Bruce Springsteen will wrap up his massive River tour with a final show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA, on September 14, and the legendary rocker recently sat down for Vanity Fair‘s new cover story, which delves deep into Springsteen’s motivations and demons, as the musician himself does in his upcoming autobiography, Born to Run, including his bouts with depression and a scary neck surgery that kept him from singing for months, and hints at a new album of original music on the way.

On the autobiography, which will come with an 18-track retrospective soundtrack of sorts called Chapter and Verse, Springsteen acknowledges its general depth, saying, “I knew I was gonna ‘go there’ in the book. I had to find the roots of my own troubles and issues—and the joyful things that have allowed me to put on the kind of shows that we put on.”

Some of those troubles and issues involved various struggles with depression, which have had their ebb and flow in Springsteen’s life and career. “One of the points I’m making in the book is that, whoever you’ve been and wherever you’ve been, it never leaves you,” he says. “I always picture it as a car. All your selves are in it. And a new self can get in, but the old selves can’t ever get out. The important thing is, who’s got their hands on the wheel at any given moment?”

Another topic in the interview was a surgery that Springsteen underwent three years ago, an invasive procedure that required replacing disks in his neck by cutting into his throat. The process left Springsteen unable to sing for three months, something that he admitted was scary but has ultimately been a success, and the legendary touring power of the musician isn’t expected to slow down any time soon. Although he admits that he has “a finite amount of time in which I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing.” He notes that the only band that surpasses his own “in terms of loyalty and repeat attendance” is the Grateful Dead. “And I think we’re in a very respectable second place,” he says.

Springsteen talked about a new album he has in the pipeline, set for a possible release next year, which will mark his first record of new original music since 2012’s Wrecking Ball. Springsteen says the album has been finished for over a year and that it’s “more of a singer-songwriter kind of record,” inspired by the collaborations of Jimmy Webb and Glenn Campbell in the ’60s—“pop records with a lot of strings and instrumentation.”

Springsteen and his E Street Band continue The River tour tomorrow, September 7, at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park.