American musician (1949- )
And of course we searched for everything, to see what was there, but we just felt lucky that we had what we had.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
interview, Backstreets, December 10, 2015
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack;
I went out for a ride and I never went back.
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing,
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Hungry Heart", The River
And the world is busting at its seams;
And you're just a prisoner of your dreams.
Holding on for your life 'cause you work all day
To blow 'em away in the night.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Night", Born to Run
Hello beautiful thing, maybe you could save my life.
In just a glance, down here on magic street,
Loves a fool's dance
And I ain't got much sense, but I still got my feet.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Girls in Their Summer Clothes", Magic
Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between flesh and what's fantasy and the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Jungleland", Born to Run
You can't start a fire, sitting 'round crying over a broken heart.
This gun's for hire,
Even if we're just dancing in the dark.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Dancing in the Dark", Born in the U.S.A.
In the third grade a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Bruce Springsteen Talking
Spare parts
And broken hearts
Keep the world turnin' around.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Spare Parts", Tunnel of Love
To accept that our fortunes were going to rest on whatever this was, for better or for worse. That was a big responsibility at the time, and we were putting everything we had on what we'd done. So it was just traumatic. And you're young, 24 or 25, and you don't have the stability or the history to be able to put it in any kind of perspective. It was just all that there is and all that there was gonna be. [It felt like] there were gonna be no more records after this record. We were all going off a cliff the next day, as far as my approach to it. It was just, "This was it."
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
interview, Rolling Stone, August 25, 2015
We busted out of class had to get away from those fools;
We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"No Surrender", Born in the U.S.A.
When I die I don't want no part of heaven.
I would not do heaven's work well.
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Youngstown", The Ghost of Tom Joad
She'll let you in her house
If you come knockin' late at night.
She'll let you in her mouth
If the words you say are right.
If you pay the price,
She'll let you deep inside.
But there's a secret garden she hides.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Secret Garden"
The wise men were all fools, what to do?
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Last to Die", Magic
The first day I can remember looking into a mirror and being able to stand what I saw was the day I had a guitar in my hand.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Bruce Springsteen Talking
Everybody's got a secret Sonny,
Something that they just can't face.
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it;
They carry it with them every step that they take.
Till some day they just cut it loose.
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down
Where no one asks any questions,
Or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Darkness on the Edge of Town"
Now you play the loving woman;
I'll play the faithful man.
But just don't look too close into the palm of my hand.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Brilliant Disguise", Tunnel of Love
When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways. You know, The Beatles did, The Rolling Stones did. So I enjoyed artists that engaged in their worlds and then created some reflection of it that people could meditate upon and think upon. So that was just, to me, I was just continuing along doing what I was doing.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
interview, NPR, January 15, 2014
At this point, I don't need my records to be Number One or sell as many as this person or that person. That's not fundamentally important -- I don't believe that sustains you.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Bruce Springsteen Talking
I think what's happening now is people want to forget. There was Vietnam, there was Watergate, there was Iran -- we were beaten, we were hustled, and then we were humiliated. And I think people got a need to feel good about the country they live in. But what's happening, I think, is that that need -- which is a good thing -- is gettin' manipulated and exploited. And you see the Reagan reelection ads on TV -- you know: "It's morning in America." And you say, well, it's not morning in Pittsburgh. It's not morning above 125th Street in New York. It's midnight, and, like, there's a bad moon risin'. And that's why when Reagan mentioned my name in New Jersey, I felt it was another manipulation, and I had to disassociate myself from the president's kind words.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Rolling Stone, December 1984
There was a lot of stuff we loved in it from the music we loved, but there was something else too -- and that something else was quite a sense of dread and uncertainty about the future and who you were, where you were going, where the whole country was going. That found its way into the record.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
interview, Rolling Stone, August 25, 2015