You ask for your audience's investment in your music; you're in a relationship with them. And their relationship with the E Street Band is separate from whatever else I might do. I like the idea of us being something that people rely on.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of a deep connection between an artist and their audience, likening it to a relationship.
Bruce Springsteen highlights the symbiotic relationship between musicians and their audiences, suggesting that audiences invest emotionally in their music. This connection creates a bond that transcends the artist's other endeavors, as fans come to rely on the music and the experience it provides, underlining the significance of this relationship in the realm of performance art.
In practice
During a concert, a musician could use this quote to emphasize their appreciation for their fans.
I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.
I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart _x000D_ _x000D_ Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts.
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell_x000D_ And I feel like I'm comin' home.
The artists we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, and on your heart and your soul.
Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.
I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
Sometimes with pop music, you have to see it to love it. With soul music, it's sparse. There's nothing that's pretentious or planned. It's just so gutsy.
I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me - it resonated.
With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.
I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.
I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.
Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.
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