Bruce Springsteen has commented on the recent death of One Direction singer Liam Payne at the age of 31, telling The Telegraph, “That’s not an unusual thing in my business.”
“It’s a normal thing. It’s a business that puts enormous pressures on young people,” he elaborated. “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. “
Springsteen says to compensate artists turn to drugs or alcohol “to take some of that pressure off,” something that’s not foreign to him or his band.
“I mean, I’ve had my own wrestling with different things,” he says. “Drugs were not uncommon in the E Street Band, you know.”
But Bruce drew the line on those things affecting his live shows.
“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,” he said. “And so it made a bit of a boundary around that stage, where people had to be relatively sober and at their best.”
He added, “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.”
After Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau mentioned artists who died young like Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, Springsteen added, “and people continue to fall to it. It’s a death cult.”
“It’s a grift, man. That’s a part of the story that suckers some young people in, you know, but it’s that old story,” he added. “Dying young – good for the record company, but what’s in it for you?”
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