A year after his Western Stars album, Bruce Springsteen returned last month to announce he was reuniting with his famed E Street Band to release their new album, Letter To You. As a part of its rollout, Springsteen launched a new radio show with Apple music entitled A Letter To You Radio, and for its most recent episode the Boss welcomed Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl. Throughout their chat, the trio reflected on key moments in their career and the big breaks that came along the way.
Springsteen led the conversation by admitting that, while he felt he and the E Street Band’s early success was completely unexpected, he viewed Pearl Jam’s success as inevitable. “You had the kind of band that simply was a big, powerful band with a reach that wanted to extend to a sizable audience. I mean, it was just in the nature of your music,” he said. “I don’t know if you feel like that or not, but that’s how it looked from my vantage point from the outside.” In response, Vedder spoke about the pressure his band faced after the success of their first album.
“Really, there was a lot of attention just from the first one and we hadn’t even made the second one yet. I just wanted to make the next record and have the next record be better,” Vedder said. “I was like, ‘If you like this, then I think we got even more that we can better that one.’ Yeah. I just wanted to make more records.”
Dave Grohl chimed in, looking back at the moment he knew he could be a rock star. “I saw this Chicago punk rock band, and then I had that Ramones moment, where a lot of people saw the Ramones, and they were like, ‘Oh my God, it’s three chords, man,” Grohl said in the interview. “And the songs are two and a half minutes long.’ It’s like, this is not ELO. This is not Genesis.”
The full A Letter To You Radio episode can be heard on Apple Music here.
Letter To You is out 10/23 via Columbia Records. Pre-order it here.