Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen emerges in The Andy Warhol Diaries as both a live performer and a media figure: a high-voltage presence before a vast audience, yet also someone whose appeal Warhol measures through small gestures, backstage stories, and the prospect of an Interview cover. The entries connect his public image to performance, romance, and charity without turning these passing encounters into a fuller biography.

Public Image and Personal Appeal

In an August 1985 account, Dolly Fox tells Warhol about introducing her friend Julianne to Springsteen. She had persuaded Julianne to see him; backstage, the two exchanged looks, and Dolly described the attraction as immediate. Warhol asked whether Dolly had slept with Springsteen before making the introduction and whether Julianne had slept with him that first night. Dolly said she had not slept with him, though she had nearly done so, and that Julianne had not slept with him on the first night. The exchange presents Springsteen through reported romantic intrigue, not through a direct account of his relationship with Julianne.

The Meadowlands Concert

On September 1, 1985, Warhol went with Dolly and Keith Haring to Springsteen’s concert at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. They had press-room tickets but stayed on the floor, amid what Warhol remembered as a sea of people. Dolly and Keith were struck by how many young fans from New Jersey asked Warhol for autographs, placing the concert’s mass enthusiasm alongside Warhol’s own familiar celebrity recognition.

The show ran from 7:00 to 11:30. Warhol described Springsteen as a little fireball and noted that he spoke about restoring jobs to the steel mills while leaving his Democratic affiliation implicit. He found the stage movement loose enough to question whether it counted as choreography, joked that he himself might manage it, and imagined he could be good at slam dancing. His response was not simply a review of the performance: he singled out Springsteen’s giggling laugh and said that he had become good-looking, unlike when he was younger. The crowd, the political references, the movement, and the laugh combine into a portrait of a performer whose appeal registered with Warhol both as spectacle and as personal charm.

Charity and Interview

A few days after the concert, Warhol said he had learned that Springsteen gave away a great deal of his money. That information changed his estimation of the singer: Warhol said he liked him now and immediately considered whether Interview could feature him on its cover when he wanted publicity for Farm Aid. The thought links Springsteen’s charitable reputation to the magazine’s celebrity-making machinery. An act of giving becomes, in Warhol’s account, both a reason for renewed personal approval and a possible occasion for publicity—an intersection of public image, philanthropy, and editorial opportunity.