Bruce Springsteen has been reflecting on how the deaths of young artists before their time have become a “normal thing” in the music industry.
In a new interview with Daily Telegraph, conversation turned to recent events regarding Liam Payne, who died last month after falling from a Buenos Aires hotel room. Although the investigation into the ex-One Direction singer’s death has yet to conclude, a partial autopsy revealed traces of drugs were body in his bloodstream, as well as in his room.
The 31-year-old’s struggles with drugs and his mental health have been well documented and have led some to speculate whether his death was suicide. It should be noted that Payne had been in the music business for over half his life – he first auditioned for The X Factor when he was 15.
"That's not an unusual thing in my business, it's a normal thing,” said Springsteen. “It's a business that puts enormous pressures on young people."
"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.
"I understand that very well. I mean, I've had my own wrestling with different things. The band has all wrestled with their own issues."
As an up-and-coming musician during rock’s Wild West era - the 1970s, Springsteen was well aware of the temptations out there and the E Street Band were no strangers to drugs.
However, their leader did strive to keep them off the stage: "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."
And the 75-year-old singer-songwriter acknowledged the morbid glamour that attaches itself to young stars who burn out before they fade away. He even directly referred to this tendency as a “death cult.”
“It’s a grift, man,” he said. “That’s a part of the story that suckers some young people in, you know, but it’s that old story. Dying young (is) good for the record company, but what’s in it for you?”
