Bruce Springsteen has voiced his worries about the “enormous pressures” that the music industry imposes on young artists.
Reflecting on the recent tragic death of 31-year-old Liam Payne, who fell from his hotel balcony, the 75-year-old rock icon pointed out that such incidents are not rare. Many celebrities find it difficult to cope with fame, often turning to drugs and alcohol.
In a conversation with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Bruce, who has been candid about his own struggles with depression, stated: “That’s not an unusual thing in my business. It’s a normal thing. It’s a business that puts enormous pressure on young people.”
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“Young people don’t have the inner facility or the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame.”
“So they get lost in a lot of the difficult and often pain-inducing [things]… whether it’s drugs or alcohol to take some of that pressure off,” reports the Express US. “I understand that very well. I mean, I’ve had my own wrestling with different things.”
While acknowledging that his E Street band has faced “their own issues” over the years, he stressed that he always set limits regarding their behavior while on tour.
He further added: “The band has all wrestled with their own issues. And Danny [Federici] certainly did. Drugs were not uncommon in the E Street Band, you know.”
“There was a boundary, however I stayed out of your business, but if I was on stage and I saw that you were not your complete self, there was going to be a problem.”
“And so it made a bit of a boundary around that stage, where people had to be relatively sober and at their best.”
“And I always say, one of the things I was proudest of is that if one of my fellas passed on, they passed on of natural causes.”
The conversation shifted when Bruce reflected on the tragic early demises of music legends like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain.
Bruce lamented: “And people continue to fall to it. It’s a death cult..”
“It’s all just a charade, man. That aspect of the narrative hooks in the youngsters, right? But seriously, it’s that old plot – dying young might thrill the record labels, but exactly what does the artist get out of it? “.