7 Bruce Springsteen 7reflect folk rock, soul, and rhythm-and-blues influences,
especially those of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Stax/
Volt Records. Springsteen’s voice, a rough baritone that he
used to shout on up-tempo numbers and to more sensual
effect on slower songs, was shown to good effect here,
but his sometimes spectacular guitar playing, which
ranged from dense power chord effects to straight 1950s
rock and roll, had to be downplayed to fit the singer-
songwriter format.
With his third album, Born to Run (1975), Springsteen
transformed into a full-fledged rock and roller, heavily
indebted to Phil Spector and Roy Orbison. The album, a
diurnal song cycle, was a sensation even before it hit the
shelves; indeed, the week of the album’s release, Columbia’s
public relations campaign landed Springsteen on the
covers of both Time and Newsweek. Three years passed
before the follow-up, the darker, tougher Darkness on the
Edge of Town (1978), appeared. With “Hungry Heart,” from
The River (1980), Springsteen finally scored an interna-
tional hit single.
By then, however, he was best known for his stage
shows, three- and four-hour extravaganzas with his E
Street Band that blended rock, folk, and soul with dramatic
intensity and exuberant humour. The band, a crew of
mixed stereotypes—from rock-and-roll bandit to cool
music professional—was more like a gang than a musical
unit, apparently held together by little other than faith
in its leader. Springsteen’s refusal, after Born to Run, to
cooperate with much of the record company’s public
relations and marketing machinery, coupled with his
painstaking recording process and the draining live shows,
helped earn his reputation as a performer of principle as
well as of power and popularity.
Nebraska (1982), a stark set of acoustic songs, most in
some way concerned with death, was an unusual interlude.