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Maybe I'm just to unfamiliar with Joel's work,but I'm not sure about this connection. Although I think you're right that nothing is born in a vacuum, artists are constantly feeding of what they hear. All music is a fusion of music from the past and present, the Beatles doing revolutionary things with music is too some extent a myth. They merely gave a very original twist to the sounds they heard in turn.

I've always seen Bruce as an artist who feeds of the past more than artists in his direct surroundings or in the current charts. Although BITUSA was laden with modern instrumentation, it was still very much a throwback to the great R&R singles of the past, with a bit of country thrown in the mix. If Bruce fed of Joel I can see how that has been in their approach of classic R&R radio but not so much that Joel inspired Bruce.
I think that Bruce has always been more about preserving rock 'n' roll rather than moving it forward. As such his biggest influences were not his contemporaries, but the pioneers of rock. (Elvis, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Roy Orbison, etc.). Even when he went acoustic with Nebraska it wasn't the contemporary country singers he was listening to but people like Hank Williams.

As such I don't see The Rolling Stones, or The Who influencing him all that much (nor Billy Joel as Stud claims earlier in the thread).
Vive Le Resistance!
Originally Posted By: PhillyCalling
I agree with the Who, but early Stones without a doubt, had a influence. Let's just ask him.


Seeing how he played a lot of Stones material with the Castiles I'd say you're right. The Stones were an early influence. I'd ague though that they weren't as important as the Beatles were, who started the whole British invasion, or the animals, whose songs seemed to speak on a much more personal level to Springsteen.
Originally Posted By: Julius
How are you guys missing The Raspberries?


Interesting you bring that up. Bruce has cited them as a big influence behind many of the River-era songs.

I was interested to hear the link, so I bought a Raspberries compilation this summer. After listening to it, I was scratching my head--I just didnt hear the influence much at all.

It's also one of the only groups that influenced Bruce that I haven't liked all that much. "Go All The Way" is a good power pop song, but I didn't care for much of the rest of the CD.
The Animals - It's My Life is now up on the blog with extra audio and video.

Quote:
Of all the British Invasions bands the Animals may have had the most profound impact on Bruce Springsteen. In particular two songs, "It's My Life" and it's predecessor "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place". It is save to say that the British Invasion saved R&R. By the time the Beatles hit America R&R had been near death. Elvis enjoyed his stint in the army and came back to churn out increasingly uninspired Pop schmaltz, Jerry Lee Lewis was caught up in the scandal for marrying his 13 year old niece, Chuck Berry was doing prison time for sleeping with a 14 year old prostitute, Buddy Holly flew into a mountain and Eddie Cochran found his maker after a tragic car accident. On top of that the payola, a practice where DJs would be offered money or other services in exchange for airplay, was made illegal in 1960. This hurt the independent record companies, instrumental in pushing R&R, considerably as this was their main means for getting their material under the attention of DJs. Famous R&R DJ was caught up in the following witch hunt and lost his radio show and job. R&R had lost one of it's primary advocates. R&R's surviving performers, like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, or producers as Lieber & Stoller and Phil Spector, were now striving for a more sophisticated sound. Even though it meant that R&R gained some maturity, it also meant it lost some its edge.

The British Invasion, kicked of by the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, gave R&R its balls back. An entire tilde wave of acts inspired by the sound of early R&R by Sun in Memphis, the inner city Blues from Chess records in Chicago and the upcoming Motown sound of young America flooded the US charts. Among those acts were many of Springsteen's pronounced influences. From the Rolling Stones to the Kinks, from the Yardbirds to the Who, from the Zombies to Manfred Mann, the young Springsteen sucked it all in. Barely a year after the invasion found its way to the US Springsteen was playing guitar live on stage in his first band the Castiles. Somewhere in June 1964 "Twist and Shout" was the first song was the first song Bruce performed at an audition for the band formed by Tex Vinyard, who would promptly give him a spot in the line up. Soon after that the Castiles would start playing the Jersey shore. The R&R that was spawned from the British invasion, along with Bob Dylan, would prove to be the main ingredient for Bruce's early musical education. The British invasion would soon kick start the American Garage or Frat Rock scene, Springsteen was part of that and it would form his definition of R&R and instill in him an importance of having a band. The power blues of Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds and Cream would prompt Springsteen to shortly experiment with the genre himself in bands like Steel Mill before settling back into classic R&R and British Invasion music with the E-Street Band.

Shortly after breaking through with "Born to Run" Springsteen was confronted with the uglier side of the R&R industry. The recording of the album had hardly been a breeze and Springsteen was at first hated the results. Maybe it was fear of failing acting up, what else was he going to do but be a R&R star. On top of that Springsteen had to deal with the draw back of the hype that was created around him. Although he wanted to make it big, I don't think Springsteen had ever considered what that would mean, the hassle that would bring with it. Springsteen was uncomfortable with the adoration, going from a small town kid with a R&R band enjoying moderate success on the Jersey shore to the messiah of R&R is not an easy transition to make. His manager Mike Appel had filed suit when he saw his young prot?g? slip from his control with Rock critic Jon Landau now in the picture as producer. As a result Springsteen could not return to the studio. Instead he was forced to go back on the road after the emotionally exhausting "Born To Run" tour to gain some revenues to pay for his legal battles with Appel.

During what would be called the "Chicken Scratch Tour" Bruce's frustration and disillusion would increasingly start floating to the surface. Some performances on this tour would proof to be his most personal. Although Springsteen threw some new self penned material into the mix, like the "Thunderroad" negative "The Promise", some songs of Eric Burdon's the Animals proved to be a better vehicle. The Animals had first broken the charts with Josh White's "House Of The Rising Sun". Although Both Bob Dylan and Nina Simone would cover the song with success before the Animals, Burdon's dark, brooding and intense vocal made their version the one that mattered. The Animals set themselves apart in the whole British Invasion by heavily relying on keyboards instead of guitars, add to that Burdon's uninhibited baring of the Soul the attraction for Springsteen is easy to see. The Chicken scratch tour would feature two songs made popular by the Animals. First there was Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill penned "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place". Originally this song was intended as the follow up for the Righteous Brother's immortal smash "You've Lost That Loving Feeling", to be produced by Phil Spector. Through the intervention of the Animals manager Allen Klein the song found a much better voice with Eric Burdon. The song quickly grew out to be an anthem for soldiers serving in Vietnam and for small time teens wanting escape, a sort of prototype "Born to Run". Throughout his career Springsteen performed the song a handful of times, reflecting both interpretations.

The second song Springsteen would perform was the chilling "It's My Life". Springsteen would stretch out the three minute record to a full blown fifteen minutes starting with a long spoken intro in which he revealed much of his troubled relation with his father. The best recorded performance, on bootleg that is, in my opinion the November 4th 1976 version performed at the Palladium in New York (download here). With a subdued arrangement Springsteen would describe the confrontations he would have with his father in the kitchen of their house. The piercing guitar backed with the haunting glockenspiel, saxophone and cymbals would add to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the intro. Springsteen sets the scene perfectly, we can see his old man hunched at the kitchen table, over the empty cans of beer and his cigarettes. We can feel the apprehension Springsteen must have felt entering that kitchen, dreading yet another confrontation. Here we see a young Springsteen trapped in his relation with his dad, feeling suffocated by the small town his growing up in, scared to death he'll end up like his old man with his dreams broken. R&R was Springsteen's means of taking control, of acting out his dreams and fantasies. And as "It's My Life" moves into Springsteen's venomous reading of the song, spitting out the chorus "It's my life and I'll do what I want", its not just his father anymore he's shouting at. Bruce is directing his frustration at Appel, who's at that moment threatening to take away his dreams.

When the lawsuit settled Springsteen was free to record "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". The direction he took in that spoken intro of "It's My Life" would prove to be instrumental for large parts of that album. The venom of that intro and song can be found back in "Badlands", a song decidedly more confrontational than "Born To Run". The latter was a statement, with the second we find Springsteen spitting in the face of his background and maybe even Appel. It's there in his affirmation of being a man in "Promised Land". More pronounced "It's My Life" echoes in "Adam Raised a Cain", here the song and intro have simmered to adolescence angst of biblical proportions. But the traces are found in "Factory" as well. Nowhere near as venomous as the first examples "Factory" is a song of a much more reflective nature. "Factory" might be one of the key tracks in his career. It is where Springsteen let go of the battle with his father for the first time and took an effort to see where his old man was coming from. Through understanding Douglas Springsteen he got a look into the lives of working class America, a look into the lives who hadn't had the means to escape it. Through his father he became to understand what moved that segment of America better, allowing him to write about them and for them with more intelligence and authority in the years to come.
One thing Bruce did take from acts like Cream and Hendrix and the Who is their loudness.

I'm shocked no one has brought that up here. While his early writing and arrangements may've been influenced by Dylan; his early singing by Orbison, Elvis, and Van Morrison; and everything else a mix of CCR, Berry, the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, etc etc -- why is no one mentioning the one thing that Bruce can do that none of these other influences ever could? Which is rock an entire hockey arena from the floor to the rafters, for 4 straight hours?

That seems to be the one thing unaccounted for here and everywhere else I read someone trying to deduce the man's influences.
Originally Posted By: Julius
Why is it that people still believe Bruce played 4-hour shows?



Because his longest shows did last over 4 hours from start to finish?

Not 4 hours of music mind you, but including the half time break they clocked in at over 4 hours.

And it's easy to round 3 hours 30 minutes including break up to 4 hours. wink
Originally Posted By: el_jefe

I attribute it to the unrevealed profound influence of liking the feel of turning the button louder on the amplifier.


I don't know. The raw guitar playing on the '78 versions of Prove It, Badlands, and Candy's Room were definitely not picked up from the usual suspects. Neither were the 'arena-ready' arrangements. He had to get the idea from somewhere...
Devil With the Blue Dress On by Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels is now up on the Blog in the customary verbose and over analytical style with videos, sound samples and photos.

Quote:
"Everybody's always asking the definition of Garage Rock. Well, I'm gonna tell you right now. It's white kids trying to play black Rhythm and Blues and failing......gloriously." Little Steven van Zandt.

I picked Mitch Ryder's classic rendition of Shorty Long's "Devil With The Blue Dress On ", but I might as well have picked the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" or "Dirty Water" by the Standells, "Double Shot Of My Baby's Love" by the Swinging Medallions or "You Can't Sit Down" by the Dovels. I simply picked "Devil" because it was the template crowd pleaser "The Detroit Medley" that has been present in Springsteen's set lists since September 1975, all the way up to the Rising tour in 2003. Mitch Ryder was one of those quintessential Garage acts from the early mid to late sixties. "Devil" was one of Mitch's few hits peaking at #4 in the billboard charts. But contrary to popular believe this was not uncommon those days. Garage acts, or Frat Rock bands, though often one hit wonders, would regularly be on top of the charts. But since Garage was a factor in a time when the 45 still reigned supreme and in a time where small labels still were a force to be reckoned with, a lot of those hits became obscure nuggets when the album format took over R&R.

Garage was part of the tidal wave caused by the British Invasion, or rather the Beatles appearances on the Ed Sullivan show. Even though "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen was released in 1963, as sort of an avant garde Garage release, those appearances were what busted the band culture wide open and prompted Springsteen to pick up the guitar and join his first band the Castilles. I believe that Garage became an important part of the aesthetic, romanticism and ethics that is at the base of Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band. Garage gave young kids the feeling that anybody could have that big record on the top of the charts. More than ever Garage made the dream of R&R accessible to just about anyone. By the time the Beatles hit, the first wave of R&R had perished. Radio was dominated for a while by R&R based pop, by the lavish productions of Phil Sector or Leiber & Stoller, or by the highly polished songwriting and performing of Sam Cooke and Roy Orbison. While that did give R&R more credibility and gave R&R more artistic value it also put R&R beyond the reach of many white kids. The Beatles showed that you could do it yourself basically, they opened the doors to a whole new bag of R&R dreams.

That band ethic is why "Born To Run" turned out the way it did. Springsteen wanted to record his own Phil Spector album, but I believe he never even contemplated recording it with studio musicians and a proper producer. In stead he took the band in the studio trying to recreate the Spector sound with his own band, layer by layer. Spector simply had an army of musicians in the studio recording them simultaneously on a two track recorder. Although the musicians on Spector's record became known as the Wrecking Crew, they were never a band in the way the E-Street Band was. I think to Springsteen the R&R band represented the sort of mystic brotherhood busting out of class together, trying to get away from those fools. That romanticism created a different aesthetic from the producers approach Spector had, where musicians were secondary to his own genius. It was also the reason why "Born to Run" ultimately came out sounding different from Spector's ground breaking singles. Though recorded with a smaller band, the album ironically sounded a bit more cluttered and muddy than what Spector achieved with his two track. By the time "Born To Run" hit the market Spector was already far in his decline. Springsteen met him once in the studio when Phil was recording one of Bruce's idols, Dion, in '77. Spector merely turned to Springsteen and said "doesn't this make "Born To Run" suck".

Though the band ethics of Garage were important to Springsteen while recording his albums with the E-Street Band, on stage it wasn't as pronounced till Little Steven joined the band. Van Zandt has always been much more the Garage connoisseur and enthusiast. Though Springsteen tapped in to the Band ethics of the Garage movement and part of its aesthetic (taking his loud guitar sound from there), I think he himself was much more enamored with the R&R sound of the mid fifties to the early sixties. Van Zandt however was a hard core Garage fan. I think his enthusiastically running mouth is what made Springsteen realize how important the Garage sound was to the E-Street Band, often characterized as the greatest bar band of R&R. With Little Steven joining the Band the Garage classics became regulars in the set with "The Detroit Medley" turning out to be the ultimate rave up for the boys. In no other song Max's relentless pounding, Gary's throbbing base, Danny's raucous organ licks, Roy's rollicking piano or Clarence honking would come together in quite the same way building to a climax in a R&R frenzy. "The Detroit Medley" made clear we were indeed dealing with the heart stopping, pants dropping, earth shattering, hard rocking, hips shaking, earth quaking, nerve breaking, Viagra taking, history making, legendary E-Street Band.

Springsteen's Garage sensibilities would be part of his break through success as well. By the time "Born To Run" hit the market R&R was threatening to collapse under its own pretenses. The album culture and art rock had taken the fun out of R&R. In a recent interview with Boulevard Magazine Little Steven called Art Rock "the anti-Christ", while trying to make an argument that songs like "Louie Louie", with their simple effectiveness, are actually harder to write than Pink Floyd's pretentious drivel of the early seventies. The Jack Holtzman release of Nuggets in 1972, with the infamous Lenny Kaye liner notes coining the term Punk, was signifying that something was simmering beneath R&R's pretentious surface. Nuggets stood as a reminder of R&R's dream and glory. While Springsteen played in the infamous Max's Kansas City, one of the key clubs to the birth of Punk, he was never part of that scene. Springsteen is never mentioned when it comes to the significance of Max's or the birth of Punk. Even though "Please Kill Me (the oral history of Punk)" does have a chapter called "Because The Night", a Springsteen penned Patti Smith song, Springsteen is never mentioned. Although Springsteen was trying to find that three minute essence of R&R, much as Punk was, Springsteen stood outside of that movement. Maybe that's because Springsteen, although undoubtedly part of the counter wave, simply was too good a musician and songwriter to be a part of the Punk scene. Springsteen wasn't marred by the artistic pretense Punk had before the Ramones hit the scene, he wasn't NY enough, but more importantly he wasn't held back by being unable to play even the simplest chords. Springsteen became the artist who infused the album culture of Rock with the aesthetics of early R&R and Garage, bringing R&R back down to earth.

But as Don McLeese pointed out in his classic article for the Chicago reader in 1980 there was a paradox to Springsteen as well. "[By] treating a Springsteen as something special, we threaten to undermine what made him special in the first place". As early as '78 Springsteen realized that when the first River songs became part of the Darkness tour. Two of them "The Ties That Bind" but especially "Sherry Darling" were much closer to the the sounds of the Garage bands that inspired Springsteen. As "Tracks" showed, Springsteen had been writing songs like that for the E-Street Band as early as 1973 with "Seaside Bar Song". It wasn't until "The River" Springsteen started to bring those Garage sounds more to the foreground. Further scaling down his songwriting Springsteen abandoned much of the grand imagery that defined "Born To Run" and "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". Partly produced by Little Steven, "the River" was oozing with the sweat of the garage that gave birth to Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band in the first place.
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