Audio for Bruce Springsteen’s conversation with Ed Norton is now up. Enjoy!

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you’ve ever heard. And I had maps. Obviously, Dylan had come when I was 15, and obviously I listened to his music first, and his music contained a lot — I used to say when I heard ‘Highway 61,’ I was hearing the first true picture of how I felt and how my country felt. And that was exhilarating. Because I think 1960s small-town America was very Lynchian. Everything was there, but underneath, everything was rumbling. … I think what Dylan did, was he took all that dark stuff that was rumbling underneath, and I think he pushed it to the surface with irony and humor, but also tremendous courage to go places where people hadn’t gone previously. So when I heard that, I knew I liked that, and I was very ambitious, also.

— Bruce Springsteen, on dark elements in music, in a conversation with Ed Norton at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2010.

Bruce Springsteen, in a conversation with Ed Norton, on the timing of Darkness on the Edge of Town’s release:   “I think Darkness came out of a place where I was afraid of losing myself. I had the first taste of success [with Born to Run], so you realize it’s possible for your talent to be co-opted and for your identity to be moved and shifted in ways that you may not have been prepared for. I was the only person I’d ever met who had a record contract. None of the E Street Band, as far as I know, had been on an airplane until Columbia sent us to Los Angeles.”

erikayes:

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark

Monday’s guest: The Boss (You can still listen to his new album The Promise on NPR Music until next week!)