The guitarist Bruce Springsteen knew always belonged in his band
It takes a small army for Bruce Springsteen to get any of his songs off the ground.
Even though he has had many songs that have lived and died off the strength of his performance, what makes all of them so much more interesting is seeing how the rest of the E Street Band works off his tunes. They are a living entity in many senses of the word, but Springsteen felt that there was a lot more that the band had to offer when they had the right guest working alongside them every single night.
But there are a couple of rules that one needs to know before taking on a gig in the E Street Band. The entire point of working in a group like this is to give respect to the rock and roll legends that came before them, and that means learning songs on the fly. Not everyone goes into a show thinking that they are going to play a song like ‘Wild Thing’, but if ‘The Boss’ is counting the tune off, you’d better have your shit together by the time the whole band kicks in.
A lot of that comes with the territory, but even if there’s a learning curve, every member of the band is responsible for bringing something new to the table. Clarence Clemons was one of the finest musicians that he ever had in the band, and while it took a while for the rest of the band to get acclimatised to Patti Scialfa, her backing vocals are some of the greatest parts of the band’s sound in their later years.
There was no real need to add more bodies onstage, but during Springsteen’s sabbatical from the band, he felt that there was something interesting about bands like Rage Against the Machine. Everyone in the band was singing with the same passion that he used to have, and Tom Morello seemed to have the same kind of musical values that he had every single time he played.
It might have taken a cover of ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ for Springsteen to pay attention, but what Morello was doing was about more than just subtle lip service to ‘The Boss’s tunes. He was a Springsteen fanatic every single time he performed, and when he was eventually invited up onstage with the E Street Band, Springsteen felt that there was another dimension to their sound that he didn’t realise was there before.
Morello is light-years different from what Stevie Van Zandt is doing on the other side of the stage, but Springsteen felt that the band sometimes needed that musical push, saying, “It’s funny. When Tom Morello’s up there, the E Street Band is a pretty big house. But he builds on another room. He builds on a room that hadn’t existed before. We have a surfeit of great guitarists. Tom, once again, does something else kind of on the instrument and something in his mind and who he is, he’s a great addition and we’re enjoying it as it stands.”
And it’s not hard to see where Morello got some of his ideas for his solo tours as well. The Highwayman is a much different monster than anything that Rage ever did, but when you listen to his protest music that’s rooted deep in the tradition of folk music, a lot of it seems to have more to do with what Springsteen was making when he was laying down the tracks for records like Nebraska.
While Morello might not be a fully-fledged member of The E Street Band, the reason why he works so well is that he has that same fearless energy that Springsteen did in his prime. Creativity is absolutely spilling out of every pore of his body, and whether he’s jamming with them out on the road or throwing some new parts on their studio albums, he will always have a home on their stage.
