Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Published May 10, 2005
Bruce Springsteen's downbeat new disc at No. 1 this week? Really?
It doesn't have a hip producer or guest appearances by the likes of 50 Cent or the Game, who seem to be on every chart-topping effort these days. And it is getting minimal radio airplay. But "Devils & Dust" went to No. 1 in 10 countries, including the U.S.A.
"That was just shocking," said Springsteen, who performs tonight at the sold-out Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. "I know there's an audience out there for it, but it tends to be smaller than for my other [rock] records. That's just fine. So it was a nice surprise that people had that kind of interest in it because it's an unusual record to end up in that spot."
"Devils" sold 220,000 copies in the United States in its first week -- twice what his last acoustic-oriented effort, 1995's "Ghost of Tom Joad," did but less than one-third what his last rock album, 2002's "The Rising," sold in its initial week.
The success of Springsteen's album and his sold-out solo tour are testaments to his bond with his fans. They are loyal but open-minded enough to let him follow his muse, whether his character is racing down the highway looking for the promised land or holding a finger on a trigger in an unwanted war in a faraway land -- or trying to find comfort with a hooker who reminds him of his ex-lover.
John (Hondo) Hughes of St. Paul considers himself a hard-core fan. "The core group realizes his music works on a deeper level," Hughes said as a bootleg of Springsteen's Met Center concert from 17 years ago tonight played in the background. (He has a sixth-row ticket for Tuesday's show.) "They feel a deep connection beyond the music. They'll go with Bruce wherever he wants to go."
And Springsteen is finding those kind of fans on this, his second solo tour, which will play to a scaled-down Xcel Center with 6,000 seats.
"I've had some great audiences, some of the best of my career," he said Saturday by phone before going onstage in Denver. "The audience comes in and it's about the quiet and the silence. There's a real communion that occurs between the singer and the audience at these shows."
"It can be demanding, the idea of trying to do something new," Springsteen said. "That's what I've asked for from my audience.
"When you've been at it a long time -- hey, I'm a 55-year-old guy, I'm not on the radio for the most part, I'm rarely on any video television -- to have the intensity of audience involvement and the freedom -- audiences tend to like to box you in -- that's nice. That's what's supposed to happen. You're supposed to work together to keep out of the box. That's how it stays alive and vital and real, and there's no end in sight.
"When I was a kid, when I thought where I wanted to be in my late 20s, where I wanted to be at 55 -- this is it. I'm lucky."
For someone who was supposed to be onstage when he was doing this interview, Springsteen was relaxed, talkative and thoughtful. As always, chuckles punctuated the conversation.
He relishes working solo -- something he used to do often in his early days in New Jersey. Unlike his last solo tour in 1995-96, after the release of "Tom Joad," he has added piano to his arsenal.
"My piano chops are somewhat iffy," he said. "Already, they've gotten better from just the first couple of weeks. You don't ever forget. You know I wrote all those introductions to 'Born to Run' on the piano. 'Jungleland,' 'Backstreets,' those were all written on my little Aeolian piano. I have a limited ability on [piano] but I can usually get pretty expressive with it. After a while, your nerves calm down and you realize that your fingers will go in the vicinity of where you are trying to put them if you just remain calm."
New songs are really old
Many of the songs on "Devils & Dust" were written during the "Tom Joad" tour but he didn't want to put out another acoustic-oriented album back then. He soon reconnected with his E Street Band for two big tours and "The Rising."
Last year, he took time off while his wife, E Streeter Patti Scialfa, made a solo album and did a brief concert tour. Finding himself at home with nothing to do, he pulled out those post-"Tom Joad" songs and discovered them to be "still relevant and powerful.
"This is a group of songs that I always knew I wanted to get out. It harkens back to some of the deepest writing I do. I like to do a lot of detailed storytelling. This particular kind of writing doesn't really age." He put these tunes together with some others featuring a "small sort of country-roots band" for "Devils & Dust."
Many songs on the new album talk about family and faith, making it almost his "family values album," as the New York Times put it. Having written occasionally about his relationship with his father, this time Springsteen offers a few songs about the mother-child connection.
"I don't know why that happened," he said. "It might have been some things I was reading. Also, I had a close friend that passed away and left two sons. And, of course, my own kids and understanding the intensity of the mother/child bond. They're all songs where that bond gets severed and people are trying to find out how to deal with the severance of that bond. On the record, some find their way in the world and some don't."
Springsteen doesn't write about his own kids -- Sam, 10; Jessica, 12, and Evan, 14. "I like the idea of writing songs for my kids but I don't know if I'd want to write songs about them," he said. "It's enough for them to be my kids and it's enough for me being their dad. We have our hands full with the real-world version of it. But it's all there. You can't spend 14 years with children and not have it come through your music in some fashion."
Banned by Starbucks
"Devils" has raised some dust about Springsteen's image. In "Reno," the protagonist quotes the prices of a prostitute in graphic language. That song prompted Starbucks, champion of adult-aimed albums such as Ray Charles' "Genius Loves Company," to decline last week to carry the Springsteen CD in its 4,400 stores.
When the Boss heard the news, he joked onstage Friday in Oakland, Calif., that the CD would be available at Dunkin' Donuts.
Speaking the next night from Denver, he shrugged off the caffeinated controversy as "no big deal. The record wasn't particularly for them." Last month on "VH1's Storytellers," Springsteen blew his "holier-than-thou image" (his words) by admitting that he occasionally has gone to strip clubs.
"I didn't realize it was that revelatory," he said with a big chuckle.
What's the hardest thing about being Bruce Springsteen?
"I'll have to ask him. I'm not him that much. I'm him when I'm onstage. The minute my foot goes on the first step off the stage, there's a whole other world going on."
Vote for Change revisited
Springsteen received some criticism for co-organizing the Vote for Change Tour to back Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign. Some conservative-leaning fans stayed away, even though he has been outspoken against President Bush on past tours and has long championed the underdog, the blue-collar worker and, as he once put it in song, "the brothers under the bridge."
Although initially despondent after the election, he said he learned that there's "a lot of idealism out there, a lot of people interested in moving this country in a different direction. I sat in front of 80,000 people in Madison, Wis., and it was probably one of the most amazing days of my musical life. There was a lot of hope. ... There's a lot of thought and energy out there; it just hasn't coalesced around a focal point."
His Vote for Change event in St. Paul with R.E.M., John Fogerty and Bright Eyes was "very, very memorable," he said. For two songs, he was joined by unadvertised guest Neil Young, who he said is "always fun to play with because he's an incredible engine."
Even though he has sold more than 60 million albums since his 1973 debut, Springsteen finds that he's motivated by the same thing that he was at the beginning: "Looking at the world around me and trying to divine some sense -- it's the same searching, searching, searching.
"It's a search that you commit both yourself and your audience to; they have to commit themselves to also. That's what makes it a living relationship rather than something that's become ossified over the years. You want an audience that is ready to go down that road. That's who I see staring back at me every night. It's so good."
Jon Bream is at 612-673-1719 or popmusic@startribune.com.
The Boss' to-do list
Don't expect to hear "Born to Run" at tonight's concert. "I put aside any-thing we played a lot on the recent E Street Band tours," Springsteen said, but added: "On a given night, you may want to pull something out of the bag. I played 'The River' on the last couple of nights on the piano and I found a nice reinterpretation of it."
Bruce Springsteen
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Where: Xcel Energy Center, W. 7th St. and Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul.
Tickets: Sold out.
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