Bruce Springsteen ‘was not comfortable’ in Los Angeles or New York, feels ‘safe’ in New Jersey

Bruce Springsteen stands by his New Jersey roots, shunning Los Angeles and New York to stay near his hometown of Freehold.

"It’s certainly not Los Angeles," Springsteen told The Sunday Times in a new interview. "I feel safe here. This is where my people are, where the folks I wrote about are. I was never a worldly young man."

The "Born to Run" singer said he was "not comfortable in Los Angeles for the time I lived there" during the 80s and 90s and "was not comfortable in New York" either.

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"I don’t think you can find photographs of me falling out of nightclubs in either of them. And when Patti and I had children, we were not comfortable about them growing up in Los Angeles. I grew up on a block that had six houses with my relatives in them, so we came back here. The kids had aunts and uncles nearby and it was a good payoff for not being where the industry is: normal life." 

He added, "You know, it’s funny. You grow up in a place that you weren’t so sure about for a variety of reasons. Then, whether for nostalgia or the feeling that you’re on solid ground, you find yourself returning. Now I love my hometown."

Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa have three children, Sam, a firefighter, Evan, a music content editor, and Jessica an Olympic silver medalist equestrian.

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The 75-year-old said he and Patti deliberately kept their family out of the spotlight, though the kids weren’t unaware of who their dad was.

"When they were little, if they heard me on the radio they would go, ‘Bruce Springsteen!’ It was their way of separating their dad from this abstract character who also seemed to be a part of their lives," he said. 

The "Dancing in the Dark" singer continued, "A lot of times, we just didn’t expose them to it. They came to concerts a few times before going back to their rooms to play video games, and didn’t know much about it beyond what they may have read. When they were older they wanted to bring their friends to the show, but apart from that, they chose their own lives, developed their own work, found their own partners and families, all at a nice distance from the strangeness of my job."

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In 2017, Springsteen told The New York Times his kids had "a healthy disinterest" in his career.

"We had our kids late, I was 40 when our first son was born, and they showed a healthy disinterest in our work over all the years. They had their own musical heroes, they had their own music they were interested in. They’d be pretty blank-faced if someone mentioned a song title of mine, and I always looked upon that as that we did a good job," Springsteen said.