The singer Bruce Springsteen called his “religion”
Every song Bruce Springsteen ever wrote was about believing in the power of rock and roll.
Most people like to talk about writing the occasional good tune to get them over the line into rock stardom, but ‘The Boss’ was a firm believer that a three-minute rock and roll tune had the power to change the world as long as the right people were listening. And while there are countless examples of him turning each concert stage into a rock and roll church, he was only a lowly convert to the faith.
While Springsteen has turned into a prophet of rock and roll in many respects, there are just as many times when he has managed to transcend what the genre could do. There are pieces of the great saints that came before him, like Keith Richards and Bob Dylan, but when Born to Run came out, a lot of people felt that he was telling the story of their lives back to them whenever he sang.
A lot of the everyday people that Springsteen sang about weren’t all that different from those that he hung out with in his native New Jersey, but when the guitars are roaring behind him, he could make even the most minuscule part of life feel like the most important thing in the world. And while that took a lot of practice, ‘The Boss’ did have to work on his moves when looking at the greatest artists at the beginning of rock and roll.
After all, The Beatles were the ones that started his journey to pick up a guitar, and if it wasn’t for The Rolling Stones, Springsteen wouldn’t have had a model to base the E Street Band off of in the first place. If the British invasion were creating something that seemed attainable, the kind of majesty that Elvis Presley carried himself was something that no other artist could have possibly mustered.
Springsteen didn’t think that he could reach the level of Presley’s fame, but he knew that whatever that Memphis kid was after was worth devoting his life to, saying, “Elvis is my religion. But for him, I would be selling encyclopedias right now. That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain’t no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book.” Then again, there were bound to be limits on how much of Presley’s stage Springsteen could mimic.
While Presley made his dance moves look easy, there was no way that ‘The Boss’ was going to adopt the hip swivel while still playing guitar. What grabbed him was the excitement, and if Presley did it all by himself, Springsteen knew that he could do the same thing as long as he had that same sense of community behind him whenever he started performing tracks like ‘Jungleland’.
In fact, a lot of the best Springsteen wouldn’t have had the same impact if it were him and a guitar. Nebraska is a fantastic record that consists of only him playing guitar and singing his tunes, but if you need any indication of why the rest of the band is so important, just listen to Born in the USA right afterwards and hear what everyone from Roy Bittan to Clarence Clemons can do with any of their features.
So while Presley will forever be the messianic figure who helped kickstart rock and roll, Springsteen has at least earned a spot as one of his most devoted missionaries. It wasn’t about trying to learn how to play every one of his songs, but as long as he kept that same energy that he heard out of his favourite Presley records, he could rest easy at night knowing that he gave each show everything he had.
