Born to keep running? Bruce Springsteen working on a new album

Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt performing at Wembley (Rex Features)

Bruce Springsteen has dropped some serious hints that he is working on a new album - which would be his 18th studio record to date- saying that he still has “a lot of material” to share.

Fans of The Boss have already proven their appetite for his newer stuff. The triple Grammy-winning 12 LP Wrecking Ball went to number one in 16 countries including the UK and America.

“I have stuff I’m working on that I’m very happy about,”  he said backstage during his 3 July concert in Milan.

He spoke tentatively to Rolling Stone magazine about the new album:  “I hate to say, because I don't like to be wrong. But I have a lot of material. I still feel like I'm in the middle of the well."

Springsteen, who admitted to having “struggled through the Nineties”, has had a fruitful subsequent decade, producing six studio albums since 2002’s The Rising.  

"I always used to say, in the past decades, that I wanted to make more records – and I've done that,” he said, describing the past 12 years as “the best we’ve ever had”.

The “Born to Run” singer has been back playing with the E Street Band (with Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine temporarily standing in for Steve Van Zandt) on the Wrecking Ball tour since March.

Springsteen and co have already been back in the studio this year spending a day off from their tour cutting new tracks in Sydney.

"We've never had a recording session during a tour in our lives. We did a couple of things that I wanted to put down. So that was very exciting. And being with Tommy was exciting. The band – Steven, Nils, all those guys – continues to be a source of inspiration for me."

On the Coventry leg of the Wrecking Ball tour last week Springsteen and the band altered their set in honour of The Sopranos’ James Gandolfini who died on Wednesday of a heart attack.

E Street band guitarist Steve Van Zandt co-starred with Gandolfini,  who was just 51, in the HBO mobster series. He tweeted:  “I have lost a brother and a best friend. The world has lost one of the greatest actors of all time.”