I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the deep connection between an artist and their audience, emphasizing the significance of genuine performance.
Bruce Springsteen expresses the essence of live performance, highlighting that both he and the audience seek a shared experience where emotions are stirred and profound moments are created. He acknowledges that whether performing solo or with a band, the goal remains the same: to evoke feelings and create a transformative experience for the listeners.
In practice
In a speech at a music festival, an artist might mention this quote to highlight the purpose of their performance.
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.
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
A writer's work is the product of laziness.
That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.
Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.
The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.
I've made movies that I thought were good. I've made movies that I thought were okay, but then I was very good. And sometimes you're in a movie and you think, I wish more people saw that - because you're good. And it just works out that the movie gets lost. But that's show business.
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