Bruce Springsteen

He's having fun paying tribute to the R&B legends of his youth and he's not apologizing for those high ticket prices

- ANDY GREENE

Seven minutes before Bruce Springsteen is scheduled to call to talk about his new R&B-covers album, Only the Strong Survive, a number I've never seen before, from Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, pops up on my phone. "Hey," says a gruff, familiar voice at the other end of the line. "It's Bruce." He's eager to talk about how he cut the LP at his home studio in New Jersey as a way of honoring some of his favorite R&B greats from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties: "It started out with me saying, I've written songs. I've made movies. I'm sitting here in the house. I like to record. Let me go record songs that I love." In the next 30 minutes, we also discuss his next covers album, the E Street Band's 2023 tour, future archival box sets and the widespread and intense fan uproar that followed the high ticket prices (and the use of dynamic pricing) for that upcoming tour.

You'd never done any of the songs on this album before in concert. How did you choose the tracklist?

I did have a record previously that I made of me singing other people's songs that wound up on the floor. It wasn't until I discovered "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)," by Frank Wilson, the Motown rarity, and my voice slipped in perfectly, that I realized, "I should be singing soul music."...I was looking to make a record that had some classics on it, but also things that people may not have heard. So I chose [songs like Dobie Gray's 2001 single] "Soul Days." [The Commodores'] "Nightshift" was a big hit, but it was 1985. I chose ones I liked at the end of the day, and what I can sing well.

Were you trying to avoid super-iconic songs like "My Girl" and "Dancing in the Street"?