Bruce Springsteen Says Patti Scialfa’s Cancer Fatigues Her Intensely

Bruce Springsteen opened up about watching his wife, Patti Scialfa, live with multiple myeloma.

“They found it early on and she’s got really good doctors, who have helped a lot. But it does fatigue her, very intensely, and that’s a problem,” Springsteen, 75, told The Times of London in a profile published on Saturday, October 19. “I’m doing a three-hour show, which is fatiguing for me and I’m pretty much at the top of my health. But she’s been great.”

He added, “We’ve worked out that she can come out and sing a few songs, and it’s important that the fans know what’s going on because they haven’t seen her in five years. Patti decided she owed that to her audience.”

Springsteen and Scialfa, 71, have been married since 1991. She also plays in Springsteen’s touring E Street Band. After two decades together, Scialfa was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer, in 2018. She confirmed her diagnosis in Springsteen’s Rock Diary documentary, which premiered last month.

Springsteen met Scialfa in the early 1980s at a local bar in New Jersey. Soon after, he invited Scialfa to join his E Street Band on the Born in the USA tour.

“She’s a very good songwriter, but she hasn’t got the credit due because she lives with a suck-all-the-air-out-of-the-room attention whore,” Springsteen jokingly told The Times. “She’s had a problem there. She’s got a beautiful record about to come out, but she’s had a tougher time getting her work recognized because of who she’s married to.”

According to Springsteen, he is only “the captain” of their marriage during a stage show. The rest of the time, Scialfa takes the lead.

“When Patti comes on stage with me, she understands I’m the captain of that particular ship,” Springsteen told the British newspaper. “The minute I step off stage, I’m the chauffeur who gets the kids to school at 6 a.m. I’ve known Pats, on and off, since she was 17, and we had a steady relationship as friends until we got together as a couple in 1988 when I was 38 and she was 34. It’s worked out pretty well … except for the fact that I tend to take up a lot of space.”

Springsteen and Scialfa share three children: sons Evan, 34, and Sam, 30, and daughter Jessica, 32. None of the Scialfa-Springsteen offspring has followed in their parents’ footsteps as performers. (Sam serves as a firefighter, Jessica is a competitive show jumper and Evan works as a music content editor.)

“When they were little, if they heard me on the radio they would go, ‘Bruce Springsteen!’ It was their way of separating their dad from this abstract character who also seemed to be a part of their lives,” the legendary rocker said in Saturday’s profile. “A lot of times, we just didn’t expose them to it.”

Springsteen continued, “They came to concerts a few times before going back to their rooms to play video games, and didn’t know much about it beyond what they may have read. When they were older they wanted to bring their friends to the show, but apart from that, they chose their own lives, developed their own work, found their own partners and families, all at a nice distance from the strangeness of my job.”