The first time Bruce Springsteen heard a song that “mirrored” his life
Growing up in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen struggled to feel represented by the songs he heard blasting from the radio airwaves. While this love was already ignited, one track made him relate to the art form like never before and elevated his relationship with music.
Although Springsteen has spoken at length about the impact of The Beatles on him as an adolescent after hearing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ in 1964, there was another British band with whom he felt a stronger kinship. While they never hit the same heights as the four lads from Liverpool, for Springsteen, it represented a watershed moment as he finally heard a song which felt relatable to his imperfect teenage existence.
An element of The Beatles felt out of reach for a boy from Asbury Park, who seemed destined for the blue-collar life. The Fab Four were from a similar working-class background to Springsteen; the picture-perfect images he saw pasted on album sleeves and magazine covers presented an idyllic depiction he felt was beyond him.
However, as he said in his keynote speech at SXSW in 2012, his opinion of The Beatles changed upon seeing their acne-riddled faces from their Hamburg residency. It made him believe it was possible to be a musician without being devilishly handsome, and he was further incentivised to follow his dream upon discovering The Animals, who were more rugged in every sense.
During the same speech, Springsteen described hearing ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’ as a “revelation” before reciting the lyrics from the song. The track includes the poignant lines, “We gotta get out of this place, Girl, there’s a better life for me and you, Yes, I know it’s true”.
Springsteen continued: “That’s every song I’ve ever written. Yeah. That’s all of them. I’m not kidding, either. That’s ‘Born to Run,’ ‘Born in the USA,’ everything I’ve done for the past 40 years, including all the new ones. But that struck me so deep. It was the first time I felt I heard something come across the radio that mirrored my home life, my childhood. And the other thing that was great about The Animals was there were no good–looking members. There were none.”
The New Jersey native further explained why the appearance of The Animals was significant and liberated him to feel comfortable with his own skin. Springsteen added: “They were considered to be one of the ugliest groups in all of rock and roll. And that was good. That was good for me, because I considered myself hideous at the time. And they weren’t nice, you know. They didn’t curry favour, you know.”
He concluded: “They were like aggression personified. It’s my life, I’ll do what I want. They were cruel. They were cruel, which was so freeing. It was so freeing. When you saw Eric Burdon, he was like your shrunken daddy with a wig on. He never, he never had a kid’s face. He always had a little man’s face, you know.”
While the aesthetic of The Animals may have seemed inconsequential to most, it knocked down a barrier to entry for Springsteen, who believed his looks would potentially stop him from becoming a rock ‘n’ roll star. However, most importantly, he also strongly connected to tracks such as ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’, which epitomised his situation.
