Fresh Air's summer music interviews: Pete Seeger

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today we conclude our series of interviews with musicians from the FRESH AIR archive. Since today is Labor Day, we've pulled out our interview with Pete Seeger, who is famous for singing songs about working people, unions and social justice. Seeger is one of the most important figures in the history of American folk music. He popularized Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land" and wrote "If I Had A Hammer" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" In the 1940s, he sang union songs with the Almanac Singers.

A few years later, he co-founded the Weavers, who surprised everyone, including themselves, when they became the first group to bring folk music to the pop charts until they were blacklisted. Seeger refused to answer questions about his politics when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. His conviction for contempt of Congress was eventually overturned on appeal. As a young man, Seeger believed songs were a way of binding people to a cause. Here's one of his many labor songs.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COTTON MILL COLIC")

PETE SEEGER: (Singing) When you go to work, well, you work like the devil. At the end of the week, you're not on the level. Payday comes, you ain't got a penny 'cause when you pay your bills, you got so many. I'm going to starve, and everybody will, 'cause you can't make a living in a cotton mill. When you buy clothes on easy term, collect will treat you like a measly worm. One dollar down. And then, Lord knows, if you can't make a payment, they take your clothes. I'm going to starve, and everybody will, because you can't make a living in a cotton mill.

GROSS: Pete Seeger kept singing and protesting right through 2011, when he joined a march in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests. For many years, he was also a champion of environmental causes. When I spoke to Pete Seeger in 1984, he told me about how much he was influenced by Woody Guthrie.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

SEEGER: Woody showed me how to hitchhike and how to ride freight trains, how to sing in saloons. I said, what kind of songs do you sing? Well, he said, this year, here's five or six tunes that are nearly always worth a nickel or a quarter. (Singing) Makes no difference now what kind of life fate hands me. I'll get along without you now. That's plain to see. It's a Gene Autry hit - was in 1940.

GROSS: Was it hard to learn how to jump a railroad car?

SEEGER: No for men. It's - of course, for a woman, it would be much more difficult. The danger of being assaulted by men who assume that any woman who'd travel that way is open to his advances. But Woody said, you wait in the outskirts of town. And when the train is picking up speed, it's still not going too fast, you can grab a hold of it and swing on. Getting off the first time, I didn't know how to do it. And I fell down and skinned my knees and elbow and broke my banjo. Fortunately, I had a camera with me. And I hocked it in a local pawn shop and bought a very cheap guitar. I knew a few chords. And I got through the rest of the summer playing the guitar.

Woody was a direct actionist. When he was singing once for - to raise money for war bonds during World War II, he and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were in Baltimore. And they said, Mr. Guthrie, we have a seat for you at the table. And your friends, we have some food for them in the kitchen. He said, what do you mean? He tipped the whole table up - a big, crowded dining hall - dumped a whole table full of plates and everything on the floor and tipped another table up. And finally, he was restrained. And Brownie says, Woody, you're going to get us all in trouble. I'm lame and Sonny's blind. And they let him out. He was absolutely furious.

Now, part of his education - here's what happened. Before he met a lot of radicals, he was singing country songs on a little station in California. And he sang a song with a lot of dialect. It was probably an old minstrel song - I's going across the river. And he got a letter. Dear Mr. Guthrie, I think you mean well or I would not bother to write. But don't you know that kind of dialect is deeply offensive to people like me? We like your music, but that dialect is unnecessary. It's a relic of slavery. Woody, next day on his program, read the man's letter on the air, said, folks, I just read you this guy's letter. I want to - and now I'm picking up a copy of that song. Now, you listen. I got the copy of this song right near the microphone. And he took up that song. And he held it near the microphone.

(SOUNDBITE OF PAPER TEARING)

SEEGER: He tore it into strips...

(SOUNDBITE OF PAPER TEARING)

SEEGER: ...Right in front of the microphone. That was Woody Guthrie.

GROSS: You started doing a lot of performing for unions in union halls and even on picket lines. How did you all come up with the songs that you thought would really speak to the people who were there?

SEEGER: With long discussion. When I met Lee Hays, I met one of the few geniuses I've met in my life. We were always talking and thinking of what kind of songs were needed. We'd be trying out this and trying out that. Sometimes one person would start a song and another person would finish it. That's how it was with the song "Talking Union." We'd heard Woody singing, you know, the old "Talking Blues."

(Playing guitar, singing) If you want to go to heaven, let me tell you what to do. Got to grease your feet in a little mutton stew, slide out of the devil's hand, ooze over in the Promised Land. Take it easy. Go greasy.

And so on. And I don't know whether it was Lee or Mill or me who thought of...

(Playing guitar, singing) You want higher wages, let me tell you what to do, got to talk to the workers in the shop with you. Got to build you a union, got to make it strong, but if you all stick together, boys, it won't be long. You get shorter hours, better working conditions, vacations with pay, take your kids to the seashore.

They made up most of the first part of the song. And they had one problem after another. Suddenly, it came to a dead stop. How are you going to win? The song was unfinished for a couple of weeks. And up on the roof one day, I found myself thinking, well, the only way any of these struggles are won is by the unity of people. I wrote three more verses - didn't have much rhyme in them, as I remember. But I got the idea across that in spite of all the things that could go wrong, all the attacks that would be made on a group of working people that you could win if you stuck together.

GROSS: In 1949, you were one of the people who were supposed to perform at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill.

SEEGER: I did. I sang "If I Had A Hammer" and "T For Texas." I forgot what else. "We Shall Not Be Moved," maybe.

GROSS: You and many of the people there were...

SEEGER: And we had stones thrown at us.

GROSS: Yeah.

SEEGER: It was a pretty horrifying day. A lot of people thought, this is the beginning of American fascism. This is how Hitler got started. I was just one of 10,000 people. There were 20,000. It was a huge crowd, came to hear Paul Robeson. But the Ku Klux Klan had infiltrated the police force of the county and maybe the state, for all I know, and the city. I don't know the details. But it was the Ku Klux Klan that initiated the attack. And they had the concert surrounded with walkie talkies, like a battlefield.

And after the concert was over, everybody who attended it was directed down one road. There were three roads you could have gone, to the left or straight ahead or to the right. Now, I wanted to go to the left because my home was up there. But the police said, no, all cars down here. And they directed us as though they were going to run the gauntlet. And there were some 15 piles of stones about the size of a baseball, which had been waist high, these stones, thousands of stones. And every car that came by got a stone - wham - at close range.

There was a policeman standing about 80 feet away. And I said, officer, aren't you going to do something? And he said, move on, move on. Then, I look around. The guy in back of me was getting stone after stone because he couldn't get past me. I was stopped. So I moved on. Funny, last - about a year and a half ago, I was out west. A man says, Pete, you were at Peekskill, weren't you? Yep, I said. He says, do you remember the car in - time you stopped and spoke to a policeman? And I said, yeah, and there was a car in back of me getting hit. He says, I was in that car. I...

GROSS: Had he been hurt?

SEEGER: Yeah - well, he would have been killed if I hadn't moved on.

GROSS: When you look back - I don't know about how many times before that you had been confronted with that kind of direct violence. How did you behave during it? And are you satisfied with the way you behaved when you look back?

SEEGER: Well, I'm sure that in retrospect you can just think how the things we did wrong - but knowing what I knew then, why - I think we did the right thing. And I was of the opinion then that the average American wouldn't go in for that kind of fascist approach. You see, there were signs went up in Peekskill. Somebody printed them up. They were put on bumpers, bumper stickers. They were put in windows of apartments and houses. I saw them in bars. They said, wake up, America; Peekskill did. Now, it was all America to do the same thing. You find these Commie so-and-so traitors, whatever you think they are, and you show them what's going to happen to them. Either they get out of this country - that's the whole idea of America, love it or leave it.

Yet within about a month, those signs were taken down. Now, nobody knows exactly why those signs came down. But I'm convinced that within Peekskill, there were many arguments within families - might have been a grandparent that would say, you mean you threw stones at women and children? Well, we don't like these people either. But still, you don't throw stones at women and children. I mean, is that what Abe Lincoln would have done? Is that what Thomas Jefferson would have done or anybody you admire? Is that what Jesus would have done? And it's significant that those signs did not stay up in Peekskill. And you'll be interested - as of last month, Peekskill has a Black mayor.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Pete Seeger in 1984. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SONG, "JESSE JAMES (JUST ASK)")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Pete Seeger in 1984.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: During the 1950s when you were performing with the Weavers, I think that, initially, you performed at a lot of demonstrations and union halls and outside. And then, you made a decision to start trying nightclubs. Was that a big crisis to actually decide...

SEEGER: Oh.

GROSS: ...To move into the clubs?

SEEGER: We - that was a soul-searching. In one sense, I felt we was going into enemy territory. Why should I want to contribute to the nightclub scene, which I thought was anathema? I come from old New England Puritans, who thought nightclubs were dens of iniquity, and never have been much of a drinker myself. But I wanted to reach people. And I remember Woody telling me, Pete, if - it's good experience, singing a bar. You ought to do it occasionally. So I did. But to take a job at a nightclub and work there six nights a week - but we took it, and it was a very valuable experience. We learned a hell of a lot in six months. The Weavers had had six months of rehearsals and were ready to make some records.

GROSS: Were you really surprised when your record started getting played on the radio and became big hits?

SEEGER: Yes, we never expected to get on the hit parade. And to everybody's surprise, including the head of Decca Records, "Goodnight, Irene" sold 2 million copies in the summer of 1950. It was the biggest seller since World War II along with one of Bing Crosby's songs. "Sam's Song" was the big seller. But "Goodnight, Irene" was on every jukebox in the USA in the year 1950. You couldn't escape that song. It floated up from every filling station, from every diner.

GROSS: That might have made it even more difficult than when you were blacklisted.

SEEGER: Well, it made difficult for the blacklisters. But I didn't expect to last 10 minutes. I thought the blacklisters would be after us a lot sooner. It took them a couple years to chop us down. And it was a full five years before they got around to calling me up before the Committee on Un-American Activities. I was surprised they took so long.

GROSS: You wanted to sing a song to the committee, right?

SEEGER: I think I did. They questioned me about a song. I said, oh, that's a good song. I'll sing it to you. Well, no. They didn't want me to sing. They wanted to know where I had sung it - at the following place. I said, well, I have a right to sing a song anywhere I want to whether I agree with the people or don't agree with them. I'm not interested in telling you that. They said, we direct you to tell us. No. They said, you are liable to be under contempt of Congress. Do you use the Fifth Amendment as your defense? No, I said. I just don't think these are questions any Americans should be asked especially under threat of reprisal if they give the wrong answer. So in effect, I was defending myself on the basis of the First Amendment. See, the Fifth Amendment, in effect, says, you have no right to ask me this question. But the First Amendment, in effect, says you have no right to ask any American such questions.

GROSS: I'm speaking with Pete Seeger, if you're just joining us. Have the wounds ever healed among the folk musicians who were friendly witnesses and those who weren't before HUAC?

SEEGER: I guess it's been harder for the friendly witnesses. History has not been kind to the Un-American Activities Committee. It feels as I felt, that these people didn't love America so much as their own particular version of America, which was somewhat limited, shall we say. And so those who cooperated with the committee have wished they could forget it all. Those who stood up to the committee, as Lee says, if it wasn't for the honor, he'd just as soon not been blacklisted. It was an honor.

GROSS: Well, that honor kept you off of television for many years afterwards. How did you feel around the early '60s when the folk music boom started taking off, when finally folk music had become commercially viable and you were, in a way, prevented from participating in it because you weren't allowed on radio or TV?

SEEGER: Well, I was mad. I wrote some articles in Sing Out! magazine warning people that this ABC television show called "Hootenanny" would be kind of a travesty on what a real hootenanny would be. A real hootenanny was a bunch of people who hoped that music could bring people together, to bring a peaceful world, a world without racism, a world where you had a right to join a union, a world without sexism. And instead, it was a second-rate vaudeville show. Some good folk music got played on the air, but there was an awful lot which was kept off the air. Why? Because it wasn't cheerful, happy music. And yet, to my mind, some of the greatest tragic music in the world are the tragic songs that I've heard sung by American working people.

GROSS: Well, take a song like "If I Had A Hammer." That is, I think, one of the most recorded songs in the world. I mean, hundreds of people have recorded it, right? But when you had first written it, it was considered a very dangerous song.

SEEGER: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: What was considered dangerous about it?

SEEGER: Hard to say. Talk about freedom and justice, maybe. It's hard to say, hard to say. And if you tried to pin people down, well, they'd just say, that's one of these commie songs. I'm sure in the Southern states, the segregationist leaders would have said, oh, this talk about all my brothers and sisters, only the commies talk that way. Only the n***** lovers, only the race mixers talk like that. My gosh, people today can't realize, though, how much America has changed as a result of the civil rights movement and, one thing after another, the women's movement. We didn't win all the victories we hoped we would win, but we won some victories. And maybe that's the way the world moves forward.

One of my favorite songs these days is - oh gosh, I love it, but don't have a guitar with me - Arlo and I sing it all the time. (Playing guitar, singing) We are climbing Jacob's ladder. We are climbing Jacob's ladder. We are climbing Jacob's ladder - brothers, sisters, all.

I sang it way down low, the way you might sing it if you were singing a child to sleep. That's a great song. It was made up by people in slavery. But it's, I think, one of the most scientific songs in the world. Revolutionists, as well as religionists, often forget that heaven doesn't come in one big bang. It comes in many steps.

GROSS: Your work has inspired thousands and thousands of Americans of different generations, and you could have, if you wanted to, really, like, played that role to the hilt of, you know, like, the father of the modern American folk music movement.

SEEGER: No, I would have known it was a lie. My main purpose as a musician has been to get people singing and get people to make music by themselves. And it's the only reason I keep singing is because I'm a skilled song leader now. My voice is 50% shot. I can still shout in the high notes, but I - my low notes are very wobbly. But I can still get a crowd singing. And so when they're singing, they don't bother listening to me. They're having a lot of fun. And that's my main purpose. I want to show people what a lot of fun it is to sing together.

GROSS: My interview with Pete Seeger was recorded in 1984. He died in 2014 at the age of 94. After we take a short break, we'll hear the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, "Born To Run." Springsteen recorded an entire album of songs associated with Pete Seeger. Here's one of them. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAY ME MY MONEY DOWN")

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) I thought I heard the captain say, pay me my money down. Tomorrow is our sailing day. Pay me my money down. Pay me, pay me, pay me my money down. Pay me or go to jail. Pay me my money down. Soon as the boat clears the bar, pay me my money down. He knocked me down with a spar. Pay me my money down. Pay me, pay me, pay me my money down. Pay me or go to jail. Pay me my money down.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I am Terry Gross. We're going to conclude our series of interviews with musicians from the FRESH AIR archive with Bruce Springsteen and hear the interview I recorded with him in his home studio in New Jersey not far from where he grew up. It was back in 2016 when his memoir had just been published. The book shares the title of his most famous song, "Born To Run." The theme of that anthem is escape. But in much of the book, Springsteen reflects on how he and his music were shaped by home, roots, blood, community, freedom and responsibility. We started with a track from his album "Chapter And Verse" that serves as an audio companion to his memoir with a selection of songs that span his career. It includes this demo version of his song "Growin' Up."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GROWIN' UP")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK, take two.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Well, I stood stone-like at midnight, suspended in my masquerade. I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade. I was open to pain and crossed by the rain. And I walked on a crooked crutch. Well, I strode all alone into a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched. I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd. They said, sit down. I stood up. Ooh, growing up. Well, the flag of piracy flew from my mast.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Bruce Springsteen, welcome to FRESH AIR, and thank you for welcoming us into your studio. I'd love it if you would start by reading the very opening from the foreword of your book. It's really a fantastic book, and I'd like our listeners to just hear a little bit of your writing.

SPRINGSTEEN: OK. My pleasure.

(Reading) I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I. By 20, no race-car-driving rebel, I was a guitar player on the streets of Asbury Park and already a member in good standing amongst those who lie in service of the truth - artists with a small A. But I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hardcore bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style, and a story to tell. This book is both a continuation of that story and a search into its origins. I've taken as my parameters the events in my life I believe shaped that story and my performance work. One of the questions I'm asked over and over again by fans on the street is, how do you do it? In the following pages, I'll try to shed a little light on how and, more importantly, why.

GROSS: Thanks for reading that. So what's it like for you to write something that doesn't have to rhyme and that you don't have to perform on stage?

SPRINGSTEEN: (Laughter) That's actually - not having to perform it on stage is a good one. But it's a little different, you know? It's - I'm used to writing something; it becomes a record; it comes out. Then, I go perform, and I play it, and I get this immediate feedback from the audience. So that's been the pattern in my life. But the book has been a little bit different, you know? I mean, you get feedback from the press, and the fans are just starting to get a chance to read it. So I'm looking forward to that.

But you still had to find the music inside your language, you know? It was - that's a big part of what sort of moved me to begin writing the book. I wrote a little essay, and I felt, yeah, this is a good voice. This is a good feeling. It feels like me. But then, once you get into the book, you've got to constantly find your - the rhythm of your prose. And it ends up being quite a musical experience either way.

GROSS: Well, that's one of the things I love about the book, is that there is rhythm and music in it even though it's not a song. So many of your songs, particularly the early ones, are about, you know, like, searching for a dream and running to, like, bust out of the confines of your life. And in some ways, you know, I get the impression from your book that that was your father's story except he never found the dream. It's kind of like - a little bit like the story that you describe in your song "The River."

SPRINGSTEEN: Right. Yeah, my dad was young. He went to work, but he'd been to war. He'd seen some of the world. It wasn't like he was going to be an extensive traveler or something. It didn't seem to be in the nature of - in his nature or in the nature of his parents or many of the folks in my family, really. There were - we had a cousin that went to - off to Brown University. It was like a nuclear explosion took place.

(LAUGHTER)

SPRINGSTEEN: You know, it was just incredible for everybody. So you're correct that my parents did really sort of live out a big part of that story. And to a certain degree, he did find his little piece of what he was looking for in California.

GROSS: 'Cause when you were 19, he moved to California. Yeah.

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, they moved out west, which was a huge undertaking because no one - it was like moving to another planet for them. But I think that's what my father wanted to do. He wanted to move to another planet. And they had very little. They had $3,000, and they - I think they had an old Rambler. And they slept two nights in the car and a night in a motel. And they had my little sister with them with all this stuff packed on top. It was a really go-for-broke decision. And it did pay off for them. You know, they - I think they enjoyed the West Coast and their California life quite a bit. You know, my father still had periods of illness that were...

GROSS: You're talking about mental illness?

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, difficult to manage. But I believe he did feel like he found something there that he couldn't have found at home.

GROSS: Do you think the song "Born To Run" is, in part, about him and, in part, about you?

SPRINGSTEEN: Well, someone mentioned that to me the other day. I always thought it was just about me.

(LAUGHTER)

SPRINGSTEEN: But what do you know? And looking back on it, my parents lived out quite a bit of that story themselves.

GROSS: Except you had a dream in a way that your father - maybe he didn't have a dream that he could articulate?

SPRINGSTEEN: It certainly wasn't one he could articulate. It was just, I got to get out of here.

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah. So you write, too, about your father, that he was kind of very - let me quote you 'cause you put it so well. You write that - (reading) he loved me, but he couldn't stand me. He felt we competed for my mother's affections. We did. He also saw in me too much of his real self. Inside, beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, timidity, shyness and a dreamy insecurity. These were things I wore on the outside. And the reflection of these qualities in his boy repelled him. I was soft, and he hated soft. Of course, he'd been brought up soft, a mama's boy just like me.

SPRINGSTEEN: (Laughter).

GROSS: So that timidity and shyness that you wore on the outside - it's kind of, like, the opposite of your stage persona.

SPRINGSTEEN: (Laughter) I know. It's bizarre.

GROSS: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about the timidity and shyness of your youth?

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah. Well, T-Bone Burnett once said that much of rock music is simply someone going, (singing) wah (ph), Daddy.

(LAUGHTER)

SPRINGSTEEN: So I got to take my - I've got to take some blame for that myself, I guess. But, yeah, just - that was - when I was young, you know, I was very shy, and that was my personality, you know? I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety, which all would have been very familiar to my pop, you know, except it was a part of himself he was trying to reject. So I got caught in the middle of it, I think.

GROSS: So do you think that your stage persona draws both from, like, the angry and uninhibited side of you and the more inhibited, timid side of you?

SPRINGSTEEN: I think it's both there. I think if you just - you know, I think that plenty of folks - if you just looked at the outside, it can read - you know, it's pretty alpha male, you know, which is - it's a little ironic because, you know, it's - that was personally never exactly really me. I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life, and perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree. I was looking for - when I was looking for a voice to mix with my voice, I put on my father's work clothes, as I say in the book, and I went to work, whether it was a result of wanting to emulate him so I felt closer or whether it was I wanted to - as I say in the book, I wanted to be the reasonable voice of revenge for what I'd seen his life come to. It was all of these things. And it was an unusual creation.

But most of these - most people's stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography. And they're trying to create something that solves a series of very complex problems inside of them or in their history. And I think when I - unknowingly, when I went to do that, that's what - I was trying to integrate all of these very difficult things that I've been unable to integrate in my life and in my life with my parents.

GROSS: We're listening back to my 2016 interview with Bruce Springsteen. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SONG, "O MARY DON'T YOU WEEP")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 in his home studio just after the publication of his memoir, "Born To Run."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: During your early years as a musician, you were in Asbury Park - boardwalk, carnival atmosphere. What did you love about that kind of urban beach, you know?

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah.

GROSS: And the, you know, Madame Marie and all of the - like, all the boardwalk regulars - you made great stories out of those characters, great songs out of those characters. But what appealed to you about knowing them and writing about them?

SPRINGSTEEN: It was just my location at the time. I didn't move to Asbury with the thought of - you know, it wasn't an anthropological...

GROSS: But you connected in some way.

SPRINGSTEEN: ...Reason. But I went, and I just fit in there. Asbury was down on its luck but not as bad as it would get. And so there was a lot of room to move. You know, clubs were open till 5 a.m. There were gay clubs. In even the late '60s, it was a bit of an open city. So as young ne'er-do-wells, we fit very - you know, we fit very comfortably in that picture. And then when I went to write, I just wrote about what was around me. It fired my imagination. It was - of course, it was a colorful locale. The city was filled with characters and plenty of people at loose ends. And so it just became a very natural thing to write about.

I didn't give it too much thought at the time, but I did think that it gave me a very individual identity and that if I was going to go out into the musical world on a national level, I was very interested in being connected to my home state. There wasn't anyone else writing in this way about these things at that time. So it was something I did very intentionally, in a sense, as creating a certain very, very specific and original identity.

GROSS: And that's one of the things that really interests me comparing you to Dylan because when you first started, people were comparing you to Dylan, one of the new Dylans and everything.

SPRINGSTEEN: Sure.

GROSS: In some ways, like, persona-wise, you're the opposite. He changed his name. He surrounded himself in mystery. His lyrics are very obscure. Your lyrics tell stories. You're all about a place. You reveal so much about yourself and the world around you in your songs. You know what I mean? Like...

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah.

GROSS: I know that you're more than what you literally tell us about in the songs, but still, you have an identity and try to tell us something of who you are in your songs.

SPRINGSTEEN: You just go where your psychology leads you. I think, you know, I've always loved the fact that Bob's been able to sustain his mystery over 50 or 60 years. That's - in this day and age, that's quite a feat in itself. And, you know, the things that I loved about Bob's music - and I describe him in the book as the father of my country, which he really is - were things that just didn't fit when I went to do my job. You know, I had come out of a somewhat different circumstance, and the shoes - the clothes just didn't fit.

GROSS: I want to quote you again. So you write - this is toward the beginning of your career.

(Reading) I wanted to be a voice that reflected experience and the world I live in. So I knew in 1972 that to do this, I would need to write very well and more individually than I had ever written before.

And this was - at some point, you realized, too, that although you had, like, the most popular bar band in Asbury Park, that there was a bigger world, there was a lot of talented people...

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...And in order to, like, be someone in that world - to have a career, to make a difference - that you had to figure out what was unique about you, and you had to write great songs. And in fact, you achieved that. You wrote great songs. But, you know, how did you go about trying to write the best songs that you could, I mean, when you knew that a lot of this was going to depend on the songwriting?

SPRINGSTEEN: When I thought about signing a record deal or writing something that might put me in the position - 'cause I'd had already had plenty of things that had fallen through with my rock bands - I looked at myself, and I just said, well, you know, I can sing, but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play the guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world. What excites me about a lot of the artists I love? And I realized, well, they created their own personal world that I could enter into through their music and through their songwriting. There's people that can do it instrumentally like Jimi Hendrix or Edge of U2 or Pete Townshend.

I didn't have as unique a purely musical signature. I was a creature of a lot of different influences. And so I said, well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing. And at the time, for one of the few times in my life, I didn't have a band; I just had myself and the guitar. So I was going to have to do something with just my voice, just the guitar, and just my songs that was going to move someone enough to give me a shot. So I wrote songs that were very lyrically alive and lyrically dense. And they were unique. But it really came out of the motivation to - or I understood it was - I was going to have to make my mark that way.

GROSS: We'll hear more of my 2016 interview with Bruce Springsteen after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SONG, "BORN TO RUN")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 in his home studio just after his memoir, "Born To Run," was published.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: You started going to therapy in 1983. And at some point - you say in your 60s you had a really bad depression. And I'm wondering if you thought about, during that period when you were very depressed, how many people in the world really wanted to be you and...

SPRINGSTEEN: Doesn't count for that much at the time.

GROSS: Yeah. Right.

SPRINGSTEEN: (Laughter) You know? But, of course, you know, people see you on stage and - yeah, I'd want to be that guy. I want to be that guy myself very often, you know?

GROSS: (Laughter).

SPRINGSTEEN: You know? I get plenty of days where I go, man, I wish I could be that guy.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SPRINGSTEEN: And, you know, it's not quite - there's a big difference between what you see on stage and then my general daily - my daily existence.

GROSS: You write about - you write - I'm sorry?

SPRINGSTEEN: No, I'm talking to myself.

GROSS: Oh, OK.

SPRINGSTEEN: Don't let that bother you.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SPRINGSTEEN: It's part of my illness. I do it all the time.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: You write about how being on stage is almost like medicine for you, you know.

SPRINGSTEEN: Sure.

GROSS: Does it get you out of yourself? Does it...

SPRINGSTEEN: Oh, of course. You're immediately pulled out of your - the inside of your head, and it immediately changes your frame of mind. I have never been on stage where I've - no, that's not true. I have been on stage on a few occasions where I felt I couldn't escape the interior of - my interior thoughts. But Peter Wolfe once said, what's the strangest thing you can do on stage? Think about what you're doing.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SPRINGSTEEN: There's just nothing weirder you can do. If you're up there thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there, and it's not going to happen, you know? So trying to learn how to overcome those, which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together.

GROSS: During the depression, there was a period of a year and a half when you weren't on the road. You were home with one of your sons. I guess with your youngest?

SPRINGSTEEN: Mmm hmm.

GROSS: Did that contribute to the depression because you couldn't be on stage and you couldn't have that kind of cathartic experience?

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, I tend to be not my own best company. I can get a little lost when I - if I don't have my work to occasionally focus me. But at the same time, you've got to be able to figure that out. The year and a half I was home, my son was in his last year of high school, and it was kind of my last opportunity to be here with him in the house, and I wanted to get that right.

GROSS: As you mentioned in your book, you wanted to write songs that you wouldn't outgrow, that you could sing as an adult...

SPRINGSTEEN: Right.

GROSS: ...That weren't just kids songs and...

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...You know, done, accomplished (laughter).

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah.

GROSS: But when you sing some of your early songs now, as you still do, like "Born To Run," does the song have a different meaning to you than it did when you first started, you know, performing it?

SPRINGSTEEN: We just had a series of concerts where the show was very interesting 'cause we'd start out with my earliest material, and we played about half a record off of our first record and then half or three-quarters off of the second record. So I was going back to my earliest music and re-singing my earliest songs that I wrote when I was 22. And it was funny that they just fit perfectly well. You know, there was a - they sort of gather the years up, as time passes, and you can revisit. The wonderful thing about my job is you can revisit your 22-year-old self or your 24-year-old self any particular night you want. The songs pick up some extra resonance, I hope. But still, they're there, and I can revisit that period of my life when I choose. So it's quite a nice experience. And the songs themselves do broaden out as time passes and take on subtly different meanings, take on more meaning, I find.

GROSS: What's an example of a song that's taken on a different meaning or more meaning for you?

SPRINGSTEEN: A lot of the ones that are people's favorites. You know, "Born To Run," that expands every time we go out. It just seems to - you know, more of your life fills it in, fills in the story. And when we hit it every night, it's always a huge catharsis. It's fascinating to see the audience singing it back to me. It's quite wonderful, you know, to see people that intensely singing your song.

GROSS: As someone who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Philadelphia, I love that you've continued to live in New Jersey, not only in New Jersey but not far from where you grew up. Why have you stayed close to the home that your father left? Your father went to the opposite coast...

SPRINGSTEEN: It's ironic, yeah. They...

GROSS: ...When you were a teenager.

SPRINGSTEEN: (Laughter) It's rather ironic. But I just felt very comfortable here. And I was uncomfortable with city life. I was more or less a kid that came out of a small town, and I was a beach bum and loved the ocean and loved the sun. And I liked the people that were here. I liked who I was when I was here. I wanted to continue writing about the things that I felt were important, and those things were pretty much here. I felt like a lot of my heroes from the past lost themselves in different ways once they had a certain amount of success. And I was nervous about that, and I wanted to remain grounded. And living in this part of New Jersey was something that was - it was essential to who I was and continues to this day to be that way.

GROSS: Bruce Springsteen, I can't thank you enough for...

SPRINGSTEEN: Thank you.

GROSS: ...Inviting us into your studio and allowing us to do this interview.

SPRINGSTEEN: Well, thank you very much.

GROSS: Thank you so much.

SPRINGSTEEN: Very enjoyable. I appreciate it.

GROSS: And I really love the book (laughter).

SPRINGSTEEN: Thanks a lot.

GROSS: My interview with Bruce Springsteen was recorded in his home studio in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, "Born To Run." And that concludes our series of interviews with musicians from the FRESH AIR archive. We hope you enjoyed it.

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, our guest will be tennis great John McEnroe, known for his epic matches with Bjorn Borg, his outbursts at umpires and his new careers as a TV tennis analyst and as the narrator on the hit Netflix series "Never Have I Ever." McEnroe is the subject of a new Showtime documentary. I hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THUNDER ROAD")

SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) The screen door slams. Mary's dress sways. Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays. Roy Orbison singing for the lonely. Hey, that's me, and I want you only. Don't turn me home again. I just can't face myself alone again. Don't run back inside. Darling, you know just what I'm here for. So you're scared, and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore. Show a little faith. There's a magic in the night. You ain't a beautify, but hey, you're all right. Oh, and that's all right with me. You can hide underneath your covers and study your pain...

GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THUNDER ROAD")

SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair. Well, the night's busting open. These two lanes will takes us anywhere. We got one last chance to make it real, to trade in these wings on some wheels. Climb in back. Heaven's waiting down on the tracks. Oh, oh, come take my hand.

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.