Dear Tom, Hope all is well. In regards to some of the criticism you say you've been taking for your great album, some real smart guy once said "he who is not busy being born, is busy dying" (Dylan). I still hold that to be true. I can't count the amount of changes I've been through that have pissed off some fans. If you have a long career, not only will that happen over and over again, but it's supposed to. The Clash's second album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, was produced by Sandy Pearlman, high production values, hard guitars, and received some similar criticism from "the faithful." Who remembers that now besides old guys like me? Nobody. All they remember is the Clash went on to be one of the most important bands we'd ever seen. It just comes with the turf. If you're not reaching out beyond the audience you have to the greater audience you might have, you'll never find out what your band is truly capable of, what it's worth, and how much meaning you can bring into your fans' lives. If you act honorably, which means writing well, performing like it's the only thing that matters on a nightly basis, and giving the best of yourself to pull out the best in your audience, you've done your job. Then you let the chips fall where they may. Protect your heart, your art, your band, your friendships, then CHARGE ON, BROTHER, CHARGE ON! I'll be catching up with you along the way. Come out and see us any time.—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Journal Entries by Laura Jane Grace
Tomorrow we're headlining the Saints and Sinners Festival. Ticket sales are low. The promoter overpaid for us and he's losing his ass. There's mythology surrounding the area here, the convention center is cool because it's forever tied to Springsteen but it sounds like shit playing there unless you're actually Springsteen. This is our schedule for the day:8:00 AM—Bus Arrives at Venue
8:45 AM—Crew Lobby Call
9:00 AM—Load In
10:15 AM—Band Lobby call
10:30 AM—Sound Check
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM—Radio interview with WHTG
2:00 PM to 5:00 PM—Photo shoot for Magnet Magazine 6:30 PM—Interview with XM Radio
7:00 PM—Interview with WSOU
7:30 PM—Interview with the Cleveland Scene
10:30 PM—Set Time
You can't help but feel a little ridiculous being in a punk band that's playing at the House Of Blues in Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida. The stage is walking distance from Pleasure Island for fuck's sake. Outside of the venue, families amble along, pushing strollers carrying whiny brats wearing Mickey Mouse ears on their heads while high on sugar and cartoon fantasies. The location trivializes anything you have to say on stage. What a joke we are and the audience knows it.You don't see all the people in the room who are singing along with their fists pumping in the air. You just see the people in the room who aren't singing along. You see the people leaving through the ones who stay.Punks yell "fuck New Wave!" in between every song we play. They hate our new album. I'm a fool and I let it get to me. I can't focus and I play horribly. The set feels like it's never going to end. I'd like to think that wasn't me up on stage tonight but it was.This is the first time I've ever really hated being on tour. I want to go back to the bus and crawl into my bunk and die. I want my heart to stop beating. The band and crew can find me blue-faced and cold to the touch in the morning.
Andrew starts off the conversation apologizing. I apologize to Andrew in return. Warren tells me how much he doesn't like me. "I like you when you make an effort." Warren tells me this band isn't his whole life, it's just part of his life. He tells me that if the band broke up today he wouldn't die. I tell Warren that if the band were to break up today that I would feel like I was dying. Warren wants to tour less and spend more time with his "loved ones." He makes a point in emphasizing "loved ones" a couple times when talking. He is telling me that I am not one of his "loved ones." I get it.I tell Warren that I'm just blown away that he's surprised by our hectic schedule right now and that if he didn't want to tour he shouldn't have signed a fucking million-dollar major label record deal. You don't get the money for free. You have to work for it. Warren tells me we aren't very inspiring right now. I make the argument that this is the most inspiring we've ever been. It may be ugly but who's to say ugliness isn't inspiring? We're absolutely pushed to our limits. We're climbing Everest. Frostbite has set in. This journey will surely cost limbs. We've run out of food and we're turning to cannibalism. No one gets to leave with their sanity intact. That wouldn't be fair. There's a whole big world full of sensible balanced people, what's so goddamn inspiring about any of them?
The past two days have taken years off of my life. I've talked to a million people—friends I wish I could talk to more, journalists I feel stupid for talking to, and label suits I never want to talk to again. If the past couple of days were made into a cartoon flip book, it would be one of me progressively fading.We have a rule about not playing shows on Monday nights but here we are playing a show on a Monday night. No one is paying attention to what we're agreeing to anymore. Interviews all day long today, radio station performance, meet and greet with contest winners, then finally after all that, we play a show.I worry. I worry that I'm losing my hair. I worry that I'm getting fat. I worry that I'm going to have a cocaine-induced stroke and spend the rest of my life using my diminished brain capacity to think about how I had it all and then I threw it away. I worry that I'm going to get arrested and convicted of a crime and then sentenced to years in jail. I worry that it will be a sentence just long enough to leave me with some life left when I get out but forever damaged, emotionally dead. I worry that I am too self-centered and egotistical, arrogant and vain. I worry.We all joked as we headed up on stage tonight that we should get matching shovel tattoos. We've been digging deep.I've ignored a call from my father everyday since my birthday.November 22, 2007—Chicago, IL
Just woke up from a dream. Andrew's wife and I are lying side by side on our backs on the floor of the otherwise empty tour bus. I have female genitalia, a detail which I am ecstatic about.Verité slides her hand down into her pants and starts pleasuring herself. I do the same. She tells me how happy she is for me and how glad she is that we can relate to each other in this way. She turns and moves in to kiss me and her face freezes in time. She is suddenly grotesque and unbeautiful. The thought of my wife enters my head and I pull away. I rise to my feet and her face melts into a look of embarrassment and rejection.In the dream, Andrew and the rest of the band and crew come crowding back into the bus. We act natural, like nothing was going on."I'm sorry," I silently mouth to Verité. Dream ends.I've taken three shots of Scotch in an attempt to put myself back to sleep. It only makes me want another shot of Scotch. I don't even like Scotch.Copyright 2016 by Total Treble, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Hachette Books, New York, NY. All rights reserved.This article appears in the October issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.