All language subtitles for Imagine Darkness.Revisited.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.Forum_Subtitles01.ENG

One night a few weeks ago,
a rock legend, Bruce Springsteen,

came here to the South Bank
in London to present a film

about the long
and troubled creation

of his 1978 album,
Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

Darkness,
Springsteen's fourth album,
was three long years in the making.

He was struggling with a lawsuit
with his first manager

and was determined to follow
the success of the celebratory
Born To Run album

with something quite different,
something significant,
something profound.

Springsteen wrote over 40 songs
for what would be
the ten-song Darkness album,

wrestling with lyrics
on his notebook, swapping phrases,
concepts and lines

as he built his big statement.

If Born To Run was
a cry for freedom,

a sophisticated update
on the adolescent joy of '60s pop,

Darkness was determined
not to run away,

but to show that rock'n'roll and
Springsteen himself could grow up.

He wanted to write about the fallout
of the American Dream,

about the ties that bind
in disillusioned mid-'70s America,

not a million miles away
from the "me" America of today,

which makes this a timely
and strangely prescient film.

We've made a special edit
of Thom Zimny's film for Imagine

which takes you
inside the process of creating
this make-or-break album.

As the extraordinary archive footage
that laces the film shows,

there were many struggles and
wrong turns on this intense journey

to find the "darkness
on the edge of town".

This thing ain't nine to five. This
thing is 24/7. It was a mission.

We were messianic in our approach.

It was like, "This movie
is going to save the world."

The work ethic that surfaced on
Darkness was even more intense than
anything that had gone on before.

This was our lives.
This was everything to us.

There were no wives or families or
girlfriends that mattered that much,
so we were there all the time.

But the obsessive/compulsive part
of my personality

was such that I would be driving you
crazy just because I could.

I was a dangerous man to be around.

Bruce is a man with a vision
and, at the same time, he's a person
in search of a vision.

More than rich and more than famous
and more than...happy,

I wanted to be great.

After Born To Run, I wanted to write
about life in the close confines
of the small towns I grew up in.

In 1977, I was living on a farm
in Holmdel, New Jersey.

It was there that I wrote
most of the songs
for Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

I was 27 and a product
of Top 40 radio.

Songs like The Animals' It's My Life
and We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

were infused with
an early pop class consciousness.

That, along with my own experience,
the stress and tension
of my father's and mother's life

that came with the difficulties
of trying to make ends meet,
influenced my writing.

I had a reaction
to my own good fortune

and I asked myself new questions.

I felt a sense of accountability to
the people I had grown up alongside.

I began to wonder
how to address that feeling.

All of this led to the turn
my writing took on Darkness.

Tonight I'll be on that hill

Cos I can't stop

I'll be on that hill

With everything I got

Lives on the line

Where dreams are found and lost

I'll be there on time

And I'll pay the cost

For wanting things

That can only be found

In the darkness
on the edge of town...

That was just sort of a big...

That's a reckoning
with the adult world, you know,

with a life of limitations
and compromises.

But also a life of kind of...
of just resilience
and commitment to life.

You know, to...

You know... To the breath
in your lungs, you know.

How do I keep faith
with those things?

How do I honour those things?

Darkness was a record
where I set out to try
to understand how to do that.

Cos tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run...

You've had Born To Run in 1975.

That was the biggest hit

that any of us had any connection to
ever.

The success we had with Born To Run
immediately made me ask,
"What's that all about?

"What is that... You know,
what does that mean for me?"

..these velvet rims and strap
your hands across my engines...

The success brought me an audience.

It also separated me from all
the things I had been trying to make
my connections to my whole life.

And it frightened me because
I understood that what I had
of value was at my core

and that core was rooted
into the place I'd grown up,
the people I'd known,

the experiences I'd had.

If I move away from those things
into a sphere of just...

..freedom as pure licence to go
about your life as you desire,

without connection...

That's where a lot of the people
I admired drifted away from -

the essential things
that made them great.

Tenth Avenue freeze-out

Tenth Avenue freeze-out
I'm talkin' about...

Tenth Avenue freeze-out
Talkin' about that...

The success at that particular
moment was so dream-like.

Aaaah!

Say it, say it, say it...

All of the rock'n'roll dreams
that I had held as a kid

have finally come true.

All of a sudden,
the band was noticed.

We really started building
a following

and everything was going good.

We were so excited
about that type of success

that we felt we'd made it.

We were finally in a studio
making records.

We got it made.

Then all of a sudden,
things just stopped.

There were two clouds that hung
over the writing and the recording
of Darkness On The Edge Of Town

and one was just the success we had.

Let's face it.
You're one thing one day,

then all of a sudden,
you're post-Time and Newsweek,
post-Born To Run

and everyone looks at you entirely
different than what you are.

You were a struggling artist one day.
Now you're a real success story.

I enjoyed it plenty along the way,
tried to accept the things
that had happened to me,

but not let them distort my idea
about who I was
or what I wanted to do.

I had to disregard my own mutation.
That was the cloud of success.

The other one was just the lawsuit
that I ended up in with Mike.

In January of 1976,
events had occurred

that had led to a fracture
in the relationship between Bruce
and his former manager Mike Appel.

The main problem we had initially
was we couldn't record.

I was signed
to Mike's production company

and that gave Mike the power to
decide basically all the essentials

about how we recorded,
who we recorded with. I was
kind of his property in that area.

I couldn't make those decisions
on my own, so therefore,
we couldn't go into the studio.

With regard to the legal situation,

the actual initial court order was
that Bruce couldn't go in the studio

with a producer not approved
by Mike Appel.

In the early stages of that lawsuit
when things didn't go well,

his only form of protest over this
was just not to go in at all.

The litigation that was going on,
we weren't really a part of it, but
certainly we were affected by it.

We were all broke. Nobody had any
money. We were going day to day.

It wasn't a lawsuit about money.

It was a lawsuit about control -
who was going to be in control
of my work and my work life.

Early on,
I decided that was going to be me.

The bottom line was that it would be
my ass on the line and I was going
to control where it went

and how things went down.

That, for me, was what
the lawsuit was about.

If I don't go in the studio, I don't
go in the studio. But I don't go in
under somebody else's rules.

It's my life
and I'll do what I want

It's my mind
and I'll think what I want

Show me I'm wrong

Hurt me sometime

Some day I'll treat you real fine

Don't push me

It's my life
and I'll do what I want...

If I can't make the music
that I want to make,
I won't make the music.

We played live. We survived playing
the live shows as best as we could,
but things got very, very difficult.

When it came down to it, you can
lose the rights to your music,
you can lose your ability to record,

you can lose the ownership
of your songs,

but you can't lose...

..that thing,
that thing that's in you.

Ready?

Not being able to return
to the studio after the Born To Run
record was just heart-breaking.

You hear a lot of talk about bands
being family, teams being family.

At that time, it really was that
because what we had
truly were our relationships

and the music
that Bruce was writing.

Now, in the olden days

When the Mongolian gangs
rode along Route 9

We go runnin' scared

And driven way down south
through the pines

Weekends in the sun
in that cheap motel

Out by the Dynamo

We loved each other
till there was nothing left

And we drove that old car as hard
and fast as she would go...

During that time, we rehearsed every
day at Bruce's house in New Jersey.

We could play into all hours
of the night.

It was far enough and big enough
and away from other houses that we
could make all the noise we wanted.

My sense of his reaction
to this road block in his career

was that determination, that will,
that desire to do it his way

became even greater.

Maybe his way of working it all out
was to write songs.

And I take her round easy

Looking for a moment
when the world seems right...

While there was a lot of pain
because I was trying to sort out

what had happened between Mike and
I in the lawsuit, it was also a time
of re-finding myself and freedom,

the freedom I found back
where I felt like I belonged.

And I picked this chick up
hitchin'

She hung her head out the window
and she screamed

She was looking
for someplace to go

To die or be redeemed

Well, you can ride this road
till dawn

Without another human being
in sight

Cos baby,
everybody's gone lookin'

For something in the night...

Bruce had been away for a year
since he made Born To Run,
this big record to live up to.

It was like the clock was ticking.

The plan was to do Darkness
fairly quick.

These days,
two or three years between records,
people don't think about it much,

but in those days, I made
two records in the first year
that I had a contract

and another record shortly after
that. Two or three years in between
records then, you disappeared.

I read many articles, "Whatever
happened to... Flash in the pan."

For all I knew,
that might have been true.

The stakes were even higher
in certain respects.

What was this guy going to do next?

The future was pretty cloudy.

We'd had one success. A lot
of people, that's all they have.

If I'd had that one success,
I'd have gone back to Asbury Park
millions of dollars in debt,

rather than the other way round.

You didn't know if this may be
the last record you'll ever make.

Everything I'm about and think
about, I've got to get it out now
on this record

because there is no tomorrow.

There's just this moment.

One, two, three, four!

Cold rain running
down the front of my shirt

I'm flat on my back wheels
in the dirt

Angel makes her face up
out on Baker Street

She's straddling the shifter
in my front seat...

In June of 1977,

Bruce's situation with his former
manager was decided conclusively.

He got control of his music
and ultimately his career.

It was probably, in my view, the
defining moment of his young career

because he had withstood the rigours
of someone literally trying
to take his future away.

These were the things that I would
have fought to the death for

because without them, at that time
particularly, I felt I had no life,

so whatever it was, I knew I was
going to take it the whole way.

Finally, we went back into
the studio to start recording the
Darkness On The Edge Of Town album.

It was a sense of "we can finally
start working on this thing

"with the proper production team
of Bruce and Jon Landau".

When we sort of got together
and started talking about Darkness,

I had vaguely assumed
that we would in some way pick up
from where we left off.

I think even us,
as well as the record companies,
after Born To Run...

felt the next record would sort of
follow in the same footsteps,
you know,

and propel us a little further
along. That would seem
like a formula to me.

He wasn't planning to write the next
Jungleland or the next Backstreets.

I think that was one moment.
He was in another moment.

I think that a lot of this album
had to do, ultimately,

with Bruce's own personal growth

and trying to come to terms
with his idea of what it meant

to be a man.

So I was trying to write music
that both felt angry and rebellious,

yet that also felt adult.

That was a big thing
that shaped that record.

One, two,

three, four!

"The Promised Land"

On a rattlesnake...

One, two,

three, four!

It was quite experimental
that we didn't go into that record

with an absolutely specific idea
of what we wanted from it

and how we were going to get there.

I remember him telling me he really
wanted to downsize the scale,

that big sound of Born To Run.

Suddenly,
everything got very sparse

where the Born To Run album had
this sort of, you know,

our take on the "wall of sound".

Now you had
this vast cinematic landscape.

The record maintains that kind

of ominous,
potentially hopeful feel throughout.

It doesn't break that focus.

You know, one phrase
that we would use to discuss
the sound of the record

as it evolved...

..was "the sound picture".

What kind of picture was the sound
of the record suggesting?

We did want a certain feeling
of loneliness,

a certain unglamorised,
to mix languages, you know, sound.

There was no "sweetening",

you know, a lot of overdubbed,
especially strings and horns.

We didn't want any sweetening.

We wanted the coffee black.

Well,
I'm riding down Kingsley...

And that was pretty much
what I was after.

I was after a leaner sound,
a little bit of an angrier sound.
I wanted to toughen up the songs.

When you're first beginning
and first making records,

you so think that you need this
big production and this big sound,

so I think Bruce was
a little futuristic in saying,
"Let's just be simple."

I wanted the record to have
a very relentless...feeling.

Nothing is forgotten or forgiven

When it's your last time around

I got stuff running round my head

That I just can't live down...

You're very preoccupied with parts.

On Born To Run,
Bruce wrote all those parts.

The way to get it just the way
he wanted it was to focus
on each individual part.

We had these very, very set
arrangements on Born To Run.

Darkness was
a little bit more freewheeling.

A bit like...

'We just simply didn't rehearse
any more.

'I would give the guys the chords,'

count into the song and before
they could come up with parts,

they'd have to play.

So the first two or three takes,
you didn't get people recording,
you got people playing.

Very often I didn't have the words.
Like I remember Badlands,
I think I had "Badlands".

"Badlands"

Bruce was at that time
a tremendous rewriter

of alternate versions, alternate
verses, alternate endings.

He always created choices
for himself.

All right.

"Badlands"

I had that riff,

so I would...we'd count it off,

then I would sort of imagine...
imagine a verse.

You know, an "A" and a "B" section,
though I wouldn't have
any lyrics yet.

I was just following
whatever worked musically,
whatever felt exciting musically.

That was the first real
E Street Band record.

I think in many ways his first
two albums were solo records.

Stop, stop.

How do you capture
that great live thing in the studio?

It was still a bit of a mystery.

In the '70s, somebody decided
that all ambient sound was bad.

Everything was carpeted,
everything was dead.
Nothing was allowed to breathe.

We wanted to capture the sound
of the band live.

But studios created this completely
unnatural environment

with not a hint of any reverberant
sound coming off of anything.

If you listen to a lot of records
from the '70s, the deadness on them,
I find it makes my skin crawl.

You don't like...

Well, you don't like...

We didn't know
how to get any sounds.
That was our problem all along.

'Nothing seemed to be working.
We were just babes in the woods

'trying to figure out how to make
a record that sounded like live,'

like we hear in our heads, but not
really knowing the technology or
having the wisdom to figure it out.

'The drum sounds on Darkness...'

That was quite a fiasco.

We literally spent weeks
just trying to get drum sounds.

An incredible amount of discussion
and attention devoted to the subject
of Max's snare sound.

He would be sitting next to me

and Max would be out there and he'd
say, "Again." And Max would hit it.

And all Bruce would say,
over and over again, was, "Stick."
He could hear the stick on the drum.

It got to a place where we were
analysing this so carefully
that everything sounded like...

Stick!
It's like hitting it with a stick.

"Stick. Stick." I mean hours!

We put the drums every place
you could put them in that building.
We put the drums in the elevator.

You would hear the whole reverb
of this whole big stairwell,
which made no sense.

I was waiting for a phone call
to come back to the studio
and start work again

while they're 10 hours a day hitting
a drum trying to make it sound like
a drum. It was pretty sad, really.

The problem was this:

I fantasised these huge sounds.

And so we went to pursue them,

but they were always bigger
in my head!

And so we constantly were chasing
something that...
was somewhat unattainable.

The thing that I didn't understand
was the fundamental equation
at the time -

if you get big drums, the guitars
sound smaller. Get big guitars,
the drums have to...

Something has to give.
There's only so much sonic range.
But we didn't know this.

We just assumed
everything could sound huge.

"Badlands"

In those days, our process was
to rehearse a song in the studio,

lay it down - record it,

and once it became at all coherent
go back into the control room
to listen to it

and start honing it,
individually and collectively.

It was about as much
the live performance of the take.

When you sat down, it wasn't just by
rote. You went out to create magic.

"Promised Land"

You just interpreted the songs
more in your own way
and the sound reflected that.

It was much more stark.
There was less saxophone.

'The sax became a bit of an issue
on that record. Take Born To Run.

'The basis of the record was
the Brill Building, Phil Spector

'and urban popular music.

'When you went to
Darkness On The Edge Of Town, it
was a little more heartland, rural.'

So I then began to say,
"How do I use the sax?" It's a very
urban instrument. How do I integrate

what Clarence is doing
into this context?

He had definite ideas about
certain solos and certain songs.

'He would direct me by telling me
a story, then he'd hum it.'

"Like this, Big Man."

"Badlands"

I remember we had mastered the
record with no sax solo on Badlands.
It was just a guitar solo.

At the end of the record, we didn't
think we had enough saxophone.

We took the guitar out. It would
have been a terrible mistake.

Its presence is so strong
in the places where it appears,

it feels like the sax is on
much more of the record than it is.

O-oh-oh-oh...

Little darlin'...

# Yeah...

No matter what I do
Girl, you know it's true...

We recorded a lot of music.
Reels and reels and reels of tapes
and songs. It went on for days

and days and days. Just recording
songs. He was very prolific,
like he exploded.

Born To Run, there were only like
nine songs. Eight made the album.

On Darkness, there were like 70
songs. That was a big difference.

If you think about that,
somebody sculpting eight songs

and then all of a sudden
the next album they write 70 songs.

Basically, the first good 10 songs
you write, that's your record.

This... That process would end.

Forever. And never came back.

He would write five songs to get one.

There was a lot of multi-versions
of all kinds of things.

'We were always pulling things
apart. I had a big junkyard of stuff
as the year went by.'

If something wasn't complete,
I pulled out the parts I liked.

Put them in the other car,
so that car runs!

End of the day
factory whistle cries...

Bruce, to this day, has notebooks
He's always diddling, always writing,
very aware of things around him.

The magical notebook! An endless
stream of songs coming out of it.

What are you looking in this book
for? All it gives is more work!

After the sessions, Bruce would say,
"Let's go to the book. I've got more
songs. Let's go through them."

So we'd literally sit at the piano
and he'd open up a book
of...ideas, you know.

And he'd have...twenty-five ideas
in there.

Your mama's yappin'
in the back seat

Tell her to push over
and move them big feet

Every Monday morning
I got to take her down
to the unemployment agency

Tell her this morning
I ain't fighting...
If she don't shut up

Tell her I ain't fighting
Tell her I give up

Yeah, baby!
And it's the last time
her ass is gonna be ridin' with me

You know that's the truth, baby!

We've got a hot sun
beatin' on the blacktop

She keeps talkin'
she'll be walkin' that last block

She can take a taxi
back to the ghetto tonight

All right!
Cos I got some beer
and the highway's free

And I got you
and, baby, you got me

Hey, hey, hey...

You know, you'd go,
"Hey, what a great song!

"We're gonna use that, right?"
And then he'd go, "No, I don't know
if that's gonna make it."

'Ideas that I was interested
in concentrating on'

would have been diluted
at that moment if I'd made more of
a miscellaneous grab bag of music,

no matter how entertaining it was.

"Independence Day"

You realised after a while
that the albums were made up of songs
that had an emotional thread.

Not a collection of what the artist
would think was going to play well
on the radio.

oh-oh-oh-oh

I quit, little darling

Yeah

No matter what I do
You know it's true...

Those songs wound up being cut later
on the River album.

We went back to those
and pulled some of those out
and some had to wait for Tracks.

It's really hard
to write a good song.

For him to write good songs, that
possibly could have been hit songs,
and not put them out, put them aside,

it took an enormous amount
of discipline and willpower
to do that.

It's a bit tragic, in a way.
He would have been one of the great
pop song writers of all time.

Oh, every night I see a light
shine up in your window

Oh-oh-oh

Every night you won't answer
when I come knocking

At your door

And your daddy won't ever
let me in

And I see from the street
your silhouette sittin' next to him

What must I do

What does it take
to get to you

Oh, talk to me

Until it's all over...

'Steve was... He had a great ear
and he still does.

'He loves the...
the classic sort of pop.

'A lot of things that ended up
on Tracks, an enormous amount,'

The River outtakes and Darkness
were his favourite things.

And he was a big... It's the
three-minute pop single for Steve.

..little girl and talk to me

Until it's over...

Play the bridge.

I think part of what pop promised
and rock promised was
the never-ending now.

The always...
"No, no, no, it's about living NOW.

"You need to be alive RIGHT NOW."

I just don't understand
what you say

What must I do

What does it take
to get to you

What's all the fuss

Why can't you just, girl,
talk to me?

With those three minutes,
it was all on, you know.

It was... All of a sudden you were
lifted up into a higher place
of living and experiencing.

And there was this beautiful,
ever-present now.

Baby,
I've been working hard each day

Well, come on...

'He just can do anything.
He can write anything, for anybody.

'And he just very much
took that for granted,'

which is how a lot of our popular
stuff ended up not being released.

'I mean, one great example, which
I think would have fit on Darkness is
a song called Because The Night.'

I was recording Patti Smith at the
time, as well as Bruce Springsteen.
I wanted to be a record producer.

So I started producing the record
in-between Bruce's stuff.

Got toward the end and we were
at the hotel, me and Bruce,
and he said,

"Hey, man.
How you doing with Patti?"

I said, "I don't have the song
that'll make everybody listen
to the album."

He said, "You don't have
the single." I said, "That's right."
He said, "What are you gonna do?"

I knew I wasn't going to finish
the song because it was a love song.

And I really felt like I didn't know
how to write them at the time.

There were so many out there. I
figured I'd do something different.

Also, a real love song like Because
The Night I was reticent to write.

I think I was too cowardly
to write it at the time.

But she was...she was very brave.

She had the courage.

I was in my apartment

and having a long-distance romance
with Fred "Sonic" Smith
who later became my husband.

He was supposed to call me.
I waited for him to call me
for hours.

I thought,
"I'll listen to that darn song."

It was so accessible,
it had such an anthemic tone,

it was in my key and I kept
letting it loop and play.

And I still tried to resist it,
but I filled in the blanks

and in the blanks it tells the story
of me waiting for Fred to call
and of my love for Fred.

Have I doubt when I'm alone

Love is a ring, the telephone

Love is an angel
disguised as lust

Here in my bed
until the morning comes...

Fred did call
about three in the morning...
and I wasn't made at him, though,

because by the time he called
I had written my share of the lyrics
of my one and only hit song.

Can't touch us now...

The two biggest songs that were
written for the Darkness album
and recorded by us -

Fire and Because The Night -

didn't make it onto the album.

One thing about Bruce is, I think,
if he thought something
was going to be a hit

and he didn't want
to be represented by that hit,
he'd just leave them off the record.

Bruce was going for something
and, like on Born To Run,
he had something in his head.

Until he got that thing
in his head on tape,

he would just keep going
and going and going.

Everybody put in their two cents
about the music, the production,

maybe where something should be
or shouldn't be and a lot of times
Jon or Bruce or Steven huddled up.

There are a lot of people in
the control room - a producer, Jon
Landau, the artist who is a producer,

and Steve Van Zandt,
so I held back.

I'm looking at the piano fader
on the console and Steven's looking
at the guitar fader.

Everybody wants to lean over
the engineer and push themselves up
a little bit.

That made for, at times,
some pretty funny discussions.

Sometimes some pretty tense
discussions.

Probably more tense than funny.

Steve is generally,
"It's my way or it sucks!"

You know? It's like, "Hey, man!
This is a major tragedy!

"Stop! We're wrapping
this whole thing up right now!"

'A transition was taking place
at that point

'and everybody would be finding
what role to play.

'I was just doing
what a friend does.'

I'm just gonna give you my opinion,
you know?

And try to discover
what it is you want to do.

'The basis for our situation
in the studio was

'that Jon is a formalist,'

for the most part.
He's kind of a pop formalist.

'It has all roots
in gospel and soul,'

but they were also well-performed,
well-sung, well-played records.

'Steve likes things
trashier and noisier.'

He's the garage guy, you know.

And so I tend to like things
in the middle somewhere.
It was just two varying opinions.

And I enjoyed them both.

I didn't want any one person
having too much control

over the direction
the music was taking. So...

I would yin/yang a little bit.
It was just the way I played it.

'A couple of different things came
together at a certain time to form
my approach towards the record.'

The explosion of punk dawning
in '77,

which actually I felt quite a bit
for. I felt some similarity
in spirit somewhere, you know?

'I started listening to country
music, which I hadn't really done
before that.

'For the first time, I really
connected with Hank Williams.'

What I liked about that was
that country music had tackled
the adult concerns.

One of the elements that was
so striking between Born To Run
and Darkness,

on Born To Run characters said,
"Baby, we were born to run."

In the ensuing three years,
it was made painfully clear
that you can't just run away.

He was starting to have
some conversations with Jon Landau
that I think helped a great deal.

He kind of was drawn back
to a more solid time,

that John Wayne character
in The Searchers. "I know who I am.
I know right from wrong."

That sort of clarity
that I think we all search for.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town,
it's a meditation on where you're
going to stand.

With who and where will you stand?

Tonight I'll be on that hill
'cause I can't stop

I'll be on that hill
with everything that I've got

Lives on the line
where dreams are found and lost

I'll be there on time
ready to pay the cost

For wanting things
that can only be found...

That song builds
to that one big moment.

And I'll be on that hill
'Cause I can't stop

I'll be on that hill
with everything I got...

That was the only answer I had
at the time. Not forsaking

your own inner life force.

You know, how do you hold on
to those things? How do you hold on?
How do we keep those things?

How do we do justice and honour
to those things? That was
the question the record asked

over and over and over again.

Adam Raised A Cain -
how do we honour our parents?

You know, Promised Land -
how do we honour the community?

Factory - how do we honour
the life that, you know,
our brothers and sisters

and parents live?

For some reason, that was something
that really mattered to me...
and it mattered to me a lot.

The whistle blows...

Factory...

That was just the paradox
of earning your living

and getting life from a place
that also takes...
takes a lot out of you,

which is just something I saw
as a kid. My dad lost his hearing.

As a child, I'd bring him his lunch.
He was working in the plastics
factory at the time.

The machines were whirring and
whirring, huge machines, and he was
cutting big, long pieces of plastic.

These days people would wear those
big headsets, but in those days, no.

He didn't even see me for minutes
because the noise was so great.

His back was to me
and I was saying, "Dad,"

but he couldn't hear me
because the machines were so loud.
He stopped and I walked around

and I'd hold the lunch bag
and he'd nod his head and...
we walked out.

I go back to most of my writing
before Greetings and it all appears
simply terrible to me.

You're still writing a lot of bad
words. You know, you're writing
a lot of bad verses.

So you're trying to learn
how to write well,
but your artistic instinct

is all you... It's what you're
going on. Your artistic intelligence
hasn't been developed yet.

'Hopefully, that increases and
develops over a long period of time

'which gives you an ace to play
down the road as you get older.'

At the time, I'm going
on artistic instinct and...

that's a wide open game.

So I'm following all kinds of paths
and roads, going, "That doesn't feel
right. That doesn't feel right.

"That doesn't feel right."
That's how I'm judging.

"Lights out tonight
and you're all alone..."
I didn't save that one!

"Baby's on the street,
you're getting pushed around."

That was my opener for that one!

"Lights out tonight, trouble in the
heartland." There it is. Finally!
I don't know how many pages in.

Racing In The Street, I'm sure
there's a million versions on that.

There was one where there was
no girl. There was no girl in it.

The continuance of the story of the
two guys in the first verse, I asked
two people what they thought.

I asked Obie Dziedzic,
one of our earliest fans.

He said, "I love the one
with the girl in it."

And I asked Steve and Steve says,
"Oh, the one with the girl in it."

I said, "Really?" I thought he was
going to go for the other one.

He says, "Yeah, that's what happens
in life. Two guys are pals,

"then the girl comes along
and that's it."

When I inserted the relationship
in the last verse,

it made sense of the journey
that the guy is taking.

You know, a lot of the songs
deal with my obsession
with the idea of sin

and what is it? What is it in a good
life? Because it plays an important
place in a good life also.

How do you deal with it?
You don't get rid of it.

How do you carry your sins?

That's what the people in Racing
In The Street are trying to do.

Tonight my baby and me
we're gonna ride to the sea

And wash these sins off our hands

Tonight, tonight

The highway's bright

Out of our way, mister,
you'd best keep

The summer's here
and the time is right

For racing in the street...

'Life is no longer wide open.
Adult life is a life
of a lot of compromise.'

And...and that's necessary.
There's a lot of things
that you should be compromising on.

And there's some essential things
where you don't want to compromise.
So figuring those things out.

What's the part of life
where you need to compromise
to whatever - to pay your bills,

to get along,
you know, to feed your kids,
to make your way through the world?

What's the part where there's a part
of yourself you can't compromise
with or you lose yourself?

Sometimes you wondered if the end
was ever going to actually happen

because you'd record 50 or 60 songs

and I guess then Bruce would
collate all his thoughts

and try to decide
what the story was.

When I did my running order
for that album,

I don't know if any of the songs that
wound up on the album were my picks.

Nobody knew until the end, really,
how it was going to turn out.
I don't think Bruce or Jon did.

This was the beginning of Bruce
being very meticulous
about the sequencing as well.

He would have sequences made up.

He would have four or five sequences
and he'd listen to them through.

We always were concerned
with our cornerstones - the first
and last cut on both sides.

So that was our narrative device.

After the year of recording,
listening to all the stuff
that we had,

I stripped the record down
to really its barest
and most austere elements.

And I decided I wanted something
that felt like a tone poem.

And I didn't want any distractions
from the narrative and the stories
that I was telling.

And also I wanted to have
a sort of apocalyptic grandeur.

In the darkness
on the edge of town

In the darkness
on the e-e-edge of town...

I think Born To Run and Darkness,
they're the beginnings of the story.

I'm beginning to tell the story
that I tell for most
of the rest of my work life.

When we finally got to perform
on the Darkness On The Edge Of Town
tour after the record was finished,

it was almost like a wave of relief
that we had been able
to withstand the pressure...

..of not recording, of not
being able to do what Bruce wanted.

It's amazing to me how he was able
to withstand it and never crack

and never really show at all
how disturbing the whole thing
must have been.

'I ain't got one regret
about...about...

'you know, one second
of the past three years

'because I've learned a lot from it.

'You can hear it on the record,
I hope.'

The Darkness album and the Darkness
tour was such an important part

of the Bruce Springsteen
and E Street Band story

because, in my view, it really
seemed like the first time

that it is possible
to do it your own way

and there was a ferocity in the band

when we finally went out
and started playing again
that perhaps wasn't there earlier.

It was just an absolutely
"take no prisoners" approach.

Mister, I ain't a boy
No, I'm a man

And I believe in a promised land

And I believe in a promised land

And I believe
in a promised land...

Every one of these albums is
a search for that vision of now.

That's what ups the ante.

That's what makes
some of these records...

What made them so difficult
was they weren't done

until he had advanced his vision.

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