“Came out later”: The artist that shaped Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting
The art of songwriting doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Although the best artists of their generation are good at quoting their hearts and putting them down on paper for the world to see, it’s hard to get to that point without looking back on the best songwriters that came before you and seeing what made them tick. And while Bruce Springsteen was clearly indebted to American artists like Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie during his prime, he thought he indirectly had his songwriting shaped by this rock and roll trailblazer.
Looking through The Boss’ best records, though, it’s not that hard to see the Dylan comparisons. From the rambling songs that he made in his pre-Born to Run days to eventually working on entire tribute albums to Pete Seeger, Springsteen was clearly used to the folk tradition of making songs that appealed to a wider demographic than the people who wanted to hear ‘Tutti Frutti’ when it came on the radio.
Because when you think about it, the early days of rock and roll needed the lyrics to have something to say. Unless you were Little Richard and could get there through sheer power, many of the best songs would have to have stellar lyrics, or people would have had to deal with someone plonking away on three chords for minutes on end.
Although Chuck Berry may have had the same three-chord foundation that everyone else did, his songs remain stand-alone stories. Not all of them had to be that deep, but listening to him talking about taking the car out for a spin or talking about a woman not being true, Berry paints that picture in a way that everyone could appreciate.
And it’s not like Springsteen couldn’t see himself in what Berry was doing. Compared to everyone else on the scene trying to make it on the pop charts, Springsteen was one of the many personifications of ‘Johnny B Goode’, taking everything that he could and channelling it into that guitar whenever he started singing about characters like Wendy in ‘Born to Run’ or the disillusion Frankie on ‘Highway Patrolman’.
While Springsteen did have to do a fair bit of catch-up with Berry after first hearing The Rolling Stones play his songs, he knew that there was something deeper happening when he started writing his own tunes, saying, “I think his influence on my own writing came out later on when I wanted to write the way I thought people talked. That’s how he writes. When you hear one of his songs it sounds like someone’s coming in, sitting down in a chair, and telling you a story.”
Despite Springsteen’s classics having their own characters to them, it’s easy to see both sides of that relatability coming through. ‘Glory Days’ sounds like someone sitting next to you at a bar, while a song like ‘You’re Missing’ is the kind of conversation that people only wish they could have had with their loved ones who have been lost to history.
Not all of Berry’s lines were meant to be too serious, but they were still teaching Springsteen what songwriting was all about. It can be a straight-ahead story, but it’s also important to set the scene for the listener before spewing out nonsense.
