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December 12, 2025 14 mins

Legendary rock photographer Jim Fuller joins host Buzz Knight on Takin’ A Walk to discuss his stunning new Bruce Springsteen photography book “Spirit in the Light,” a definitive collection of iconic concert images spanning decades of The Boss’s legendary performances. Fuller shares behind-the-scenes stories of photographing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, revealing the intimate moments and explosive energy that defined Springsteen’s most memorable shows.

In this compelling conversation, Jim Fuller discusses the creative process behind “Spirit in the Light,” explaining how he captured Bruce Springsteen’s raw authenticity and connection with audiences through his lens. From backstage access to front-row perspectives, Fuller details his journey as a rock and roll photographer documenting one of music’s most iconic performers. The veteran photographer reflects on specific images featured in “Spirit in the Light,” sharing the stories behind Springsteen’s most powerful stage moments and what makes The Boss such a compelling photographic subject.

Fuller also explores the evolution of concert photography, the challenges of capturing live performance energy in still images, and his relationship with Bruce Springsteen over the years. He discusses the curation process for “Spirit in the Light,” selecting the photographs that best represent Springsteen’s spirit, passion, and legendary stage presence. Music photographers, Bruce Springsteen fans, and photography enthusiasts will appreciate Fuller’s insights into rock photography’s golden era and the technical artistry required to document live music history.

This episode of Takin’ A Walk offers an intimate look at Bruce Springsteen through Jim Fuller’s photographic eye, celebrating “Spirit in the Light” as both an artistic achievement and a testament to one of rock’s greatest performers. Fuller’s stories reveal the dedication, timing, and artistry required to create timeless rock and roll photography that captures music’s transformative power.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taking a Walk.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Buzznight and welcome to the Taken a Walk Podcast. Now,
if you are a fan of the Taken a Walk Podcast,
we asked that you spread the good word.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Tell all your.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Friends about it, and you can find us certainly on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts,
follow us, share it, leave your reviews.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
We love if you could spread the good word.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, today, I'm honored to have a topic here Bruce
Springsteen that is near and dear to my heart. And
I've got the author of this beautiful photography book called
Spirit in the Light, James Fuller. Welcome to the Taking
a Walk Podcast. It's a beautiful book. Oh my god,
I love it.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Oh thank you, Thank you, Buzz. It's great to be here.
And it was a labor of love or something that
sat in a box for fifty years and now has
come out into the light.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Nice Spirit in the Light.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
It covers nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy five, right.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Right, just a brief two year period when Bruce was
between his second album and Born to Run.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Pretty rich period for Bruce Springsteen fans.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
So we're gonna talk to James Fuller about spirit in
the light.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
After we take this quick break and we'll be right
back Taking a Walk.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
James Fuller, Welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Thanks man, it's great to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
And I'm not going to let you escape our opening question.
And I have a feeling I know what the answer is, James.
If you could take a walk with someone, who would
you take a walk with and where would you take
that walk?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Wow?

Speaker 4 (01:44):
I wasn't prepared for this, but actually actually not Bruce Okay, yeah,
actually probably someone like Clarence Clements and to get his
side of the story of what thing were like, sort
of behind the scenes, because there's a lot of information
about Bruce out there, lots of interviews, lots of you know,

(02:07):
I sort of feel like I know where he's coming from.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Oh yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
And Clarence the big man, Oh my god, I mean
I love that. Jake Clemens is certainly now still you know,
carrying the torch for Clarence.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
But boy, don't we miss Clarence every day?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Right, big shoes to fill. But yeah, he played an
important role.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
So James, what is your line of work?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I know you're not, by nature a full time photographer,
is that correct?

Speaker 3 (02:38):
True. I was a teacher for many years. I'm retired now,
and teaching is all about words, and I taught middle
school most of the years, and students were like in
my face all the time, and I loved it, just
loved the job. But summers were really a nice time
to get away and do something different. Allowed me to
work on things without words, without people, photography. So I

(03:03):
was a photographer early on and gradually moved along from
taking pictures of Bruce to doing large format landscape photographs,
cloth over the head, that whole kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
So do you recall the first time that you personally
connected with Springsteen's music.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, my ear was to the ground. I was always,
you know, going to concerts and trying to look for
the next big thing. I was up at a small
college in upstate New York, Hobart College, and freshman fall
concert was supposed to be John Sebastian. He got sick
at the last second, and then posters went up around
campus and they advertised an unknown recording artist named Bruce Springsteen.

(03:49):
I'd heard of just a little bit about him. So
I got the theater half an hour early, and I
got front row seats because there wasn't much demand at
the time. The place eventually filled up and within a
few minutes of Bruce taking a stage, I knew this
was it, this was the next big thing.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Did you have camera in tow at that moment?

Speaker 3 (04:13):
I did. I almost always had my camera in tow
back then, my thirty five millimeter Canon FTV. So I
took a role of film that night developed him. And
you know, the lighting back in the early days and
Brus's whole performance was a little bit the lighting was
weak and had basic stage lighting in one spotlight. It

(04:34):
was fun to see through the years how he increased
the lighting and did different things with lighting, and how
he responded to that because they brought in a lighting
director to make more dramatic lighting, using fills and things
like that. Suddenly he was being more dramatic and I think,
you know, encouraged by.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
That, and as we understand, over time, ticulously fanatical about
the details, whether it be the lighting, the staging, the
whole sound.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
From every aspect of a venue.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
As you sort of reflect on this from seeing that
first show to the way it's become what do you
think of Bruce and that you know, just fixation for excellence.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, I just went to the Archives celebration, the Springsteen
Archives celebration of the fiftieth anniversary Born to Run, and
they showed a film of the making of jungle Land,
and you think that boy, that'd be fun to watch,
but it wasn't because he was so relentless in his
quests for excellence. And the thing I remember most about

(05:49):
is I'm saying again again again to the band members
to try different things and keep going. So there are
actually two sides to Bruce, the stage foreman side where
he's you know, all out fun and just a joyous
and moving experience. But then you can see from those

(06:10):
films how hard he worked to get the sound right
for each thing.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
So we've had a few photographers of rock on the
taking a walk. We had a couple of visits with
our dear friend, the great Henry Dilts, who's an amazing
photographer without question.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Elliott Landy as well.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
I don't know if you're familiar with Elliott, but but
had Elliott on and Lynn Goldsmith actually too at her on.
So when you think about your style and what people
can look forward to seeing in your beautiful book Spirit
in the Light, how would you define your style.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Well, I think I was in the right place at
the right time that he was pretty much unknown these
years that I photographed him, and so I could get
quite close, usually front row. At one point the manager,
Mike Apell even sent me up on stage with I
was taking pictures up there behind all the equipment and
all the wires and all that going on, and then

(07:18):
suddenly I was grabbed by two roadies and thrown off stage.
They said to me, Bruce doesn't want anybody on stage
when he's up there. But you know, Bruce is uh,
you know, his quest for excellence really put pressure on me.
When I was thinking about bringing out this book. I
didn't want to do something that was less than the

(07:38):
best I could do, and so I spent a lot
of time and a lot of money getting everything done
just right. So I felt a little bit like Bruce
in that, you know, I wanted it to be as
good as it could possibly be. So I had the
negatives on drum scan by Mark Doyle Akellor and and
then I had a designer brought into it an elegant

(08:00):
look and went to a printer a duo tone printing
which really makes the prince pop. So I did as
best I could.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
You certainly did.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Now did you have to be in contact or were
you in contact with you know, John Landau or the
you know, the Springsteen organization.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
No, you know they you know they're they're not all
that accessible. You know. Everything I did, I was in
a public performance, so it's sort of fair game, and
I just wanted to do the best I could with
it and honor this period of time because I feel
like this period of time has been a little bit neglected.
There's no recording of the East Street Band when they

(08:42):
had David Sanchez, incredible piano player, and it just had
a little different feel to it, and thinking back in
those days, I wanted to try to preserve some of
that visually, at least hoping that someday that maybe one
of those conc tapes come out.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
But you aren't curious to see what what Bruce would
think of it.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Uh, Well, I've had a friend who has a connection
and sent it to him and I'm just waiting waiting
for the word. So hopefully someday I'll hear from him.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Oh boy, I mean, he's he's gotta you know, love
it being you know as he is, and artists often
are not always you know, so respectful of the historical
aspect of things, you know, artists like Bruce or you know,
re releasing things or unearthing things.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So I have to think this would this would speak
to him.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yes, yeah, I would hope. So I hope, you know,
bring back some some fond memories when you know, he
was really working to make himself known and the record
company was threatening to drop him, and so every show
seemed to be like his life depended on it. And
he's continued that spear through all the years since.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
It's kind of like it's the last show, right, like
like you know, I'm going to play it like like
this is it, you know, even though it's not it
that that mentality which you have to admire. Now, was
this just taken from the Hobart show The Spirit and
the Light or where it was a series of shows obviously?

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Well? Yeah, interesting because he came as a total unknown
and by then and I they gave him three encres
at a time when encores were not standard, and and
they brought him back a little more than a year later,
and those shows you can see the improvements in the
lighting and the photographs really start to pop and Brice
gets much more dramatic, more hand gestures, plays off Clarence

(10:44):
Clemens more. It's just becomes a much more polished and
exciting act. And then he came back one more time
for this is a small theater in upstate New York
for the second show with the Born to Run tour.
He was supposed to rehearse there for a week to
get this show ready to go, so there was some

(11:05):
connection to that theater that he seemed to like. So
he did you know, the recording of the album took
longer than they thought, but so I had to cancel
the rehearsals, but he honored coming back for one the
third show there, and just within two years.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Now, I saw him for the first time at Ohio
U in Athens on the Born to Run tour and
it was unbelievable. The memories are incredible of it. And
one memory that sticks out for seeing him on that
show and that tour was the crowd stood up pretty

(11:47):
much the entire show, as I recall, it was that
true at the Hobart show.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Well, the first show, I would say, you know, wasn't
an enthusiastic audience at first, but you got feel and
when he started out with New York City Serenade, just
Bruce only acoustic guitar and David Sanchez's long piano introduction.
Suddenly you could just feel it in the room that
people suddenly sat up and said, whoa, this is something

(12:15):
really exciting has happened here. And by the end he's
finishing with twist and shout and the crowd has stormed
the stage for a total unknown.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Now did you say earlier that you had been sitting
on these and done nothing with this work for fifty years.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well, my brother was always encouraging me to get these out,
and he did find Dave marsh but out a concert book,
and I submitted a few of them, and surprisingly he
used them. But I was never really happy with how
the reproductions in that book, and so I sat sort
of kept in the back of my mind that maybe

(12:54):
I should do something because I felt my photographs told
a story of the evolution of Springsteen days, that he
went from just a sort of a street punk to
a dramatic performer to just the very edge of total stardom.
I knew I had something, something in the box, and
I didn't realize I had so many good ones because

(13:16):
I just printed a few when I first did them,
and so when I went back just two years ago
and started printing all these old negatives, I realized I'd
enough for a book that could could be important historically.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
It's a piece of music history, no doubt. It's it's
absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
So tell our listeners how they can find your book,
Spirit in the Light.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, yeah, I've chosen not to go with the big
box route and all that. I can't find an Amazon,
but I do have a website in e commerce website
it's called Spirit in thelightbook dot com, and you can
go there and order it and I'll hand package it
and send it to you.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Oh that's fantastic. Well, it's an honor having the book.
It's an honor speaking to you and hearing your story.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
James Fuller, congratulations on it, and thanks for being on
Taking a Walk.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Thanks buys, it's been a fun walk. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts.
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