Listen to Bruce Springsteen’s keynote speech from SXSW

Bruce Springsteen delivered the keynote speech yesterday at SXSW in front of thousands of festival attendees. Music critic Ben Sisario, writing about it in the New York Times said:

“Mr. Springsteen, 62, posited his own experience as a fan as the, or at least, one, unifying story of pop music. After first quoting the rock critic Lester Bangs, who said that Elvis Presley was the last thing that everyone could agree on, Mr. Springsteen gave reminiscences of a wide swath of music that inspired him: Elvis Presley, Woody Guthrie, Roy Orbison, doo-wop, the Animals, Stax and Motown, James Brown, the Sex Pistols. Speaking sometimes with fanboy self-deprecation, sometimes with high poetics and sometimes as if he were leading a graduate cultural-studies seminar, he explained how each pushed him toward the kind of epiphanies that every musician (and fan) experiences.”

You can listen to the full audio of the speech here. Below, watch a couple of excerpts from Springsteen’s keynote.