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The following notes, written by Bruce, are taken from the book "Songs".
After Tunnel of love was released in 1987 and I toured in 1988, I spent the next two years doing very little musically. These were the years in which I saw my family come together. We lived in New York for a while, then we moved to California. I always loved the West, since I first drove through with my manager, Tinker, in the early '70s. When I had free time, I'd head for Arizona and drift through the state on a motorcycle. I'd spent some time in California, since my parents had moved there twenty-five years before. I had a younger sister in Los Angeles, and in the early '80s I bought a small bungalow in the Hollywood Hills.
By 1989 Patti and I were looking for a change of scenery and a fresh start. After a stint in New York City, I realized I still craved some open space. In Los Angeles I could still have my cars and motorcycles, be thirty minutes from the mountains, ocean, and desert, meet some new people, and relax amidst the anonymity of a big city.
Human Touch began as an exercise to get myself back into writing and recording. I wrote a variety of music in genres that I had always liked: soul, rock, pop, R&B. The record, once again, took awhile because I was finding my way to the songs. I also worked for the first time with musicians other than the E Street Band. I felt I needed to see what other people brought with them into the studio and how my music would be affected by collaborating with different talents and personalities.
One day in LA Roy Bittan played me a couple of pieces of music that he'd written. I liked them and told him I'd be interested in writing lyrics to them. One of them became "Roll of the Dice," the other became "Real World." I had never collaborated with another songwriter on any of my other records. I was looking for something to get me going; Roy was enthusiastic and had good ideas. He soon joined the production team of Human Touch, with Jon and Chuck.
The record took shape when Roy and I would play together in my garage apartment and make tapes of song and arrangement ideas I came up with. Then we'd go into the studio and set up what essentially was a two-man band. I would sing and play guitar; Roy would play the keyboards and bass. Together we'd perform to a drum track. The two of us could create an entire band sound live in the studio. That way we got a good sense of what songs might work, and those were the ideas we developed. Then musicians would come in and play to what we recorded, or we'd play with them and record the songs love. Very often we'd do both and pick what worked the best.
Human Touch was another record that evolved slowly. It took awhile for the songs on the album to shape themselves into a cohesive whole. In "Human Touch," "Soul Driver," and "Real World," people search to find some emotional contact, some modest communion, some physical and sexual connection. But to receive what love delivers, they have to surrender themselves to each other and accept fate. This tension is at the heart of Human Touch.
Writers and artists create little worlds and control them. You do that well enough, and you begin to believe you can live in one of them. But the real world doesn't work that way. Love levels the playing field, you can't predict its outcome, and the same rules apply to all. Both Human Touch and Lucky Town came out of a moment in which to find what I needed, I was going to have to let things go, change, try new things, make mistakes--just live.