The musician Bruce Springsteen called “the coolest, uncool loser”
America’s definitive blue-collar champion, Bruce Springsteen, has rightfully held this revered status for decades. Lovingly known as ‘The Boss’, his nickname speaks volumes about his significance. Fusing hearty, anthemic rock with tales that profoundly resonate with ordinary people, Springsteen has created many moments that transcend music, tapping into something culturally vital.
Despite exploring many genres throughout his extensive career, Springsteen has always been a rocker at heart. He belongs to a perfect generation that was old enough to experience the cultural explosion of the 1960s firsthand and witness many historical figures in action. This era not only shaped his musical style but also influenced his countercultural outlook.
The New Jersey-born hero is so deeply indebted to the world of rock that he even treasures artists unknown to the mainstream. This includes Walter Cichon, a relatively obscure musician who played in the local Jersey Shore band The Motifs in the mid-1960s. Despite not being a household name and tragically going missing in action in Vietnam in March 1968, Springsteen regards Cichon as one of his ultimate influences.
At their peak, Springsteen described the band as being “a head above everybody else”, with Cichon such a pioneer that he was the first figure the future ‘Born to Run’ songwriter would find had the charisma of a true star.
It’s not just rock that Springsteen loves, though. Marvin Gaye is another figure who made a significant impression on him, with the soul king’s socio-political approach and passionate delivery contributing to discernible aspects of Springsteen’s earthy essence. Furthermore, he’s even mentioned Suicide as a consequential force in his life, which aptly outlines the breadth of his taste. The New York duo’s oft-challenging experimentalism and aggressive stage presence inhabit a vastly different realm from his own work. Still, there are resemblances in the bleak realism of their lyrics.
Crucially, another pioneer Springsteen holds dear is Roy Orbison. At first glance, it might seem a strange pairing, but there’s undoubtedly a link between the bespectacled Texan’s unique rendering of melancholy and the emotion that fuels some of Springsteen’s most piercing cuts. Of course, there’s much that separates them, too, with Orbison’s work inhabiting a melodramatic, dream-like space.
In his 2012 keynote address at SXSW, Springsteen discussed the impact of Orbison and the era’s pop music on his work. In his typically frank New Jersey style, he called the ‘In Dreams’ singer “the coolest, uncool loser”.
He recalled: “Roy Orbison, besides Johnny Cash, he was the other Man in Black. He was the true master of the romantic apocalypse you dreaded and knew was coming after the first night you whispered, I love you, to your new girlfriend.”
Harking back to those heady formative years, Springsteen continued: “You were going down. Roy was the coolest, uncool loser you’d ever seen. With his Coke bottle black glasses, his three-octave range, he seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities.”
With tracks such as ‘Crying’ and ‘It’s Over’, Orbison tapped into the deepest romantic fears of Springsteen’s green, wide-eyed generation. He captured the crushing lows and searing highs of romance in a way that had never been done before, as pop music had traditionally been a saccharine environment. These cruelly ironic numbers imbued realism into the form and changed its course for the future.
Orbison’s artistic success in harnessing the beauty of disaster resonated with the young, lovesick Springsteen. As expected of a hormone-filled teenager of that period, for a time, he genuinely believed that life meant untold tragedy before he realised, after experiencing more of it, that it wasn’t true. It was only true in pop music. Heartbreak has always sold.
