The 1980 song where Bruce Springsteen saluted two musical heroes
By the dawn of the 1980s, the life of Bruce Springsteen really was like a runaway train. There was no stopping him, nor was there any chance of catching up.
The previous decade had heralded four albums’ worth of what would forever be considered some of his finest works and lasting legacies, with many probably surmising, wrongly, that a new era would see him crumble under the pressure of continuing to hit it out the park again, and again, and again.
It would be naive to say that Springsteen was blind to the weight of expectations on him, but the effects of this perhaps manifested themselves in ways at first peculiar to the outside world. No, he didn’t overtly falter, but there was a period where he looked inwards, and seemed to get scared about the heights of his fame landing him in an early grave.
After all, you’d only have to look as far as Elvis Presley to find an apt case study for that. ‘The King of Rock and Roll’ may have been stunning in his reign, but when he died alone, at home on his bathroom floor at the age of 42, the ramifications couldn’t have been more stark. It sounds obvious, but it was definitely not what ‘The Boss’ wanted.
Yet despite the tragedies of how they met their endings, there was no denying the impact that the original rock and roll gods like Presley had on every part of the scene going forward, not least Springsteen. Combined with a force like Chuck Berry, the legacy between them was unstoppable, and it compelled ‘The Boss’ to write the track ‘Johnny Bye Bye’.
Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the song’s title might be similar to. In 1962, Berry had written a tune called ‘Bye Bye Johnny’ as a follow-up to ‘Johnny B Goode’, and Springsteen was simply following in these footsteps of greatness. But even still, it was not a track that was going to earn its status on an album straight away.
Most of the lyrics were taken from the Darkness on the Edge of Town outtake track ‘Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)’, and although it technically began life in 1980, first being performed live at a show in Manchester the following year, it wasn’t until 1982 that the singer officially committed it to tape.
Yet even then, it took up to six differing versions for the song to finally be satisfactory, not to mention a legal agreement between Berry and Springsteen would be listed as co-writers on the song. Eventually, it made its way onto the 1998 deep cut box set Tracks, but in many ways, this was no reckoning for a song that started out with such seismic power behind it.
When you look at it this way, the turbulent lives of men like Presley and Berry can be put to rest when you consider the monumental impact they made in the world. Whether ‘Johnny Bye Bye’ made Springsteen feel any better about the prospect of his own demise is something that only he can answer, but it’s clear that for as long as music still stays in his life, he’s not going to kick the bucket.
