Bruce Springsteen feared being compared to Bob Dylan early in his career.
The 68-year-old icon was widely compared to Dylan following the release of his ‘Born to Run’ album in 1975, and Bruce admits the parallels led him to change his writing style, because he was determined to forge his own identity.
He said: "I don’t think you can really recapture what you did in your youth. It’s tricky; if you try, it can feel like a cardboard copy of something you [formerly] did naturally.
"So I don’t think I’ll make a record quite like that ever again, where there’s a blizzard of words coming at you – I was havin’ fun throwin’ all those words around, and I imagined myself quite the poet at the moment. But later on I was interested in a more colloquial way of speaking through the songs, and a more direct approach.
"Also, at the time there were the comparisons to Dylan, so I moved away from that style – although now I go back and realise, gee, it really wasn’t like Dylan much at all. We could have taken that a little further, but I was interested in creating my own identity at the time."
Despite being one of the best-selling artists of all time, Bruce previously revealed he still finds playing new music to be "frightening".
He explained: "You work on an album in a hermetically sealed environment. One of the most frightening things is playing it for someone else. For the first time you’re hearing it through their ears.
"They’re just sitting there, but you’re hearing the thing totally brand new through their ears. And you’re recognising all its faults and all its strengths. So the thing about coming out in front of an audience every night is that I’m hearing what I’m doing through that audience’s ears."
Bruce Springsteen feared Bob Dylan comparisons
