Nils Lofgren

The E Street Band’s finest on how gigging in Rome when the Pope’s in town can be detrimental to your punctuality…

- David Mead

What was your first gig and how did it go?

“I was five years old and I started bugging my parents for accordion lessons which they financed for almost 10 years. One of my teachers took me with him to a giant spaghetti dinner, some big structure where there was a lot of adults having dinner in rows and rows of tables, and we strolled up and down playing famous Italian folk songs. That was certainly my first gig – no pay, but I was performing in public. Fast forward to guitar playing, I don’t even have a memory of the first one, y’know? I was in so many young bands that just played covers of the great music on the radio at the time in the 60s…”

Describe your current stage rig…

“I’ve been using Takamine acoustic guitars and I go through a series of foot pedals featuring chorus, compression, some delay pedals and sometimes a POG – I use the simpler version that just has three dials on it – lows, highs and volumes. I use an overdrive, a Barber Burn Unit, it gives you two different settings for overdrive and I’m going to run my Stratocaster through the same rig – I’m going to play some electric on the upcoming tour – and A/B it back and forth just for simplicity. With The E Street Band I use a similar rig, more advanced with foot pedals and presets and all that, and I run those through Fuchs amps with 2x12 inch cabinets, designed by Buzzy Feiten. A lot of the time, for gigs around town, I’ll use a Blues Junior and I’ve just recently got a Fuchs combo amp I’ll bring with me to England with me on this upcoming tour.”