Read Online Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen by Unknown - Free Book Online

Hammond?
    It wasn’t
by
that. I’d read the book, or I’d been reading the book, and I happened to be involved with Mike. I went in to Mike and Mike said we’ve got this appointment with John Hammond! So then we went up there. So yeah, it is … but it was just a freaky thing. There was a whole series of events at that time that were happening to me almost exactly how they happened to Dylan when he first started, and it was just coincidence. I met Hammond, then I went and played the Gaslight, and a lot of those little clubs, and it was by myself, I had no band. So anyway, Clive did a big hype, which probably as he looks back on it was a mistake. I mean the way it was done. I think I read somewhere he thinks it was a mistake himself—in his books he says it. Anyway, the big hype came out, and then for a long time I was thought of as like a Clive project that bombed. I sold 20,000 records or something. Even though the band was consistently getting good press, and Mike was always shoving it back to Columbia, when the record sales ain’t there, they can ignore it. So when the second album came out I had an argument with the A&R department. They didn’t think it was good, I thought it was good; they didn’t want to release it, I wanted to release it; eventually they did release the album, and it got pretty good reviews and did pretty well.
    So meanwhile, all this time the albums are selling every week, but atthe record company at that time, well, there were a lot of inner conflicts between us and them. There were a lot of people there who were really pulling for us, but the people who had the big say at the time were not too involved with my project. I think Billy Joel was happening then, somebody was happening then. So, I don’t know if they figured we’d disappear and go away or what. But we kept going out there and kept playing. See, to bet against us was to make a bad bet, because the guys, we had nothing else to do! You were dealing with desperate faces—we
had
to go out there every night, we had to do that. And it was great, it was something we lived to do. This was our chance, and there was no turning around. I wasn’t going to stop and go back and fix TVs; there was nothing else I could do, so this was it for me. So they were dealing with something that would not stop. Could not stop. If you can stop, in this music-type thing, well then you
should
stop.
    Finally, a year went by, and
Wild and Innocent
started to sell quite a few records, and then several major things happened. [Irwin Segelstein’s] kid—was the president of CBS records—came to see us at a show. Freaked out, went back and was bugging his old man: “What’s the matter with you?” and on and on. And the Jon Landau article came out at the same time. And all of a sudden the tide turned. It just went over the hump where it became too much to ignore anymore. They finally wised up to this. And things started to come around, and I started the new album, and it went on and on. In the end—and I’ve always worked on this principle—you go to somebody, and you’ve got a deal on their terms. You’re in their ballpark playing their game. I always found it’s better if you make them come to you. Then they’re in your neighborhood, playing your game. To a degree, you can call the shots. In our situation, we just played and played—those guys, they’re the most consistent band, they play good every night, I mean,
real
good every night. Even on a bad night, they’re still good [
laughs
].
    It was a good night last night!
    Last night was a good night. It wasn’t a great night, but it felt real good. It’s that kind of band that comes out, man, and always during the night they’re doing something … So that’s what we did every night: played and played, over and over. So finally what happened was the company came to us and said, “Hey, let’s get together,” and when they finally did, that’s when it started to work out. And now, they’re