Time Off: Jon Landau Interview

TIME OFF WEB EXCLUSIVE:
JON LANDAU by Sean Sennett
July 29, 2006

Jon Landau, rock manager extraordinaire, is on his laptop and flipping through the I-Tunes library. Calling up ‘Bring Them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam)’, Landau is previewing Bruce Springsteen’s latest recording. A protest song inked by Pete Seeger during the Vietnam War, the tune is particularly apt in 2006. Next on the play list is Bruce’s reinterpretation of Blind Alfred Reed’s ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?’ Springsteen has updated the depression era tune with new lyrics to reflect the handling of the New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina disaster. Landau brought the song to Bruce’s attention earlier this year.

The pair have shared a creative partnership for over three-decades. Landau, who had worked for Rolling Stone and produced records for the MC5, came on board as Bruce’s co-producer, and later manager, around the time of Born To Run in 1975. Along the way Landau has also produced the likes of Jackson Browne and managed the careers of Shania Twain and Natalie Merchant. Springsteen has always remained a priority.

Bruce’s latest album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions grew out of an exchange of tapes between the pair. With Bruce keen to release more material, he began evaluating his archives. ‘We Shall Overcome’ had been recorded for a Seeger tribute album, Where Have All The Flowers Gone in 1997. Over the next decade a loose ensemble of New York City based musicians were called upon to occasionally record with Bruce at his New Jersey farmhouse.

Hearing the material Landau, as Bruce say’s, ‘made another ‘I think we’ve got something here’ calls’. “It’s a Bruce driven project,” Landau begins, “I just contributed, as I usually do, with my feedback. He had his own ideas. As soon as we started talking about it, it felt great. Simultaneously, I think he was very interested in performing this music. He thought he could he could make a great show out of it.”

“Bruce has just been very immersed in music for these last few years. To my ear, this group of folk songs just jumped out. There remains a substantial amount of material for some sort of Tracks II idea,” he admits. Springsteen, by his own admission, is keen to release more records at a faster clip, without a reduction in quality. “Bruce and I have been working together for thirty years, in one way or another,” continues Landau. We’ve all just learned how to do our thing better. I think Bruce, in the last eight to ten years, has gotten more comfortable with finishing things. It’s a less a tortuous process than it once was."

“We brought new people into the process on The Rising (2002) and Devils And Dust (2005). [Producer] Brendan O’Brien was a big help; that was something new. We’ve had our own homegrown team of my dear friend Chuck Plotkin, myself (until I took myself out of it), Toby Scott [engineer] and Bob Clearmountain. We’ve brought in some fresh blood starting with The Rising. That was something different and very stimulating. I think working with these different musicians for right now provides another source of ideas.”

Landau describes last year’s Born To Run reissue project as ‘a pure joy’. The slim-line box set included a DVD on the making of the album, as well as the concert DVD and ensuing live album Live At The Hammersmith Odeon. Rumour has it that concert film from the 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town may also be released at some point in the future. “We have been paying more attention to the video archives,” admits Landau. “I think we’re now on a track where, in between releases, we’re going to find more and more ways of releasing stuff of Bruce’s. We should get a lot of stuff out. I think twenty-five years ago we were sort of the opposite. Unless it was perfect and met certain criteria, [Bruce] didn’t want anybody to hear it. Now, it’s just so much more relaxed … we’ve all gotten much more relaxed as time goes on. Releasing great music is still the aim.”

Springsteen has admitted that a new E-Street Band album is next on the agenda. “I sure hope so,” chimes Landau. “The last one we made with Brendan, The Rising, I believe it took eight or nine weeks. The old days of two-year albums … well, we look back on that sometimes and laugh trying to remember exactly what took two years!

“We looked at some of the songs that we left off when we were doing Tracks and it’s like ‘Who’s idea was it not to put ‘Roulette’ on the album?’ I’m like ‘Bruce … it was your idea …’, and he’s like ‘Jon, don’t kid me … don’t you remember’ (laughs).

So whose decision was it to leave ‘Because The Night’ and ‘Fire’ off Darkness On The Edge Of Town?
“You can safely tell your readers that not putting those tunes on the album wasn’t my idea (laughs).”

Of late the web has been abuzz with rumours of the Holy Grail for Springsteen enthusiasts, an ‘electric’ Nebraska. Bruce trialed the songs with the band while working on tapes that eventually became Born In The U.S.A. “Before Bruce made the decision to put out the Nebraska sessions as is, we sort of looked at the possibility of it as a blue-print for a studio album,” continues Landau. “We spent a certain amount of time in the studio recording band versions of a few of the songs. They weren’t, in my judgment … (thinking) … we made the right decision. The right version of Nebraska came out. I don’t know if that is particularly meaningful stuff. It’s not something we focused on. I’d go slow with that idea.”

On his recent Seeger Sessions tour, Springsteen was able to make available a live concert clip each night for eighteen-nights straight. After recording ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?’ fans were able to view the song on-line almost immediately. It’ll be interesting to see how the web affects Bruce’s releases in the future.

“For us, I think every approach has validity for the person to whom it’s suited,” continues Landau. “We’re album guys, that’s what we grew up on and we’re used to making albums. Whether or not we’re going to get into using the internet for smaller groups of songs … I think that we might. I think the album, as long as it continues to exist, is going to be our top priority. I think when an album is successful creatively, it’s greater than the sum of its’ parts. When you get a group of songs that create a vision that is bigger than themselves - that’s fantastic. One thing that Bruce, and myself as well, have always been interested in is communicating a vision. Bruce really communicates a vision embedded in the music and lyrics and I think we’ll find ways to do that.”

While reluctant to put back on a full-time producers’ hat, Landau remains enthusiastic about his position.

“I’m very content with what I’ve done,” he explains. “I couldn’t begin to tell you … there’s something about a particular relationship I’ve had with Bruce. We’re such close friends; we’ve sort of grown up together. To sustain a relationship like this through all the twists and turns, and through all the things each of us has had to deal with … we’ve had to grow as people to accommodate changing lives. It’s been an incredible ride. It continues to be … I’m as excited about this tour right now as I was about Born In The U.S.A or Born To Run … because the music is fabulous and in the end the work, for both Bruce and myself, is musically driven. When you feel you’re a part of something you really believe in creatively … that’s great, it’s really great.”