Over a 41-year recording career, Springsteen has sold more than 120 million albums, won 20 Grammy awards, and played thousands of gigs, mostly backed by his legendary ensemble the E Street Band. It’s not for nothing that they call him “The Boss”. But what is it really like to work for Springsteen?
“It’s a term of affection, but he is certainly ‘The Boss’, both in a figurative and literal sense,” says drummer Max Weinberg, who has been playing with Springsteen since 1974. “We are all parts of a 40-year-old, well-oiled machine directed in every aspect by Bruce. I have never seen any other aggregation of singer and band that’s like this.”
Guitarist Nils Lofgren, a member of the E Street Band since 1984, as well as being an acclaimed solo artist in his own right, agrees. “In Bruce, you’ve got a guy with hundreds of great songs, which is the core of any rock ’n’ roll show, [who is also] an incredible singer and performer,” he says. “And even beyond that, you’ve got a guy who just grew up very engaged and passionate. You can’t fake that. He’s picked musicians over the decades that have that same sensibility. Collectively, it’s a formidable thing.”
The seriousness with which Springsteen takes his music is reflected in his staging. “There is a simplicity to the lighting, and the only pyrotechnics come from his physical performance and from the music itself,” says Roy Bittan, the band’s piano player for the past 39 years. “The goal is to make it feel like a one-on-one experience. If you’re out in the audience you feel like he’s talking to you.”
It has been hailed as the greatest rock ’n’ roll show on Earth. Tonight, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band take the stage at Wembley Stadium to deliver another epic set, containing everything from stark, emotional intimacy to righteous explosions of joy and anger. There will be 18 musicians, dipping in and out of music that encompasses blues, soul, gospel and folk, all focused on rock’s most charismatic, critically lauded and popularly acclaimed singer-songwriter.
Over a 41-year recording career, Springsteen has sold more than 120 million albums, won 20 Grammy awards, and played thousands of gigs, mostly backed by his legendary ensemble the E Street Band. It’s not for nothing that they call him “The Boss”. But what is it really like to work for Springsteen?
“It’s a term of affection, but he is certainly ‘The Boss’, both in a figurative and literal sense,” says drummer Max Weinberg, who has been playing with Springsteen since 1974. “We are all parts of a 40-year-old, well-oiled machine directed in every aspect by Bruce. I have never seen any other aggregation of singer and band that’s like this.”
Guitarist Nils Lofgren, a member of the E Street Band since 1984, as well as being an acclaimed solo artist in his own right, agrees. “In Bruce, you’ve got a guy with hundreds of great songs, which is the core of any rock ’n’ roll show, [who is also] an incredible singer and performer,” he says. “And even beyond that, you’ve got a guy who just grew up very engaged and passionate. You can’t fake that. He’s picked musicians over the decades that have that same sensibility. Collectively, it’s a formidable thing.”
The seriousness with which Springsteen takes his music is reflected in his staging. “There is a simplicity to the lighting, and the only pyrotechnics come from his physical performance and from the music itself,” says Roy Bittan, the band’s piano player for the past 39 years. “The goal is to make it feel like a one-on-one experience. If you’re out in the audience you feel like he’s talking to you.”
Springsteen writes a set list in the run up to each show “but he never follows it”, says Lofgren. “Sometimes he’ll change the first song on the way to the stage ‘cause he hears the roar of the crowd and he gets a better idea. And all night long he’s getting better ideas. He’ll change the songs, and even inside the songs he’ll change the arrangement. He’s really a master of stream of consciousness, he’ll pick up an acoustic guitar and point to the pedal steel, tell Soozie [Tyrell, violinist] to play fiddle, point to Charlie [Giordano, keyboards] to pick up an accordion, and he does that all night. Bruce is always challenging himself to make each show unique, something you will never see again. The horn players say he’s like an old jazz cat.”
The core of the E Street Band formed over a number of years in the Sixties and early Seventies in Asbury Park, in Springsteen’s native New Jersey. When Springsteen was signed by Columbia as a solo artist in 1972, he enlisted local musicians including bassist Garry Tallent and late, long-serving members saxophonist Clarence Clemons and keyboard player Danny Federici. Weinberg and Bittan arrived in 1974 and Van Zandt, a long-time friend and collaborator, officially joined in 1975. Backing singer and guitarist Patti Scialfa (who later became Mrs Springsteen) was brought in alongside Lofgren in 1984. Federici died of melanoma in 2008, aged 58, and Clemons of a stroke in 2011, aged 69, but a core of seven musicians remains, augmented by a touring line up that has risen, over the years, to 18. “It’s kind of like Bruce is the Pied Piper and these are people he’s picked up on his journey,” says Weinberg.
Of course, being The Boss necessitates a certain distance; a space between employer and employee. Springsteen disbanded the E Street Band in 1989 saying he felt stuck in a rut. But Weinberg insists there was never a falling out. “We all just kind of went about our business, and grew up and stayed close. No one offered more advice and assistance, emotional and otherwise, than Bruce. He was checking in on a weekly basis, how’s everybody doing?”
Springsteen made guest appearances on many of his former band member’s solo projects and used them on his own solo sessions over the next decade, eventually reconvening the group in 1999. Since then, they have produced one acclaimed album after another, from the inspirational post 9/11 masterpiece The Rising to last year’s angry bulletin from recessionary America, The Wrecking Ball.
All of the E Street Band talk keenly about the loss of Federici and particularly Clemons, the imposing saxophonist who appeared with Springsteen on the cover of Born to Run. When I spoke to Springsteen last year he compared losing Clemons to losing “something elemental [like] the air or the rain”. The band now features Clemons’s nephew, Jake Clemons, on saxophone as part of a five-piece horn section, something which, Lofgren says, puts “more tools in the box for Bruce to play with.”
And offstage? Bittan insists there is little difference between the public performer and the private man.“You can’t do what he does without really being able to have feet-on-the-ground centred-ness,” he says. “We all know it’s easy to get caught up with all the things you are presented with when you reach a certain level of celebrity. I think he realised that if he doesn’t make his own personal life as real as possible, that would spill into what he is trying to do.”
Weinberg adds, “Bruce is the guy who has got to sit in his room with a pencil and a guitar and write those songs. That’s why he’s The Boss. It’s pretty simple when it comes down to it.”
