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In the end it just wasn´t to be. The hopes and dreams of a nation faded as the grim reality of a European Final defeat in Bucharest on Wednesday evening took hold.Too many young inexperienced players under too much pressure, carrying too many peoples aspirations on their young shoulders. There are many ways to justify the stinging defeat but in the end each of us will have our own opinion and we could argue the toss until the end of time without ever reaching agreement so let´s just move on.
A loser is not someone who is down and out a loser is someone who refuses to get back up. In the case of Athletic club the opportunity to rise again is luckily just around the corner, in fact the upcoming cup final on the 25th of May is the real against all odds story legends are made of.
They will face the mighty Barcelona, probably the best team in the world at the moment in what will be Pep Guardiolas last game in a season with no success yet for the Catalan giants, so really noone in their right mind expects Athletic to do anything.
With this in mind it is the perfect opportunity to repay all the faith the people of Bilbao and Bizkaia as well as many admirers around the world, have in those young players.
So, aupa Athletic, lets get out there and do it.

Bilbao this morning woke to a nice spring breeze and a city full of hope. In only 2 days time Athletic club will play the first of their two finals this year and will carry the hopes and dreams of a generation of Bilbainos into battle on Wednesday evening in Bucharest.
It has been 35 years since a title has been won and so the people in and around Bilbao are ready, desperate almost for some kind of success.
This has been a memorable season in many aspects for the club,defeating Manchester utd home and away on the road to the final, not to mention the heroics in Germany against Raul´s Shalke. But, like always, the final step is still the most procarious. being a finalist is simply not enough, they need to win at least one of the finals and with the Barca Spanish cup final looking the more difficult of the two our main aspirations will be in Bucharest against Atletico Madrid on Wednesday night.
So step up to the plate bhoys, cometh the hour cometh the man etc.
Aupa Athletic

I was in New York again for the easter holidays but this time as opposed to last year´s trip Springsteen was in town.
I arrived in town ticketless and nervous and thought that with the huge number of tickets available on e bay and other sites that there would be no problem obtaining one. I was wrong.
we arrived on Wednesday evening and Bruce was due to play on Friday and Monday so I had little time to get organised. Anyway, to cut a long story short I bought a general admission ticket from “stub hub” basically because they have a shop in Manhattan, and of I went to the show on Friday morning expecting huge queues of expectant fans. There was noone waiting, unlike in Europe where we like to wait in line up to 24 hours before the shows the Americans prefer to do things in a more dignified fashion. So a day of shopping awaited me before returning the the garden at around 5pm.
I got my wristband and waited eagerly for the draw to see if I was one of the lucky ones going into the pit and at 1715 the number was called and I was in.
The organisation was excellent and within an hour or so I was standing about 3 feet from the stage nervously drinking my overpriced beer and waiting for the Boss.
Well the rest is history as he produced an incredible performance of over 3 hours with hand shakes and high fives included(I swore not to wash my hands again)
As I left the arena I was struck with a sense of sadness, something that frequently happens after a Springsteen show but was cheered up by the fact that I will do it all again at least five times this summer in Europe.
Thanks New York, you were great.

The show in Boston was the 6th show on the Wrecking Ball Tour. By now we have a pretty good idea what Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band stands for, post-Big Man and with the numerous extensions of the line-up. Like I lived out a dream by meeting my idol, it seems as if Bruce is now living out a dream of just putting everything on that stage he can think of. Add a monopoly player and we’re back to the good, old days of Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, which was the first time Bruce attempted this concept.
This may sound slightly sarcastic, but it’s not meant that way at all. The shows by most accounts don’t suffer by the presence of a horn section, singers, a rapper, and a bongo drummer. On the contrary, they are all utilized in a way that blends in well with the music, new and old, and doesn’t distract too much from the power of the core E Street Band. The only quibble has been that Steve Van Zandt seems to have trouble finding his place in this line-up and has appeared distant compared to other tours. Hopefully this will change over time.
Other than that, concerns about static setlists, shorter shows, or signs of Bruce aging have proved groundless. The last two shows have seen a total of ten tour premieres, the length of the show has already increased by 15-20 minutes, and Bruce… well, he continues to defy the year on his birth certificate and appears in better physical shape than at any point post-E Street Band reunion. Knee slides, back-bends, and crowd surfing are all part of his palette of ticks, and by the end of the night, he still looks like he could go a few more rounds.
Clarence Clemons, of course, is not forgotten, nor is Danny Federici. The touching commemorations first seen at the Apollo show have been repeated at every show and are an important part of the night, for Bruce and fans alike. May they continue as the tour progresses
In the next couple of weeks Bruce and the band hit their home turf of Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York. Not that the previous shows have just been a warm-up, but expect the following run of shows to reach new heights of emotional and powerful impact. For those of you with tickets, it’s time to dig deep into your souls and find the kid in yourselves, forget about what’s not being played, and embrace the present. The big wheels are rolling.

I always tell kids they were lucky to be born in age of reproducible technology,” Bruce Springsteen told a music business audience. “Otherwise they’d be travelling in the back of a wagon and I’d be wearing a jester’s hat.”
Pausing for laughter about this observation on the low historical status of performing artists, he added, “It’s all about timing.” On the evidence of his mesmerising speech at the South By South West music festival in Austin, Texas, however, the legendary rock star may be selling himself short. If Springsteen ever tires of playing music, he could forge a whole new career in public speaking.
His keynote address at SXSW was funny and touching, hugely entertaining, but also profound and revealing. In remarks aimed at inspiring a new generation to reach for the highest artistic level, he paid homage to the musicians who inspired him: Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield and, in a particularly eloquent tribute, claimed he owed his whole career to British beat group, The Animals, “one of the ugliest groups in rock and roll.”
“It’s great to be in a town with ten thousand bands,” Springsteen declared, reflecting with delight on the chaotic spirit of SXSW, where the music business effectively colonises the city, and thousands of hopefuls tout their wares in every imaginable venue, from bars to tattoo parlours, whilst executives and hustlers gather to plot the future of music. “Back in ’64 when I picked up the guitar, this would have seemed an insane pipe dream;” said Springsteen, joking that “there wouldn’t have been enough guitars to go around. We’d have to be sharing.” He discussed the continuing unifying potential of music in an increasingly divided cultural landscape, “where no one agrees on anything anymore: there is no keynote, no unifying theatre of anything.” Rather than viewing this with the grumpy nostalgia of many of his generation, the 62-year-old Springsteen declared his delight in what he called “a post-authentic world” where “there’s no right way, no pure way of doing it, there’s just doing it” and “only one thing remains consistent, the power of creativity.”
He was most revealing when he turned his attention to his own creative development. Springsteen described his experience of seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 as his own “genesis moment”, where the confluence of “a red hot rockabilly” and the new technology of television somehow gave birth to “the first modern 20th century man, creating fundamental outsider art that would be embraced by a mainstream popular culture”.
Springsteen rhapsodised poetically about doo wop, describing it as “the most sensual music ever made, the sound of raw sex, silk stockings brushing across upholstery, bras popping, running mascara, tears on your pillow.” Doo wop, he said, “dripped from the late night gas stations and pool halls, the temples of life and mystery in my home town.” He singled out Roy Orbison as having a profound impression on his teenage psyche, by taking this imagery and adding layers of romantic darkness. “He seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities. He sang about the tragic unknown ability of women, he was tortured by soft skin and angora sweaters, beauty and death. But he also sang about being raised to heights of near perfect paradise and bliss. In those few moments he told you that the wreckage and the ruin and the heart break was all worth it.”
Phil Spector was praised for the “lesson that sound was its own language.” The Beatles were “cool, classical, formal, an independent unit who suggested everything could come out of your own garage.” Bob Dylan “gave us words to understand our hearts.” He talked about idolising James Brown, claiming there was “no greater performer.” Soul moved Springsteen because he heard in it “blue collar music with the gritty determination of the blues, the church, the earth, and the sex soaked heavens. It was music of sweaty perspiration that drenched a man’s shirt.” In the E Street Band he found a way to bring that together with country music, “the working men’s and women’s stories I’d been searching for, stoic recognition of every day reality.”
Springsteen saved his highest praise for The Animals, the great bluesy Newcastle combo fronted by Eric Burdon. “For some they were just another beat group but for me they were a revelation, the first records with full blown class consciousness that I’d ever heard.” Performing a growling version of We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place on acoustic guitar, Springsteen effectively demonstrated the deep connection between with his own work. “That’s every song I’ve ever written,” he declared, only half in jest.
“The other great thing about The Animals was there were no good looking members. They were one of the ugliest groups in rock and roll. Eric Burdon looked like your shrunken daddy with a wig on. He never had a kid’s face, and he couldn’t dance. They put him in a suit and it was like putting a gorilla in a suit. But he had a voice like Howling Wolf coming out of a teenager. The Animals weren’t nice, they didn’t curry favour, they were aggression personified, and it was so freeing. The name was unforgiving; the most unapologetic group name ’til the Sex Pistols came along. It struck me so deep.”
Playing the riff of the Animals’ version of Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Springsteen demonstrated how he turned it into his own classic song, Badlands. “Listen up youngsters,” he joked to the assembled musicians. “This is how successful theft is accomplished.”
Springsteen has a rich appreciation of pop history but for all the retrospection of his speech, his aim was to inspire younger versions of himself. It is not often you see queues around the block for a talk at a business seminar, but then it is not often you get someone who can lead 2000 delegates in a sing-along of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Our Land.
Springsteen signed off with advice to young performers at SXSW, delivered with the flourish of a Shakespearean soliloquy, revelling in poetic contradiction: “Rumble, young musicians, rumble. Open your ears and open your hearts. Don’t take yourself too seriously … and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Have iron clad confidence … but doubt, it keeps you awake and ready. Believe you are the baddest ass in town … and you suck, it will keep you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive in your heart the whole time and, if it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. Stay hard, stay hungry, and stay alive. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have … and then remember, it’s only rock and roll.”

An exclusive interview with Bruce Springsteen in Paris

On this record, you include songs that aren’t exactly new, with “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Wrecking Ball” having been performed before. But they fit in the moment, right?

“Wrecking Ball” seemed like a metaphor for what had occurred — it’s an image where something is destroyed to build something new, and it was also an image [suggesting] just the flat destruction of some fundamental American values and ideas that occurred over the past 30 years. It was a 30-year process of deregulation and different things that added up to the inequality that we’re experiencing in the States right now. So, it seemed like a good metaphor.

With “Land of Hope and Dreams,” I needed a song that was very spiritual, because the record moves from guys who are really very angry to guys who are angry but constructive. To me there’s always a spiritual element in that, and a religious element to some degree. Maybe that’s just my Catholic upbringing, but that’s how I write about it. So that song was big enough.

The trouble with a record, if you write a really big song at the beginning, the record demands to gain size as it goes along — or else you blew your wad at the top, my friend [laughs]. That’s why, how many records do you put on where it’s like, hey, that first song!… That second song’s good… [snores]. You’re out by number seven or eight.

But on our records, I try to build them so there’s a question asked, and there are scenarios where those questions are played out. If you look at this record, there’s a question asked: Do we take care of our own? I don’t think so, a lot of times. So then there are scenarios where you meet the characters who have been impacted by the failure of those ideas and values. You get to the guy on “Easy Money,” he’s going out for a robbing spree — which is really just what’s occurred at the top of the pyramid. He’s imitating your guys on Wall Street the only way he knows how: I’m going out tonight for easy money.

If you trace it along, every song introduces you to a slightly different character. Then at the end, I’ve got to find some way to mend their stories together so it all makes sense to you. I’ve got to try to find some way not necessarily to answer the question that I asked, but to move the question forward, to move the ideas forward, to move forward in the search for a new day. “A new day” comes up a lot in the record, which is really just, okay, how do you move forward? I’m interested in that.

So the record has to build, and it has to expand emotionally and spiritually, and it’s also supposed to be throwing you a good time in the mix. You know, it’s got to sound good and play great. That’s always a challenge, but “Land of Hope and Dreams” was a song of such size and spiritual dimension that by the time the end of the record came around, it fit really well.

Also, those are voices from history and other sides of the grave. If you listen to the record, I use a lot of folk music. There’s some Civil War music. There’s gospel music. There are ’30s horns in “Jack of All Trades.” That’s the way I used the music — the idea was that the music was going to contextualize historically that this has happened before: it happened in the 1970s, it happened in the ’30s, it happened in the 1800s… it’s cyclical. Over, and over, and over, and over again. So I try to pick up some of the continuity and the historical resonance through the music.

In the past, you’ve committed yourself to play for presidential candidates, and of course the presidential election is coming up this year in the U.S. Are you planning to sing or do some concerts for Barack Obama?

I got into that sort of by accident. What it was, the Bush years were so horrific that you couldn’t just sit around. I never campaigned for a politician previous to John Kerry. But at that moment it was such a blatant disaster occurring at the top of government that you felt if you had any cachet whatsoever, you had to cash it in, because you couldn’t sit around and watch it. So I campaigned for John Kerry, and Obama last time — and I’m glad that I did — but I’m not a professional campaigner, and every four years I don’t think I’m gonna pick a guy and go out for him. I’d prefer to stay on the sidelines. I generally believe an artist is supposed to be the canary in the coalmine, and you’re better off with a certain distance from the seat of power.

In 2008, you came out very strongly for President Obama. Are you still in the same mood today?

I think he did a lot of good things: he kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit, Michigan. He got the healthcare law passed, though I wish there had been a public option and that it didn’t leave citizens the victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden, which I think was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government.

He’s more friendly to corporations than I thought he would be, and there aren’t as many middle class or working class voices heard in the administration as I thought there would be. I would have liked to see more active job creation sooner than it came, and I’d like to have seen some of these foreclosures stopped or somehow mitigated. The banks have had some kind of a settlement, a partial settlement, but really, there’s a lot of people it’s not going to assist. I still support the president, but there are plenty of things — I thought Guantanamo would have been closed by now. On the other hand, we’re out of Iraq, and hopefully we’ll be out of Afghanistan soon.

So many people after 9/11, and so many people these past couple years, look to you for your interpretation of events. Does that make you feel any kind of a burden? That so many people care? Look at us: when we were waiting for you earlier, so many people care about what you think, and what you feel about what is happening in the world.

Actually, I’m terribly burdened, and at night when I’m sleeping in my big house, it’s killing me [laughs]. It’s a rough life, it’s a brutal life! The rock music business: brutal, brutal, brutal. Don’t believe what anybody tells you.

No, it’s a blessed life. And these are just things I’m interested in, and things I’ve been interested in having a conversation with my audience about.

I enjoyed artists when I was young who tried to, one way or another, take on the world — for better or for worse — and who were involved in the events of the day as well as just entertaining people. I have a big audience: I have Democrats, I have plenty of Republicans, I have people who just come to dance and enjoy themselves, and people who are interested in the social aspects of what I’m writing about. And I’ve really just enjoyed it all.

So I just enjoy having that conversation. If I have something to say or if I can write a song about it at a given time, I do. And if I don’t, then I don’t. I write to process my own experiences. I always figured that if I do that for me, then I do that for you. You write for yourself initially, just trying to understand the world you live in. And if you do that well enough, then it projects to your audience. But I’m not in elective office where I have to come up with a plan every day. I don’t experience it as a burden. It’s not like that. It’s pretty much a charmed life, I would say, if you’re a musician. That’s why they call it playing.

On this record, more than ever, we have spiritual references, biblical quotes, things like that. Is it because you feel your own mortality now?

No, I think I just got completely brainwashed as a child with Catholicism. Once you’re in… it’s like that Al Pacino line, I keep trying to get out, they keep pulling me back! Once you’re a Catholic, you’re always a Catholic. You get involved in these things in your very, very formative years. I took religious education for the first eight years of school; I lived next to a church, a convent, a rectory, and the Catholic school. I saw every wedding, every funeral, every Mass. Your life was filled with the smell of incense and priests and nuns coming and going, so it’s given me a very active sense of spiritual life, and made it very difficult sexually, but that’s all right [laughs].

On another subject, could you say a few words about the transition from Clarence Clemons to Jake? There’s a great portion of your eulogy where you say, “Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die.”

I met Clarence when I was 22. That’s my son’s age. I look at my son, and he’s still a child, you know? Twenty-two is… you’re just a kid. And I guess Clarence might have been 30 at the time, so it goes back to the beginning of my adult life. And we had a relationship that was, I would say, elemental, from the very beginning. It wasn’t about anything we necessarily said to one another, it was just about what happened when we got close. Something happened. It fired peoples’ imaginations; it fired my own imagination and my own dreams. It made me want to write songs for that saxophone sound.

Losing Clarence is like losing something elemental. It’s like losing the rain, or air. And that’s a part of life. The currents of life affect even the dream world of popular music; there’s no escape. And so that is just something that’s going to be missing.

We’re lucky in that we have people around: we have Eddie Manion, who had played with the Sessions Band, Southside Johnny, and our band previously; and Clarence’s brother had a son who, in 1988, came and saw his uncle play the saxophone. Clarence mentioned Jake to me quite a few years ago, and he was on the road with us a bit during the last tour, and he plays very well. He’s also been around the band and understands what our band is about. We were together with Clarence the week he passed away, and there’s a good musical and spiritual connection to Jake. So I’m excited about it. I think it’s going to add to the new conversation about these things that we’re going to have with the audience when we come out on stage.

I heard that you’re going to have a complete horn section on tour—it takes a full horn section to replace Clarence.

It does—it takes a village to replace the Big Man! It takes many men [laughs]! So, we’ll do the best we can.

Do you think it’s going to change something in your stage personality?

I don’t know. It will change everything a little bit — or a lot. The thrust of the music will still be what it is, but it’s a big loss. Any time you lose… you know, we lost Danny [Federici], and these are guys that you’ve been with for 35 or 40 years, and you just enjoyed them being there, you know? But you move on. Life doesn’t wait.

So Clarence has to be replaced, you replaced Max at a few concerts with his son…

Right. I’m working on replacing myself now, and I’m gonna stay home. I will be home, and somebody else can do it [laughs].

On the last tour, you paid tribute to Joe Strummer, and you showed some support for Gaslight Anthem, and it seems you’re still a huge, huge music fan. I was wondering, as you look back at your music fandom, what four or five bands would you start and end with?

My own music fandom? Oh gosh… I hate to speak them aloud [laughs]. Because in truth, there were so many. I’d say one of the greatest things about music fandom is if you have one other person who is as fanatic about it as you are. That would be Steve [Van Zandt] for me. Steve and I have shared an insane and intense love affair with rock ‘n’ roll music since we were teenagers. If a guy changed the way he combed his hair, if they changed their outfits… pop is all about obsession with detail. It’s a world of symbolism, and you live and die by that sword, for better or worse. But it’s also a lot of fun, and fun to argue about and fun to debate about.

So one of the great things was my connection with Steve in that area, and also with Jon. Jon was another freak who just was — it was all about the music. That’s the most important thing. You’ve got to have a friend or a pal who is sort of alongside of you in your insanity and knowswhy you can spend three hours debating these things. I remember Steve and I on the bus to New York City, battling who was supreme at the time, Led Zeppelin or the Jeff Beck Group. Old Elvis, young Elvis. It goes on forever. It still goes on to this day. So that’s a great blessing. I wish all of you a good rock ‘n’ roll partner.

When you were younger, you could spend a full year agonizing about a drum sound in the studio. Now you release a record every two years.

Now I just agonize. It’s not over anything special [laughs]. That’s the adult. When you’re an adult, you don’t have to worry it as much…

Does that mean you’re not trying to write “the great American novel,” with every record as one chapter?

Mainly, you’re trying to make a good record. You’re trying to make a record that won’t waste peoples’ time. You’re trying to be an honest broker with your fans — if I’m asking them to listen to it, I’ve got to know that it’s everything I have, at least at that moment. That’s why I think my relationship with my audience remains so vital and so present.

You’re always out there shooting for the moon, but in different ways. That hasn’t really changed. Our intentions on this album were no more nor less than our intentions on Born to Run or Nebraska. My intention is to do what, say, Bob Dylan did for me, which is to sort of kick open the door to your mind and your body, and make you want to move and think and experience and get angry and fall in love and reach for something higher than yourself and grovel around in something lower than that, also [laughs]. That’s the job description. That’s what people are paying you the money for: they’re paying you the money for something that can’t be bought. That’s the trick. And that’s what you’re supposed to deliver. You’re being paid for something that can’t be bought; it can only be manifested and shared. That’s when you’re doing a good job.

Can I ask you about anger? About the anger you might feel, the anger there seems to be so much of in America in the last four to five years, that anger that surfaced in the Tea Party… Does that anger get to you? And what do you see as its source?

I think our politics come out of psychology, whether we like to think so or not. And psychology, of course, comes out of your formative years. So my experience growing up — between when I was born to when I was 18, I grew up in a house where my mother was the primary breadwinner, and she worked very hard every day. My father struggled to find work, and I saw that it was deeply painful and created a crisis of masculinity, and that it was something that was irreparable at the end of the day.

Those conditions are present in the United States right now, where you have a service economy overtaking a manufacturing economy. You’ve got a lot of guys who worked in manufacturing whose jobs have disappeared, and who are not necessarily coming out of those manufacturing jobs with the skills to move into a service economy. It’s a very, very different world. And so you have quite a few homes where the man is no longer the primary breadwinner.

I think that the lack of work creates a loss of self. Work creates an enormous sense of self, as I saw in my mother. My mother was an inspiring, towering figure to me in the best possible way, and I picked up a lot of the way that I work from her. She was my working example: just steadfast, just relentless. But I also picked up a lot of the fallout. When your father doesn’t have those things, it results in a house that turns into quite a bit like a minefield. And it can be abusive in different ways — just tremendous emotional turmoil.

So, I kind of lost him, and I think a lot of the anger that surfaced in my music from day one comes out of that particular scene. And as I got older, I looked toward not just the psychological reasons in our house, but the social forces that played upon our home and made life more difficult. And that led me into a lot of the writing that I’ve done.

I’m motivated circumstantially by the events of the day: that’s unfair; that’s theft; that’s against what we believe in; that’s not what America is about. But the deepest motivation — and the reasons to ask those questions, ultimately — comes out of the house that I grew up in and the circumstances that were there, which is mirrored around the United States with the level of unemployment we have right now. It’s devastating. People have to work. The country should strive for full employment. It’s the single thing that brings a sense of self and self-esteem, and a sense of place, a sense of belonging.

There are times in the new songs when you come close to calling for an uprising. Can you really foresee that kind of response in America?

Well, the thing that has happened that’s good in the States: there’s no doubt that the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States was powerful about changing the national conversation, which has been stuck for decades primarily coming from the right. The Tea Party set it for quite a while, and if you saw the initial years of the Obama presidency, he was kind of working under the national tone that the Tea Party set.

The minute Occupy Wall Street occurred, suddenly people were talking about economic inequality. No one has gotten anybody in the States to talk about economic inequality for the past two decades. You had politicians who tried — John Edwards tried with his “two Americas” — but they couldn’t get any traction. The labor movement wasn’t successful bringing that up as a current issue. But people in the street do it, and it works. It works. And if you look now, suddenly you’ve got Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a vulture capitalist [laughs]. I mean, that’s impossible! That would never have occurred in ten million years without Occupy Wall Street. Where they go from here? I don’t know, and they’ve got to be careful; it’s a very delicate dance, and you don’t want to alienate the people who you’re speaking to. You can go off the edges with it. But it was without a doubt very important in changing the tenor of the national conversation. If you go to the United States right now, there’s discussion about the one percent and the 99 percent; you have people talking about economic inequality, and what to do about that, for the first time in a very, very, very long time.

I’d like to talk about your version of American patriotism, which has always been inclusive and generalist: it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can get on the train. And then you look America and the way that the Tea Party is polarizing one side, and there are people who don’t even believe that Obama is an American. Do you think that the political system is actually irreparably damaged? Can you actually have a “United” States?

I don’t know. I think this is the issue: we’ve destroyed the idea of an equal playing field. They’ve had some recent studies that say, depending on where you come from, no, you can’t get on the train. There was a study recently that said that people were locked into the strata under which they were born. If you were born at the top, your chances for progress were great, and if you were born struggling, more often than not that’s where you were going to remain. So that’s a big promise that’s been broken.

There’s a critical mass point where a society collapses. You can’t have a civilization where the society is so factionalized — you just can’t have it. People have got to be connected; everyone’s welfare has got to be connected. So, that’s a huge, huge challenge. The unemployment level is dropping a little now, which is good, but it’s going to take a long time to even remotely get back to the employment level we were at just a few years ago. Is it irreparable? I don’t know the answer to your question.

I read somewhere that you were working on your autobiography. Is that true? And how’s it going?

I wrote a little bit, and then I stopped for a couple of years. I haven’t looked at it in quite a while. It’s one of those things… I wrote a little bit at one time, but then I see in the newspaper that everybody else is writing them, and so you don’t want to be just another goldfish in a bowl. It’s like: hey, Pete Townsend! He’s got one coming! Neil Young! He’s got one coming.… ahhhh, fuck it, the hell with it [laughs].

What would you call it?

The… Handsomest Man in Show Business. [Laughs] No, I have no idea. My Story!… I Believe! I may call it that. According to Me. [Laughs]

I was just curious, how, throughout the years, throughout all your albums, how are you still keeping in touch with the public concern? I mean, practically, are you involved in your local community?

Well, there’s an idea that it would be hard to do, but I don’t think that it is; I think you can make it hard. We have organizations we’ve worked with for 25 or 30 years, in every city and also in my local area. But really, I think the answer to what you’re asking, and I get asked this a lot, is that you have to remain interested and awake. You have to remain alert. You have to be constantly listening—and interested in listening—to what’s going on every day. You have to remain interested in life and in the way the world’s moving. You have to be awake and listening—that would be the best way that I would put it.

As a writer, the way that I write, it’s like you’re hungry for food. That’s the writing impulse. The writing impulse is the same as one for hunger or for sex — it’s like that. It’s not something that’s related to your commercial fortunes. I mean, I’d do it for free. I’m glad that they’re paying me, but it was something I did for free before they were paying me.

And so I’m constantly looking — the writer looks for something to push up against. Tom Stoppard, the playwright, once said he was envious of Vaclav Havel because he had so much to push up against, and he wrote so beautifully about it. I’d prefer to stay out of prison if I can, but I knew what he was talking about. You need something pushing, pushing back at you, and you tend to do your best work when there’s something that you can really, really push up against. And there has been in the States over the past — certainly for me, over the past 30 years, but that’s come to a head over the past four years now. So this record, there was quite a bit to write about.

I want to ask a question about your singing. You have a wide range now — you can go from a very high falsetto to a strong and deep voice. Do you feel you’re still improving?

[Sings falsetto:] Yes, I do! I do, I do, I do… [sings deep:] I do. [Laughs] For some reason when I got around 40, I was able to sing high all of a sudden. I’m not sure why. I used to have a harder time when I was younger; I have a little bit of a falsetto now that I didn’t have. Look at Tony Bennett: Tony Bennett’s 85 and he’s still singing. He still sings great. So I think you need a little bit of luck, and then you have to have something you’re dying to sing about.

Do you feel more powerful as a musician than you would be if you were a politician?

A politician? No, I could never be a politician. I just don’t have the skills. Everything that I’ve studied was about learning how to do my job as a musician better, and also trying to understand the arc of my own life and my family’s life — an immigrant family that came to the United States. I thought that there was something common in that, that if I understood that about me, I might be able to illuminate something about your life. That’s all I do. I have no interest in any other job, really, and I have no other skills whatsoever. So I’m hoping to continue to remain “powerful” as a musician [laughs] as best as I can.

I know you’ve spoken about Clarence a bit already, but I just wanted to ask, with respect to the actual making of this album, did the passing of Clarence have any effect on that?

Well, most of the record was made; 95 percent of it was made, and it wasn’t an E Street Band record. It was basically a solo project. So that didn’t immediately impact the record. This record took quite a different musical tilt. We were lucky to get him on “Land of Hope & Dreams,” which was essential —really essential. When he comes up, it’s just a lovely moment for me.

Two years ago, onstage in Glastonbury, you joined a small band from New Jersey called The Gaslight Anthem. Is it true that your sons make you listen to new bands?

Yeah! You know, music is a family business. Of course, you’re always concerned that your kids might… I mean, it’s what Mom and Dad do, how cool can it be? I always say, kids wouldn’t mind coming out to see 60,000 people boo you, but who wants to see 60,000 people cheer their parents? Nobody really wants to see that — I don’t care how great a kid you are, you don’t want to see that. Booing, that’s interesting.

But he ended up with tremendous musical taste and a great musical appetite, and he just began, “Hey Dad, come here. Check it out.” So I actually heard a lot of music that way: Gaslight Anthem, Dropkick Murphy’s, Bad Religion, Against Me!… a lot of young musicians through his guidance. I’ve gone to quite a few shows with him, and we’ve had some great times, so it’s a nice thing to share.

I want to ask about your songwriting process. Do you set aside time each day to write? And can you talk about how inspiration comes?

I don’t set aside any time in the day. I write when the fire gets lit, and then I do it in spare time. I work at home, so there’s always something going on — somebody needs to be picked up from school, somebody needs to be dropped off at school. But it doesn’t take me long, like it used to. These songs were all written… “We Take Care of Our Own,” “Shackled and Drawn,” and “Rocky Ground” came along for almost a gospel album package I was thinking about. And then the other things came very quickly, one after another, as soon as I found the voice that I was going to use. “Easy Money,” and then the rest of the songs came pretty quickly, one day at a time.

The main thing writing is about, a lot of it is waiting. You may wait a year to write something good. So you have to be pretty good at waiting. And I may write a lot in the meantime — I wrote 30 or 40 songs before these songs, just to sort of keep everything going.

The inspiration thing, if that’s what you’d call it, it’s like a visitation. Something happens where suddenly, it’s like the planets aligning: the times, what’s in the air, what’s inside of you, there’s your craft, your skills… and suddenly they go click. And zoom. If they don’t align, nothing happens. When it clicks — when the times, you, your story, the story that is alive out there at the moment, what’s going on in the world, your craft, your skills align like that — then bang, it comes out, and then good things happen. Hopefully. You sort of wait for that moment a lot.

One last question. Should they ever start filming The Sopranos again, would you join Stevie in that? What would be a part for you?

I have no acting skills whatsoever. This is all the acting I can do, and I’m doing it right now. So you see, it would be very dull. But Steve, on the other hand, is naturally hilarious, as he has been since the day I met him. He was quite a natural. I’m going to stick to music for now.

Before we go, just a personal favor… can you do that falsetto again?

I’m not gonna be as good as Obama. Obama can sing. Did you see that? [Sings falsetto:] “Let’s stay together.” I can’t do it. [Laughs]. He’s better than me

Fortunately very few of us will have to go through what Paul McBride endured as a consequence of being a Celtic fan. Bullets and bombs in the post, with the inevitable stresses, are not part of a civilised society, but he coped without shirking. Instead of playing to the gallery, he carried an uncompromising message to some in the Celtic support, making a few more enemies but many more admirers.

His loss will be felt most by his loved ones, who are in our thoughts at this time, but without his insight, the years ahead will be poorer for us all.

Although officially the new Springsteen album “Wrecking Ball” doesnt hit the shops til next week I have had a downloaded copy on my computer for 10 days now. Every day I listen to it more than once and as they say in the music world, its a grower.

But is my opinion still valid?

It has been a long time since Bruce released anything that I didnt like so I have to try and be more objective about this review.

Anyway here goes. In my humble opinion this is the best Springsteen effort since “The Rising” It is of the same critical framework, a rocky protest type album talking of America and the worlds  insecurities , many of which are indeed caused the The USA itself. A mocking Bruce screams “We take care of our own, wherever this flag is flown” a song likely to be as misunderstood as the 1984 “Born in the USA”. Both sings are NOT flag waving anthems , but are a critical look at how The States are viewed by others.

A new version of “Land of hope and dreams” feturing the saxaphone of the recently deceased Clarence Clemons, shines bright among other gems such as “Jack of all trades” and “youve got it”.

As he warms up for another world tour Bruce has delivered the best excuse ever for going out to see , without doubt, one of the best live acts ever, a new album that rocks.

If you have never seen The Boss live, do yourself a favour and go see the show.

You can thank me later

The greatest captain our club(CELTIC) has ever known has spoken about the demise of Glasgow Rangers and I think it is as always worth listening to Billy McNeil , captain of the Lisbon Lions. THESE ARE HIS WORDS NOT MINE

THERE will be Celtic fans singing and dancing in celebration that Rangers are now in administration.
I am NOT one of them.

Let me make it clear that when confirmation came through of Rangers’ plight I didn’t feel joy — just sadness.

Real sadness that one of the two greatest clubs in this country is on its knees.

Never mind the debate about whether or not Celtic need a strong Rangers. Scottish football needs them.

Yesterday’s bulletin from Ibrox was stunning.

Of course, there’s been talk of administration for months — but when I heard it was true I was still shocked.

I always want to see Celtic beat Rangers. Make no mistake about that.

But I don’t want Rangers to go to the wall.

I’ve never desired that.

The Old Firm rivalry — and I’m not talking about the ugly side of it, the unacceptable bigotry and sectarianism – has been fabulous over the decades.

I relished it as a player and a manager — and just as much now as a fan.

It’s been an incredible state of affairs at Ibrox.

And it’s all just made me so glad and relieved that Celtic have been run so well for so long.

Thank God for the likes of Fergus McCann, Dermot Desmond, Brian Quinn, Dr John Reid and Peter Lawwell.

There have been plenty of critics of them over the years. And for definite, any Celtic supporter would rather have seen more trophies won in recent times.

But surely now we see Rangers’ very existence is in jeopardy, we must look at the bigger picture.

That Celtic are financially strong, that there’s no threat to the Hoops’ long-term future.

It’s why there should only be thanks given to the men I mentioned.

Why Celtic’s history books should look favourably on them.

Celtic are on course for the Treble — and look to be in great shape.

I can’t praise the board enough for their work.

I’ll be honest, when someone of the stature of John Greig felt the need to quit Ibrox I started to become very concerned for Rangers.

And since Greig left Gers have been a sorry sight.

In my eyes this is a diabolical situation.

I never thought I’d see the day when a club like Rangers went into administration.

But the harsh fact of the matter is that the people running Rangers have taken the wrong steps time after time. And when the emotion of it all is stripped away, they are now reaping what they sowed. That’s the bottom line. It’s unarguable.

But I still hope Rangers can recover — because our game needs them.

Celtic almost folded in 1994.

And mercifully Fergus McCann came in and transformed how the club was run.

Ever since then there’s never been any worries about its health.

There was a period when Graeme Souness was Rangers manager when they were bringing in players of real top quality.

As Celtic boss, it was hard for me to see because I knew there was no way we could compete with them in the transfer market.

But now we know Gers couldn’t really afford it.

They were spending what they didn’t have. That ruinous policy continued during the Dick Advocaat era.

To the extent that Rangers could now be finished.

It’s still hard for me to get my head round that. I’ve got so many fond memories of my playing days when we were battling with Gers for the top honours.

On the pitch we were fiercely competitive — nothing was conceded.

But off it both sets of players enjoyed a great relationship. Honestly.

A number of Celtic players, including myself, attended Jim Baxter’s wedding.

I also remember being a guest of the Celtic supporters’ club in South Africa — Rangers great Ronnie McKinnon was welcomed too.

They were the good old days. I well appreciate so much has changed since then.

But the Old Firm are great clubs. To think it could now be all over pains me.

Celtic could so easily have gone down the same financial road — they too could have embarked on crazy spending.

I’m so happy they didn’t.

Desmond has been a fabulous benefactor for the club.

He has invested a lot of his time and money.

But he’s never done so in an irrational way.

That’s why today we’re looking at a Celtic in great shape on and off the field.

Even in a very difficult financial climate the Hoops are prospering.

Chief executive Lawwell has put in place superb commercial deals, overseen investment in the right places.

I give him and the other board members my heartfelt thanks for looking after the club I love. Especially when things look so bad at Ibrox.

We may not share Billy´s words or thoughts but we must respect them, hail hail

I was listening to the weather forecast yesterday and they announced with glee that a Siberian cold snap was on it´s way to Euskadi. On hearing the comment I chuckled to myself ,wondering if they were talking about the weather or once again talking in metaphor about the worsening economic situation.
It seems we are about to enter recession again and economic recovery once again seems like a pipe dream. When i got into the car and tuned into my local radio station there it was again, the cold spell warning, so indeed they were refering to the weather. It seems that we are about to be hit with a wave of sub zero temperatures across the country that could last up to a week or ten days.
In the 16 years i have been residing in Bilbao I have yet to experience cold that in scotland is commonplace. We have often been threatened with short , sharp cold spells but in the end they have rarely come to anything, but this time it appears to be imminent.
So what can we do?
Wrap up, hot water bottles in bed and lots of hot drinks(hot toadies being my choice) and just grin and bear it. As for the economics how I wish it were so easy.