannot believe
the energy that goes into that show,
not just from you but from the entire E Street Band.
When you have February 1st in the future,
are you already thinking about it?
Are you thinking like, "We gotta get into show shape
right now"? -Yeah.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-It's, uh...
The thing with show shape is, almost no matter what you do,
you are still going to wake up the next morning
after that first show
feeling like you've been beaten with a baseball bat.
[ Laughter ]
Every single thing is going to hurt you.
Every muscle and bone in your body,
your voice is going to feel like it will never sing again.
And then you play the second night,
"Eh, it's not so bad."
[ Laughter ]
-I got think you got to just stick with it, right?
-Yeah, by the time you're three or four nights in,
your body adapts, and you get used to
being constantly tired because you are.
And so I live with fatigue for about a year and a half.
Your immune system drops, so you gotta get used to getting
a little more regularly sick just because of the --
to the degree that you're pushing your body.
But it's still the greatest [bleep] thing in the world.
[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
-I mean...
Obviously, it sounds like you stayed busy
and you realized, you know, there was an opportunity
with the pandemic to do other things.
But I imagine from you, the entire E Street Band,
from top to bottom, everybody must be just so excited to be --
-Well, it's been -- we've been six years.
So it's a long time. -Yeah.
-And, you know, I mean,
it takes us two seconds to come back with each other.
But, yes, it's been -- we've been off for a long time,
so looking forward to it.
-We're gonna take a quick commercial break, but I --
You don't know this, either,
but I do want to tell you something.
One more thing about my mom, which is we -- our first --
Not our first dance, but the mother/son dance at our wedding,
she always wanted to do --
she wanted us to dance to a Bruce Springsteen song.
-All right. -And so the band
had to learn it, and the song was "For You,"
from "Asbury" -- you know, from your first album.
And my wife pointed out, "That's a crazy song
that your mom wanted you to sing a song where the lyrics
are, 'I came for you, for you.'"
She's like, "Why would you do that on a day
where you're seriously here for me?"
[ Laughter ]
She goes, "I think this is a very aggressive song
for your mom to have picked." -Now, get this.
I'm the guy that wrote it.
[ Laughter ]
So I know exactly what you're talking about, you know?
[ Laughter ]
It's got -- you know, it's a strange song.
I don't know what it means.
[ Laughter ]
It sounds suicidal to me. [ Laughter ]
But -- And it's a very unusual song for the wedding...
-Yeah. -...and the son/mother dance.
But, God bless. -You know what?
[ Laughter ]
She thinks outside the box, Bruce.
I don't know what to tell you.
I got more to ask. We'll be right back
with more from Bruce Springsteen.