Bruce Springsteen on “one of the best” songwriters ever
All any songwriter can ask for is to find their voice whenever they write a tune. Even though many like to draw from their influences whenever they can, it takes a special breed of writer to create a sound that is uniquely identifiable to them, either through their way of writing lyrics or the way the music pushes the listener. While Bruce Springsteen may have his craft of writing pieces pulled from the heart of America, he admitted that one of his fellow 1970s brethren was among the greatest writers he had ever heard.
When tearing through his first handful of songs, though, Springsteen was in danger of being pigeonholed before he hit the big time. Although he could push the audience with the E Street Band whenever he played live, he was often interested in making the same rambling tracks that Bob Dylan was used to doing back in the 1960s.
By the time Springsteen had emerged, the singer-songwriter generation was already undergoing a major change. With acts like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor becoming the most prominent names in the industry, Springsteen ventured to the West Coast to get a taste of what the new school of rock and rollers were making.
On his trip down, Springsteen heard Jackson Browne sing for the first time. Being on the verge of releasing the album Late for the Sky, Browne had already developed a unique vocabulary for writing songs, creating beautiful tracks like ‘Doctor My Eyes’ and ‘Fountain of Sorrow’.
When Springsteen inducted Browne into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he recalled witnessing one of the best songwriters he had ever seen, recalling, “I walked Jackson play. There were great songs written and sung in that pure emotional tone that I always loved. As I listened that night, I knew simply that this guy was one of the best. Each song was like a diamond, and my first thought was, ‘Damn he’s good’, and my second thought was, ‘I need less words.’”
As Springsteen returned to his native New Jersey and began honing his craft, both his and Browne’s careers were about to have slightly similar trajectories. Although Browne would not receive the same acclaim that Springsteen would have, their way of writing songs had a few similarities across Springsteen’s Born to Run, with ‘The Boss’ learning how to make tracks that were cutting and to the point without having to use as many elongated verses.
Across albums like The Pretender, Browne would go on to crystallise his craft, writing about the dissolution of his marriage and learning to use music to work through it. No sooner did Browne use music as a healing mechanism, Springsteen flirted with the sounds of darkness on the album Nebraska, featuring only him on an acoustic guitar for the majority of the album.
For all of their similarities, Springsteen has always maintained the utmost respect for what Browne was able to do with his songs. While Springsteen may have a handful of great stories laced throughout his works, Browne has always aimed to write tracks to rip the heart of every listener out of their chest.
