“Drop me out of an airplane anywhere, and I’ll find the nearest roadhouse, and light up somebody’s night”: Bruce Springsteen on why he never gave in to self-doubt
For most artists, self-doubt is part of the job. But Bruce Springsteen isn’t most artists.
In a new conversation with Rolling Stone, the singer-songwriter reflects on his sprawling 74-track box set Tracks II: The Lost Albums, and explains why – even during the quieter stretches of his career – he never questioned his place in music.
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Springsteen’s latest record gathers material largely written and recorded during the 1990s, a decade often seen as a lost chapter in his career. Between 1992 and 2002, the musician released only one studio album, 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, leading some to wonder if his fire had dimmed.
But as Springsteen puts it, “that was for a variety of reasons”.
“Our children were very young at exactly that moment. And also I didn’t have any interest, really, in working with the band. I felt just burned out on it at that particular place in time. But I was working on music all the time. I just wasn’t releasing it.”
Asked if there was any point in the Nineties where self-doubt had started to sink in, he admits: “not really.”
“I always used to say, when I was in the middle of some of the big lawsuits [in the mid-Seventies], ‘OK. Well, somebody can take your publishing and somebody can take your records or take your songs or take whatever money you’ve made out of the thing, but you can drop me out of an airplane anywhere in the United States or most parts of the world, I’ll land and I’ll find the nearest roadhouse and I’ll light up somebody’s night.”
“And so, that’s something that’s in me,” he adds. “You can never lose it. And so during the Nineties, I understood that.”
He recalls telling longtime manager and co-producer Jon Landau, “‘Gee, this record didn’t do as well. Jon, it’s just not our time. Somebody else’s time.’”
“If you’re ever going to have a long career, hey, it’s going to be your time and it’s going to be not your time sometimes,” says Springsteen, “and you got to be OK with that and you just got to carry on, work on.”
Springsteen, who’s set to wrap up his tour with the E Street Band later this week, also teases a “finished” solo record on the way.
“I would imagine it will come out in ‘26 sometime,” he says.
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