Bruce Springsteen: 'Donald Trump is undermining the entire democratic tradition'

Bruce Springsteen has again condemned Donald Trump, with less than a month before the US presidential election. Springsteen, who had previously called the Republican presidential candidate “a moron”, told an audience in London: “It’s a terrible thing that’s happening in the States. He’s undermining the entire democratic tradition.”

Springsteen was speaking at an invitation-only event for European press at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London to promote his autobiography, Born to Run. When asked by host Antoine de Caunes to explain to Europeans the appeal of Trump, Springsteen replied: “Nobody’s been able to explain that.”

Springsteen also paid further tribute to Bob Dylan, following the latter winning the Nobel prize in literature. “Like a Rolling Stone was the first time I heard a version of my country that felt naggingly real,” he said. “Long after all of us are forgotten, Bob’s work is going to be ringing out loud and clear.” He contrasted Dylan’s writing favourably with his own work: “Bob’s certainly a poet. I’m a hardworking journeyman.”

Born to Run dealt extensively with Springsteen’s family, covering not just his relationship with his parents and grandparents, but also the changes parenthood had wrought on his own life. He said the final section of the book, “writing about everyone you know now”, was the hardest to write. “I showed my kids the things I wrote about them,” he said. “Patti [Scialfa, his wife] and I discussed that section of the book and she didn’t change anything, [though] she wasn’t necessarily comfortable with everything. There were some things I wasn’t comfortable with myself. But she gave me a lot of room to explore.”

Discussing how his troubled relationship with his father had affected his own parenting, he spoke of how people honour their own parents by trying to steer away from the things they had difficulty with and by passing on the things they did well. “The difficult thing was not having a role model to pass on what it meant to be a good parent,” he said. That meant being a father “did not come naturally: the suspension of deep personal time; the giving over of yourself at any moment of the day. I was used to my work taking over my time. It was my sacred space. To have ‘Hey! I need a ride to Billy’s house,’ was something it took me a while to get used to. But I have a good relationship with my kids. I wouldn’t say I was perfect, but I did OK.”

He spoke, too, about how playing live had helped him cope with the depression that had struck him at intervals over the past 30 years. Playing such long sets – Springsteen routinely goes well past three hours when performing with the E Street Band – meant he would be “too tired to be depressed. To be depressed you need to have certain amount of energy, to go hunting through the weeds. There’s also a great centring element that wards off [the effects of depression]. It hardens your centre; that wards off self doubt and the unproductive questioning that comes with depression.”