Jon Stewart Interviews Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen arrives at the Daily Show’s Manhattan studios on foot one icy day in late January, fresh from Jersey – he fought the wind for the dozen blocks from the Lincoln Tunnel along 11th Avenue, wearing only a thin leather jacket. “There was traffic,” says Springsteen, “so Patti dropped me off.” (“The Freehold is strong in that one,” Stewart says, picturing this journey.) The two men spoke for nearly two hours, with Springsteen sharing details of his creative process, his grief over the loss of Clarence Clemons last year and the angry patriotism that fuels Wrecking Ball.
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Serious Men with Silly Jobs
They have a lot to talk about this evening, these two guys from Jersey, these serious men with silly jobs.
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Stewart on His Friendship with Springsteen
"It’s not at all surreal," Stewart says with heavy sarcasm, referring to his friendship with the legendary rocker. "It’s very hard to reconcile sitting and fishing in a little pond in New Jersey with a guy that you spent many years hitchhiking the New Jersey I-95 corridor to see in Philadelphia back in the day. The only band I think I’ve seen more than Bruce Springsteen is the Springsteen tribute band Backstreets. I try not to let him know how pathetic I truly am."
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On ‘Wrecking Ball’
On Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball, his characters aren’t looking for escape – they just want a job. With fiercely populist tunes like “Death to My Hometown” and “Shackled and Drawn,” Springsteen paints a picture of an America where “the banker man grows fat/Working man grows thin.” As he tells Stewart, Springsteen wanted the new songs to address “what happened to the social fabric of the world that we’re living in.”
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We Take Care of Our Own
Over the course of the conversation, Springsteen offers his take on Occupy Wall Street and the negative influence of what he calls the "big-money Wall Street hustle," explains why his new single "We Take Care of Our Own" is not "jingoistic" and opens up about how he's coping with the death of E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons. "Losing Clarence was like losing the rain," Springsteen says. "You’re losing something that has been so elemental in your life for such a long time."
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Stewart Reminisces Listening to Springsteen’s Music
I can remember me and my friends hearing you and thinking, “Oh, we’re not alone. It feels like this guy knows us. Maybe that’s the magic of the conversation. – Jon Stewart
"At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. When I did your show, that’s the experience I’m having. It’s like, “Oh, my God, an island of sanity.” – Bruce Springsteen
"I think this is when we should kiss and hug [laughs]."
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Two Hours Later
After the near two hours that the two men talked, Stewart handed the recorder to a Rolling Stone staffer: “Here you go – we got most of it.”
“There’s a lot of drunken singing,” adds Springsteen. “A lot of it’s in Hebrew,” says Stewart.