The musicians that Bruce Springsteen claimed “created their own world”
Bruce Springsteen never claimed to be the rockstar ever to touch a microphone. He was brilliant both with and without the E Street Band backing him, but in terms of his raw appeal, it always comes down to his way of telling people a story rather than relying on a killer guitar solo or some impressive vocal run. He comes by it honestly, but he knows that some of his contemporaries have the power to take people on a journey just through music.
Then again, ‘The Boss’ has taken many journeys on record. With the help of every member of his behind him, it’s easy to picture that Jersey boardwalk in ‘Born to Run’ or sit right in the room with Bruce and his other half as they talk about peeling out and moving somewhere better on the song ‘Thunder Road’.
Even when he stripped the E Street Band out of his sound, Springsteen still managed to hold the audience in the palm of his hand. Thanks to records like Nebraska, we now know what the dark sides of Springsteen’s mind were like, discussing all of the people based on the wrong side of the tracks, like the killer sentenced to death on the title track or the poor state trooper that has to end up chasing down his brother on ‘Highway Patrolman’.
But if you take Springsteen’s words out of it, it’s just a man sitting playing guitar. Sure, Bob Dylan had done the same thing when he was making his masterpieces, but in terms of raw finesse, Springsteen gravitated towards guitar players as the people who can make pure emotion whenever they play.
It’s one thing to have a great song, but Springsteen singled out three massive players for being able to push their music forward, telling NPR, “I just said, ‘What excites me about a lot of the artists I love?’ And I realized, well, they created their own personal world that I could enter into through their music and through their songwriting. There’s people that can do it instrumentally, like Jimi Hendrix or Edge of U2 or Pete Townshend.”
Springsteen isn’t that far off the mark with any of his choices, but what’s interesting is how each of them used their sound for something different. Pete Townshend, for example, pretty much invented the idea of the power chord, turning what was initially basic Beatles-esque chords into something nasty.
The Edge followed Townshend’s footsteps in the early days, but using digital delay on U2’s greatest songs was more than a cheap effect. Even with over 30 years in the public consciousness, albums like The Joshua Tree still manage to sound like the future solely through the way that The Edge plays those icy high notes.
Both Townshend and The Edge certainly had something to express, but Hendrix seemed to be channelling something that he needed to get out of his system. There are plenty of artists that seem to internalise the music, but Hendrix’s way with melody offered people new colours that no one anticipated, almost as if he turned the entire rock scene from black and white to technicolour the minute the Summer of Love hit.
Springsteen readily admits that he was nowhere close to making that kind of magic, but it’s not like he made nothing but straight-ahead rock. Yes, Townshend, the Edge, and Hendrix had something brooding in their sound whenever they played, but as soon as Springsteen opened his mouth, he created lush stories that no one could recreate.
