Peter Ames Carlin

In Bruce's eyes sound a lot like, you know, unhappy music executives who are telling him that like your time's running out, kid.

You know, this is your moment and you either have to make this happen or you're going to go away forever.

But in Bruce's eyes, just the fact that he had this dream and that's what did him in, you know, as they say, it's the hope that kills you.

Yes, right.

And it's also in some ways a retelling.

And this is something that John Landau told me explicitly.

This is an album that begins with a woman named Mary.

and ends in what is essentially a sonic envisioning of a crucifixion, which is that sound at the end of Jungleland where Bruce makes these howls that no one –

the death of the magic rat.

And finally Bruce said, I think I got something.

And he went into the studio and put on his headphones and they played those last bars and he began to make that wailing sound that he makes over those last few moments of that song.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, in some ways, you know, some of the musicians just had an easier go of it because they were, you know, laying down the basic tracks and taking off.

But it was the people whose work was getting overdubbed, like Clarence Clemons' saxophone work, where he really got put through the ringer because Bruce had such a very specific sense of exactly what he wanted to hear.

And fortunately, he had chosen musicians who were hardy enough and dedicated enough to help bring that about.

Sometimes, though, Bruce was trying to get every aspect of it just exactly right.

And sometimes that meant he would shut everything down and sit there trying to rewrite a line and be sitting silently for two, three, four hours.

Or he would, in trying to get the right guitar tone, he would play two notes over and over again.

And Stephen Appel, who was Mike's younger brother, who was working as a road manager and kind of