Circa 1986
"General concern became focused on Central America at this point, partly
through reading (e.g. early poems of Ernesto Cardenal), then, most
dramatically, as a result of travel to the region. Did I get "politicized"?
There's an "-ism" and an "-ized" for everything, and none of them mean that much to me. If
what government does affects a person's life as much as their work does or
their lover does, then it seems to me it's equally fair game for comment in a song."
-- from the World Of Wonders Tour Program, circa 1986. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.
2 November 1991
Q:Have you noticed a transition in your music from a rural kind of music to.. the latest album is "Inner City Front" and the whole.. the setting is so city.
BC: Yeah, well, that's where I'm spending my time... yeah, it makes difference to the surface of things, but also... it's kind of on purpose. I spent a long time holding up nature as a source of oppsoition to the things that confront most of us in our daily lives. Two things. One, I kinda said all I had to say about that at the time, and also I found that people tended to make too big an issue of the nature part of it. They were missing the point, because not everybody... people thought I was writing about nature... So it just seemed like the two things together made me want to go for something closer to most people's experience, including my own, 'cause I grew up in the city...
-- from Bruce Cockburn Interview, The Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CA, 2 November 1981. Transcribed by Charles Wolff. Anonymous Submission.
November 1999
Steve Lawson: So the addition of electric stuff happened around Humans, or Inner City Front...?
BC: Inner City Front was really the big one. There's electric guitar on many of
the earlier albums, but it didn't start to take over until I was playing
with heavier bands with more drums and more emphasis on rhythm, and then it
was an irresistible pressure to pick up the electric guitar - to hear myself
on stage for one thing - but also to keep up in intensity with the other
guys. There was a big learning process in there. On Inner City Front I got
away with it, but there's a lot of learning in front of people going on. I was
applying the same techniques to the electric as I used on the acoustic, but
there's a big difference in touch and it took some time to kind of get the
feel for it.
-- from Bruce Cockburn Interview, Guitarist Magazine, November, 1999, by Steve
Lawson.
Help out! To add material to this section, see this page first.
Albums Index
This page is part of The Cockburn Project, a unique website that exists to document the work of Canadian singer-songwriter and musician Bruce Cockburn. The Project archives self-commentary by Cockburn on his songs and music, and supplements this core part of the website with news, tour dates, and other current information.