The Beatles Record Bruce Springsteen Says “Changed the Course of My Life”

Listening to a soon-to-be favorite record for the first time is always a memorable experience, but for a young Bruce Springsteen listening to his first Beatles record, it was, quite literally, life-changing. Growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Springsteen was already familiar with other American rock legends, like Elvis Presley.

“But the keeper was 1964,” The Boss said in a 2020 Rolling Stone video feature. The year a 15-year-old Bruce Springsteen decided he wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roller, too.

The Beatles Record That Changed Bruce Springsteen’s Life

In his 2020 Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen described the moment he first heard the Beatles’ 1964 track “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” “On South Street, with my mother driving,” Springsteen recalled. “I immediately demanded that she let me out, I ran to the bowling alley, ran down a long, neon-lit aisle, down the bowling alley, into the bowling alley.”

“Ran to the phone booth, got in the phone booth and immediately called my girl and asked, ‘Have you heard this band called the Beatles?’ After that, it was nothing but rock ‘n’ roll and guitars.” He continued. Although Elvis Presley previously inspired Springsteen to pick up a guitar, the “Born to Run” singer said he didn’t keep up with the instrument for very long. But the Beatles, a four-piece band, not just a solo superstar, re-invigorated Springsteen’s interest.

“It was a very raucous sounding record when it came out of the radio,” The Boss explained on BBC’s Desert Island Discs. “It was really the song that inspired me to play rock and roll music, to get a small band and start doing some small gigs around town; it was life-changing. It’s still a beautiful record.”

The Boss Wasn’t The Only American Kid To Think So

Beatlemania often focuses on the Beatles’ influence on rock ‘n’ roll as a whole, but their role in American rock music is particularly interesting. While it would have been difficult to find an American child who didn’t like the Beatles in the early 1960s, the Liverpudlian quartet seemed to have an even bigger influence on future U.S. rock ‘n’ roll than musicians from that country, like Elvis.

Bruce Springsteen was not alone in his early interest in Elvis Presley a later interest in the Beatles would overshadow. Fellow American rocker Tom Petty had a similar experience. In a 2014 interview with Q with Tom Power, Petty explained that as inspiring as Elvis was, there was a limitation to the dream. No one could be Elvis. Elvis was Elvis.

“The Beatles,” he continued. “That looked like something that could be done. These people look like they’re self-contained. They make music that they wrote themselves, and their music’s all there on the stage. They look like they’re really good friends, and they’re having a lot of fun.”

Springsteen, born in 1949, and Petty, born in 1950, grew up listening to the same early waves of Beatlemania in New Jersey and Florida, respectively. Despite that distance with each other and with the Fab Four from Liverpool, something special happened in 1964—something that would change American rock ‘n’ roll forever.

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