Bruce Springsteen

Happy Memorial Day! And a heads-up that a Nils Lofgren interview will be airing on “Andy Sedlak’s Back Door Radio Hour” tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday, May 29) at 3:00 p.m. Andy tells us, “We talked about his new solo album, Sacred Weapon, his new live DVD, Nils Lofgren & Friends Live Acoustic, the online guitar lessons available via his website, songwriting, a few stories behind songs on the new album, his work with Neil Young, the mentality before a Bruce Springsteen show and just what it’s like to play for 20,000 people on a nightly basis with Bruce, why he got kicked off his high school football team, and who he roots for now. We were busy, right?” The show airs on WWSU 106.9 in Dayton, OH; hear it online at listen.to/wssu.Andy mentioned the guitar lessons at nilslofgren.com, something we recently spoke with Nils about in-depth as well, for an upcoming issue of Backstreets magazine (new issue coming soon, we swear!). Fifteen bucks for each hour-long lesson from one of the true guitar greats? We figure that’s worth paying attention to. His latest virtual class is for the “Countin’ on a Miracle” solo… here’s Nils talking to Backstreets’ Roderick Jones about that solo’s genesis:

We were on a plane flying into Amsterdam after a great show. Bruce came up to me and said, “You know, for the show tomorrow night I’d like you to put together a little acoustic opener for ‘Counting on a Miracle.’”

I was up all night working on this thing, really being kind of ruthless. Like, look, tomorrow night I’m doing a show in Amsterdam. I want to have a piece that Bruce will sign off on that I can play.

I wound up being so excited that, even though I was tired, I stayed up all night long, played all day long. I was playing in the van to the soundcheck!  I’ll never forget, at the end of the soundcheck… they wanted to open the doors. So, we gotta stop, and we were walking off the stage, and I stopped Bruce and I said, “Bruce, I don’t know if I wanna play this ‘Miracle’ piece cold on you, but I got something that I think might work.”

He said, “Let me hear it.” So we stopped the doors from opening for another 45 seconds, and I played it quick. He said, “That might work, give it a shot tonight.”

And I did, and it worked, and I was able to use it every time that we played that song for the rest of the tour. That was literally a creation that was done in, like, 18 hours.

Check out the Nils Lofgren Guitar School for Lesson 1: “Keith Don’t Go”; Lesson 2: “Harmonics”; and Lesson 3: “Miracle Intro, Part One.” New lessons are added monthly

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