The Geordie band that Bruce Springsteen called a “revelation”
Bruce Springsteen is the most famous son to hail from New Jersey, and is a poster boy for the heartland rock sound that has defined contemporary American music. However, he does also owe a great deal to bands from across the water in the United Kingdom.
It’s little secret that a light was switched on inside his head when Springsteen accidentally stumbled on The Beatles for the first time as an adolescent. He was in the car with his mother when ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ came on the radio, altering his perspective on music completely and enriching his soul.
Then, shortly after, when the Fab Four appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, Springsteen went out and bought a guitar, convinced he would follow in their footsteps with a band of his own one day.
As his appetite for rock of the British variety grew, Springsteen fell head over heels for other UK-based bands who headed to America to become the next Beatles, and became obsessed with The Animals.
Around this time, a never-ending carousel of groups visited the States, and the British invasion was born. It was a recipe for success, and seemingly, audiences lapped up any performer who happened to have a British accent.
Also in 1964, The Animals moved to London from Newcastle in search of national acclaim. They quickly acquired a record deal, and their second single, ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’, introduced the band to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
The track was their only number-one hit in either country and laid the foundations for a long, successful career in both territories. Springsteen was one of the many American kids who gravitated to The Animals and felt a strong connection to them despite the geographical divide.
In 2012, Springsteen was invited to be the keynote speaker at the arts festival, SXSW, and during his lengthy speech, he took the time to pay tribute to The Animals.
Firstly, he began by explaining how the British invasion taught him the power of “four guys, playing and singing, writing their own material”, before adding of The Beatles, “The Beatles were cool. They were classical, formal and created the idea of an independent unit where everything could come out of your garage.”
Springsteen continued to wax lyrical about The Beatles, noting how he saw an image of them in a magazine and was immediately struck because “they had on the leather jackets and the slick-backed pompadours, they had acned faces.” He added, “I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, those are the guys I grew up with, you know, only they’re Liverpool wharf rats.'”
However, as much as Springsteen’s fondness for The Beatles captured his heart and mind, he noted, “And then, for me, it was The Animals.”
Detailing precisely why they were the pick of the bunch for him, he shared: “For some, they were just another one of the really good beat groups that came out of the 1960s. But to me, The Animals were — they were a revelation. I mean, the first records with full-blown class consciousness that I had ever heard. ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place,’ had that great bass riff, [plays bass line of ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’] and that was just a clock, a clock marking time.”
While The Beatles were responsible for opening up Springsteen’s mind to new musical horizons and showing him that it was possible to look like him while being a star, The Animals went a step deeper. They proved to Springsteen that he could write about the topics that mattered to him, as well as the community that he represented. It was another crucial moment of discovery, which eventually amalgamated to make Bruce Springsteen become ‘The Boss’.
