Remember When I Used to Talk About Bruce A Lot?

Eff you!

Bruce Springsteen and the Secret of the World

Fame grips a Jersey boy, but he gets out unscathed

FEBRUARY 5, 1981

By Fred Schruers

Accuse Springsteen of being a "star" and he'll flick his hand like he's just been splashed with pigeon shit. He is eager to point out that he has the better deal in the meeting place between fan and star.

"I think the one feeling that's more unique to this job, the best part of the whole thing, is meeting someone like this guy I met the other night who had been on a bus ten hours. He's twenty-one years old and he just grabs a hold of me. We're in a room crowded with people. He's cryin', and he doesn't care. He says, 'It's my birthday,' and I ask, 'How old are you?' He says, 'I'm twenty-one, and this is the most important thing in my life.' And you know they're not kidding when they say it because you look in their faces and they're so full of emotion.

"You meet somebody and it's like an open well. In ten minutes I'll know more about him than his mother and father do, maybe his best friend. All the things it usually takes for people to know each other just go away, because there's this feeling that it's so fleeting. They tell you the thing that's most important to them right away. It's a sobering thing, because you know that somewhere you did that something that meant something to them. It's just a real raw, emotional thing; it's like the cleanest thing you ever felt. You have a communication, a feeling, and I don't know, you just gotta love the guy. If you don't there's something the matter with you.

"And it ain't some starry-eyed thing, and it ain't some Hollywood thing, and it ain't some celebrity thing. This guy, he loves you, and what's more, he knows you in a certain way. That's the thing that makes me strong. I get strong when I meet somebody like that."