Entertainment For Lively Minds
When Mr Hepworth interviewed Mr Springsteen ...
Posted by dai on 17 August 2010 - 5:39pm.
The 1984 interview. Springsteen had already released 2 (relative) flop singles in the UK from his latest album Born in the USA when the OGWT special aired.
I have often wondered how it feels to effectively have broken The Boss in Europe. Before this special he was probably at the level of Tom Petty, afterwards he moved into the stratosphere with the likes of Jackson, Prince and Madonna.
It was a revelation at the time for me to actually see video of the E Street band performing live. Before this, there was only the oft aired Rosalita clip.
Can't find anything on youtube but here's a still from the intro.
So Mr Hepworth, any recollections of this seminal moment in rock history ?
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I'll bet
you've just given him an idea for an article! Be interesting though...
I beg to differ a little...
He was extremely popular as a live act in the UK long before the release of Born in the USA. I think I'm right in saying that he played six nights at Wembley Arena in 1981 on The River tour.
His record sales, on the other hand, skyrocketed in this country in 1984.
Agree with you Patrick
I saw him in Birmingham I would have said 1978 or 1979 certainly before The River - quite possibly the Born to Run tour. I recall the set being incredibly long - well over 3 hours - and a very long rock and roll medley in the encore.Anyway the gig was at the NEC and a sell out to boot so I guess he had already made it well before 1984 although I accept his popularity shot through the roof after Born in the USA.
Birmingham was 81
His first UK tour was 81 after only 2 Hammersmith shows in 75.
NEC 1981
It was a brilliant show.
He was a big live act
But the big record sales started in 85 in Europe after the special which was Dec 84 I believe. Born in the USA had stalled with lead off single Dancing in the Dark reaching no. 28 in the UK. It was re-released after the special and got to no. 4 and BITUSA returned to high in the charts.
He then started playing stadiums rather than arenas. It all started with Mr Hepworth ...
Many a fine group got an OGWT airing around then.
I can't remember if it was Mark or David who came back from a trip to the US fizzing with enthusiasm about Lone Justice and The Bangles, both utterly unheard of up until then.
Must've been a good time to be a music journalist / broadcaster when you had the power and the platform to genuinely break an artist... "Lionel, Lionel, calm down.. 'Course I'll mention the boys on the next show. Make it the ususal.. Bit of fruit 'n' flowers, bottle of Dom P and a couple of girls to enjoy them with to my hotel room and I'll see what I can do.."
Now there's a subject for a podcast.
Bangles pref.
Things I remember
* That was in the days when he really didn't do interviews, as opposed to the later stage when he just did loads of rare interviews.
* It started with a piece to camera nearly as long as Robert Carlyle's in the Johnnie Walker ad. Haven't seen it for years. Don't have a copy.
* It was after a show at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. He was delivered to us in a room backstage and then picked up again fifteen minutes later. All I was thinking was "keep him talking".
* They allowed us to film two numbers, Born In The USA and Cover Me (which was lined up as the next single.) The third one in the film, the Mitch Ryder medley, was achieved by filming clandestinely and then overdubbing the sound from the version on the "No Nukes" live album.
* It did help break him in the UK and they certainly saw it like that. People saw on the TV as a live performer, both in this film and in the Dancing In The Dark video, and were taken with the idea that live performance could be this exciting. It's the Live Aid/Italia 90 effect, the TV re-packaging of a live experience.
* I wish the music business was capable of a conspiracy as smooth as you describe. You plug millions of acts in your career, the overwhelming majority of whom get nowhere.
I've got it on VHS, so I
I've got it on VHS, so I could try and convert it to DVD if you'd like a copy?
Brother dearest,
Yes please.
Thanks
Fascinating stuff, especially the bit about the medley being overdubbed. I had no idea.
I actually already have a DVD copy converted from original VHS if you want one.
If anyone can upload it
a lot of us would like to see it. I remember Born in... feeling like something of a betrayal to my serious late teen mind after the 'authentic' Nebraska and the much played Winterland bootleg so I fully opted out. I did get Dancing In The Dark on 45 but ended up playing the B Side, Pink Cadillac , a lot more, the ultimate and joyfully ridiculous car song.
oh give us a break!
"Seminal moment in rock history"! my ass. I remember one moment in this interview where Springsteen said something like "we just didn't know how good we were," trying to suggest an understandable lack of confidence in their formative years. Probably testing the water for the reaction he would get. Sure enough Hepworth then looked at him incredulously and said in effect "SURELY NOT!" "you can't be serious buddy" type of thing. From what I remember Springsteen looked uncomfortable, in the same way you would if someone were following you with a knife.
Generally Hepworth had his tongue so far up Mr Springsteens rear end, that no information was gleaned. Apart from the one interesting moment pointed to above, it was mostly on the lines of "so what is it LIKE to be multi-million dollar rock star then?"
tick tick tick
Just putting a
Y on the end of your Christian name isnt much of an alias if you want to wind him up Mr Ellen...
Asking what it's like to be multi-million dollar rock star...
is quite a good question if you ask me. Asking it repeatedly might even provoke an honest answer.
I am imagining a Jeremy Paxman / Michael Howard type scenario...
Hepworth: "So what's it like being a multi-million dollar rock star then?"
Interviewee: "Oh man, you know the fans are incredible..."
Hepworth (interrupting): "So what's it like being a multi-million dollar rock star then?"
Interviewee: "Oh man, the chicks on this tour are incredible..."
Hepworth (getting increasingly vexed): "It's not that difficult a question. What's it like being..."
And so on ad infinitum...
Careers on the decline
Hepworth: "So I'll ask once again, what's it like being a multi-million dollar rock star then?"
Interviewee: "Generally its Ok, barring stalkers, and er … obsessive fans"
my recollection
is that DH was given a good deal of time for the interview and that Bruce took it very seriously. In fact he was almost too earnest in some of his responses. He obviously understood that he was a lucky man whose fans had invested a lot in him
I don't suppose interviewing people on air is as easy
I don't suppose interviewing people on air is as easy as people who haven't done it imagine. In the Spectator this week Nicky Campbell tells the story of his late pal and Radio 5 colleague Alan Robb interviewing John Major during the '92 election campaign:
During the interview "his mind went blank. In a panic, he remembered the Spitting Image portrayal of the PM as a grey man obsessed with eating peas. 'And do you like peas?' asked Allan. Major didn't have the faintest notion what he was on about. 'I like a variety of vegetables but peas I am relatively neutral about,' he answered after a bewildered pause."
It could happen to anyone.
Well, you're entitled to your point of view
And no doubt it's well founded in your experience of having interviewed rock superstars on camera under difficult conditions. The "tongue up rear end" criticism is one most often levelled at people interviewing rock stars. It seems to me that it just goes with the territory. You're dealing with people who are very nervous about how they might be coming over, you're pretending to be having a casual conversation while actually your pulse is racing, you're surrounded by technicians, producers, fixers and air warmers, all of whom are looking for a different thing from the transaction. You are not Jeremy Paxman grilling the Chancellor. You are not Jonathan Ross teeing up Ricky Gervais to tell that gag he has already told the researcher. You are the person just trying to keep it moving, to prod it in promising directions and to divert it away from the unpromising ones. You are the person who will get the blame if something goes wrong. You are also the person who gets the blame if it goes right. Still, I seem to remember getting £200 so I'm not complaining.
You can't win
I once did a brief interview - to publicise a play I was in - that was with someone who was an old friend, but also was kind of cutting his teeth as a journalist. He interviews properly famous people now; but when he interviewed me, he had to put up with no end of abuse in subsequent issues of the publication; merely because the interview was conducted in a cordial, pleasant, conversational manner. At no point were there any tongues up anuses but the abuse came nevertheless.
This will no doubt come across as yet more sycophancy, and I've mentioned it before, but...
That Springsteen special was incredibly important to my late mother in her early love of his music - which was like a baptism of fire in 1984 - and she watched that special on video until the tape was damn nearly worn out (this'll be the VHS that my brother mentions having, a few posts above). It brought her hours of great, great joy. So thanks.
Interesting coda.
"Still, I seem to remember getting £200 so I'm not complaining."
Is that an ironic dig? A genuine point about getting paid to do something the rest of us would ransom our granny to do? Was it including expenses? Was the flight paid for by the record company or the BBC? Club or cattle?
I hear David's point and I do try to understand.
I also remember a magazine called Q which employed a journalist called Tom Hibbert who, seemingly, could avoid such alleged analinguistic temptations and whose interviews were given pride of place.
Edgy, spiky, combative interviews with Stars only happen in transcript, I suspect.
Combative interviews do
happen, but rarely end up with anything worth writing about.
I once arranged to meet a famous old footballer in Newcastle to do an interview and, having driven up from Birmingham, was persuaded to buy him several drinks while, having already agreed what we were going to talk about by letter, he spent 30 minutes asking me what my angle was, why I was writing what I was writing etc. I later realised that what he really meant was "will you pay me" which, as nobody else in the prpject was getting paid, I couldn't do anyway.
After 30 minutes of this I got up, thanked him for giving me the privilege of driving to Newcastle for no fucking point whatsoever and walked out of the bar, without the material I needed.
"Tongue up rear end"
I've only interviewed a handful of rock stars but I've interviewed hundreds of TV and film stars and I'd say on the whole, you kind of have to.
You want them to warm to you, you want their PR to think it's all gone okay so there might be a next time and so a bit of fake laughter at their anecdotes and jokes and with a bit of light flattery thrown in for good measure does no harm whatsoever.
Interviewing is much harder than it looks. I'm rarely relaxed. And I have never and would never, ever, be brave enough to do it on camera.
Right
I have converted the special into about 6 manageable parts. What should I do with them ?
I will only upload to youtube if Mr Hepworth is happy that I do that. I would then link to them from here.
God, I haven't watched this in *years*
Thats's ...
... my part 6 !
Hell of an editing job...
...to make that fit with a recorded performance from four years earlier.
Here's Part 1
If Mr Hepworth is unhappy I will take it down, otherwise more to follow ...
walking and talking too
surely this was the inspiration for Robert Carlyle. DH walks and talks, walks round two corners, deals with noises off and still manages to keep going...8)
And Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
[Edit] This appears to be blocked
The 1984 "image"
Above - looks like a cross between Jones the Steam from Ivor the Engine and David Essex in gypsy mode.
Not a good look I'd venture. When was the last time Bruce wore his floppy hat or do we think that such headwear may impact on any *cough* folical "work" that may or may not have been done?
The Boss's hair
Much speculation about it on other websites. Certainly seems thicker now in some areas than 84!
Vimeo?
.
Part 5
And part 6
Pretty similar to the Devil ... clip above.