Bruce Springsteen

I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them. ”

My dad was young; he went to work. But he'd been to war. He'd seen some of the world. It wasn't like he was going to be an extensive traveler or something. It didn't seem to be in his nature or in the nature of his parents or many of the folks in my family, really. ”

After 'Born to Run,' I had a reaction to my good fortune. With success, it felt like a lot of people who'd come before me lost some essential part of themselves. My greatest fear was that success was going to change or diminish that part of myself. ”

Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why. ”

Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time. ”

I was an insecure young man. So my need for total dedication from the people I was working with was very great. Those things were tempered as time passed by. ”

The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown. ”

Think of it this way: performing is like sprinting while screaming for three, four minutes. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. And then you walk a little, shouting the whole time. And so on. Your adrenaline quickly overwhelms your conditioning. ”

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day. ”

I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along. ”