Bruce Springsteen is a musical legend. There’s no denying it – he’s got the stats to prove it. But what is he doing at a technology conference? Well, in a time of change, when music is changing – what advice can the digital generation take from rock and roll?

What is the advice the Boss is giving young musicians?

Rumble, young musicians, rumble. Open your ears, and open your hearts. Don’t take yourself too seriously, but take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry, but worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you awake and alert. Believe you are the baddest ass in town. And you suck.

Springsteen’s 50 minute keynotecovered about his life growing up, and followed no real set storyline, the Boss himself remarking that keynotes don’t really feature very often in the digital world. Springsteen picked up his first guitar a mere ten years after the creation of rock and roll, and today the world catalogue of recorded music monstrously large. This largely due to the influence of technology, which has made recording and distribution easier and more cost-effective.

The purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips. There is no right way, no pure way, of doing. There is just doing. We live in a post authentic world, and today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, and your personal history. At the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that still matters.

So there it is, from The Boss himself. Wanna be a musician? Just play music.

[Source: CBS]