‘Greensleeves’: The song that started Bruce Springsteen’s musical journey
Approaching the sixth decade of his lengthy career, Bruce Springsteen still retains a firm place in the music canon for his distinctive Americana lyrics paired with pop-rock riffs. Colloquially nicknamed ‘The Boss’, Springsteen has attained commercial and critical success like few other artists. Throughout his career, he’s obtained 20 Grammys, an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and even received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.
Springsteen’s performance has become as famous and iconic as his studio music. Known for lengthy sets and usually accompanied by his favourite beaten-up wood Fender Telecaster, Springsteen has played thousands of shows since his first foray into music in the mid-1960s. But even the most accomplished performers needed to start somewhere.
For Springsteen, that somewhere was a New York City social club called Elks Lodge in Freehold. Spurred into action by a live performance he had seen of The Beatles on television, Springsteen began performing at the venue on Sundays, when entry to the venue cost just 35 cents. Each band would play between three to five songs to less than 100 people.
During an interview with Jimmy Fallon for The Tonight Show, Springsteen recalls beginning his set with the first rock song he learned, The Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout’, saying, “And I’ve been singing it ever since.”
But before he ventured into rock, Springsteen named the first song he ever learned on guitar as the traditional folk song ‘Greensleeves’, a far cry from the bright Americana rock and roll he’s known for. The crowd’s reaction seems to be a mix of disbelief and dissatisfaction with the answer, which Springsteen acknowledges: “You can hear the reaction from your audience. ”Greensleeves’, he’s playing ‘Greensleeves’?’ Damn.”
He explains to Fallon: “It was a folk song. The first thing I had was a big book of American folk music, and so I learned that first because it only had two chords. And then eventually I made my way to the third chord which allowed you to play ‘Twist and Shout’, so…”
So Springsteen’s motivation for learning the song didn’t come from a love for British folk but instead from a desire to eventually learn a Beatles song. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he stated that hearing The Beatles on the radio changed his life “because I was going to successfully pick the guitar up and learn how to play.”
He recalls a time he heard ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ while in the car with his mother: “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 and roll guitars.”
While ‘Greensleeves’ faded to a story he would tell on talk shows, the influence of the Beatles on Springsteen endured. Rock and roll became Springsteen’s main musical interest, and his cover of ‘Twist and Shout’ remains a staple in his live sets.
