Bruce Springsteen Changed His Writing Style After an Album Sounded Too Much Like Bob Dylan
Bruce Springsteen released his debut album in 1972, a decade after Bob Dylan released his first. Springsteen’s album was well-received by critics, but some reviews drove him to change up his writing style. Springsteen admired Dylan and had for years. Still, he didn’t want to put out music that sounded too much like him. Here’s why comparisons to Dylan convinced Springsteen to avoid this in the future.
Bruce Springsteen said 1 of his albums sounded like Bob Dylan
When Springsteen signed to Columbia Records, he was meant to put out music that sounded Dylan-esque.
“John Hammond, Clive Davis, and Columbia had thought they’d signed a folk singer-songwriter,” Springsteen wrote in his memoir Born to Run. “The stock was way up on singer-songwriters in those days. The charts were full of them, with James Taylor leading the pack. I was signed to Columbia, along with Elliott Murphy, John Prine and Loudon Wainwright, ‘new Dylan’s all, to compete in acoustic battle at the top of the charts with our contemporaries.’”
He convinced the label to let him perform with a backing band, pushing his sound away from Dylan’s. He also wrote semi-autobiographical songs.
“Most of the songs were twisted autobiographies. ‘Growin’ Up,’ ‘Does This Bus Stop,’ ‘For You,’ ‘Lost in the Flood,’ and ‘Saint in the City’ found their seed in people, places, hangouts and incidents I’d seen and things I’d lived,” he wrote. “I wrote impressionistically and changed names to protect the guilty. I worked to find something that was identifiably mine.”
Still, the album drew comparisons to Dylan’s work. Springsteen recognized this and decided to switch up his writing style.
“I never wrote completely in that style again,” he explained. “Once the record was released, I heard all the Dylan comparisons, so I steered away from it. But the lyrics and spirit of Greetings came from an unself-conscious place. Your early songs emerge from a moment when you’re writing with no sure prospect of ever being heard. Up until then, it’s been just you and your music. That only happens once.”
Bruce Springsteen greatly admired Bob Dylan as a musician
While Springsteen didn’t want to sound like Dylan, he still admired the other artist. He used his music as a way to improve his own songwriting.
“Bob Dylan is the father of my country,” he wrote. “Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home were not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived. The darkness and light were all there, the veil of illusion and deception ripped aside. He put his boot on the stultifying politeness and daily routine that covered corruption and decay.”
Springsteen added that Dylan’s writing was so truthful it made him hopeful.
“The world he described was all on view, in my little town, and spread out over the television that beamed into our isolated homes, but it went uncommented on and silently tolerated,” he wrote. “He inspired me and gave me hope.”
The ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ singer admired Springsteen’s cover of his song
Springsteen long admired Dylan, and the older artist eventually returned the favor. After hearing Springsteen’s cover of his song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Dylan spoke about how much he liked his take.
“Incredible! He did that song like the record, something I myself have never tried,” Dylan shared in a Q&A on his official website. “I never even thought it was worth it. Maybe never had the manpower in one band to pull it off. I don’t know, but I never thought about it. To tell you the truth, I’d forgotten how the song ought to go. Bruce pulled all the power and spirituality, and beauty out of it as no one has ever done. He was faithful, truly faithful to the version on the record, obviously the only one he has to go by.”
