![\"Bruce](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bruce-Springsteen-1977-Tour-E-Street-Band-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Carl Lender<\/p>\n
Sun 21 June 2026 20:30, UK <\/p>\n
If you were to go to a Bruce Springsteen<\/a> gig a few years back, the crowd would have been made up of excited punters holding homemade signs with song titles scribbled across them. <\/p>\n Why? Well, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are pretty good when it comes to navigating their way through a cover. Springsteen himself has previously said that because of everyone\u2019s background in jam bands and bar bands, it\u2019s pretty rare for them to be presented with a song that they can\u2019t knock out within a moment\u2019s notice. <\/p>\n In fact, he always said that the test was whether or not they could play \u2018Wild Thing\u2019. If a budding group member didn\u2019t know their way around this tune, they were never going to make it in the E Street Band<\/a>. It sounds like a pretty harsh audition process, but it\u2019s worked out well for them so far, so why not?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, the entire band are bar band veterans so they play 100s of nights before we\u2019d ever stood out in front of an audience after we had a record deal so there\u2019s a common well which we all draw from,\u201d he said, \u201cI mean if we played \u2018Wild Thing\u2019, you\u2019ll be fired from The E Street Band if you don\u2019t know how to play that.\u201d <\/p>\n You can\u2019t really deny Bruce Springsteen\u2019s ability to play a good cover. There\u2019s not a song he and his band can\u2019t take and make their own. Bob Dylan, who is famously critical of other artists, said that Springsteen\u2019s cover of \u2018Knockin On Heaven\u2019s Door\u2019 helped him feel nostalgic for the first time, as the sound with which that track was played resonated on an incredibly deep level. That\u2019s pretty high praise. <\/p>\n \u201cHe did that song like the record, something I myself have never tried. I never even thought it was worth it,\u201d said Dylan, \u201cMaybe never had the manpower in one band to pull it off. I don\u2019t know, but I never thought about it. To tell you the truth, I\u2019d forgotten how the song ought to go [\u2026] I\u2019m not a nostalgic person<\/a>, but for a second there it all came back\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n Springsteen knew just how powerful a cover could be, and so always wanted to play songs that he felt the world needed to hear. As someone who was massively inspired by Motown, he decided to put together an entire record of classic covers called Only The Strong Survive in a bid to try and drag the joy those songs brought into the modern age, and hopefully get those tracks in front of people who might not have heard them before. When talking about why he felt the need to put together such an album, Springsteen described the tracklist as \u201cthe great American songbook\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to make an album where I just sang. And what better music to work with than the great American songbook of the Sixties and Seventies?\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019ve taken my inspiration from Levi Stubbs, David Ruffin, Jimmy Ruffin, the Iceman Jerry Butler, Diana Ross, Dobie Gray, and Scott Walker, among many others. I\u2019ve tried to do justice to them all \u2014 and to the fabulous writers of this glorious music.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Springsteen continued, \u201cMy goal is for the modern audience to experience its beauty and joy, just as I have since I first heard it. I hope you love listening to it as much as I loved making it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Carl Lender Sun 21 June 2026 20:30, UK If you were to go to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1041568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[257729,40416,256539,91533,7627,88720,77,21413,269,123796,16,15],"class_list":["post-1041567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-257729","tag-1960s","tag-256539","tag-1970s","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-e-street-band","tag-entertainment","tag-motown","tag-music","tag-rock-and-roll","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116790205718841680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1041567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1041568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}