BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Nils Talks

Some members of the E Street Band like to talk more than others. Guitarist (aka “The Godfather of the Guitar”) Nils Lofgren loves to talk, and in a new interview done by music journalist Gary Graff and posted on the Backstreets News page, Nils sheds light on a lot of things, including helping Charlie Giordano after joining the Magic tour in place of Danny Federici:

“Do any specific song memories stand out?
Well, one thing that comes to mind… Charlie Giordano is an amazing player and a great bandmate. He knows how to be in a band. For a while Bruce tried to stay true to 60 or 70 rotating (songs) out of respect to Charlie, who got thrown into this at the last minute and was completely overwhelmed but managed to totally do the job. But one night after Charlie had been playing a few weeks, you could tell Bruce was like, “Okay, Charlie’s got this down” and stopped worrying about it. So it wasn’t like he was trying to throw Charlie or anything, but one night he called “My Hometown.” We hadn’t played it yet (on the tour), and it wasn’t on the list for Charlie to learn, and Bruce is counting it off and Charlie’s looking at me ’cause I’m standing in front of him. So I got, “Yeah, we’re in A,” and he goes, “I’ve heard the song. What’s that bridge?” And I realized I don’t have to play the acoustic (guitar) rhythm ’til the second verse, so I rushed over and yelled at my tech to throw me a sharpie. I ripped off my set list from under my pedal steel and wrote the bridge chords out and was able to slap it down on the organ just before I jumped off the riser and started my acoustic guitar part. So Charlie at least had a road map for the bridge. It’s just that kind of teamwork that makes it so great. There’s just too many times where I’ll look at Steve, like, “What the hell’s coming up?” and he’ll give me the sign or something. It’s like the kind of great sports team that you don’t see that much anymore because of free agency. You don’t see guys that have played together for five, 10, 15 years, let alone 40. We’ve all brought that together now for a long, long time as the E Stret Band, and Bruce uses it well, and it makes for extraordinary shows bands simply can’t do without that history.”

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