Bruce Springsteen’s interest in music was born by listening to the Beatles, infected by their way of composing and playing their songs, which went around the world. Hearing the Fab Four for the first time has been a watershed moment for many artists, and since then, kids like Bruce Springsteen picked up the guitar to imitate the band and began their musical career.
Springsteen wasn’t born with a guitar in hand or humming a tune, and the truth is, he was never the fastest-paced kid until the Beatles gave him a creative awakening as a teenager. It was the moment when he strayed from the path of the workers to which he thought he was destined. The Boss even got a chance to make his dream come true when he performed live with Paul McCartney, no doubt frantically trying to hush the teenage fan within himself in chase of performing perfection.
When McCartney joined Springsteen in Hyde Park in 2012 for a splendid rendition of Twist and Shout to a noisy London crowd, they marked a milestone in their own careers.
Sharing the stage with McCartney would probably be enough to fulfill the Boss’s dreams, a chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with one of the men who helped chart the path of his life. Springsteen made the revelation to Rolling Stone that they asked him what was the first time a song changed his life. The answer was simple for the boy from New Jersey; “‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ came on the radio in 1964 — that was going to change my life because I was going to successfully pick the guitar up and learn how to play.”
“I saw Elvis on TV and when I first saw Elvis, I was 9 but I was a little young, tried to play the guitar but it didn’t work out, I put it away,” Springsteen remembered. “The keeper was in 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on South Street with my mother driving.”
“I immediately demanded that she let me out, I ran to the bowling alley, ran down a long neon-lit aisle, down the bowling alley into the bowling alley. Ran to the phone booth, got in the phone booth and immediately called my girl and asked ‘Have you heard this band called The Beatles?’ After that, it was nothing but rock ‘n’ roll and guitars.”
He also chose the same track when he appeared on BBC’s Desert Island Discs. He told the program in 2016: “This was another song that changed the course of my life,” he proudly noted. “It was a very raucous sounding record when it came out of the radio. It really was the song that inspired me to play rock and roll music – to get a small band and start doing some small gigs around town. It was life-changing. It’s still a beautiful record.”
He added: “If you listen to the great Beatle records, the earliest ones where the lyrics are incredibly simple. Why are they still beautiful? Well, they’re beautifully sung, beautifully played, and the mathematics in them is elegant. They retain their elegance.”
Bruce Springsteen released a new album recently titled ‘Letter to You’ and it represents his return together with the E Street Band.