Bruce Springsteen is getting candid about what it was like to raise three kids as a rockstar dad.
The 20-time Grammy winner, 75, shared in a new interview with The Times that he and his wife Patti Scialfa, 71, often “didn’t expose” their three children to their fame when they were growing up. The pair, whose relationship expands to the stage as part of the E Street Band, share three children: Evan, 34, Jessica, 32, and Samuel, 30.
“When they were little, if they heard me on the radio they would go, ‘Bruce Springsteen!’ It was their way of separating their dad from this abstract character who also seemed to be a part of their lives,” Springsteen told the outlet.
“A lot of times, we just didn’t expose them to it,” he added. “They came to concerts a few times before going back to their rooms to play video games, and didn’t know much about it beyond what they may have read.”
As Springsteen explained, their children “wanted to bring their friends” to their shows as they got older, but were still able to “chose their own lives,” have “their own work” and find “their own partners and families” later on in life, “all at a nice distance from the strangeness of my job.”
The “Glory Days” singer also opened up about his bond with Scialfa in his latest interview, describing his wife of 33 years as “a very good songwriter” who “hasn’t got the credit due because she lives with a suck-all-the-air-out-of-the room attention w—-.”
“She’s had a problem there,” Springsteen said, jokingly. “She’s got a beautiful record about to come out, but she’s had a tougher time getting her work recognized because of who she’s married to.”
While Springsteen said he’s “captain of that particular ship” when the couple is performing together, he admitted that once he steps offstage, he’s “the chauffeur who gets the kids to school at 6 a.m.”
“I’ve known Pats, on and off, since she was 17, and we had a steady relationship as friends until we got together as a couple in 1988, when I was 38 and she was 34,” he said. “It’s worked out pretty well … except for the fact that I tend to take up a lot of space.”
Springsteen’s children have all found their own work in life — Evan works in music, Jessica is a professional equestrian and Samuel is a firefighter. Last year, when speaking with The New York Times about his Springsteen on Broadway production, the Boss said his children have “showed a healthy disinterest in our work over all the years.”
“They had their own musical heroes, they had their own music they were interested in,” he said. “They’d be pretty blank-faced if someone mentioned a song title of mine.”
“I always looked upon that as that we did a good job,” he later added. “As I say in the book [memoir, Born to Run], I know a lot of kids who wouldn’t mind seeing 50,000 people boo their parents. But I don’t know how many would want to see those people cheer their parents. It’s just not right!”
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In August, Springsteen shut down retirement and farewell tour rumors when speaking to his crowd at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. “We ain’t doing no farewell tour bulls—,” he said in a fan-recorded clip.
“Hell no … Farewell to what? Thousands of people screaming your name? Yeah, I wanna quit that,” Springsteen added. “That’s it. That’s all it takes. I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
The E Street Band is next set to perform in Montreal on Oct. 31, before making its way to England, Germany, France, Spain and beyond as the group hits the road into summer 2025.
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band arrives on Hulu and Disney+ on Oct. 25.
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