Springsteen Readying New Album

Bruce Springsteen has already begun his follow-up to last year's Wrecking Ball collection. Springsteen recently headed into the studio with the E Street Band while on tour in Australia, along with Steven Van Zandt's temporary sub, guitarist Tom Morello. Springsteen told Rolling Stone, "We've never had a recording session during a tour in our lives. We did a couple of things that I wanted to put down. So that was very exciting. And being with Tommy was exciting. The band -- Steven, Nils (Lofgren), all those guys -- continues to be a source of inspiration for me." He added: "I have stuff I'm working on that I'm very happy about. I hate to say, because I don't like to be wrong. But I have a lot of material. I still feel like I'm in the middle of the well."

Springsteen, who was renown for laboring over new albums for years on end, has recently been releasing new music on a schedule closer to the way most artists work: "I always used to say, in the past decades, that I wanted to make more records -- and I've done that. I struggled through the '90s. (The E Street Band) weren't playing together and I didn't know how we sounded on record. (Producer) Brendan O'Brien gave us that gift. It gave us a rebirth and inspired me, I believe, to write more songs. Of course, it was a decade with an awful lot going on in the United States and elsewhere."