Bruce Springsteen thought Barack Obama 'had the wrong number' when he called about joint podcast, book

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Bruce Springsteen is on the air.

The Boss will appear on the Monday, Oct. 25, broadcast of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” He'll talk “Renegades: Born in the USA,” the book he co-authored with former President Barack Obama, and “The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts,” the new film of Springsteen and the E Street Band at the ’70s era No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden.

Springsteen will also perform solo on “Colbert,” which airs at 11:35 p.m. ET.

Before then, Springsteen and Obama appeared on “CBS Sunday Morning” Oct. 24 and “CBS Mornings" Monday. They talked “Renegades,” the podcast and the book, with Anthony Mason.

“I always say when I first met Bruce, he was kind of sh– seems, like, surprisingly shy considering he goes out there and sings before tens of thousands of people for hours at a time,” said Obama of Springsteen in the interview. “We just ended up being in settings where we’d have these long conversations. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be an American? These were things that were just kind of popping up over a meal or a drink and I thought, 'You know what? This might be something that would be useful for folks to hear.' ”

Anthony Mason, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama.
Anthony Mason, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama.

Springsteen said he thought Obama had the wrong number when he called him about the project.

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“I said, 'OK, let me – let me figure this out,'” Springsteen said. “I am a guitar-playing, high school graduate from Freehold, New Jersey, and OK, you want me to do what?”

The podcast aired on Spotify over eight segments in February and March and was recorded at Springsteen’s home in Colts Neck in the summer of 2020. The book will be released Tuesday, Oct. 26, from Crown.

The “No Nukes” film will be released in HD on physical formats Nov. 19, including on two CDs with DVD, two CDs with Blu-Ray and two LPs. It will be available globally in HD for digital download on Nov. 16 and digital rental on Nov. 23.

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Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers entertainment and features for the USA Today Network New Jersey. Contact him at @chrisfhjordan; cjordan@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Springsteen and Obama talk masculinity, Americana ahead of new book