Why Bruce Springsteen Preferred His Hair Dirty and More Secrets from the 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' Era

When Lynn Goldsmith first entered the New York City studio where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were recording in the late 1970s, she had two priorities — and neither involved the Boss. 

First, she wanted to dry off from the blizzard outside. Second, she needed to find her rocker pal Patti Smith, who’d invited her there that day. But as fate would have it, the now-legendary photographer found herself sitting in on Springsteen’s recording session following a request from the musician himself.

“He was cute!” Goldsmith, 75, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue of why she decided to stick around. “I’ve always had certain types, and Bruce fit the bill.”

Though it remains to be seen whether Smith was playing matchmaker that day (“Patti denies she set me up, but I think she was being a good girlfriend,” she says), something did click, and before long, Goldsmith was a member of the E Street Band’s entourage, snapping photos as they recorded and toured their 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town (And yes, she did briefly date Springsteen).

The band had been put on the map with Born to Run in 1975, but were still on the cusp of superstardom when Goldsmith joined the fold. Her photos from that era — which she’s compiled into a new book, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (available now via TASCHEN) — offer an intimate peek at the hustle and hungry heart of Springsteen, 74, and his band.

“There’s plenty of books that are just on Bruce, but I feel the band is what empowered him to be the Springsteen that he is,” Goldsmith says of the star, who wrote the book’s foreword. “I wanted it to be something not only for the fans but for him and [his family]. What I can offer with photographs is a memory, and that’s what adds a real meaning to my work.”

Goldsmith has photographed everyone from the Rolling Stones to Michael Jackson, and in doing so has learned some tricks of the trade.

“I like to think I make people look their most attractive,” she says. “I’m not out here to show people ‘the truth.’ I don’t think that’s what art is necessarily for. Whether it’s Bruce or anyone else, they like the way that I make them look.”

In Springsteen’s case, that sometimes meant letting his hair go unwashed for a bit.

“He knew his hair looked better when he didn’t wash it for three days, so I wouldn’t shoot him until his hair was dirty,” she reveals.

Though Goldsmith says she’s often “very much involved” in her subjects’ styling, hair and makeup, Springsteen knew how to rock his own wardrobe.

“With many artists… I felt they needed to expand their vision of themselves to hopefully what the fans believed they looked like,” she says. “Bruce was not one of those artists. Bruce had clothes, which, if he hadn’t chosen them, I would’ve gone out and chosen them for him. They were the right clothes.”

As he embraced his rocker persona offstage, he did so onstage, too, with Goldsmith bearing witness. The photographer says typical soundchecks for artists would begin at 4 p.m. and end at 5 p.m. Not so for the E Street Band, who would practice with their frontman for three or four hours, then go on stage to play a similarly long show.

“Physicality was relatively unique for that period of time, going into the audience and allowing audience members up on stage — a variety of things,” she says. “But what was really incredibly unique about him is that he has the capacity to tell a story about the songs. He’s not standing there going, ‘Yeah, Detroit, you ready to party?’ So it made both the band and the audience feel more connected, and the experience was more like being in someone’s living room at a great party than being in a concert venue.”

Many of Goldsmith’s photos capture that physicality onstage, like one shot that features him leaping while performing below a stage light.

“There were only a few artists that could ever jump as high as that,” she says. “There was this one light, and it was as if the light was drawing Bruce up, as if music was something that was connected to a higher power and could really unify people.”

Other shots, like one taken during a rehearsal in Springsteen’s New Jersey home, captured the special bond between Springsteen and his E Street Band members Steven Van Zandt, Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg.

“A few of them had known each other since [childhood], so there’s always a great rapport between people that have been in school together. There’s also times where they might butt heads, but it’s still a brotherhood,” she says. “There was not only a camaraderie and a brotherhood with the band, but almost a religious experience of the music being able to both heal and uplift.”

Goldsmith will give a talk on her new photo book on Dec. 4 at Fotografiska in New York City. The event will be moderated by Springsteen's sister Pam Springsteen, and members of the public can buy tickets here.

For more on Bruce Springsteen and Lynn Goldsmith, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.