Bruce Springsteen is gearing up to hit the road in support of his newly-released album, “High Hopes”, and he says he’s considering offering official live bootlegs on the tour.
“I think we live more in a touring idea that everything you do is recorded now,” Springsteen tells NPR. “And that's OK with me, you know. As a matter of fact, I believe on this tour, we're starting to do something like you can come in, you can buy a [wrist]band, you can get a copy of the night's show. So hopefully we're gonna do that at a really nice-quality level.”
The notoriously controlling artist has opened up his mind to sharing material, especially online.
“I think I'd like to get an archival series going in some way,” he says. “I'd like to make things more available through the Internet. The Internet has become our friend, you know. We went to South America — hadn't been to South America in 25 years — we played for a lot of people. And I guarantee you very few of them had ever seen us before but I was shocked by how knowledgeable they were about the band. The first night we went into Santiago, Chile, and I realized after a few songs: "I got it. The Internet." In other words, if you're anywhere today, you're everywhere. There's no such thing as having not gone someplace anymore.”
“We sold 40,000 seats like the first day in Johannesburg,” he continues. “We've never been there. But you've been there somehow, because someone wants to come and see you. So the Internet now is something that I'm becoming very interested in and trying to find ways of just, you know, getting more music out there. I mean, I'm not gonna be, you know I'm not gonna be tweeting. Somebody tweeted — I think I have someone that tweets for me, you know — "Real men don't tweet" or something. I don't know, something. But someone has tweeted in my name."
“We have our little website and we've been throwing some things from the last tour,” he explains. “If there was a great performance that night, somebody can mix it quickly. We got a guy who directs the show great. And suddenly, we caught a version of "New York City Serenade" from Rome that I was just so glad we had, you know? It was one of those things like it was just a perfect night; we had a string section and the guys played it beautifully. And when I saw it, I said, "I'm so glad this exists." And it wouldn't exist if we weren't thinking about getting it out that way and doing those things. So I'm looking forward to expanding and using more of that in the future and hopefully our fans will enjoy it and it'll give us another canvas to paint on.”
Springsteen begins his world tour in support of the record on January 26 in Cape Town, the first of four shows in South Africa where he is performing for the very first time; a month-long tour of Australia and New Zealand starts in Perth on February 5.
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