The singers Bruce Springsteen wanted to run away from: “I wasn’t gonna let that happen”
Love or hate Bruce Springsteen’s music, you have to admire just how much he owns up to his influences, both good and bad.
When we talk about those artists who have had a positive influence on Springsteen, we talk about the likes of The Beatles and Bob Dylan. The music of The Beatles really captured Springsteen’s imagination, and it was they who made him want to learn to play the guitar. Meanwhile, he wanted to write lyrics like Bob Dylan, as he was shocked at just how much one man and a guitar could effectively hold up a mirror to the world around him.
“I want people to get the same experience from listening to one of my records as I had when I listened to Highway 61 Revisited,” he admitted, “The idea that something was revealed to them that was fundamentally true and essential, and gave you a view of your world, your country, your town, your neighbours, your family.”
He probably stuck to this idea a little bit too much in his initial records. People certainly liked the first couple of Springsteen albums, but it was clear he was attempting to channel the work of Dylan, and so they weren’t commercial successes as they lacked a sense of originality. In a bid to combat this, ‘The Boss’ set to work writing Born to Run, an album which was received beautifully at the time and to this day is considered one of the best albums ever made.
It’s not a grower; this is a record which you hear once and know is a classic. Yet, despite it being such an instant LP, Bruce Springsteen hated the album once it was finished, and if he were left to his own devices, the whole thing would have wound up in the bin. There are a couple of potential reasons for this strange disdain, one being that he had simply spent too long being too close to the record, or that he was scared of the success it might bring.
“I’ve always had a bit of an ambivalent attitude towards…what was I afraid of? Change, I don’t know [laughs],” he said, “Also, it was a moment when your music was the totality of your identity, and so you were so caught up and so invested in it.”
You can see this negative affinity towards the spotlight in the other influences that Springsteen had, except this time, they provided an image of how not to be. They came in the form of people like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, and it wasn’t because Springsteen disliked their music, but because he felt that their fame was anti-whatever it means to be a rockstar. He felt there always needed to be a connection between creator and consumer, and the moment you need to avoid certain bars or places because of your fame, you’ve lost touch with your audience.
“The type of fame that Elvis had, and that I think Michael Jackson has, the pressure of it, and the isolation that it seems to require, has gotta be really painful,” he once noted, “I wasn’t gonna let that happen to me. I wasn’t gonna get to a place where I said, ‘I can’t go in here. I can’t go to this bar. I can’t go outside’… I believe that the life of a rock ‘n’ roll band will last as long as you look down into the audience and can see yourself, and your audience looks up at you and can see themselves, and as long as those reflections are human, realistic ones.”
Perhaps this is the reason why Springsteen shies away from fireworks and pyrotechnics during his gigs? The point is good music and connection, and it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
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