Bruce Springsteen thinks the music industry puts "enormous pressures" on young people.
The 75-year-old rocker has reflected on the passing of Liam Payne - who died on Wednesday (16.10.24) after falling from his hotel balcony, aged just 31 - and noted it is "not an unusual thing" as many stars struggle to cope with life in the spotlight and find themselves "lost" in drugs and alcohol.
Speaking about Liam, Bruce - who has spoken openly about his struggles with depression - told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper: “That’s not an unusual thing in my business.
“It’s a normal thing. It’s a business that puts enormous pressures on young people.
"Young people don’t have the inner facility or the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame. So they get lost in a lot of the difficult and often pain inducing [things]… whether it’s drugs or alcohol to take some of that pressure off.
“I understand that very well. I mean, I’ve had my own wrestling with different things."
Although the 'Born in the USA' hitmaker noted his E Street band have had "their own issues" over the years, he always put a "boundary" in place when it came to their conduct on tour.
He said: "The band has all wrestled with their own issues. And Danny [Federici] certainly did. Drugs were not uncommon in the E Street Band, you know.
"There was a boundary, however – I stayed out of your business, but if I was on stage and I saw that you were not your complete self, there was going to be a problem. And so it made a bit of a boundary around that stage, where people had to be relatively sober and at their best.
"And I always say, one of the things I was proudest of is that if one of my fellas passed on, they passed on of natural causes.”
The discussion then noted the untimely deaths of the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.
Bruce added: "And people continue to fall to it. It’s a death cult...
“It’s a grift, man. That’s a part of the story that suckers some young people in, you know, but it’s that old story. Dying young – good for the record company, but what’s in it for you?”
