Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band are famous for their exhaustive three- and four-hour shows. But when The Boss and the band play the Super Bowl halftime show this Sunday, the star will instead perform "a 12-minute party."
According to The Associated Press, Springsteen and the band sat down in Tampa, Florida for a press conference - their first in 20 years - to talk about the halftime show. Springsteen joked about his lack of football knowledge, and when asked why he decided to play the Super Bowl he laughed and said, "We've got a new record coming out, dummy!"
Springsteen's latest CD, Working On A Dream, was released earlier this week. He plans to embark on a world tour in San Jose,California on 1 April.
"We've got a new record coming out, dummy!" Bruce Springsteen, giving one reason why he's playing the Super Bowl
NFL tried to lure Bruce for years
For years Springsteen declined invitations to play the Super Bowl, unsure that a sports event was the appropriate venue for his music. This year, however, he had a change of heart.
"Initially, it was sort of a novelty and so it didn't quite feel right," he explained. "But it was just like, this is the year. Bands of our generation, you can sort of be seen on a stage like this or, like, not seen. There's not a lot of middle places. It is a tremendous venue."
It'll be like a Jersey show
Elaborating on how his brief appearance is going to be like a "12-minute party," Springsteen had this to say: "The idea of the show is, you are going to the Meadowlands [a concert venue in New Jersey], you get lost on the way. You are watching your clock, 'Damn, the show is starting right now.' You stop at a bar to get some directions, and the bar gets held up while you are there. So that takes another 45 minutes to get out of there.
"You come back and you miss your exit on the turnpike, and you are driving to get back around. And so you make it into the stadium two hours and 48 minutes into the show - that's what you are going to see: the last 12 minutes!"
Having seen dozens of Springsteen shows over the years, we can truthfully say that those last 12 minutes rock like nobody's business.
