David Sancious, original E Street Band keyboardist, says Bruce Springsteen has recorded a follow-up to last year’s soul and R&B covers album, Only The Strong Survive, and will likely be touring it next year. Speaking in the new issue of MOJO, on sale next Tuesday (June 20), David Sancious revealed that he’d been in the studio with Springsteen working on 18 covers.
“I’ve just worked on Bruce’s sequel to Only The Strong Survive. He’s got 18 more covers of Motown and classic R&B,” Sancious told MOJO’s Martin Aston. “And next year, I should be touring the album with Bruce.”
Sancious first played with Springsteen when he was a teenager and was a founding member of the E Street Band. He left in 1974 to pursue a solo career but reunited with Springsteen to work on 1992’s Human Touch and Western Stars in 2019. Springsteen took the band’s name from the road in Belmar, New Jersey where Sancious’ mother lived and where the group would frequently have rehearsals.
“I’m still touched by the E Street Band name,” Sancious told MOJO. “We were driving, thinking up band names, when we turned the corner onto my street, and Bruce saw the street sign, and kept repeating it. At the next rehearsal, he confirmed it. He said I was a very important part of the band and we need a name, and it sounded good.”
I was prepared to have that conversation with myself and all my ghosts from that period of my life…
Bruce Springsteen
Elsewhere in MOJO’s in-depth Springsteen cover feature, Warren Zanes speaks to Springsteen about his childhood in New Jersey, the making of The River, his 1982 masterpiece Nebraska and its follow-up, Born In The USA.
“There was a certain sense of being ready to come to some sort of grips with that part of my life and childhood.” Springsteen tells Zanes about his return in 1982 to the New Jersey neighbourhood where he grew up, a move which inspired Nebraska’s stark soul-searching. “I had brought myself to a place where I was prepared to have that conversation with myself and all my ghosts from that period of my life…”
Read the full interview in the new issue of MOJO, on sale next week and available to order HERE.
“Springsteen gave himself artistic immortality…” Read MOJO’s verdict on Deliver Me From Nowhere, the inside story of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 masterpiece Nebraska.