You ask for your audience's investment in your music; you're in a relationship with them. And their relationship with the E Street Band is separate from whatever else I might do. I like the idea of us being something that people rely on.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of a deep connection between an artist and their audience, likening it to a relationship.
Bruce Springsteen highlights the symbiotic relationship between musicians and their audiences, suggesting that audiences invest emotionally in their music. This connection creates a bond that transcends the artist's other endeavors, as fans come to rely on the music and the experience it provides, underlining the significance of this relationship in the realm of performance art.
In practice
During a concert, a musician could use this quote to emphasize their appreciation for their fans.
I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.
I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart _x000D_ _x000D_ Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts.
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell_x000D_ And I feel like I'm comin' home.
The artists we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, and on your heart and your soul.
Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.
I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't.
My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.
Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.
My songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.
I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn't want to go on!
I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.
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