How John Steinbeck inspired Bruce Springsteen
For over four-and-a-half decades, Bruce Springsteen has mesmerised audiences worldwide, consistently selling out arena tours with his dynamic ensemble, The E Street Band. Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Bob Dylan have remained a staple presence in The Boss’ interviews as his most vital career influences, but his talent’s roots spread far and wide.
Springsteen first became interested in rock ‘n’ roll as a child after seeing Elvis Presley perform on television, but his clear-cut ambition took shape when he heard four lads 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.”
“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.”
Springsteen certainly learned to play from some of the best in the business, but his poetic and often poignant verse would require a deep fascination with literature and a side order of Bob Dylan. While literary references crop out frequently throughout Springsteen’s oeuvre, it would appear that John Steinbeck was a particular favourite.
Springsteen’s most obvious reference to the American Nobel Prize-winning icon was in the 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad and its title track. Tom Joad is the central protagonist in Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which follows the Joad’s moribund migration to the American West, highlighting the empty promises of manifest destiny.
Picking up on the pertinent cultural connotations of the classic novel, Springsteen used the protagonist to add gravity to his lyrical ideas, which took some words directly from the book. “Men walkin’ ‘long the railroad tracks / Goin’ someplace, there’s no goin’ back / Highway patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge / Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge,” he sings in the first verse.
Springsteen’s references to Steinbeck weren’t confined to The Ghost of Tom Joad, either. In 1978, the New Jersey singer-songwriter loosely based the Darkness on the Edge of Town cut ‘Adam Raised a Cain’ on Steinbeck’s 1952 novel East of Eden. The story, which was famously adapted into a James Dean movie in 1955, explores the relationship between two brothers and their God-fearing father.
Listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Adam Raised a Cain’ below.
