Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Anyone expecting outspoken rocker Bruce Springsteen to spend his keynote address here at the South by Southwest music conference talking about his new No. 1 album or the politically divided state of the country may have gotten a surprise.
Instead, Springsteen delivered a rousing, witty and personal history of his varied music influences -- from Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan to James Brown to Hank Williams -- punctuating his points by playing snippets of songs on a guitar. He also offered a little veteran advice for the thousands of young, unknown musicians who have descended upon Austin in the hopes of making it big.
"Stay hard. Stay hungry. Stay alive," he said in his familiar rasp. "And when you walk onstage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it's all you have."
Springsteen is at SXSW to help launch "Wrecking Ball," his 17th studio album, which voices his frustrations over what he sees as a lack of accountability by government and financial leaders for the country's economic woes. Several members of his E Street Band were in the audience, and he and the band were scheduled to perform at a 2,000-seat theater Thursday night in Austin before kicking off a North American arena tour Sunday in Atlanta.
Thursday afternoon's event placed the current Rolling Stone cover boy in an unusual setting: Behind a podium in a packed convention hall -- and in the middle of the day, no less. Looking a little bleary-eyed, Springsteen took the stage 30 minutes late, carrying his notes on sheafs of paper, and immediately complained about the time.
"How important can this speech be if we're giving it at noon?" he asked. "Every decent musician in town is asleep. Or they will be when I'm done with this thing."
Springsteen began his talk by marveling at the thousands of bands, in almost every musical genre, who are playing Austin this week and how that would have been inconceivable to him as a young music fan. He then pointed out how fractured the music landscape has become and how hard it is for consumers with divergent tastes to gain critical consensus around an artist -- including himself.
In what may have been an allusion to today's manufactured pop stars, he argued that what matters most in music is "purity of human expression," not looks or labels or digital format.
"We live in a post-authentic world. Today authenticity is a house of mirrors," he said in his hourlong talk. "It's about what you're bringing [onstage] when the lights go down."
Springsteen then began recounting his personal journey through music, beginning when he first saw Presley on "The Ed Sullivan Show" at age 6. He managed to get his hands on a rented guitar, but his hands were too small to play it, so he just struck rock poses in front of the mirror. "I still do that," he said with a chuckle.
source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/15/showbiz/springsteen-keynote-sxsw/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
