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

different way of acting. You’re acting for 200 people or 3,000. I think I’ve seen a different way of acting. Last year you were, to me, more menacing, more mean. That didn’t happen last night. You were sometimes menacing, but not all of the time. I remember last year, girls started crying, and shouting in the middle of the song—they couldn’t handle it, they couldn’t wait until it was over to let it go. Applause is a way of relieving tension, it’s not only appreciation, it’s a relief of tension when there’s a good artist there that can build it up. People last year couldn’t wait for that—they had to start yelling and shouting. You came out with the sunglasses, moving mainly in one spot but with the tension of wanting to break out of it. Now you’re moving about, you’re going across the whole stage, but then you gave this impression that you could do it, but you were forced by some magic force to stay there, and you were wrestling with your body .
    There’s two kinds of sets that the band plays, even to this day. At the Troubadour, I was involved with wrestling with the situation, which Iwas probably not enjoying at the time. So this would cause this particular thing. It was the same with the first night at the Bottom Line, I was very involved with wrestling with what I was trying to do. I was realizing that it was not quite coming off. With the Troubadour set—once every so many gigs, sometimes you go out there and you’ve really got to fight with it to make a go of it; sometimes you go out and it just falls out like nothing. That’s when you tend to be looser. In comparison to the Troubadour, last night was like the “loose” set, where everybody’s feeling good.
    At the Troubadour, it was like the artist struggling with his art; other times it’s the artist
performing
his art .
    Yeah, that’s it. That’s the difference. At the Troubadour it really was a struggle to come through.
    I got this weird impression last night sometimes of watching
West Side Story
, and seeing George Chakiris there .
    That’s interesting, I never saw that.
    You never saw that film?
    No.
    Oh, well, it was the same kind of … well, it’s the feel in your lyrics of the East Side of New York, down-and-out people. Because of the dancing, it’s a very stylized movie. But the music wasn’t really bad, and the movie has the same kind of effect that you try to do with your lines, and it works well on many occasions. Everything coming together, you know: a bridge, a line change, falling on the ground, freeze .
    We’re trying to do a whole mess of things at once. We’re trying to do a real structured thing, but keep it real loose at the same time. The structure is like the frame on a picture, where the picture is constantly moving. So some nights it depends on how you are that night, how you’re feeling and how creative you are at any given moment. So it can vary a lot, it can vary a little night to night, it can not vary, it can do anything. Because there are certain set things we use as a skeleton for the set, and we try to let whatever happens happen around that.
    It’s interesting how you can bring across so much charisma using all the old themes in show business, like the Laurel and Hardy theme: Clarence, the big guy with the hat, and you’re the little guy, doing what you do .
    Yeah [
laughs
].
    And it always works again. But you do it with rock music, which is quite new, to do it that perfectly: choreography, humor …
    That’s because those things are all very real to begin with, the first time they were done. They’re like situations that happen, day to day. You see it on the street, those people are everywhere.
    Did you at any one moment in the development of your career come to realize that you have charisma? You’re a very charismatic artist .
    Nah, I don’t think about that stuff.
    Are you ever aware of that? I mean, it’s obvious, I think it’s hard to evade .
    I don’t know. Before I go