Sometimes it’s hard to escape receiving comparisons to the work of other people, and even though you’re constantly pushing to develop a completely original sound that feels far enough removed from your biggest inspirations, those influences are naturally always going to find a way to seep through the cracks if you’re not careful enough.
When Bruce Springsteen first emerged as a songwriter and performer in the early ‘70s, he was on the receiving end of this to a large degree, and knew that something drastic had to be done to change this.
Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ was Springsteen’s debut album, and while it was reviewed favourably back in 1973 and is still regarded as one of his finest releases, many people thought that the music he presented on the record was far too similar to that of Bob Dylan. Springsteen has never been afraid to speak about just how much he idolised Dylan, but if you receive that comparison one too many times, you might understand why there was a burning desire to alter the creative process.
However, this similarity was ultimately what earned him a record deal with Columbia in the first place, which happened to be the home of plenty of other musicians of the same ilk. Evidently, the label wished to capitalise on the popularity and success of Dylan by signing other artists in the same folky vein, and when Springsteen offered them his debut album, they realised that they’d have another artist on their hands who could offer a similar style.
But as much as he loved Dylan, he knew that he needed to escape this on his later releases before the constant parallels completely consumed him and forced him to stay in the same lane forever. With this reception, Springsteen knew that he needed to dramatically alter his songwriting approach, and bring in some different techniques that would draw him further away from being the next Dylan, and being a formidable artist in his own right.
Given his songwriting abilities, this shouldn’t have ever been too much of a challenge for Springsteen to overcome, and within the next couple of albums, he had found himself employing a multitude of different styles that began to differentiate him from his influences.
In his autobiography, Born to Run, Springsteen acknowledged how he managed to do this, and claimed that it was never his intention to copy Dylan in the first place. “I never wrote completely in that style again,” he claimed. “Once [Greetings] was released, I heard all the Dylan comparisons, so I steered away from it. But the lyrics and spirit of Greetings came from an un-self-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.”
It was more a case of his fandom and obsession with Dylan being a subconscious thing when he picked up his guitar, and the minute he started to think differently was when the world was introduced to the real Bruce Springsteen; one of America’s most important songwriters.
