(Credits: Far Out / Danny Clinch / Bruce Springsteen)
Sun 26 October 2025 16:00, UK
The most important lesson that Bruce Springsteen ever learned was to never stop being a fan of rock and roll music.
That rush that he got from listening to people like The Rolling Stones for the first time can be a hard feeling to harness, but as long as everyone keeps their eyes open, there’s no limit to where musicians can go to thrill their audience. And while Springsteen has been more than happy to point out the new talent in the world, nothing was ever going to be as heavy as hearing his heroes for the first time.
Then again, ‘The Boss’ has always had a far more eclectic taste in music than most people would have thought. Anyone who has been in the game for as long as he has would have been forgiven for only listening to music before 1965, but the number of times that he has guested on records by everyone from Bleachers to The Killers or had the chance to shout praises of bands like The Stone Roses is pretty commendable.
Because as far as he could tell, the next generation were the ones that were going to sustain rock and roll. It was never about trying to point fans towards the “real music” that was around decades before. Most of them could find those on their own, but it was a lot more interesting for everyone to see what kind of brilliance they could harness on their own rather than try to make the kind of love letter to the past every time they recorded.
And that lesson wasn’t lost on Springsteen, either. A lot of his modern records have the same massive sound that he wanted to get back in the day, but when listening to the albums he released in the 2010s, for instance, Wrecking Ball is a much different than The Rising, which was also miles away from Born to Run and Born in the USA. ‘The Boss’ had no tolerance for being stagnant, and neither did rock stars like Paul McCartney.
Springsteen was an avid fan of The Beatles ever since ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ became a huge hit, but seeing what Macca has done ever since leaving the group has been an absolute trip. Not everything hits the same way as it did with Wings, but if you were to pick a few albums from his discography, RAM sounds nothing like Venus and Mars, and neither of them even come close to what was happening in the 2000s on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
So when the opportunity came to perform with the former Beatle for the first time, Springsteen had no problem calling him one of his biggest inspirations, saying, “No matter how long you have been in music, there’s that basic realisation that you simply would not be here the way that you are without this specific person, without this person on the planet. Suddenly I’m getting to play with one of my all time great heroes and complete this 45 year circle.”
Granted, Springsteen is only one in a long line of people who have had their DNA changed by listening to McCartney’s music. The entire 1960s revolution would have played out very differently had they not been a part of it, and even if there were artists who hated what they stood for, it took them becoming famous for people like Lou Reed to go in the opposite direction with The Velvet Underground.
But even if Springsteen doesn’t perform every single McCartney cover that he can in concert by any stretch, it’s not about trying to emulate his idol in that respect. The Fab Four taught everyone to dream bigger than the music that they grew up on, and ‘The Boss’ wasn’t going to rest until he had his own classics under his belt.
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