The Word asked some writers to describe their meetings with Bruce Springsteen. So I gave them this account of my own backstage encounter. It appeared in the November 2007 issue.

I met Springsteen backstage after a concert he played in Chicago, in 1995. He'd just released the downbeat album The Ghost Of Tom Joad and his solo tour was just as stark. He said to the audience: 'These songs were written in conditions of silence, so that's how they're best heard... Don't make me do what I had to do in LA, get down in the audience, confiscate those cellular phones and speak harshly to some supermodels.'

Tom Joad was inspired by Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath; Springsteen likens the Mexican immigrants of modern times to dustbowl refugees of the 1930s. It's a serious record and Bruce wanted his concerts to reflect that. Fans who took photos were told to crush their Instamatics under their heels. As the evening wore on Springsteen created the atmosphere he wanted. In the quietest songs his voice was no more than amplified breath. The hall was full of a silence more dramatic than a roaring stadium.

When it's over I get a tap on the shoulder. Bruce would like to say hello. And now somebody is leading me through the backstage maze to a small dressing room. Out of a strip-lit corridor I'm suddenly adjusting to darkness and a scene like some Caravaggio painting, perhaps The Supper At Emmaus. There in the gloom is bearded Bruce with a few disciples seated around. I mean, Motley Crüe it isn't. He gets up and welcomes me, a stocky chap in working-man's shirt with sleeves rolled up. He keeps eye-contact and has a firm handshake. He asks after London and pads across to his fridge to fetch us the first of several Budweisers. I decide I like this guy already.

I take a seat with the others; it could almost be a prayer meeting. I slowly realise they represent local activist groups, reporting back to Bruce on causes he's become involved with - union disputes, food-banks and homeless shelters. All very Tom Joad, in a way. Like the show tonight, it's hushed and somewhat solemn, punctuated by Springsteen's self-deprecating wisecracks. And they're always followed by his trademark noise, a wheezy, rasping chuckle that makes his neck disappear while his shoulders shake. I'm reminded of that cartoon dog, Mutley, in The Wacky Races.

Then I ask about his new songs. He talks in a slow, deliberate way - the way of a man who's thought deeply about a thing but doesn't want to sound too glib - touching on 'the mystery of human hope' and 'the way a man's soul might respond to beauty'. He admits Tom Joad is the most austere thing he's ever done. He was troubled by the bleakness of its stories; every character is hard-pressed by circumstance or challenged by hard moral choices; he wanted 'a miracle' to light their way out. Then he found it in the song called Galveston Bay, about a man who pulls back from the act of murder he seems destined to commit. Springsteen leans forward, hunched with concentration. 'And that was it. I found it. That was my miracle...'

We all nod earnestly. Then the neck disappears and the shoulders shake again: 'Heughh heughh heughh!'