The music Bruce Springsteen played was never about trying to pit rock and roll against the man.
A lot of the villains that populated songs tended to come from average circumstances or the passage of time, and while he did have a few strained relationships with his father that he crammed into his songs, you can’t listen to any of them and not feel his regret for not being able to work out his differences with his old man. Although not everyone could get onboard with what he was saying all the time, there’s a good chance that they could have lived through a lot of what ‘The Boss’ was talking about.
From day one, Springsteen knew he wasn’t going to get to the top of the musical food chain strictly by singing about himself. He had the potential to make fantastic music about the everyman, and since his voice was a little bit rough around the edges, it was the perfect way for him to deliver tunes about kids from the wrong side of the tracks whenever he performed. Then again, it’s not like he was the first person to think of this idea.
Bob Dylan was preaching from a pulpit half the time he was singing, but when listening to his music, a lot of it comes back to the problems everyone was going through. Even though ‘The Boss’ may have had to outrun a lot of the Dylan comparisons back in the day, it was far more difficult to look at all of the other acts getting on the heartland rock train when he was, whether that John Mellencamp singing about the bread basket of America or Tom Petty bringing a sense of sunshine to American rock.
Around the time that Springsteen was making music, though, John Fogerty was already doing a lot of what he wanted with CCR. They weren’t considered one of the most fashionable bands in the world, but in the age when everyone was becoming their own version of a hippy, Fogerty was always there in his flannel shirt singing the kind of songs that anyone could relate to no matter what they were doing.
Although he was pulling from a lot of personal experiences on tracks like ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’, his poetic side always covered up all the specifics perfectly. No one would have known about the kind of simple living he was talking about on ‘Born on the Bayou’, but when listening to the swampiness of those records, anyone could feel like they were honourary passengers rolling down the river.
And it was that simplicity that kept Springsteen going throughout his first few sets with the E Street Band, saying, “The crowd was eclectic. Rough kids out of high school that weren’t snatched up by the draft yet. A mixture of college and working girls with bouffant hairdos and a small but steady hippy contingent. A tough crowd to please. [But] for the three minutes of ‘Proud Mary’, a strange brotherhood would fill the room. It was simply a great song that everybody liked, and it saved our asses on many occasions.”
But looking beyond the traditional rock and roll guitar heroes, what Fogerty was doing was sorely needed at that time. There was a clear divide within America that was growing steadier by the day, and while he had no problem making his opinions known on tunes like ‘Fortunate Son’, he was proud to make songs that anyone could fall in love with regardless of political affiliation, religious belief, or sexual orientation.
Yes, it was simple, but there was beauty in that simplicity that has been long forgotten ever since CCR decided to call it a day. There are many artists that are able to create magic today, but Fogerty is one of the few who knew his limitations and decided to ride down that river for as far as it would take him.
