Meet the new boss

She might be married to a rock icon but Patti Scialfa is her own woman when it comes to making music.

Long before she caught the eye of Bruce Springsteen, the New Jersey native was hawking demos around the record companies. At just 19 she narrowly missed out on having one of her songs recorded by Aretha Franklin after top Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler had recommended her.
But duties as a backing singer for the likes of Southside Johnny, The Rolling Stones and ultimately The E Street Band, which she joined permanently in 1984, delayed her first solo album until 1993. The well-received Rumble Doll contained more than a handful of standout songs including ‘Valerie’, which has since been recorded by Emmylou Harris.
Her second solo album, 23rd Street Lullaby is even stronger, with a higher quotient of finely crafted numbers and some seriously soulful vocal performances. But why the delay between records?
“It wasn’t meant to be that long,” she says. “I had tried to make this record a few times before. I even recorded and mixed a record around ‘97 and some of these songs were on it. But I wasn’t really crazy about it – it didn’t sound personal enough.
“Some of the songs go back further,” she adds. ‘I wrote ‘Rose’ in the late 70’s when I was waitressing in New York. Rose was an older waitress who was very kind to all the younger girls. I was just 22 and I didn’t know anything about working in a restaurant but she taught me a lot. I can still balance four plates up one arm which takes some talent, believe me (laughs).”
Does Patti have any regrets that she wasn’t able to pursue a solo career much earlier?
“Yes, but not the kind of regret that takes anything away from the life I am leading. I have three children, a loving husband and we’re fortunate enough not to have to worry about the rent. But I wished that I had been a little more ambitious. I’m always a little reticent about putting myself out there. It was the lack of my own ambition that I didn’t bring more records out. Bruce is the one who has been pushing me, saying ‘you have to go out and play live with this one’. When I did Rumble Doll I was six months pregnant with our last child so I couldn’t go on tour.
She describes the new album as a love letter to New York City where she lived before finally settling down with The Boss.
“Everybody wants to tell their story and this is mine,” she says. “I lived in the Chelsea area of New York from the mid seventies until Bruce and I got together in 87/88. It was a great place to be with lots of artists, writers and painters, and rents were still reasonable. I really wanted to stay living there. Bruce tried it for a year but I think the city was hard for him. He found it tough to move around freely at that time.”
These days Scialfa lives with her husband and their three children – two sons and a daughter – on a farm in Colts Neck in the heart of rural New Jersey. Despite Springsteen’s high profile they’ve managed to live a conventional life and are familiar figures in the local community. Still, it must be difficult for them to maintain that kind of normality?
“No, not at all,” she says. “We chose to try and live this way and I take my kids to the school, which is right across the road from our house and we go out to the movies and to dinner. The thing is, Bruce’s fans are fantastic in that they’ve always been very sensitive when it comes to respecting our privacy. Besides that, between Bruce and I we have a large extended Italian/Irish family and that helps a lot.”
Scialfa says that Emmylou Harris recording one of her songs was important in validating her as an artist in her own right,
“The fact that it was somebody completely outside the E Street camp, who I’d never met, expressing an interest in me and championing my record was really important,” she reflects. “That kind of support from another woman meant a lot to me.”

23rd Street Lullaby is out now on Sony Records.