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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This album walks an interesting line between the personal and political. But if you say ''political,'' people get scared.
JON LANDAU: My favorite song on the album is ''Long Walk Home,'' where he sings, ''that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone.'' And that's followed by the reference to ''what we'll do and what we won't.'' And I think at that point, the listener knows what he's talking about, without him getting hyper-literal.
So I think there is a commentary and an expression about things. But I think it's always part of a bigger thought. It's not an end in itself. And I don't think Bruce is engaged in writing political music as it's commonly understood. Now, with the Seeger Sessions band, he recorded an old-fashioned political song, ''Bring 'Em Home,'' Pete [Seeger]'s own song. He did add quite a bit of his own lyrics to it. And he was also doing a great early '30s song, ''How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live.'' So in the context of doing a tour that focused on other people's writing, he picked up some very direct types of things. But in his own writing, I've never known him to be fundamentally [political]. The political implications of the songs are just that: they're implications that come out of a larger vision.
Do you miss being in the producer's chair, since you haven't done that since the early '90s?
No. I started out as a ''legendary rock critic.'' My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor. I took a hiatus from that, and then got back into the production thing when Bruce and I met up. And after we did Born to Run, I continued to work as a freelance producer, trying to build my skills and reputation; I made The Pretender with Jackson [Browne]. But after that, from Darkness on, basically because somewhere in that process I added the hat of being a manager, I was pretty much just taken up with working with Bruce.
By the time we got to the '90s, after all the thousands and thousands of hours we had spent sitting side by side in the studio, I felt whatever it was I had to offer, I had done. Whatever I know and whatever talents I have, Bruce had absorbed them. So my presence wasn't required. So in the '90s, I stopped producing and sort of expanded our management work. We did quite a bit with Natalie Merchant and Train, and had a wonderful time with Shania Twain for six years or so. That was great fun, because from a management point of view, we got to do a lot of things that one doesn't do with Bruce, because they're not appropriate for Bruce.
But at the same time, I was sort of looking for who could be a fresh influence in the studio for Bruce. Now that I was out of the equation, for a while he continued with our great production partner, Chuck Plotkin. But at a certain point, it seemed like there was a need to shake things up. It was actually our pal Donnie Ienner [former head of Columbia Records] who said the guy to look into was Brendan O'Brien. I sort of investigated Brendan a little bit and became convinced that that was potentially a great idea. And eventually Bruce decided to explore the idea of having a fresh producer.... That took a while for him to absorb. But once the two of them sat down, they formed a relationship very quickly. Bruce himself is a great record producer. It's just that producing entirely on your own has some of the shortcomings of a lawyer doing his own case. And Brendan brings in this state-of-the-art skill set. The second or third night he was recording with Brendan, Bruce called me. He's kidding around and he says ''Jon, this is fantastic. This is just better than I could have expected.'' So I said, ''Well, what's his method?'' He said, ''His technique is very simple. Let me explain to you how he does it. First you go in and play, right? Then you come in and listen to the playback, and it sounds phenomenal. That's his method.'' [Laughs]
NEXT PAGE: ''The fundamentals of managing Bruce involve three major things... One is writing great songs, two is making the best album he can make, and three, doing the best show he can do. Everything else is a lesser issue.''
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