The guitarist who became a “muse” for Bruce Springsteen
The American legend Bruce Springsteen has earned a rightful place among the Rock Hall elite with his captivating performances and remarkable songwriting prowess. Known affectionately as the Boss, he has mesmerised audiences worldwide for over four-and-a-half decades, consistently selling out arena tours with his dynamic ensemble, The E Street Band.
Springsteen became enamoured with rock and roll music as a child after seeing Elvis Presley perform on television, but his clear-cut ambition took shape after hearing about the Fab Four from Liverpool. “I saw Elvis on TV, and when I first saw Elvis, I was nine, but I was a little young, tried to play the guitar, but it didn’t work out, I put it away,” Springsteen once told Rolling Stone. “The keeper was in 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on South Street with my mother driving”.
He added: “I immediately demanded that she let me out, I ran to the bowling alley, ran down a long neon-lit aisle, down the 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.”
While The Beatles inspired Springsteen to pick up his first guitar, his pool of influence has never stagnated. Although his music didn’t directly reflect it, Springsteen became infatuated with punk and experimental rock music throughout the 1970s.
In a past interview with Rolling Stone, the Boss revealed his admiration for the experimental electro-punk duo Suicide. Announcing the collective’s 1977 debut album as a particular favourite, Springsteen said, “That’s one of the most amazing records I think I ever heard. I really love that record.” He added that the album’s nightmarish closing song ‘Frankie Teardrop’ was “One of the most amazing songs I ever heard.”
Over the closing decades of the 20th century and into the next, Springsteen kept a finger on the pulse, regularly endorsing emerging subgenres and artists. In 2000, Springsteen became familiar with the heavy rock group Rage Against the Machine when they reimagined his song ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ in their covers album, Renegades.
Shortly after, Springsteen acquainted himself with the band and even invited their guitarist Tom Morello to join his E Street Band for several special concerts on his 2008 tour. They also performed ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ together during the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert series in 2009.
Having established a firm friendship, Springsteen and Morello teamed up in the studio in the early 2010s while the former recorded his seventeenth studio album, Wrecking Ball. Following the album’s release in 2012, Morello again joined the E Street Band for the Wrecking Ball World Tour.
Discussing his eighteenth studio album, High Hopes, in 2014, Springsteen revealed that, beyond friendship, Morello was a crucial muse. “I was working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade when Tom Morello [sitting in for Steve during the Australian leg of our tour] suggested we ought to add ‘High Hopes’ to our live set,” Springsteen revealed in a post on his website.
“I had cut ‘High Hopes’, a song by Tim Scott McConnell of the LA-based Havalinas, in the 90’s. We worked it up in our Aussie rehearsals, and Tom then proceeded to burn the house down with it. We re-cut it mid-tour at Studios 301 in Sydney along with ‘Just Like Fire Would’, a song from one of my favourite early Australian punk bands, The Saints. Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level. Thanks for the inspiration, Tom.”
Watch Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello perform together at the Rock Hall 25th Anniversary Concert below.
