Bruce Springsteen sat down for a long chat with AARP: The Magazine in advance of his upcoming album, Letter To You, set for release on October 23rd. The new collection is his first to feature the E Street Band since 2014 and marks his first new rock-based music of the new decade.
Springsteen revealed he was unsure whether the type of songs he needed for the E Street Band would find their way to him: “I hadn't written rock music for the E Street Band in about seven years. I was thinking, 'Well, maybe I don't have any more rock music in me.' You never really know. It's part of the anxiety and mystery of the job that I do — which is a magic trick, because you take something out of the air that isn't there. There is no existence of it whatsoever, and you make it physical — literally. You can go for long periods without picking up anything significant. Or you'll just pick up different things.”
Springsteen went on to explain what it's like when the muse comes: “It's like you're in a mine and one vein has gone dry, so you tap into another. A pop vein or a folk vein, and so you start working there, and you discover a whole new rich vein of gold that you can draw from. It's not rock n' roll; it's just something else. But because I am primarily a rock n' roll musician when I'm operating sort of at my peak — in other words, in front of my largest audience with my favorite band — I like to every once in a while, come up with some rock songs.”