The album that gave Bruce Springsteen “a sense of the divine”
Many people are surprised when they hear the origin of Bruce Springsteen’s nickname ‘The Boss’. The man is music royalty, with more hit singles and albums than can be committed to memory and a live show that continues selling out stadiums worldwide. As such, The Boss has always been considered exactly that: the boss of all things music, of the catchy chorus, the guitar, the spectacle. In actuality, his name stems from a period when he and his band were first doing paid gigs, a moment in time when they allowed Springsteen to look after the money and told venue owners he was “the boss”.
It’s hard to imagine being at such a level that a joke nickname between friends is now considered a statement of your impact within the music industry. It’s even harder to imagine where someone with such stature manages to get their inspiration from. The truth is that Bruce Springsteen has always been very open about the artists who have previously inspired him, whether that’s in terms of his live performance, specific moments in his life or, in this case, finding beauty in music.
During his appearance on Desert Island Discs, Springsteen went through a list of different songs which had impacted him in one way or another. Some are typical of what you would expect a rock star to listen to as the likes of The Rolling Stones, Elvis and The Beatles make an appearance. However, it’s Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks that The Boss describes as giving him “a sense of the divine”.
The specific song chosen by Springsteen was Madame George, a gorgeous ten-minute ballad initially released in 1968. Morrison has previously described the song as “poetry and mythical musings channelled from my imagination,” and several people claim to have been inadvertently affected by it. Lewis Merenstein, a producer who was working with Van Morrison at the time, said he started crying when he first time heard it. “It just vibrated in my soul,” said Merenstein, “And I knew that I wanted to work with that sound.”
Madame George (and subsequently Astral Weeks in its entirety) had a similar impact on Bruce Springsteen. “Astral Weeks was an extremely important record for me,” he said, “It made me trust in beauty, it gave me a sense of the divine. The divine just seems to run through the veins of that entire album.”
Connecting so much with these softer moments in music will undoubtedly have impacted Springsteen and the way he writes music. While many of his songs are rock ballads that people can dance to, he’s also never been afraid to move into something a bit smoother. This can firstly be seen in tone, like in the relatively recent single Wrecking Ball, but it’s also present in the way he writes lyrics. Even more upbeat songs lend themselves a poetic license that draws on beauty in a way that fans struggle to not well up at.
Having a nickname like The Boss is a testament to how Bruce is considered in music, and getting to that level stems from pure talent and an ability to connect with his audience. The beauty in his music plays a massive part in all of this, and the connection to the divine that he got from Astral Weeks will have likely set the foundation on which he built all of this on.
