Two guys talking about walking music
Probably the best long-form Springsteen exchange on record has been an interview by Will Percy, nephew of writer Walker Percy. It got deep into song- and identity-craft, far beyond "in some fashion."
Following nicely in that vein was Nick Hornby's recent interview with Springsteen for the Observer, Britain's oldest Sunday paper. Despite the musician's appearance in the writer's High Fidelity and their shared Marah friendship, they hadn't met until the interview and its surrounding events.
The obvious awkwardness seemed to pay off. Reading it last night, one question stood out for me. "Does it feel like young man's music to you now," Hornby asked, "the first three, four records?"
Springsteen responded:
(The paragraph chunkings are mine, for readability.)
I would say that it is, you know, because a lot of young people actually mention those records to me. I remember I was playing over here a while back and I was staring down and there was a kid, he couldn't have been more than 14, 15, he was mouthing every word to us, Greetings From Asbury Park, literally word for word and this kid — forget about it, his parents were the glimmer in somebody's eye [laughs].
In some ways I suppose it is, but also a good song takes years to find itself. When I go back and play 'Thunder Road' or something, I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost [laughs]. And that was the country at the time I wrote that music. I wrote that music immediately preceding the end of the Vietnam war, when that feeling swept the country.
A part of me was interested in music which contained that innocence, the Spector stuff, a lot of the Fifties and Sixties rock'n'roll, but I myself wasn't one of those people. I realised I wasn't one of my heroes, I was something else and I had to take that into consideration.
So when I wrote that music and incorporated a lot of the things I loved from those particular years, I was also aware that I had to set in place something that acknowledged what had happened to me and everybody else where I lived.
The rest is here, including Hornby footnotes and Tony Blair talking about a "grotty" apartment where he and Cherie used to listen to Bruce.
Big thanks to Shalini for reminding me to post this.
