Stephen King’s favourite Bruce Springsteen album: “I knew from the beginning it was amazing”
It was almost serendipitous that Stephen King would grow to become an acquaintance of Bruce Springsteen, with the two first making headway in their respective professions at around the same time.
The author’s first novel, Carrie, was published in April 1974, a little over a year after Springsteen’s debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., was released. King was a fan first and foremost, though, but he ended up crossing paths with ‘The Boss’ numerous times under a variety of different guises.
The writer is exactly two years and two days older than the rocket, too, and like many of his generation, the horror icon has been a massive fan of the singer and songwriter’s work since the very beginning. It didn’t take long for King to experience his first taste of Springsteen’s formidable live shows, and he instantly regarded it as the greatest concert he’d ever attended.
Even though more than three decades had elapsed and he’d no doubt been to countless more gigs in the interim, King couldn’t see past a 1977 Springsteen slot at the Ice Arena in Lewiston, Maine, as being the cream of the crop. “There’s so much energy, so much generosity in the show,” he explained. “And so much real life in the music.”
By the time they finally met in person, they were both world-renowned masters of their chosen vocation, which led to a hilarious miscommunication where King’s fame outstripped that of his illustrious counterpart when they sat down for a chinwag in a New York bistro shortly before the arrival of 1982’s Nebraska.
“A teenage girl came over, stars in her eyes,” King reflected. “Bruce reached for a pen. She never looked at him. She said, ‘Oh my god, Stephen King!’. Bruce laughed his ass off, and I did the autograph thing.” Chalk one in the win column for the prolific author, then, but ‘The Boss’ never held it against him.
King even contacted Springsteen’s team about possibly writing or directing the music video for the title track from Born in the USA, which “didn’t happen for a variety of reasons.” When King was performing with his band Rock Bottom Remainders at a 1997 gig in Los Angeles, who made a surprise appearance for a cover of Them’s ‘Gloria’? “That was fun,” the writer understated. “I was so excited to be sharing a mic with Bruce Springsteen that I forgot the chords to ‘Gloria’, and there’s only three.”
Needless to say, the mutual appreciation society has been in full flow for decades, but which of Springsteen’s 21 studio albums to date is King’s personal favourite? Unsurprisingly, it’s one regarded as being among his best, something he realised as soon as the second track kicked in.
“My favourite album of his is Nebraska,” King shared with Rolling Stone. “I knew from the beginning of ‘Atlantic City’ that it was amazing. He had really grown as a songwriter. He’s done stuff in music that nobody else has done.”
With his opinion having failed to shift since the album was released, King has and will continue to defend Nebraska to the death as Springsteen’s finest work. If that’s been his stance since the early 1980s and ‘The Boss’ has rolled out another 15 records since then, don’t expect it to change, either.
