Tonight in New York, one week from today in New Jersey – the EZ Street Band!
We recently discovered that there are few better things in life than hopping on a call with Hank Azaria. He is as personable and kind as he is clever and quick. There is a comforting essence to his voice, whether that be from its familiarity, or its humble and sincere tone. He is authentic as they come, which is ironic given that he has made a name for himself by modulating how he talks and adopting the vocal inflections of people and characters alike.
However, upon turning 60 this spring, the voice acting legend and TV/film star accidentally stumbled upon a new gig: rockstar. Not just any ‘ol rockstar, though – The Boss.
He wanted to perform a set as Bruce Springsteen at his 60th birthday party and started on the journey of transforming into him for a handful of songs, learning his quirks and studying his music and interviews in a way he had never before. A tough job to mimic The Boss? Sure. A worthwhile one for a lifelong fan? Absolutely. A true passion project that changed the course of Hank Azaria’s 60-year-old life? Without a doubt.
A New Yorker through-and-through, Azaria grew up a fan of New Jersey’s pride and joy (like most of us). Little did he know that his studying of The Boss at the time would come in handy way down the road, because today he is in preparing to take the stage at Brooklyn Bowl… as Bruce Springsteen. Currently in the midst of his first run of dates as Hank Azaria & the EZ Street Band, the actor is performing a tribute to The Boss that combines his well-known, well-loved voice acting skills with his own life story as a fan and disciple of the real E Street Band. These shows, while fresh to the local rock and roll circuit, are not rooted in being ‘a cover band.’ No – these shows honor the life and legacy of Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band through all-too-accurate mimicry, genuine care, and personal reflection. (The way he slips into a fiercely accurate, heartwarmingly gritty Springsteen voice is second-to-none.) The artistry of The Boss is not even close to being tainted by this impression, nor by this mutual adoration of both band and fans. This little tour is a celebration, and this new project of Azaria’s is a labor of love.
Hank Azaria and his innumerable talents have been part of the cultural zeitgeist for close to 40 years with career highlights including Tuesdays with Morrie, The Birdcage, Friends, Night at the Museum, Brockmire, The Simpsons, Along Came Polly, and Ray Donovan. His list of awards and accolades range from Tony nominations to Primetime Emmy wins. He is also a devoted father, a charitable activist, father, and holds an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Tuft University, due to his humanitarian and philanthropic endeavors. None of it has been taken for granted – not even close. However, this ‘becoming’ of Springsteen for a few hours a night is a dream he didn’t know he had, come true, and as original fans of The Boss & Co., we had to pick his humorous, hard-working brain.
On performing at The Stone Pony, Bruce Springsteen’s famous original stomping grounds: “No question about it – I definitely feel the weight and the importance of [The Stone Pony]. It hasn’t hit me yet, though. As Billie Jean King famously said, ‘Pressure is a privilege.’ It hits me more like that, just as a significant moment for me, personally, growing up loving Bruce and hearing about The Stone Pony. I’ve never been there before. I grew up in Queens. I haven’t spent that much time in Jersey, but, you know, we’re all East Coast brothers in our Springsteen love. So, for me, I literally can’t wait for this, and I do feel the responsibility, shall we say, of delivering the best show possible at The Stone Pony.”
On taking to the stage: “We’ve just sort of started doing it – concerts and touring. I didn’t set out to do this, really. I just set out to have some fun and do something that would bring me joy, because I was turning 60 and I kind of got very into this because I’m already a vocal nut [Laughs]. I got kind of obsessed with unlocking this impression of Bruce. Then it was kind of a weird backdoor into learning to sing properly as best I can, which I’m still doing. This became this big joy bomb that I didn’t intend, but I’m so glad I stumbled onto it even so late in life.
And, you know, the joy in it is real for all of us on stage. It feels like the joy in the audience is real, too. I mean, we all know what it’s like to be at an actual Bruce show and sing along and how that feels great. People ask me, ‘Do you feel like a rock star?’ And the truth is, I don’t. I feel like what I am, which is a fan who is fortunate enough to get up on stage and share this with other fans. I’m really blessed. I have this gift of mimicry that I’ve used in all kinds of different ways, and I literally can’t think of a better way to use it for myself and others than unlocking this joy of raising money for charity and singing some of my favorite songs. I realized this the first time we did a live gig, that we look with any artist you love, any recording of artist you love – when you see them live, it’s a joyful experience and, I guess some more than others, depending on how great they are live, but we all know how great Bruce is live. With Bruce’s music, the poetry of it and the cinematic quality of it, the movies that play in your brain, I think, are a huge part of the appeal of his music. Certainly that’s true for me. And I share not only a mimicry of it and a celebration of it on stage, but my own story, too, of connecting myself personally to the music. I think that what’s fun; everybody in that audience has their own poetry, their own movie that plays when they hear any song, and anybody could get up there, really, and share their story of that song, which it would be a really pretty entertaining moment, I think. I might do that in upcoming shows. I might have people come up and talk a little bit about what the song means to them, et cetera, so I think that’s what this show really is.”
On connecting with the work of Springsteen – new and old, on stage and off: “In our set, we do, ‘She’s The One,’ and as a lead into that song, I tell the story of the night I met my wife, which is a pretty funny story. She certainly is the one for me, by the way, but I also remember when I first heard that song when I was 12 or 13. I remember that I’ve always loved it and it’s always been in my top five of Bruce’s songs, but at that age, you are just hoping to maybe someday have a girlfriend or just feel that way about a girl, you know? Then, you cut to whatever it is – 48 years later – and I have felt that way about many women, including girlfriends, my first wife, and my current wife. So, to look back at the song, to sing that song, it has as much – if not more – resonance for me now than it did at every other stage of my life. That song has meant something different each time. I think that’s part of Bruce’s genius – they’re eternal songs. They’re evergreen, these songs. […] Bruce said himself that. I heard him say this about 10 to 15 years ago, that he had gotten away a little bit from playing the early stuff, particularly Born to Run. He revisited it at a certain point, though, because he obviously has a much different perspective now than he did then when writing it. And he said that he really felt that they held up. Those songs held up and he was happy that he felt that way. I agree, and I’m happy he feels that way about those songs, too.”
On his favorite Springsteen song: “It changes over the years. When it comes to Bruce, there’s a lot to choose from. I mean, all Bruce fans could literally make a Top 50 and it would be sort of hard, right? [Laughs] You’d still feel like you’d be leaving some songs out! ‘She’s The One’ has always been in my top, and I was gonna say ‘Thunder Road,’ too, and the entire Born to Run album. Really, though, I could stick that as my top eight or nine songs, or however many songs are on that album and I probably wouldn’t be far off. You know what surprised me, though? I got much more into Bruce’s live recordings than the album versions to learn to mimic. It’s a combination, but there’s a live recording of ‘Growing Up,’ and it’s an old one where he goes into this long story about his motorcycle accident from when he was a kid, and how there were two things unpopular in his house growing up: one was him and the other was his guitar. I sort of used that as a format to tell my own story, really, in the show. I kind of I used it to tell the story of the two times I’d actually met Bruce and made kind of a real fanboy fool outta myself. Relaying my story in that song, and also while singing my version of that song… that’s my favorite. I love singing that song more than almost any other song that we do.”
On the E Street fans, or Spring-Nuts: “The interesting thing about these audiences is that sort of specific. At first I did a set that just meant a lot to me for my birthday, and I did about 10 songs, but then for our first paid gig, we figured that we should add the super hits. So we added ‘Dancing in the Dark,’ ‘Born to Run,’ of course. We added ‘Born in the USA,’ ‘Glory Days,’ ‘Hungry Heart,’ because we wanted to add the real pop hits. I love those songs and they’re fun to play, but for true Bruce fans, for the audience for this show, you kind of can’t get too esoteric. I mean, they’re right with you on the deep cuts just as much as they are for those big hits.”
On nailing down the voice of Bruce Springsteen, and which one is harder – the speaking voice of The Boss, or the singing voice of The Boss… both of which he has had firsthand, in-person experiences with: “It’s funny, because I am more of a vocal impressionist. I’ve been doing a talking impression of Bruce since I was 15 because I just loved those bootlegs so much. We would collect them as teenagers back when you could only get vinyl. Those were the days before cassette tapes. They weren’t even on the scene yet! Every weekend we go down to the record store, and I lived in Queens, so we go down to the Village and on Eighth Street and see what new bootleg came out that week. We would get it and hear on them these things called talks, or what we called talks, Bruce’s talks. I mention this in the show – that those talks, those monologues that he did meant as much to me as the music after a while. He mentioned a lot in there about following your dreams, about being who you are, and, of course, telling stories behind the songs. I just ate that up. It got me not only into his music, but those talks really got me through a lot of hard times as a teenager and encouraged me to try to be a creative person when really nobody else was. I wouldn’t even admit to anybody I wanted to do that. I tell the story in the show about how I got to tell Bruce that in person and how I kind of overdid it a little bit in my enthusiasm [Laughs]. I mean, he was very gracious and sweet about it, you know, but he also walks the earth as kind of a God. I’m sure it’s something that he probably hears daily in one way or another, but it was really a privilege and an honor to be able to impart that to him.
Anyway, so singing was much harder. I mean, I could sort of fake my way through this or that, and I’ve had to sing my whole career, but usually just in a comedy way. I actually pretty much only sang in a comedy way, so for that you don’t really need to sing very well. You need to carry a tune and sort of convey the story of the song, so it’s ok if you talk through half of it, you know? I never really learned to sing properly for a variety of reasons, but I sort of tricked myself into trying to do that with this, because, in my mind, I wasn’t singing; I was trying to capture Bruce. I sort of tricked myself – like a Jedi mind trick into – into thinking that I had to really be meticulous about learning to sing and increasing my vocal range and just singing better. Even though we’ve got the Bruce rasp, that actually kind of makes it harder sometimes. You’ve got to sing through that smokiness! That was an unexpected joy of all this, too: to learn something at my advanced age, learn to sing, learn a new skill.”
On how this project of his is the dream of a lifetime (our words, not his, but still very true): “It is, in many ways, it is. Singing itself is a joy. That’s medically proven, like scientifically proven; something about how your vagus nerve really responds to just singing and how it’s a way to release positive endorphins and chemicals in your system, which is very addictive, actually. And then, for me having worked so hard over many, many years with many, many different vocal impressions, this one was for me. I played a French guy in this movie once and that was hard. It took like two or three months to get a good French accent. Some come easier than others, but this was the hardest one, and this is the hardest I’ve ever worked. Singing like Bruce took like six months and I’m still working on it after almost a year, but I really love it.”
On the message of this show, this project, and the idea of putting yourself first, doing what you’re interested in and love, and not living with reject: “It really is celebratory and special, this show. People have kind of come away with that from the show, and I’m really glad that they have. Young actors and performers ask me for advice, “How do I make it? What should I do? Should I try it?” And what I always say is that I knew this when I was 20 years old. I knew that I didn’t know that I would make it, but I knew that I would regret it if I didn’t try. A lot of that message was the message of Bruce’s music. I knew that I would regret it if I didn’t try, and I think that if nothing else, that’s a good reason to try something. If you have creative aspirations, follow them.”
On the slight possibility of Bruce Springsteen sauntering on stage during his Stone Pony set next week: “Well, I think he’s supposed to be in Los Angeles that week, but if he did show up, after the medics attend to me from my heart attack, we would have a nice time together [Laughs]. That’s has occurred to me and that would be like the holy grail [Laughs]. You know, there are so many things to this, but you’re right. Playing The Stone Pony? That’s a check, right? , That’s a huge bucket list thing that I didn’t even know was on my bucket list. And, of course, somehow Bruce coming up with us at some point would be incredible. I would love that, of course. That’s bigger than a bucket list! One of the things that I would have to do though would change the key, because I sing a little bit lower than Bruce – my voice is a bit deeper. So I have to sing about a step or two lower and we’d have to work out some keys and argue about what key we’re gonna sing in [Laughs], but I’m sure we can get past that. I would certainly never forget it – that is for sure.”
On picking up the physicality of Bruce Springsteen: “You know, that was really unconscious. I mean, I’m sure it was there in me already, because I’ve studied him my whole life without really knowing that was what I was doing. just by being a fan and a natural mimic. But, yeah, it’s sort of the body tends to follow the voice for me as a performer. It’s hard not to adopt those mannerisms, too, if I’m talking and singing, so it’s hard not to feel a body follow. And then once I noticed it, I saw some playback of myself and I was like, ‘Oh, I can actually lean into some more of that.’ I’m really not doing an impersonation of Bruce, though – I’m trying to sound like him as much as possible and bring my own authenticity to it, which, sounds like an impersonation, but to me there a slightly difference. I’m not a natural rock performer at all. Anything I can hang onto to make me feel like my body is getting into it the performance and show is good, because I’m such a vocal person first that I tend to kind of do things from the neck up a little bit more.
On the future of Hank Azaria on the rock and roll stage: “I’m loving this right now. It has unlocked me as a singer, I’ll say that. I’ve had to sing in a few things. Oddly, in the last few years I played Ray Donovan, I played a guy who was in a cover band, and I did a cover of ‘Night Moves’ and a few other songs. I had to sing on an episode of [The Marvelous] Mrs. Maisel. There are also other songs that I love apart from Bruce songs, of course, but there’s so much to the Bruce world and I’m so obsessed with trying to perfect it that it is gonna have me busy. Maybe when I turn 70 I’ll branch out.”
