Recommendations of the Editorial team
Bruce Springsteen is the embodiment of rock’n’roll in many ways. He connects Hillbilly music, rockabilly, blues and R&B, and his music represents the very own values of rock’n’roll: passion, the need for freedom and the search for itself.
In all of his songs you will find a willingness to portray even the simplest aspects of life in an urgent and dramatic way. The first time I heard him in a small club, the bitter end in New York, where he had a guest appearance.
I asked him where he came from and he grinned a bit and said from New Jersey. At that time, jokes were made about New Jersey. The people from there were not particularly bright. Next time I saw him with his band where David Sancious played.
I had never experienced anything like that. He played acoustic guitar and danced across the stage, and the guitar was not plugged in anywhere. It was not so important for him that you could hear every note. His access to music was drama. A year later I saw him in La with Max Weinberg, Clarence Clemons and Steve van Zandt in the band. That was even more dramatic – how they used the headlights and brought everything to the stage.
Bruce has never shied away from being grown up
When I came back on the second evening, I expected to see the same thing again, but it was completely different. The greatest thing was that they themselves had so much fun. They were a brotherhood, outsiders who had incredible strength and had a story in their luggage that had to be told.
Bruce has never shy away from being grown up. He is a family man with children and the same values and worries as the American working class. This runs like a thread through his work, the desire to find this one person and go through life with him.
Listen to “Rosalita”. Her mother doesn’t like him, her father can’t stand him, but he came to get her. Or “The River” – for those of us who do not have much to get married, the struggle for love in a comparable world is symbolized by these two people who jump into the river at night. Bruces songs are full of such pictures.
Bruce has all possible influences, from Chuck Berry and Gary “Us” Bonds to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. But there are also similarities with Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and James Dean – People whose quiet murmurs could be heard better and said more than the shouting of other people. Bruce always had an enormous thematic and emotional bandwidth and volume – even his quietest things are quieter than anything you have ever heard.
But he always covered a spectrum of almost heroic width. He is one of the very few songwriters who were able to find words after September 11th. His feeling for music as a healing force has never left him: he stands between the rebellion and redemption with his feet on both sides of the gap between black and white gospel, blues and country.