Credit: Far Out / Columbia Records

Bruce Springsteen’s favourite Bob Dylan lyric

Sun 7 January 2024 18:00, UK

Growing up in America during the 1960s almost guaranteed two things. Firstly, The Beatles captured your heart and moved you toward growing your hair long, and secondly, Bob Dylan’s lyrics provoked protest in your mind. For the New Jersey-born Bruce Springsteen, who was starting to understand the power of music when the aforementioned acts hit the radio airwaves, both performers would change his life forever.

The Beatles, a foreign agent now entirely changing the world with a collection of mop tops and pop-adjacent rock and roll, utterly enraptured the young Springsteen. “‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ came on the radio in 1964 — that was going to change my life,” he noted of hearing the song. “The keeper was in 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on South Street with my mother driving. I immediately demanded that she let me out, I ran to the bowling alley, ran down a long neon-lit aisle, down the bowling alley into the bowling alley. Ran to the phone booth, got in the phone booth and immediately called my girl and asked, ‘Have you heard this band called The Beatles?’ After that, it was nothing but rock ‘n’ roll and guitars.”

The Fab Four were the spark in Springsteen’s life that would ignite his passion for songwriting. The band represented the sincere feeling we all get deep inside that pushes us towards our deepest desires. However, as Springsteen grew up, he sought further cerebral nourishment. Without the hip-shaking potency of Elvis and The Beatles, Bob Dylan represented an evolution for Springsteen.

Before Springsteen became ‘The Boss,’ he was a huge Bob Dylan fan before he’d even won Employee of the Month. The ‘Born To Run’ singer once recalled, when inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, that the first time he heard a Bob Dylan album (Highway 61 Revisited, in 1965), Dylan’s performance “thrilled and scared me.”

The singer continued: “It made me feel kind of irresponsibly innocent. And it still does. But it reached down and touched what little worldliness I think a 15-year-old kid, in high school, in New Jersey had in him at the time.” It’s the kind of feeling Dylan gave to millions of people across the globe as he connected with an audience through highly personal and expressive lyrics.

As a noted lover of Dylan, Springsteen has shared many covers of the freewheelin’ troubadour over the years and has been routinely questioned about his favourite Bob Dylan songs. Squirming and shuffling in his seat, he answered that question in 2020 when speaking to Stephen Colbert. Given his wide appreciation for the songwriter, Springsteen picks two lesser-known hits, ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘Ring The Bells’ before doffing his cap for the musician’s legacy-defining hit ‘Like A Rolling Stone.’

Springsteen described it as a “history and culture changing piece of music,” but the musician also added that it is simply a “fantastic rock and roll song.” But he also attributed the track special praise by picking it out as containing his favourite Bob Dylan lyric of all time. The ‘Thunder Road’ singer picked out the tune’s captivating opening line, “Once upon a time you dressed so fine / Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?” noting that, thereafter, he was a fan of Dylan forever, saying he was “instantly hooked and into that song so intensely.”

Watch Bruce Springsteen pick his favourite Bob Dylan lyric below.