- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare, and by.

And also by.

A complete list of funders is available at aptonline.org, and LiveFromLBJ.org.

- "Born in the USA" is a work of critical patriotism.

It's a very patriotic song.

Some people only heard that part.

It's also a very critical song, you know?

So if you wanted to get the full effect of what I was doing, you needed to do something that was kind of an adult process, which is you had to have... you had to be able to hold two conflicting ideas in your mind at the same time.

(lively music) (pensive music) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

Since the Library was dedicated by our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, over half a century ago, it has hosted some of the biggest names and best minds of our day to discuss our nation's rich history and the issues of our times.

Now we bring those conversations straight to you.

Tonight, live from the LBJ Library is "Born to Run."

We go from the LBJ Library to the newly-opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, which has its own archive and museum on the campus of New Jersey's Monmouth University.

Our guest is Bruce Springsteen himself.

The man who "The New York Times" has called America's Conscience discusses his seminal work, including "Born to Run."

The role he's played in shining a light on the American people, and our struggles as a nation, and what he tries to do to nudge our country in a more hopeful direction.

(ominous music) Bruce Springsteen, welcome.

- (chuckles) Thanks.

- We're at the newly-opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, and it includes so many of the rockers who influenced you coming up, and the musicians, including Woody Guthrie.

I'm hearing more Woody Guthrie in your work.

Where does that come from?

- Well, I got to Woody Guthrie pretty late, you know?

I was mostly influenced by just Top 40 Radio on the whole first, I don't know, 10 or 15 years of my work life, maybe more, because that's what I heard, you know?

And you know, my mother had the radio on every morning, and from the time I was eight or nine years old, I was just indoctrinated in whatever was on the radio.

And through the mid and early-'60s there was so much great music, you know, on the radio, historic music on the radio that, really, that's what I grew up on, you know?

And then as I got older, I started to go backwards, you know, into country music, the original blues musicians, and searching for answers to the questions that my work was raising in my life.

And how do you make a good life?

How do you have impact?

How do you become a good citizen?

What does all that mean?

So as I got older, first, I went into country music because there were adult themes, and that interested me because I wanted to write music that I could sing at the ripe-old age of 40.

(Mark chuckles) And that was where the adult themes were at the time, was in country music.

But country music sort of, fate always played a very strong hand.

So that moved me back a little bit into, I realized that early folk music, and particularly Woody Guthrie, there was always an element of realistic optimism and a sense of hope, and a belief in change, even with all the difficulties that you are faced with in attempting to make change, you know?

So he deeply influenced, that was the place where I found, "Okay, you can write music that is both realistic, true to the times, but not cynical.

- Mm.

- Not cynical.

You are in a battle against cynicism if you are a modern songwriter.

- Yeah.

- You know?

And so, Woody really helped me in that battle.

- I'll come back to the role that music plays in raising our consciousness for a moment, but let me go back in your career.

To "Born to Run," which really brought you to national prominence, you were on the covers of "Time" and "Newsweek" concurrently after the release of that album in 1975, and it changed your life.

But I wonder, I've read that every year on the anniversary of that album, you drive to Jersey Shore, listening to "Born to Run," and you wind up at your house where you- - Yeah, I've done that, yeah, done that the first, really the past two or three years, you know, I didn't listen to it for probably 20 or 25 years after I made it.

And that's the way it is with most of the records, you know?

- Yeah.

- Particularly the early records, I don't... You know, I don't listen to them very much, and literally that, I think I listened to Darkness about three or four months ago.

It was probably the first time I heard it, and oh gosh, almost since I made it.

(laughs) - Wow.

Wow.

- You know, and it was pretty good.

(both laughing) But yeah, I've gotten in with a friend and I'll listen, he'll make a record, I'll listen to it.

I'll make one, I'll play in mine.

We get in the car, and we do it as we drive.

So, at the anniversaries of that record came up, you know, sometimes I'll take a drive through Asbury and end up right here in Long Branch at the house just up the street, really, just up the street from here, where I wrote the record, you know?

So, it's a little ritual that's fun.

- What were you thinking on the 50th anniversary?

August 25th, 2025 on the 50th anniversary, what was going through your mind as you heard that news?

- Well, you know, when you started, you know, no one had long careers, you know, I think.

I started in the '60s, and people were having three-year careers, four... I don't know if there was anybody, you know, we didn't look back into Frank Sinatra yet.

We were still kids.

So there wasn't any young groups that had any, you know, they were too young.

They didn't have 10 or 15-year careers, you know?

So, you didn't imagine your music lasting anywhere near that long.

So it's pretty amazing at 50 years after you create something that there's just still interest in it, you know?

And it's still moving and moves people.

It's my young man's record, so you know, a lot of young kids sort of approached me about some of the early records, and you know, I guess the last time I heard, you know, it was a good record that was, I just listened to it, and I said, "Well, I worked really hard on this and it was painful, but it came out.

It came out well, you know? "

- There's a song on the album, "Meeting Across the River," and a lyric in that song, "And the word has been passed, this is our last chance."

In so many ways, "Born to Run" was your last chance to make it big in the music industry.

- Well, yeah, that was a situation I was in at the time.

- Yeah.

- I signed a three-record deal, which I thought was a lot.

But my first two records bombed, you know, and- - Critically acclaimed, but commercially not- - Yeah, people, you know, the critics like, but "Greetings from Asbury Park" and The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle both tanked, you know?

They didn't sell very much, you know?

I think "Greetings" sold like 23,000 records, which I thought was a lot.

But I asked my managers, "No, it's terrible."

And I think when "Wildness," when it came out, might've sold less, you know, because the people who supported me at the record company, Clive Davis, John Hammond, they were gone now.

So I was orphaned at my own record company.

But I had one more record that they were contracted to let me make.

So, you know, I just went in to make the greatest record that I could, the best record that I could and it ended up being "Born to Run."

- And how did that last chance sort of realization infuse the spirit of "Born to Run?"

- You're young, you know, you're not really worried about it.

I was 24, 25 years old, you know, that's... You know, I don't remember dwelling on that aspect of it.

All I remember was painfully trying to make the greatest record I'd ever heard, you know?

That was really what I was concerned with, you know?

And the future was... Who knew what the future was gonna be, you know?

We were still playing little clubs, so I don't know if we'd even... Yeah, we started to play a few theaters, so you hadn't really raised your, you know, played clubs before I had a record.

I was still playing clubs after I had a couple of records out.

- Mm.

- So, your life hadn't changed dramatically yet.

- Yeah.

- You know, I was living in the little house up the streets, little shotgun shacks, got two or three rooms and, you know, you're still very young.

- Yeah.

- And just in the middle of, it's all about now, now, now.

And so, I was just trying to make the best record I could.

- I learned from a symposium that I attended here at the Center for American Music around the 50th anniversary of "Born to Run," that Columbia was pressuring you to drop the E Street Band, and pick up session players.

- Right.

- And you defied them, even though your back was against the wall- - Yeah.

(laughs) - You defied them, and said, "No, these are my guys."

- Yeah.

- What led you to make that decision?

- I didn't trust big city record executives or big city players, you know?

(laughs) I was a provincially young man.

I came from a little town.

These were the people that I knew.

These were the people that I trusted.

We had made the record.

The record was made.

I liked the record.

I thought it was good.

So when I ended up in the office of the fellow who was the head of A&R at the time, and he wanted me to remake the record, just wasn't gonna happen, you know?

I was dedicated to who I was.

I was, you know, dedicated to my band.

I felt these were the people who knew where I came from, understood me.

I felt we'd made a good record.

And he told me right out, he says, "You know, if we don't do this, your record's gonna go in the trash."

And that's where it went.

You know, it came out, and they put... And it went into trash, you know?

And until Jon Landau, a critic who I'd never met up in Boston came out with the future quote, you know, "the future of rock and roll" quote.

Then that, and a combination of a fellow named Erwin Siegelstein came from the TV division and moved in to be the Head of the CBS Records.

He had a son.

Son went to a college.

We played at that college.

The son saw the show.

And the college newspaper, the next day, I blasted the record company because they were killing us.

- [Mark] Mm.

The son went home, said, "Hey, dad, I just saw this guy," and brought the paper home with him.

So the father, Erwin Siegelstein, who knew enough to know he knew nothing about really rock and roll music business, called us up.

You know, and said, "How can we fix this?"

And we went out, and we had a dinner with him, and then, of course, Jon's influence, and suddenly six months after the record was released, there were ads, and finally, ads in the newspapers about it, you know?

So it was that strange, once again, so much luck is involved- - Yeah.

- In the business that I'm in, you know?

That you know, happened to play at this school, son happened to go there, father happened to be brought from the TV division, happened to be an open-minded guy who was not defensive about what he knew or didn't know, and it happened.

It could have went the other way, you know?

- Mm.

- So there's a little bit of luck and fate involved in surviving.

(laughs) - Nine years after "Born to Run," you reach a new level of fame with "Born in the USA," and its title track becomes a rock anthem.

- Yeah.

- But it tells a very mixed story about our country.

What were you trying to say about American-born?

- "Born in the USA" is a work of critical patriotism, you know?

So it's a very patriotic song.

Some people only heard that part.

It's also a very critical song, you know?

So, if you wanted to get the full effect of what I was doing, you needed to do something that was a kind of an adult process, which is you had to have, you had to be able to hold two conflicting ideas in your mind at the same time.

It's critical patriotism, you know, which I believe is patriotism, period, from where I sit, you know?

And so the song came out, had a long life, you know, it was misinterpreted.

And then it was also interpreted rightly.

And on this tour, we had a real chance to... We placed it right up against War on the top of the set, and I was really happy with it because I hadn't played it in the States in a long time because of its, it was a bit controversial.

And so, to play it every night really felt good again because it's one of my very best songs.

- Controversial because it was co-opted.

- Oh, yeah, yeah, co-opted, misinterpreted, yeah.

- Misinterpreted, yeah.

In 2002, you came out with The Rising.

- Right.

- Which was a response to 9/11.

I wonder, Bruce, how did your views on the country change after 9/11?

- Well, you know, I happened to live in a neighborhood that was very, very, I was deeply affected by 9/11, you know, I lived near... It was commute, it was a commuter neighborhood from New York.

I think we lost 150 people, you know, in my immediate area.

And on 9/11, I drove to the beach, and you could see the Towers burning, you know, from Sea Bright, you know?

If you look straight north, you see New York City.

And I had the unusual thing of that very day, leaving the beach that I was at, and somebody yelling at me, "Bruce, we need you!"

(laughs) You know, some guy rolls his window down and yelling that to me.

And you know, but that doesn't mean you're always gonna be able to write about something, particularly something as profou and tragic as that, you know?

It was very, very... I tried to be very cautious about writing about it, and you know, I wrote "The Rising," which is also once, it's probably one of my best songs, you know?

But it was sort of the situation of being, living where I lived, and feeling like everybody else felt this tremendous feeling of profound sadness, and anger, and hurt, and loss, and it all came out of that.

- Yeah, I wanna go back to this notion of you being America's conscience.

The New York Times recently wrote a story that said that "Springsteen continues to believe in songwriting as a tool to hold his bruised, beloved country to account."

When did you start feeling the responsibility to make statements about our country in your music?

- Well, you know, I've written about America since I was very young.

In my 20s, "Darkness on the Edge of Town," really started there deeply, you know, but even lost in the flood on "Greetings from Asbury Park," and that was just what I was interested in.

I enjoyed artists who encompass their times.

Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, you know, Woody Guthrie.

Those were the people who created worlds that encompassed the moment that they lived in.

So I was interested in being a part of that.

And so those were the subjects that I was drawn to along... Because of my, you know, I was working-class background, you know, a very tough time growing up.

My father and my mother had very difficult life experiences, and so, you know, you're very drawn to writing about those things and just as a way of trying to sort through them yourself.

So I wrote about America a lot in this time passed, you know, I felt it was part of my cultural obligation to chart the journey of the country in the latter half of the 20th century, you know?

I think if you were interested in what was going on in post-industrial America, I was interested in it.

My family had been affected by it very deeply, and it was a personal obsession of mine that I wanted to write about.

Everything really comes from that.

- Mm.

- I don't sit, and I work from the inside out, you know, from my family life, from what I see, from my own experience, and these were the issues that I was just interested in writing about.

- You've called America today a "rogue nation."

How do you explain the turn that we have taken as a country?

- I don't know if I can explain it, you know, except I don't, because I don't think there's any single reason.

I think if you look back, I think the Post and the countries go through series of revolutions, you know, the industrial revolution.

The post-industrial revolution.

That's when I grew up.

So I think there was a lot of people that got left behind during that period of American history.

I think the disparity in wealth is deadly and tragic for the country that has to be addressed in some realistic way somehow.

There are a lot of other reasons, you know, Donald Trump didn't, you know, fall out of the sky.

You know, he is a symptom of something that had been brewing inside the heart of the country for a long time.

But his administration, and he himself as president has really turned the country, in my opinion, against itself, and against its founding principles, against its constitution, against democracy, and to where we are, you know, viewed certainly by a lot of people as predatory and as outside the bounds of being a productive, healthy, modern, democratic society.

- I wanna quote you from your song, "Streets of Minneapolis," which was written in response to the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents.

"Oh, Minneapolis, I hear your voice, seeing through the bloody mist, we'll take our stand for this land, and the stranger in our midst."

What would you tell those who want to do something about where we stand?

How would you ask them to stand for this land?

- I don't know, yeah, in life you have to act, you know?

That's all I know.

- Yeah.

- You know, that's what I've tried to do through my work for the entire trip of my career, you know?

So, you have to find a way to personally act and also engage with others.

You have to get the conversation going.

You have to be a part of the conversation.

You have to be a part of the communication.

You have to be a part of the change itself, you know?

So you have to engage, engage, engage, and act, act, act, you know, that's really essential.

How you do it?

Everybody's gonna find their own way, you know?

I do it primarily through my music.

And then through organizations that I'm luckily able to assist through playing, you know?

- Mm-hmm.

- So, you just got off of the Land of Hope and Dreams tour, which was hastily arranged.

- Yeah.

- Was it catalyzed by this moment in history?

- Yeah, oh, absolutely.

You know, I didn't plan a tour this year at all.

But we did a version of this tour in Europe a year ago.

And at the end of the tour, which was very... It was a very powerful tour.

We ended in Milan, and the audience was, it's incredible, you know?

So, I came home really loving the tour, but regretting that I hadn't done it in America, my home, because it was all about America.

So that just went on the burner, and I think in the course of writing "Streets of Minneapolis," and the events in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, I said, "All right, this is, now's the time to do this, I have to do this."

- Mm.

- "I have to do this now."

Because of who I am, what I've written about, the place I've played in the continuity of music over the years (indistinct) And because I had it in my hands, I knew what to do, I knew what I wanted to do, times were upon us, the time to do it was now.

- Has the creative community stepped up as you would have hoped in this moment?

- I didn't have any particular hopes that I was gonna start a one-man revolution.

(both laughing) You know, I didn't think that was gonna happen.

You know, I suppose, I thought there might be more people speaking out against the current administration, and the current state of the nation, but we're living in strange times, you know?

So I have, you know, plenty of friends who feel the same way, and in their own way, do that.

And you know, but I was, my... I just went out there to say what was on my mind, you know?

I didn't have any greater hopes than that.

I wanted to bring these issues forward in a way that, because I had a large audience, I was able to do, and just put them on the table, or accentuate the, you know, what I felt the danger that the country was in.

- As you look at a land that is, to a large extent, defined by division and discord, what is your hope?

What are your dreams for our country going forward?

- Well, you know, I... I'd like to see a return of the commitment to democracy, and a commitment to liberty, hope, freedom, you know, faith in the direction that the country is going in.

I think a lot of those things have been lost and distorted over the past 10, 15, 20... I don't know, you know, how many years.

So my job is I just go out, and I do my... I put my two cents in to try to turn culture, and culture then shapes the nation, and I just try to nudge it as best as I can in a hopeful direction.

- Has the nation responded to the tour, have you seen?

When you're out there on tour, have you seen people respond to this message?

- Well, you know, you're playing in front of an audience that generally likes you.

(both laughing) But I also know there was a lot of people who did not respond so well, you know?

So, you know, it was divisive as the country is right now, you know?

But there was a lot of hope, a lot of faith in the building, there was a lot of positive direction and strength and commitment to better days ahead, that's all.

- Bruce, thank you, and thank you for what you- - My pleasure.

- Thank you.

- Thanks a lot.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare, and by.

And also by.

A complete list of funders is available at aptonline.org, and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(light flute music) (vibrant music)