I did work harder than everybody else.
And I was eight hours in my room, every night,
and six hours.
I knew more about leading a band, at 22,
than most people do today.
Cause I had to live every single day.
It’s like an art and then one and one makes three.
You say, one and one, it does…
Music, if it makes two, you’ve fail my friends.
– He’s an American singer and songwriter.
He has sold more than 120 million records worldwide.
He’s been inducted into both of the songwriters
and rock ‘n’ roll hall of fames.
He’s Bruce Springsteen and here’s my take
on his top 10 rules to success.
Rule number six is my personal favorite
and I’d love to know which one you guys like the best.
And as always as you’re watching,
if you hear something that really resonates with you,
please leave it in the comments below,
put quotes around it so other people can be inspired
as well, and when you write it down,
it’s much more likely to stick with you as well.
Enjoy.
(digital music)
(upbeat music)
– If you don’t connect yourself to your family
and to the world in some fashion,
through your job or whatever it is you do,
you feel like you’re disappearing.
You feel like you’re fading away.
And I felt like that for a very, very long time.
I think growing up I felt like that a lot.
I was just invisible, you know?
I was just an invisible person.
And I think…
That feeling, wherever it appears,
and I grew up around people who felt that way.
It’s an enormous source of pain
and a struggle to make yourself felt and visible.
To have some impact and to create meaning
for yourself and for the people you come in touch with,
was essential to all my work.
You know, it’s human nature to want to look
over the rise and over the next hill and see what’s there.
I look at myself like I’m some sort of a spiritual
adventurer with a pack on his back.
I just keep heading over the next hill
to see what’s there.
To see who I find and what I find out about myself
and what I find out about the world I live in
and the audience that I have.
And my ambition is just to make it over the next hill.
And that’s what I try, that’s what I hope
my music helps people do.
Just get up and make it over the next hill every day.
And it’s just dream baby, dream, that’s it.
That’s why at the end of the night,
that’s all there is to say.
And you’ve got to kind of keep putting one foot
in front of the other and see what the next day brings.
First of all, I didn’t think I had a great talent.
I felt that I was somebody that was going to really
work harder than the next guy and to formulate
my own ideas and my own visions.
And I did, when I was a kid, I did work harder
than everybody else.
I was eight hours in my room every night, and six hours.
And when a dance was on, I was the guy standing there
with his arms folded in front of the guitar player
all night long.
So I felt that it was simply
that I was going to
have to work very hard to do well.
My main goal was, I just wanted to be good enough
to sit in a circle with these guys some weekend
and quietly strum my guitar.
That was my great hope when I thought about
beginning to play.
And then when I started to play a little bit
I used to go down to YMCA dances and high school dances.
And I would watch the band.
I didn’t watch the lead guitar, cause that was,
I was dreaming too hard, I watched the guy
who was playing rhythm.
I said, that’s the guy I want to be.
I think I might be able to pull off,
pull off being that guy.
– Did you dare to dream in those days
that one day it would be your voice blaring
out of transistor?
– No, no, I realized I had a lot of innate talents
and a sort of ambition and drive that made me
push really hard at it, so–
– [Host] He was only 22 but was well on the way
to becoming rock royalty.
– I felt I was talented, I only had 10 years experience
I knew more about leading a band at 22
than most people knew today.
I guess I had to live every single day of it.
I had to play in front of every conceivable
audience, fireman’s fairs, movie theater openings,
shop-rite openings, out in front of grocery stores,
in between movies at the drive-in theaters.
I had already played in front of almost
every conceivable audience by the time
before I ever signed a record deal.
You’re out of this tiny little town
and there’s a million musicians and I think you,
he had this metaphor when it came to acting,
there’s a million musicians and maybe if you lose,
you don’t have a plan.
Maybe if you lose, play with a few local guys.
Maybe if you lose, make a demo.
Maybe if you lose and actually get to make a record.
Maybe if you lose, sell a few records.
But if you keep dragging him down your chances
are really, really, really, really, really small.
And so, you’ve got to have the insane hunger,
ego, ambition, and desperation to take any chance,
anything that comes your way
and try to bust those doors down.
There’s a world of love there.
There’s a world of fear, too.
And it’s standing right in front of you.
And very often that fear feels a lot realer,
certainly more urgent than the feeling love.
And the night my little boy,
when my son was born I probably got,
it was as close to what, I guess I would assume
is just a feeling of real pure, sort of unconditional love
and with all the walls down.
All of a sudden what was happening was so immense
that it just stomped all the fear away
for a little while.
And I remember I was really overwhelmed
with the feeling of the whole thing
but I also understood why,
why you’re so frightened.
When that world of love comes rushing in,
that world of fear comes in with it
then, then what are you afraid your going to,
hey, you’ve got something you can lose.
You have to open yourself up to one thing,
is to face the other thing.
You have to embrace both things.
And you embrace those things then
you’re just around the corner from,
oh, death, the whole bit.
(laughing)
Oh, my gosh, and so,
but it was also something that I think,
what I felt was so powerful, and I said,
I don’t think my music over the past four or five years
has kind of dealt with those almost primitive issues,
and it’s about somebody trying to
walk through that world of fear
so he can live in the world of love.
Why songs are good is because is,
it’s like an art and then one and one makes three.
You say, one and one, it does…
Music, if it makes two, you fail my friends.
If you’re painting and all you have is paint and a canvas,
you fail.
If all you’ve got if your notes, you’ve failed.
You’ve got to find that very thing, that you don’t
completely understand but that is truly
coming out from inside of you.
And you can put it in any,
you can set it any place,
you can choose any type of character,
but if you don’t reach down and touch that thing,
then you’re just not going to have
anything to say and it’s not going to feel
like it has life and breath and you’re not
going to create something real and it’s not
going to feel authentic.
Everybody has a memory, what they remember.
Why do you remember when you were 11 years old,
and you were walking down a particular street
on a certain day and the trees, there was a certain
wind going through the trees and the sound your feet
made on the stones as you came up the drive,
and the way the light hit the particular house?
Everyone has memories they carry with them
for no explicable reason and these things,
they call, what do you call them, sense memories
or, but they’re , they live within you,
they are an essential part of who you are
and they may not be connected to any specific event,
there’s just, you had some moment of pure experience
that stayed with you.
Not where something happened, maybe nothing happened,
but it was just, for some reason on that particular
day, you had some moment or pure experience
that revealed to you what it meant to be alive
and what it means to be alive.
What mistakes are.
The wind on a given day, how important that is.
What you can do with your life can be
brought back to you by the sound of your feet
on gravel at a certain moment.
THat’s the writer’s job.
The writer collects and creates those moments
from out of your own experience and the world
that you see around you.
And then you use your imagination and you put those
things together and you present that experience
to your audience who then experience
their own vitality, their own center,
their own questions about their own life,
their moral life, their, whatever you’re writing about.
And there’s a connection made.
That’s your job, that’s what you’re paid for.
Put something on, somebody says, hey, I’m alone.
You put something on about how people treat one another.
Those are the things those, that, alchemy
or whatever you want to call it, I think
is what you’re paid for and you do it on stage at night,
it doesn’t mean literally, it can be done through
an explosion of energy at a particular moment,
in a particular way, that makes someone want to stand up,
move themselves, do any,
go home and do whatever
they feel they need to do.
And you try to make, you just try to bring forth
experience, you know, and get people in touch
with all those things in their world.
That’s the real job.
That’s the job that keeps you writing.
THat’s what keeps you want to write that next song
because you can do that.
And because if I do it for you, I’m doing it for me.
Once I got to the point where I realized
we had, might have had one of the best
bands in town–
– [Host] Yeah.
– Well, I think we had one of the best bands in the area.
I’m starting to sing, I’m starting to get out front.
People are applauding, they’re coming regularly to see us.
We’re drawing our audience, starting to really feel
myself, see who I might be able to be,
and, but there’s always a part of you that feels like
a charlatan, a part of everybody that feels
like a charlatan.
– Still?
Still?
Still, come on?
– Of course.
Because we’re all made up of–
– [Host] Insecurities.
– Yeah, insecurities.
There’s always some part that says, well,
yeah, I’m a complete fake, but I’m also
the realest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.
I’ll be realer than you ever imagined.
– That’s a whole lot of paradox.
– Yeah, the mark of an adult, certainly of an adult artist,
is being able to hole that paradox in your mind,
that at the same time, hold those conflicts in your mind
without letting them drive you crazy
and understanding that they’re just a part of living.
Ah, lets go!
I make the records to see what I can do still.
It’s the thing that’s always meant the most
to me ever since.
There was the first time I got up at the Elks Club
and sang Twist and Shout.
♫ Shout it out baby
♫ Come on and twist and shout now
♫ Come on baby
♫ Come on let’s work it on out
♫ Twist, little girl
♫ You know you twist so fine now
♫ Come on and twist a little closer
♫ And let me know you’re mine now ♫
My education was that, those records,
that night, that was it, that was
what taught me the most important thing,
that there’s more to life than what you
see around and that was something they couldn’t
teach me in school.
You couldn’t learn it in the house.
You couldn’t learn it from the people
you’re hanging with out on the street or anything.
You know, that was the most important lesson
of my life.
I guess, at night, that’s the only thing
you try to say, you know.
Try to do, it’s really the only message, it’s real,
it’s, don’t sell yourself short.
– [Host] How would you describe your relationship
with Clarence?
– It was very primal.
And it was just one year, you’re some missing
part of me, you’re some dream I’m having.
♫ When the change was made uptown
♫ And the Big Man joined the band
He was such this huge force, you know.
While at the same time, being very fragile,
and being very dependent himself, which was maybe
what the two of us had in common.
We were both kind of insecure down inside
and we both felt kind of fragile and (bleep) ourselves,
but when we were together, we felt really powerful.
We’re very different people.
Clarence lived fast. Loose, wild and wide open.
I tend to be more conservative.
– You said off stage you couldn’t be friends.
– I couldn’t, it would ruin my life.
(laughing)
But Clarence could be clown excellently.
(laughing)
He was very good at it.
– I played in a matinee, and he was at the
Wonderbar, which is about three blocks North
of the Super Prince, and Big (mumbles) blew in
and started ranting, saying he was leaving the club.
And I walked down to the Super Prince, I mean,
it was thunder and lightning, and Bruce tells
a story that’s really true, and I walk into the club,
and over the door, and the wind actually
tore the door out of my hand and blew it
down the street, so all the bouncers go running
down the street after the door, and I’m standing
there, and there’s lightning and thunder behind me
and I walk in, you know, a black walked
into a white club, you know, it was like,
whoa, wait a minute.
And I walked over to Bruce, and I found out
who Bruce was, and I walk over and say,
I want to sit in.
He said, sure, yeah, whatever you want to do.
So I sat in, and it was a magical moment.
I swear, I have never, I will never forget that
moment, you know, and right there,
when I’m onstage with Bruce, I still feel that moment.
It was something that all my answers,
all those bands I played with,
all those things I was searching for,
and all the things I wanted to do was right there.
‘Cause he didn’t play cover music,
he played all those original stuff, you know,
I loved that, man, it was just so natural for him,
it felt like I was supposed to be there.
I was like, it was a very magical moment.
He looked at me and I looked at him,
and we fell in love, and that’s still there,
it’s still there.
(audience cheering)
♫ Romeo and Juliet
♫ Samson and Delilah
♫ You can bet
♫ Love they couldn’t deny
♫ Your words say split
♫ But your words they lie
♫ ‘Cause when we kiss
♫ Mmmmmm, Fire
♫ Fire
♫ I’m ten years burning down the road
♫ Nowhere to run ain’t got
♫ Nowhere to go
♫ Born in the USA
♫ I was born in the USA
♫ I was born in the USA
♫ I’m a long gone Daddy in the USA
♫ I’m a long cool white Daddy in the USA
♫ Oh no no
♫ Oh no no
♫ Oh no no no no
♫ Whoa
♫ No no no
♫ Born
– Thank you guys so much for watching.
I’d love to know what did you take
from this video?
What was the most important lesson
that you learned that blew your mind
that you’re going to immediately apply
to your life or your business somehow?
Please leave it down in the comments below.
I’m super curious to find out.
Also, if you want to nominate someone
for the next top 10 video,
please check the description for a link to video
where you can vote for people and put in
your suggestions as well.
I also want to give a quick shout out to Tony.
Tony, thank you so much for picking up
a copy of my book, Your One Word,
and taking that picture and posting it to Twitter.
It really, really, really, means a lot to me,
and I hope you’re enjoying the read, man.
So, thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you, I hope you continue
to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is.
Much love.
I’ll see you soon.
(digital music)
– I think that I want people that come in
and leave feeling like they got more than their
moneys worth, you know, whatever they paid for the ticket,
that idea was important to me.
The idea of you giving more than you had to
when you came out on stage.
I didn’t come from a particularly
political household, and I didn’t start out
with some particular ideology I followed my gut
where it took me and trying to write about things
I felt were important and they are important
and I still try to do that.
I don’t know, you know, I’ve
tried to keep my focus on music
that I was making.
I tried not to get distracted.
I had a lot of models who came before me
where I could see where people made mistakes
and nobody’s perfect.
You make mistakes, you know.
And you know, it’s just a part of, of,
of human life, but I think that
the kind of mistakes where you lose your
center and you lose track of the work
that you’re doing and the music that
you’re making and you lose the ability
to be relevant, to your fans
and to the community that you’re working for.
I just have done my best.
I’d be the last person to claim any,
any, make any claim on getting it completely right
or perfect, but I’ve tried to do it well
enough to where I continue to have a voice
for my fans and I’m able to look
into the world and experience,
experience and translate what I see
in a productive fashion.
(digital music)
”
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