The song Bruce Springsteen wrote to honour his musical hero: “There is only one king”
As much as Bruce Springsteen is richly unique, he’s also partly the amalgamation of his musical heroes, who are the primary reason why Springsteen embarked on the path that he followed. From a young age, he had a desire to step on stage and sing for his supper, no matter what the level. He never fostered ambitions to become a stadium-dwelling rock superstar, which would have seemed farcical and beyond the realms of possibility. Instead, the opportunity to perform and mimic his idol was all he ever wanted.
Like many others of his generation, Springsteen’s musical journey was born out of his love of Elvis Presley. Upon seeing Presley for the first time, he was instantly captivated by the mesmeric mix of talent and charisma on display. Elvis was a one-off that the world will never see again, and for those of us who weren’t fortunate enough to live through his pomp, he feels like an almost fictional character carved by the cultural gods.
Although he was young, Springsteen still lived through seeing Elvis at the peak of his powers, not just the dishevelled Las Vegas version that would sadly define his decline. Like a true diehard fan, Springsteen even made the voyage to the singer’s home, Graceland, to bolster his understanding of the man who altered the course of his life. Following the icon’s tragic death, Springsteen found it necessary to pay tribute to his ultimate hero.
When he discovered that ‘The King’ passed away, naturally, it was a tough pill for Springsteen to swallow, as he naively thought Elvis would exist forever. It felt as if an integral part of his childhood had disappeared. He later recalled: “I remember later, when a friend of mine called to tell me that he’d died, it was so hard to understand how somebody whose music came in and took away so many people’s loneliness and gave so many people a reason and a sense of the possibilities of living could have, in the end, died so tragically.”
In his mind, Presley had an unquantifiable aura that separated him from everybody else in the music industry. Springsteen added, “There have been a lot of tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one King.”
Despite Springsteen’s ascent to superstardom in the early 1970s, he never did get a chance to thank Presley for his music’s powerful, life-affirming impact. While they never met, that wasn’t down to a lack of trying on Springsteen’s part. In 1976, while slightly inebriated on tour, he got a taxi to Graceland with Steve Van Zandt in the dead of night. Sadly, Presley’s security had other ideas and halted their ambitious plan.
Admittedly, his attempt to break into Graceland was ludicrous and unprofessional, but it’s a mark of his appreciation for Elvis. After all, his debut exposure to rock ‘n’ roll came at the hands of ‘The King’ when he performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. From that moment on, Springsteen worshipped Elvis, and his life was never the same. After being hypnotised by what he saw on television as a nine-year-old, Springsteen pleaded with his mother, who caved and bought him his first guitar.
Three years after Presley’s death, The Boss paid tribute to the late original rock ‘n’ roller on ‘Johnny Bye Bye’. He used Chuck Berry’s ‘Bye Bye Johnny’ for the foundations of the ode, which he added to with layers of heartfelt emotion. On the track, he painfully sings, “They found him slumped up against the drain, With a whole lotta trouble running through his veins, Bye bye Johnny, Johnny bye bye, You didn’t have to die, You didn’t have to die.”
While Springsteen didn’t get the opportunity to tell Presley how much he owed him, he instead bottled up his gratitude on ‘Johnny Bye Bye’, which is a permanent reminder of his first musical hero’s impact on him.
