Rick Newman, U.S. News & World Report chief business correspondent, was closer to the target than he knew, when he used Bruce Springsteen to illustrate how to keep a product relevant and vibrant over a long period of time.
Springsteen was interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last Thursday, promoting his new CD, “Working on a Dream.” It was a wonderful moment. Cute to see Stewart so star-struck, for one thing. But also because in less than five minutes, Stewart and Springsteen managed to encapsulate both the passion of pursuing a dream … and the secret to succeeding at that pursuit without losing yourself in the process.
Stewart, in a surprising bit of earnestness, thanked Springsteen for inspiring him to pursue a comedy career in New York. “I can say … I do what I do because of Bruce Springsteen, and I can tell you why,” Stewart said. “You introduced me to the concept of the other side… that you go through the tunnel, and you take a chance, and …you can make something better of yourself, but there’s no guarantee. You … may get gunned down in the street. But you know what? The joy of it is chasing that dream, and that was my inspiration for leaving New Jersey and going to New York and … I just wanted to thank you … for giving me something to put into the dashboard as I drove a U-Haul van through the Holland Tunnel.
All of us need a little encouragement when we’re pursuing the uncharted path of a dream. Even, apparently, the great Jon Stewart.
But I was equally struck by Springsteen’s awareness of the dynamic he has with his audience (read: customers). How does he stay relevant? Newman guessed at it, from watching Springsteen perform. But in the Boss’s own words: “You try to find a show that you haven’t done before … that both sort of contains the history that you share with your audience, contains new music that you’ve written, and contains some way to capture the moment that’s occurring out in the world right now.”
Nice summary of the basics. Be aware of maintaining the brand, but innovate within that brand, and stay connected, intuitive, and flexible enough to capture the needs of the moment in a changing world.
But you get the sense, listening to Springsteen, that while he’s aware of the needs of his audiences, he manages that balancing act with one hand, to the side. “I go out and play to many audiences at night,” he told Stewart. “There’s the audience that comes because they want to hear their favorite songs. There’s the audience that comes because they’re interested in the philosophy and the ideas of what you’re doing. There’s many, many different audiences. And I take it into consideration when I go out there, but I don’t let it define what I do, how we do it, or what we’re trying to do on any given night.”
A fine tightrope act, but an important one master: to be aware of our “audience”, whatever that may be in our lives, but keep from being defined by it. To have our center somewhere else; somewhere very grounded and a healthy perspective away from both the crowd, and the pressures of image, next-quarter profits, and whatever else the world is trying to convince us matters most to them, right now.
Springsteen’s center … the engine that drives him … isn’t a formulaic, calculated thing. It’s a force that feels authentic and deep, even if you don’t like his music or agree with everything he says. “We’ve had a enormous moral, spiritual, economic collapse,” he explained to Stewart, when asked about the shows the band is putting together now. “And people go to storytellers, when times are like that. And our band was built from the beginning for hard times. That was the music we wrote, that was the way that we played.”
Whatever other foibles the man may have, I get the sense that Springsteen knows who and what he is. He’s a storyteller. Of dreams, and hard times, and believing in something worth working for. There’s a tremendous power in not being afraid of hard times. And believing in dreams even when the going is rough. Maybe that’s the secret. And why Springsteen’s music stays so relevant, powerful, and popular.
I only saw Springsteen and the E-Street Band play live once, on “The River” tour in London (I think in 1981). Of all the concerts I’ve ever seen, they did the best job of conveying to the audience their sheer pleasure at being able to get on a stage and play music for people. You had the impression that they were looking at each other and saying “they actually pay us for doing this?”
By contrast, Van Morrison just acted as if he’d rather be anywhere else than on the stage. And Tom Verlaine had a chilly technical brilliance but no emotional contact with the audience. So, yes, Springsteen is a storyteller, one who draws people into a circle to hear the good news and the bad.