Bruce Springsteen Has Always Been ‘Annoyed’ by 1 Way Fans Treat Him
Bruce Springsteen has been a public figure for decades. His music has touched millions and people have idolized him for years. While this is typically a good thing, Springsteen said some elements of the public’s admiration bother him. He shared why he wanted to shatter parts of his public image with his 2016 autobiography.
Bruce Springsteen wanted to shatter parts of his public image while writing his book
In 2016, Springsteen published Born to Run, a memoir that follows him through his childhood, rise to success, and ascension to rock royalty. While the book is an exciting read for Springsteen’s fans, he also includes some less-than-flattering details about himself. He explained that he wanted to splinter his “aura of saintliness.”
“Yeah, that part of my thing has always annoyed me,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s too much, you know. So any dent in it I can make, I’m pleased to do.”
He said it wasn’t necessarily his intention to do damage to his image, but he wanted to show the way his life impacted his music.
“I mean, it wasn’t something I was intent on doing. It was just writing about a life, and all of its many aspects,” he explained. “But I also decided that it was a book about my music first, and about my life kind of secondarily. If I didn’t want to write about something, I didn’t write about it. I didn’t have any rules, except I wanted what was in the book to relate back to my music. So the revelations I made about my family or my own inner workings, I felt that could be central to understanding where some of my music came from. I didn’t write all about myself. Plenty of things, I held back.”
Bruce Springsteen can’t stand another part of his public image
Springsteen finds the level to which some people adore him to be frustrating. There’s something about his public image that bothers him even more, though. For years, his fans have referred to him as The Boss. He said people began calling him that because he paid their salaries, and it stuck among fans. He can’t stand it.
“I hate bosses,” Springsteen said in the book It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive. “I hate being called the boss.”
When his granddaughter was born, he joked that he’d be happy with anything she called him, so long as it wasn’t his famous moniker.
“She can’t speak yet, so we don’t know what she’ll call us,” he said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (per Newsweek), adding, “I’m going for anything except, ‘The Boss.’”
He shared why he wanted to write an autobiography
Springsteen said that at first, he had no intention of writing a book about himself. He just began writing as a way to pass the time.
“It kind of happened by accident,” he said, adding, “I didn’t think of it initially as a book. I was writing to pass the time, and I felt if I didn’t do anything with it, maybe my kids would like to have it. I wrote quite a bit for about two or three weeks. When I went back and read it, I said, ‘This feels pretty good.’”
As he continued working on it, he realized the writing might be of interest to a broader audience.
“It just became a project I was working on,” he said. “When we’d tour, I’d put it away for the entire tour, a year and a half. When I finished what became the first of the three sections, I said, ‘Well, there’s a tale going on there that might be interesting to people.’”
