Bob Spitz: evaluation

Transcript context

…What can you tell us about Bruce Springsteen’s work ethic? Wow. Never saw anybody who had a work ethic like Bruce Springsteen. I got a chance to see it up close. When we were kids, when we were 21, Bruce came into our office and auditioned with his guitar. We quit our jobs, Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos and I, we quit our jobs the next day. Bruce, because he lived in Asbury Park and needed to be in New York to record and to see John Hammond, the great Columbia Records producer, Bruce stayed in my apartment. He wrote a lot of those songs in my apartment. I watched him work and put a band together like never before. Bruce is a master when it comes to rehearsals and making demands on the other musicians. There are a lot of demands. Timing has to be right. Sound has to be right. It has to be everything that’s in his head. He knows exactly what he wants, and he knows how to get it out of people. Yet, he is an incredibly nice person. Just a gentleman. Not that easy to work with. When it comes to music, because he is so demanding, but really a master of knowing how to work with people and how to get what he hears in his head onto a record and onto a stage. My hat goes off to Bruce. We’ve known each other for 45 years, and he still amazes me. When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, he flew back to Chicago that night to make an acceptance speech. The helicopter landed in a field near the stage. Obama hopped out. Michelle hopped out. The next person who hopped out of that was Bruce Springsteen. When I saw that, I burst into tears. We had come a long way. Twenty-one years old, rough kids, unformed, unlicked. Maybe Bruce, less unlicked than me. Here he was with the next president of the United States, the first Black man to accept that honor. It was beyond my imagination. I’m amazed how many of his live versions of songs sound as good and as tight as the studio versions. How does he manage that?…

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