Every year that I go out on tour, I think about all the craziest ideas that would be great to go out with, and I think, 'I should see if Jeff Beck wants to join my band for a month or something.'
I think it'd be fun to tour with Kiss just because Kiss is the reason I got into playing in a band.
There's successes you have in your career. For me, for example, as a guitar player, as somebody in a band putting out albums, the success that we have in our field and how we're viewed by our fans; that type of success means more than anything to us.
If there's one thing that I love as an entertainer, it's a spectacle. We all have looked up to either Michael Jackson or Madonna or Janet Jackson or anyone of those things. When I was in *N SYNC, I would watch any concert video ever and really drink it all in.
There hasn't been one highlight that stands out... but touring and performing has been great.
I think after 1970 or so, after I sold Soul City, I took off for awhile and didn't do too many gigs.
I don't know if I'm selfless - I still want to make a great record. I want to make a hit record. I want to tour; that's not completely selfless. But the truth is I'm not interested in people coming to my show for me as much as I am for them coming to my show for themselves. That's always been how I am.
It's hard to say exactly when it all started or what show it was, but I started touring when I was 11. I played all over Dallas and Fort Worth, and eventually I was touring the whole state.
We started off as a garage band who played a lot of rock 'n' roll.
Sometimes I just wish I played in a band like Foo Fighters.
The great thing about Santa Monica civic auditorium was it was a place you could ride your bike to. In this case, my dad dropped me and my friends off, and we'd go see Ronnie James Dio or Jean-Luc Ponty or Weather Report or the Pretenders.
"Born To Run," that expands every time we go out. It just seems to you - more of your life fills it in, fills in the story. And when we hit it every night, it's always a huge catharsis. It's fascinating to see the audience singing it back to me. It's quite wonderful, you know, to see people that intensely singing your song.
My grandfather is a blues musician.
I'm going to write, and after two years, when I've quit touring, if a special event comes up that I want to do, by all means I will do it, but as far as a structured tour goes, at the last date of 2014 goes, that will be it for touring.
It's silly to call me the new Ed Sheeran. He can fill stadiums as a solo artist, but I'm not like that.
So if radio flops, and MTV flops and everything flops, it doesn't matter, as long as we're still playing and kids are coming to our shows.
I don't have any desire to go back into the studio, and I certainly don't have any desire to go back on the road.
I don't ever want to play a festival again, period.
At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times.
I worked with Dionne Warwick, did shows with Bette Midler, and then I did the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Springsteen at the Garden. It was all important stuff because you want people to know you can work, you can sing, and you can still look good!
The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.
I found out how great the E Street Band is. The reality of a band that you can't scoop aside, can't put in a corner.
I love nothing more than to perform my songs in front of a live audience. And whatever I'm doing is driven toward finding or writing songs and putting out hit songs that drive people coming to see me live. Because, at the end of the day, that's what I enjoy the most.
I like Sam Bailey - she's got a huge voice.
I guess the idea of doing albums in their entirety, in sequence, appeals to people. I guess it's the memory of being able to hear the music in the way it was originally presented.
