The classic Chuck Berry rock song Bruce Springsteen said was the beginning of punk
A true musical chameleon, Bruce Springsteen has never been content with staying in one place for too long, exploring a wealth of different artistic avenues over the years, but he was never going to don safety pins or a mohawk during the punk explosion of the mid-1970s.
A particularly eclectic period in music history, the mid-1970s seemed like an endless battle between the increasingly middle-of-the-road sounds of mainstream rock, the infectious rhythms of disco, and the abrasive revolution emerging from the blossoming punk scenes of places like New York City.
Springsteen didn’t seem to fit in with any of it. Rather than nailing himself to one specific scene or sound, ‘The Boss’ blazed a trail for his own distinct output, rejecting both the banality of soft rock and the subversive confrontation of punk at the same time.
It was also then that he found his mainstream breakthrough with 1975’s Born To Run, which steadfastly held its own in an eclectic era for American rock. However, that is not to say that the songwriter didn’t appreciate the plethora of sounds surrounding him, as he has always had a particularly expansive music taste and a penchant for outsiders.
At its core, behind all the performative fashion and manufactured outrage, punk rock was about spotlighting the voices of misfits and the working-class, something that Springsteen has been devoted to since the early origins of his output, albeit with a lot less guitar distortion. Naturally, he held a degree of appreciation for the emanating CBGB soundscape in the 1970s.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t all that convinced of punk’s trailblazing nature. The origins of the style have been endlessly debated over the years, pinned on everybody from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Patti Smith, depending on who you ask. Springsteen himself heard the attitude and energy of punk rock in the first age of rock ‘n’ roll back in the 1950s, telling The Guardian in 2016, “I heard this live version of ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ by Chuck Berry and it sounds so close to punk music”.
Although ‘The Boss’ didn’t cite the specific live recording of Berry’s 1956 rock ‘n’ roll anthem, there is a particularly good cut of the track being played by the iconic guitarist at the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. During that performance, the song sounds faster and a little more rugged than the original Chess recording, so it is easy to see how Springsteen forged the connection between Berry and the buzzsaw sounds of the punk age.
Rather than denouncing punk as a rehashed version of the pioneering rock sounds of artists like Berry, though, Springsteen used the comparison as a springboard for his unique approaching to the music industry. “When you go to record with your band, you have all those sounds, you’ve created a bank,” he shared, “I like to stay as awake and as alert as I can. And I enjoy it too, I have a lot of interest in it… I like not being sealed off from what’s going on culturally.”
Being switched on to the emerging sounds of American rock has worked out very well for Bruce Springsteen. While many of his contemporaries have remained dedicated to a particular sound for years on end, the former was never afraid to fruitfully add his own listening habits into the mix, keeping his output fresh and endlessly relevant for over half a century now.
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