The Emmylou Harris album inspired by Bruce Springsteen: “I had that idea for a long time”
Emmylou Harris and Bruce Springsteen feel like they exist in two different spheres. While Springsteen is the Boss that dominates classic rock, Harris’ legacy exists more in the world of country, discovered first by Gram Parsons, who introduced her to the 1960s circle of folk and country rockers. But as her own artistry evolved, so did her scope of inspiration as she looked towards Springsteen.
When Gram Parsons first discovered Harris in a club in Washington DC, he was amazed. Her voice so blew him away that he mailed her a plane ticket to Los Angeles, demanding that she come and work with him, make her debut album and tour with his band. That would be her introduction to music but as her mentor sadly passed only a few years later in 1973, she had to start evolving on her own and turning to new sources of influence and inspiration to keep moving forward.
In the 1980s, when her sound had already grown into a more full-blown country rock sonic with a band around her and more power being put behind her vocals, she got turned onto Bruce Springsteen along with the rest of the world. Having made his name with his ‘70s albums, including the hugely successful Born to Run and The River, Springsteen was in a state of evolution, too. When the world wanted him to stay the course and keep releasing radio-ready, easy-listening classic rock tunes, he launched into something more in-depth.
In 1982, he released Nebraska – a deeply storytelling album with narrative tracks considering the lives of a cast of characters, inspired by the authors the musician loved. Seeing Springsteen release such an uncompromising record proved empowering as she’d been dreaming up her own story-led release too.
“I had that idea for a long time,” she said in a 2014 interview with SongFacts as they discussed her 1985 album The Ballad Of Sally Rose. “Then Bruce Springsteen put out his Nebraska album, and I was so inspired by the bravery of that record and the emotion of that record that I said, ‘I’ve really got to just do this project’”, she added, crediting Springsteen for the push she needed to make it happen.
Across The Ballad Of Sally Rose, Harris tells the story of Sally, a young girl who meets a more established musician, who takes her under his wing. In part, it’s an autobiographical story telling the tale of her own life with Parsons. But on the album, Sally and her mentor get married, and the work eventually tears their relationship apart, ending in tragedy. In real life, Parsons and Harris always maintained that their relationship was purely musical and platonic. As the record delves into Sally’s grief and partial guilt, it’s perhaps an insight into Harris’ feelings about her friend’s untimely death.
Either way, it’s a bold move. Much like Springsteen’s own decision to go all in on his storytelling vision, Harris committed to hers as she took the album out on tour and dedicated the entire first set of the show to playing it from start to finish, even announcing herself as ‘Sally Rose and the Rosebuds’ as she stepped into the shoes of her character.
