After soaking up the religious experience of witnessing The Beatles play The Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964, the young Springsteen visited his local Western Auto and bought his very first guitar – drastically altering the course of his existence for the low, low price of $18.95. (Farout story)
He certainly had the skill to be able to pull off an incredibly impressive and completely superfluous ten-minute hard rock style guitar solo but, for Springsteen, the songwriting has always come first.
Although Springsteen, along with the E Street Band’s legendary axeman Steve Van Zandt, have certainly imbued their joint discography with a wealth of iconic guitar riffs and masterful chord progressions, they have also steered clear from certain avenues of guitar-based expression. Namely, you aren’t ever likely to see Springsteen adopting the elusive skill of playing barre chords.
For those who have never laid their hands on a humble six-string, barre chords involve a player using their index finger to hit the same fret on multiple fingers, essentially acting as a temporary capo. Countless guitar heroes throughout rock and roll history have built their entire style around the barre chord, particularly in the fast-moving blitzkrieg world of punk rock, where stopping to alter the position of a capo every few seconds would really take the impact out of a song.
Springsteen, on the other hand, has never adopted a playing style that would particularly demand the use of a barre chord – blending the sounds of The Ramones with an album like Nebraska has never been at the top of his agenda, for better or worse.
“I’m not a big barre chord player,” he once told Howard Stern. “I mean, barre chords are hard to play and they’re hard to get around on,” quickly clarifying: “I can play ‘em, but I actually never play them. I’ve never played them in concert in 40 years, you know.”
