Bruce Springsteen on retirement: “I can’t imagine it”
There’s no need to sugarcoat it: Bruce Springsteen is 73 years old. For roughly 50 years, Springsteen has been the voice of blue-collar America, and he doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon. During a time when most artists of his generation are either retired or seriously considering retiring, Springsteen is set to put out a new LP of soul covers and is planning a 2023 world tour with The E Street Band.
When he recently appeared on The Howard Stern Show, Springsteen was asked if retirement ever came across his mind. “I can’t imagine it,” was Springsteen’s response. “If I got to a place where I was incapacitated or something, but up until then… I mean, look at Johnny Cash [or] Pete Seeger. I played with Pete Seeger in Washington at Obama’s inauguration. Pete was 91 or 92, and he came out and sang ‘This Land Is Your Land’.”
“So, I look at those guys,” Springsteen concluded. “Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll be doing three-hour shows, but I have so much different kinds of music that I can play and do. The Broadway show I can do the rest of my life in one form or another if I wanted to. I can’t imagine retirement, no.”
Springsteen also shared how his Broadway show, Springsteen on Broadway, developed naturally after doing an acoustic performance at The White House. “It just happened by accident,” Springsteen explained. “I got invited to The White House, and I didn’t want to bring the band, obviously. I said, ‘I’ll just come down and play some acoustic music.’ So I said, ‘What can I do that’s different? Well, I’ll read from my book a bit and play some songs that are related to it.”
“So I spent an afternoon or two in my studio and came up with a little show and performed it. It ended up being about 90 minutes of what the Broadway show became,” Springsteen added. “I played the show, and Barack Obama came up and said, ‘Hey, you know, I know you just this for us, but you should turn this into a show.'”
The one thing to take out of all of this: if it weren’t for Barack Obama, there would have been no Springsteen on Broadway. Check out Springsteen’s interview on Stern down below.
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