The Originals Who Borrowed - A template for dissertation
I think there’s a musicology paper—or maybe a dissertation—in here somewhere. And the more I think about it, the more I think it might actually be about two of the most celebrated “originals” in rock: David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen. Not because either of them wasn't brilliant. They were. But because I think we have confused being the person who made something popular with being the person who invented it. Maybe “thief” is too strong. “Appropriator” is probably the academic word. “Borrower” is probably the honest one. But the interesting question is why we give the borrower the credit for originality.
Bowie is the perfect example because Bowie had an antenna. He trafficked in the underground. He went into rooms where weird shit was happening and listened. He could hear what was bubbling before everybody else knew it was bubbling. Mott the Hoople. T. Rex. The Velvet Underground. Iggy Pop. Eno. Krautrock. The whole art-school/club/avant-garde world. He didn't necessarily invent these things. He found them. Then he took them, filtered them through David Bowie and made them acceptable to a much larger group of people. That is an enormous talent. In fact, it may be one of the greatest talents a popular musician can have. But we call it originality. And maybe that works until the guy becomes too big to hang around the underground anymore. Once you become David Bowie, you can't really have your finger on the pulse of the underground because you are the pulse. You are the establishment. The antenna gets harder to use when everyone in the room is listening to you.
Springsteen is a different kind of borrower. He wasn't necessarily wandering around looking for the next weird thing in the same way Bowie was. He was absorbing American music. Soul. R&B. Gospel. Doo-wop. Stax. Motown. Phil Spector. Early rock and roll. Dylan. Folk. Country. He took all of it and built this enormous thing called Bruce Springsteen, and then critics called it working-class rock. That phrase has always bothered me more the more I think about it. Darkness on the Edge of Town is a soul record played by white guys. It is loaded with the vocabulary of Black American music. But because the guy singing it was white and the guitars were loud, it became “rock,” and because Bruce was singing about working people, it became “working-class rock.” If we weren't racist in the 1970s, would we have been so willing to simply absorb all that Black musical influence into a white guy's mythology without talking about the appropriation? Probably not. And the flip side is even uglier: Black musicians who wanted to play guitar rock could be accused of crossing over, trying to sound white or abandoning their roots. White guys could borrow Black music and become more authentically American. Black guys could borrow white-coded rock and be accused of leaving Black music behind. That isn't just genre. That's racism embedded in the taxonomy.
And then there is the whole disco/glam thing. Glam had already figured out the four-on-the-floor stomp, theatricality, sexual ambiguity, spectacle and the idea that rock music could make you move your body. Then Black, Latino and gay club culture took those ideas somewhere else and made dance music out of them. Suddenly white rock culture decided disco sucked. Of course there were musical reasons people didn't like disco. People are allowed to dislike music. But you can't look at the history of Disco Sucks and pretend race and homophobia weren't sitting right there in the room. The same musical impulses that were exciting when delivered by white glam rockers became suspect when they were being driven by Black and gay club culture. Genre isn't neutral. The people allowed to make the genre aren't neutral either.
Which brings me back to the word “original.” Because rock itself is hardly an original American invention in the sense we usually mean the word. It is a collision. Blues. Gospel. R&B. Country. Doo-wop. Jazz. All of these things being stolen from, borrowed from, mashed together and transformed by people who were themselves stealing and borrowing from somebody else. That's how music works. Nobody creates in a vacuum. The genius is often knowing what to steal.
And maybe that is what Bowie and Springsteen had in common. They were both extraordinary editors. Bowie edited the underground. Springsteen edited American music. Both took things that existed elsewhere, understood what was powerful about them, and translated them into something that a mass audience could understand. The difference is that Bowie was looking forward and Springsteen was looking backward. Bowie found the future in the clubs and art spaces. Springsteen found America in its musical past. But both became identified as “originals” because their versions became culturally dominant.
And that's where the racial piece becomes unavoidable. The white artist who successfully absorbs Black musical language doesn't necessarily get accused of appropriation. He gets called soulful. Authentic. Roots-oriented. American. The Black artist who absorbs rock can be told he's crossing over. The gay artist who makes dance music can be told it's disposable. The underground musician who creates something new becomes an influence. The famous musician who hears it, borrows it and gives it to ten million people becomes the genius who invented it.
That's the thing I keep coming back to.
Maybe the history of rock isn't really a history of originals. Maybe it is a history of cultural transmission. People hear something. They steal a piece of it. They change it. Somebody else steals that. Eventually somebody comes along who is sufficiently charismatic, white, famous, marketable or culturally acceptable that the thing becomes mainstream—and we stop talking about where it came from.
Bowie wasn't a fraud. Springsteen isn't a fraud. Quite the opposite. Their ability to recognize, synthesize and translate musical ideas is extraordinary. But maybe we should stop pretending that synthesis is invention.
Because the guy who heard it first doesn't necessarily become famous.
The guy who makes everybody else hear it does.
And then we call him the original.
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Bruce Springsteen's imperial period may be the moment when American rock most successfully concealed its debt to Black music—because the man making the music was so thoroughly accepted as the embodiment of white American authenticity.
