“It’s just incredible”: Bruce Springsteen names the greatest vocal in rock history
Rock and roll has always been about a certain energy captured in between the notes whenever someone plays. Even though everyone has to be at the top of their game to make sure everything sounds right, the most perfect song might not sound completely right if it’s being played completely stiff. That’s where the ‘roll’ part of rock and roll comes in, and Bruce Springsteen knew that kind of swagger within two seconds of hearing any rock and roll band.
Although many people pour over Springsteen’s hits for the characters in his songs or the messages in his lyrics, he never forgot about the importance of having a great backbeat behind everything. It’s one thing to get people invested in a story, but if ‘Born to Run’ didn’t have that massive groove behind it from the E Street Band, would anyone have cared as much about the protagonist and Wendy leaving in search of something better for themselves?
That can only come from a band with great delivery, but it also comes from the right singer to sing the vocals. As much as some artists like to play their own songs, there are a handful of tunes that are destined to be played by other people, whether that’s Whitney Houston transforming Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ or Johnny Cash turning Nine Inch Nails’s ‘Hurt’ into his own prayer for humanity.
And it’s not like the seasoned songwriters couldn’t try someone else’s track on to see whether they could pull it off. Because if you’re writing songs, that means you’re a student of rock and roll, and when John Lennon and Paul McCartney started making tracks for The Beatles, they already had years of playing old-time rock and roll tunes under their belt as part of the Quarrymen.
They had done justice to people like Little Richard and Chuck Berry, but they always had a healthy respect for everything coming out of the world of R&B, and when they recorded their debut, ‘Twist and Shout’ was what sealed the deal for many people. It wasn’t the most polished recording, but listening to Lennon shred his larynx in those few bars of the tune had enough power to pin Springsteen up against a wall.
‘The Boss’ already had a taste of what The Isley Brothers had done with the tune, but he knew that he was hearing perfection listening to Lennon’s voice, saying, “It’s just an incredible song. [There’s] two incredible recordings of it. One is The Isley Brothers, and obviously The Beatles, with John Lennon on one of his greatest rock and roll vocals of all time. It’s quintessentially rhythm and blues.”
Although Lennon himself was always ashamed of his performance on the track, it seems like Springsteen has taken a lot of those nasty sections of the song and turned it into his own style. Aside from performing ‘Twist and Shout’ himself, Springsteen has turned tunes like ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ and ‘Backstreets’ into some of the best vocals of his career by letting go of his inhibitions the same way Lennon did.
Because, really, what is rock and roll without a little bit of anarchy? Anyone can find a way to make sure that their vocals are refined, but the true measure of any great rock singer is to push their voice just far enough to where they sound like they are about to tear their throat apart whenever they sing.
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