Edward Norton conducts a thoughtful, intelligent interview with Bruce Springsteen. Resplendent in his Joisey accent, The Boss has a lot of interesting things to say about his scene in the 1970’s up to the release of Darkness on the Edge of Town. “We were provincial guys, with no money… this whole street life in Asbury Park. New York City was a million miles away… the good part about it was that you were very, very connected to place. And it was unique, where you lived, and the people you grew up with were very singular… the irony of any kind of success is that you’re a mutant in your own neighborhood…”
Norton notes that, despite his “intense connection to a locale”, Darkness marked a time when Springsteen was expanding his horizons, reading people from outside his region (like Flannery O'Connor)—even seeing the American West for the first time. Bruce found more locales with textures and interesting stories (the Rattlesnake Speedway near Fallon, NV, for one), and therefore found fodder for his songwriting. This awareness of where he was, I’d say, grounded and focused his next several records through to Born in the U.S.A.
After which point, having become a household name, Bruce really did become a mutant in his own neighborhood; his connection to real people and situations eroded, and his music suffered. Tunnel of Love was all about being famous and divorced. The boring L.A.-period double-albums from 1991, whatever they were called, stunk. The Ghost of Tom Joad was about specific people that Bruce had never met and with whom he’d never hang out. With The Rising, connected as it was to the shared national experience of 9/11, and the less-earnest parts of The Seeger Sessions, which sounded like he was actually having fun playing music, did he touch ground again. But real people and places remain somewhat abstracted with Bruce; are there any identifiable human beings in Magic and Working on a Dream?
The interview is well worth a listen; for that matter, nearly anything about the intertestamental period between Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town is worth the time.