Backstage in the cobwebby bowels of the Royal Albert Hall, Bruce Springsteen sits nursing a glass of whisky. The huskiness in his throat suggests the drink is more medicinal than anything to do with rock 'n' roll craziness.
Earlier, he'd held a full house spellbound with just a couple of acoustic guitars, some harmonicas and a set built around his recent album, "The Ghost Of Tom Joad." Its songs of immigrant drug-dealers, convicts and child prostitutes suggest a dark underside of America that most of its citizens would prefer to ignore.Yet Springsteen seems happier and more relaxed than he has ever been. He'd like to present the man behind "The Boss."
He begins to talk almost formally, as if he's rehearsing carefully prepared thoughts, but as the conversation begins to look inwards and outwards, his voice becomes deeper and quieter. He'll come at a sentence from three or four different directions until he says exactly what he means. Three days later, he telephones from Germany to clarify a point he feels he hasn't made clearly enough.
At 46, Springsteen is now the father of three and enthusiastic husband of Patti Scialfa, once a backing singer in his E Street Band. The ever-touring rock star who once commented, "I always want to have a feeling of leanness, of not dragging too much stuff around," is now a settled family man who divides his time between homes in New Jersey and California.
When he works, he does it on his own terms. "What I've got now is a great thing," he says, "in the sense that I get to come out onstage and I don't have to play myself, I get to BE myself. I have an audience that comes and gives me that freedom, and then in turn I can give them what I feel is my best right now.
"I live in the present. The show is new music for the most part, or if I do something from the past it's radically rearranged. I don't really need to sell a million or two million records, but I do need to feel that my work is vital and that I'm motivated to walk out on that stage."
Not that it's all grim social consciousness and harrowing Depression-style narratives. A highlight of his first Albert Hall show was the brand new "Pilgrim In The Temple Of Love." An elaborately detailed saga of a sleazy bar on Christmas Eve, it's also evidence of a ribald humor that the Springsteen of a decade ago would not have displayed.
"There's a novelty album in me waiting to come out," he claims, guffawing explosively. With his goatee and brushed-back hair, as if he wants everybody to notice that it's receding, Springsteen couldn't look more different from the bandana-wearing muscle-man of 1984's "Born In The USA," though it was that record's monstrous success that earned him his financial and artistic freedom.
Thanks to its title, and a sleeve that framed Bruce's backside against a giant American flag, the album also fixed a particular version of Springsteen in the public mind. He was the working man's rocker, and, embarrassingly for the impeccably liberal Springsteen camp, the one rock star Ronald Reagan had ever heard of.
"`Born In The USA' was an anomaly, you know," he reflects. "I always see it as a funny sort of blip on the screen. I knew when I wrote the song that it felt powerful and I knew it would be popular, but I didn't expect that particular type of experience. But I'd been around for a while and I rolled with it and enjoyed myself.
"For the most part it was something I was very thankful for. It's allowed me to have a certain kind of life and a lack of financial worries. Most people don't have that luxury, but it wasn't something I wanted to do forever."
Downsizing of the juggernaut "Boss" image was probably necessary for everyone's sanity, but where many artists reach a huge commercial climax and then get bland or bloated, Springsteen has kept developing methodically. The "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" albums (1992) met a lukewarm reception, but the accompanying tour rocked out riotously. The "Tom Joad" disc has brought him some of the most admiring reviews of his career.
"I don't feel caught under whatever that particular iconic thing was in the mid-'80s. You build a box and then you're supposed to be Houdini. You're supposed to slip out of it. You're always asked to extend yourself and re-invent yourself. People have to do it in their lives, so of course you have to do it in music and in your work, too."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)