As an entertainment journalist I interviewed hundreds of movie stars and film directors over five decades, but it was a special treat to hear Bruce Springsteen, with director Scott Cooper, speak about the movie Springsteen-Deliver Me from Nowhere.
You may read here what they said in my English version of the article I wrote for the Italian magazine Best Movie.
It was my dearly departed friend Bob Stein who introduced me to Bruce Springsteen in 1975. I bought his third album Born to Run and found myself singing along to those lyrics with great emotion.
“Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays”
“And you’re in love with all the wonder it brings
And every muscle in your body sings”
“I want to know if love is wild, babe
I want to know if love is real
But ’til then, tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run”
I was not the only one to fall in love with “Bruce” in 1975, in October he was featured on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.
I continued to buy his records:
Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
The River (1980)
Born in the U.S.A. (1984)
Tunnel of Love (1987)
I am a movie lover, not a concert goer, but I went to see Springsteen’s final show of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour at the Coliseum on October 2, 1985.
I had not bought Nebraska (1982), but after seeing the movie, I listened to it carefully, reading the lyrics, which now I could do much easier on my iPad, than on the printed sheets inside the vinyls that I still have on my stereo bookshelf.
I confirmed that the title of the book the movie in based on, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, is from a line recurring twice in “State Trooper” and in “Open All Night.”
Springsteen cites these two songs as his favorites:
“Atlantic City”
“Well now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back”
“I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other’s hearts”
Scott Cooper said that, after Nebraska, Springsteen’s second acoustic record The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) “that’s really who Bruce is, because, when backed by the E Street Band, his vocalization becomes something different.”
So I listened to that album as well, reading along all the lyrics. Tom Joad is the title character from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
Verse from the title song:
“Welcome to the new world order
Families sleeping in the cars in the southwest
No home, no job, no peace, no rest”
I did not buy another Springsteen album again until Working on a Dream (2009), this time as a CD.
I did not read his 2016 autobiography Born to Run.
I did not see Springsteen on Broadway in 2017-2018, or in 2021
I did not see the 2024 documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
But I started paying attention to Bruce Springsteen again this year, when he prefaced the first show of his Land of Hope & Dreams tour in Manchester, England on May 14 with this monologue:
“The America I love is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration. There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.
In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.
They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.
The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment.”
Bruce Springsteen was again on the cover of Time on September 25, 2025.
In that article he was quoted saying: “If I’m going to stay true to who I’ve tried to be, can’t give these guys a free pass.”
And about Trump: “He’s the living personification of what the 25th Amendment and impeachment were for. If Congress had any guts, he’d be consigned to the trash heap of history.”
“A lot of people bought into his lies. He doesn’t care about the forgotten, about anybody but himself and the multibillionaires who stood behind him on Inauguration Day.”
“You have to face the fact that a good number of Americans are simply comfortable with his politics of power and dominance.”
“We’re desperately in need of an effective alternative party, or for the Democratic Party to find someone who can speak to the majority of the nation. There is a problem with the language that they’re using and the way they’re trying to reach people.”
“Those conditions are ripe for a demagogue. Those things have got to be addressed if we want to live in the America of our better angels. I still believe it’s there, but it’s struggling.”
On October 18 at the Academy Museum Gala Bruce Springsteen was the recipient of the Legacy Award, which “honors an artist whose body of work has inspired generations of storytellers and deeply influenced our culture.”
He sang three songs, “Atlantic City” from Nebraska, “Street of Philadelphia” that he composed for the movie Philadelphia (1993) by Jonathan Demme, winning first a Golden Globe then an Oscar for Best Song.
And before singing “Land of Hope and Dreams” accompanied by his Takamine P6N acoustic guitar, he said:
“Of course, as we all know, outside of this lovely world of dreams and entertainment, we’re all so fortunate work in, and to be a part of, all hell in breaking loose in our beloved United States. For 250 years, around the world, despite our many faults, the United States has stood as a beacon of liberty, democracy, hope and freedom. I’ve spent 50 years traveling kind of a musical ambassador for America, and I’ve witnessed the love and admiration that folks around the world have had for the America of our highest ideals, and despite how terribly damaged America has been recently, that country and those ideals remain worth fighting for.
“So this is a small prayer for all those folks out in the streets today and for our country. No Kings. This is the Land of Hope and Dreams. And after finishing the song, he said: “May Freedom Reign!”
You may watch Bruce saying the words above and sing at this link.
Springsteen spoke similar words introducing the film at the New York Film Festival on September 28, and the AFI Film Festival October 22.
May his legions of fans listen to the words of this legendary songwriter and poet.