Bruce Springsteen

I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.

'Darkness on the Edge of Town' came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs.

I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs.

Steve Van Zandt, the poor guy, doesn't get to play enough as it is with me hogging a lot of the solos. Steve has always been a fabulous guitarist. Back from the day when we were both teenagers together, he led his band and played lead and was always a hot guitar player.

You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.

For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in.

If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.

My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that.

The Jersey Shore is the kind of place where the policeman has a little cottage that might have been in the family for years and many other people call home.

That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.

If you're good, you're always looking over your shoulder.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

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.

The audiences are there as a result of my history with the band but also as a result of my being able to reach people with a tune.

I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.

When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.

From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life.

At the time, there was a great disagreement over 'The Wild and the Innocent,' and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn't do it, and they basically said, 'Well hey, look, it's going to go in the trash can.' That's the record business, you know.

I have my ideas, I have my music and I also just enjoy showing off, so that's a big part of it. Also, I like to get up onstage and behave insanely or express myself physically, and the band can get pretty silly.

Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.