What Bruce Springsteen Lost And Found

Bruce Springsteen, who writes so often of people who lost something — a job, a family, hope — was recently inspired by a loss of his own.

The death of George Theiss, his last surviving bandmate from his first group, sent Springsteen back into his recording archives and into his memory. The result is Letter to You, an album with an accompanying film. In them, Springsteen reflects on being "the last man standing."

We spoke with Springsteen via video link in these pandemic times. He chose an evocative location, sitting beneath the rafters of the recording studio on his property in New Jersey, with light falling in through the windows behind him.

He is 71, though the singer, famed for concerts that last three or even four hours, remains so fit that you don't think of his age when you look at him. In the interview that follows, he mentions swimming in the cold waters of the Atlantic off New Jersey in October.

It's only when you settle in with the film that you notice the changes in his face, the work of time. The film shows Springsteen with his E Street Band as they record the album across four days in late 2019. The black-and-white images of the recording studio are interspersed with old photos and video from his youth.

His first group was The Castiles, which he joined as a teenager in 1965. It was the closest he had to music school, where he gained experience and developed his own style — though Theiss, not Springsteen, was the frontman. The group broke up after three years, and Springsteen continued to perform in a series of bands. He dedicated more and more time to songwriting, and in 1972 he auditioned for Columbia Records as a solo artist. Three of the songs he wrote and recorded as demos in that time appear on Letter to You: Springsteen, the older singer, re-recorded this work by Springsteen, the aspiring young writer.

Other songs on the album, more recently written, reflect on his early days: The first image in the first song describes placing a penny on the railroad track so it could be flattened by an approaching train. They also reflect on