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Springsteen anecdote


josie
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I'm reading Bruce Springsteen's autobiography (excellent!) and this incident from 1968 caught my attention - other BC peeps might like it too:


... he pulled out an unstrung hollow-bodied Gibson with the longest neck I'd ever seen. I brought it home, cleaned it up and strung it. It was a strange piece. My guitar strings barely reached around its distant oversized tuning pegs.
...
My Gibson only had one pickup and the frets were awfully far from each other, but the sound ... the sound said, BRING ON ALL COMERS!
...
One night, some kid who knew his guitars shed some light on the "miracle" in my miracle Gibson. He walked up and congratulated me on the brilliant idea of stringing an old Gibson six-string bass with guitar strings and playing it as a solo instrument. I nodded coolly while thinking, "Holy sh*t ... it's a six-string bass!" I'd been soloing like a madman for months on a bass guitar! No wonder its sound was so thick and its fret board so impossible. It worked!

Edited by josie
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Not sure if this is in his book - just got it for Christmas and haven't read it yet (I know, I know) but my guitarist's favourite tale (and it may or may not be true) is when a youthful Bruce and his band were engaged to play as Chuck Berry's backing band for a gig. A slightly nervous Bruce went up to Chuck and said "Good evening Mr. Berry, My name is Bruce Springsteen and me and my band are your backing band tonight. Could you give me some idea of what we're going to play?" Dear old Chuck looked him straight in the eye and said "Tonight, son, we're going to play some Chuck Berry songs" and stalked off.

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