Free Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen by Unknown Page B

yourself. There was no audience at all that could relieve you by being receptive and getting you back three times. You were the yardstick .
    And with myself I’m never satisfied. I push myself hard all the time. I really don’t know why. Like the thought of doing an intermission never, ever crossed my mind. Not until someone said that the Allman Brothers did one [
laughs
], not until today, or yesterday. It never crossed my mind. I
never
did an intermission in my life. I figured, what do you need an intermission for? If it’s going perfect, if the band is running like it should run, it should be just a long, long set. And I just thoughtabout it, I just thought about it this morning. What would happen if we did this? We could actually do more. If we did an intermission, we could play more songs! Do more! But I was never into this logical approach. The idea was that was the human way to do it. And I’m not into that [
laughs
]. I was into this other way. Anybody can do it that way, I don’t want to do it that way. Which in a way is self-defeating.
    And the same thing went for the album. The album couldn’t be easy. It just could not be easy, and it wasn’t. It was the hardest thing. You don’t know. I was going to cry over it so many nights. Really, I actually did. The other day I was in this hotel in New York, the Holiday Inn, I was there for the whole summer, and this little room, not even the size of this room, was like the worst room in the world. That was the worst room they had. The mirror was crooked. It wouldn’t go straight for nothin’. The sucker was as crooked as could be, it just hung crooked. Couldn’t get it to hang right. It just blew my mind after a certain amount of time. The other day this drove me nuts. It was the album that mirror became—it was crooked, it just wouldn’t hang right! Karen was with me. She was going nuts. She went crazy several nights. I’d be in the studio eight hours, come home at five, and she was going crazy. Because she had come from Texas, didn’t know anybody, didn’t know any place to go, she just sat in the Holiday Inn all summer, in this one room, and she went nuts. So it went on and on, night after night. The album was beating me to death, then I had this relationship going on that was murder. It was the heaviest. I told her I could understand exactly how she felt; she was in this hotel room for hours and was seeing me only at night, early in the morning and at night. She didn’t know anybody else, so of course she’d get mad at me, even if she understood what was going on. So that got insane, the whole thing, it was really like freak-out time.
    Then, even as we got towards the end, the end of the album lasted for like two or three weeks! It was going to be over for weeks—the next day it would be over, for weeks and weeks. I’d be gone for two days from the Holiday Inn, and I’d come back and all she’d say was, “Is it over?” [
laughs
]. I’d say no! No, it ain’t over. I’d go back out, and I’d be gone for another two days; I’d come back and I’d say this is it, got one more song we’re gonna mix, I’ll come back and everything’ll be fine. “Is it over?” and I’d have to say no, it is not over. And this went on and on.
    Finally I spent three or four days at the studio, ’round the clock. Thelast morning. I had a gig in Providence, Rhode Island, that night; that morning I was singing “She’s the One” at the same time I was mixing “Jungleland” in another studio downstairs; at the same time I was in another studio, rehearsing the band for the gig that night. That’s the truth. I almost died. There’s a picture of it, this girl Barbara [Pyle] took a picture of it, and it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. You have to see the band. It should be on the cover of that album. Scariest thing ever. You ain’t never seen faces like that in your life. She may have it. Because if she has it, it’s something to see. You ain’t