Bruce Springsteen has a long history of performing Bob Dylan's songs in his live shows, dating back to his pre-fame days in the early 1970s. From his early renditions of 'It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry' to his more recent covers of 'Chimes of Freedom' and 'Blowin' in the Wind,' Springsteen has consistently shown his admiration for Dylan's music. In this article, we'll take a closer look at Springsteen's history of performing Dylan's songs and explore the significance of these covers in his live shows.
Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen perform"Forever Young" at the Concert for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. At the third annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony back in January 1988, the same night that Beach Boyjust about everyone in the room, Bruce Springsteen walked up to the podium and delivered a much more gracious speech to induct Bob Dylan .
“Dylan was a revolutionary – the way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind,” Springsteen said. “He showed us that just because the music was innately physical, it did not mean that it was anti-intellect. He broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve. ” By that point, Springsteen had been playing Dylan songs in his live set for well over 15 years.
Later that year, he’d play both “Chimes of Freedom” and “Blowin’ in the Wind. ” And earlier this month, Springsteenfor the first time in his live career at the “Music America: The Songs that Shaped Us” concert at the OceanFirst Bank Center in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Overall, Springsteen has played 13 Dylan songs in concert, dating all the way back to his pre-fame days in the very early Seventies.
And thanks to the magic of bootlegs and YouTube, they’re all just a click away. For two very memorable days in May 1971, Bruce Springsteen and future E Street Band members Steve Van Zandt and Garry Tallent, along with a few of their Jersey Shore buddies, including Southside Johnny, played shows as Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom.
By some miracle, a clean recording exists of their May 15, 1971, set at Newark State College in Union, New Jersey, where they opened up with a wild, bluesy rendition of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. ” Springsteen does an impressive job on the Michael Bloomfield guitar parts on the original, but there’s no record of him ever attempting the song again.
Later in 1971, Springsteen pared down the lineup of Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom to simply himself, Vini Lopez, Tallent, Van Zandt, and keyboardist David Sancious. He called it the Bruce Springsteen Band, and it’s basically what became the E Street Band a couple of years later, minus Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons. Their set was heavy on covers like “Got My Mojo Working,” “Key to the Highway,” and “Not Fade Away.
” They also did a slow, Van Morrison-inspired take on “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” at least five times between October 1971 and March 1972. Here’s a recording of one from the Back Door in Richmond, Virginia, on Feb, 25, 1972. Once Springsteen signed with CBS in 1972 and began putting out records the following year, the number of cover songs in his set dropped considerably. But he usually played at least two or three.
One was an achingly gorgeous take on “I Want You,” which grew to even greater heights once violinist Suki Lahav — whoearlier this year — joined the E Street Band. The definitive recording comes from the legendary concert at Philadelphia’s Main Point on Feb. 5, 1975. It’s arguably the single greatest live show Springsteen ever played, and there’s a pristine recording that has circulated for decades.
Just a month later, when Lahav left the band, the song forever vanished from Springsteen’s live repertoire.tour, Springsteen unveiled his take on Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” during a show in Detroit. This was before the days of the teleprompter, and he had to read the lyrics from a music stand.
It’s a completely unique rendition, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo, and he wouldn’t attempt it again until the 1988 Tunnel of Love Express tour when it became a nightly highlight. A recording from the July 3, 1988, show in Stockholm, Sweden, was released on theEP along with other songs from the tour. The song sat dormant until 2025, when it became the nightly closer on the politically-charged Land of Hope and Dreams tour.
During an off-day before a show in Paris on the Tunnel of Love Express tour, Springsteen and Clemons made a guest appearance at the televised S.O. S. Racism Concert, where they shared the bill with Joan Baez, Youssou N’Dour, Burning Spear, and many other global acts. Springsteen’s four-song set included “The Promised Land,” “My Hometown,” CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising,” and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.
” He sang it again with Joan Baez later that year when the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour came to Oakland, California. These are the only two known times he’s performed the folk standard. Much like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is a standard that one might presume Bruce Springsteen has played dozens of times. In actuality, he’s only done it twice.
The first was the 1995 Berlin concert with Wolfgang Niedecken where he also did “Highway 61 Revisited,” and seven renditions of “Hungry Heart. ” Springsteen’s second “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” took place at the 2015 MusiCares tribute to Bob Dylan at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where Springsteen played with an all-star band that included Buddy Miller, Tom Morello, Don Was, Kenny Aronoff, and Greg Leisz.
Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen were both signed to Columbia Records by executive John Hammond. He took a big risk on both, and they remained grateful until the day he died in 1987. Springsteen came to the funeral, and sang a solo acoustic rendition of Dylan’s 1973 hit “Forever Young.
” In 1995, Dylan and Springsteen performed together for the very first time at a blowout concert marking the opening of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 1997, long before Donald Trump destroyed the institution, Bob Dylan received the Kennedy Center Honors alongside Charlton Heston, Lauren Bacall, opera singer Jessye Norman, and ballet dancer Edward Villella.
Springsteen had plenty of free time on his hands since the Tom Joad tour was over, and he wouldn’t kick off the E Street Band reunion run for well over a year, so he came by to honor Dylan with a solo, acoustic “The Times They Are A-Changin'” that Bob watched in the audience alongside his mother, Beatty, who died just three years later. The only other time Springsteen played the song was during a visit to Howard Stern’s studio in 2022, and it was just a tiny snippet.alongside Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt at the November 1990 Christic Institute benefit shows.
He performed it again in 1995 during the show in Berlin with Wolfgang Niedecken and His Leopardefellband. But the most memorable “Highway 61 Revisited” took place Oct. 4, 2003, when Dylan shocked the crowd at Shea Stadium by joining the E Street Band at the last stop oftour. It’s almost absurdly sloppy, and neither of them seem to know the words, even though Bob has done the song more 2,000 times, second only to “All Along the Watchtower.
” But nobody cared. The joy was seeing two of the greatest American songwriters of the century side by side. One year after Dylan made a fantastically messy unannounced guest appearance with the E Street Band, they were joined by Neil Young during a stop of the Vote for Change tour in St. Paul, Minnesota.
This one went much smoother, and it included blazing renditions of “Rockin’ in the Free World,” “Souls of the Departed,” and Dylan’s 1968 classic “All Along the Watchtower. ” This is a concert staple that everyone from the Dave Mathews Band to Phish, U2, and the Grateful Dead had in their live repertoire. But this is the only known time Springsteen attempted it at a headlining show.
Springsteen’s earliest years as a live performer with groups like the Castiles, Earth, and Child are poorly documented. It’s quite possible he played all sorts of Dylan covers in those years, including “Mr. Tambourine Man.
” But the first definite “Mr. Tambourine Man” took place at Tom Petty’s private 40th birthday celebration in Encino, California, when Springsteen shared the stage with Roger McGuinn, Jeff Lynne, and the Heartbreakers. He didn’t attempt it again until April 23, 2008, when thetour came to Orlando, Florida.
This was the first E Street Band show since the death of keyboardist Danny Federici, and everyone was still in a deep state of mourning, but McGuinn came out during the encores to lift everyone’s spirits. He led the band on the Byrds’ rendition of “Mr. Tambourine Man. ”Springsteen famously said the opening snare shot at the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone” sounded like “somebody kicked open the door to your mind.
” Once he heard it in the car with his mother back in 1965, his life was never the same. But discounting the 1988 Hall of Fame jam, which was just a cacophony of chaos, Springsteen didn’t play it until he guested with John Mellencamp at an Irvine, California, show in 1988. And he didn’t take the lead on the song until May 19, 2009, when he played it by request during a show at the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.
To celebrate the opening of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, and America’s semiquincentennial, a two-night concert was held at the OceanFirst Bank Center that took on the near-impossible task of honoring 250 years of American music history. On the second night, Springsteen teamed up with Sheryl Crow to cover theclassic “I Shall Be Released,” marking the first time he’d ever played it.
By wild coincidence, Dylan kicked off his summer tour the previous night by resurrecting thesong “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” for the first time since 2012. Bruce Springsteen began covering Bob Dylan in 1971, at least, and the love-fest continued all the way through the 2026 Land of Hope and Dreams tour, where “Chimes of Freedom” closed ever night. But Dylan only returned the favor a single time.
This was the infamous Toad’s Place concert in New Haven, Connecticut, where Dylan played an astounding 50 songs to a stunned crowd. One of them was a very sloppy, unrehearsed “Dancing in the Dark. ”The greatest Bruce Springsteen song that Bruce Springsteen didn’t write, “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” appears on the 1988album. Written largely by Dylan and Tom Petty, the song contains a Springsteen reference in practically every single line.
“It was not meant to mock him at all,” Petty toldin 2013.
“It started with Bob Dylan saying, ‘I want to write a song about a guy named Tweeter. And it needs somebody else. ’ I said, ‘The Monkey Man. ’ And he says, ‘Perfect, ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man.
” And he said, ‘Okay, I want to write the story and I want to set it in New Jersey. ’ I was like, ‘Okay, New Jersey. ’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, we could use references to Bruce Springsteen titles. ’ He clearly meant it as praise.
” We’ll take Petty at his word that they weren’t trying to poke even a little. And it remains our dream that one day Springsteen will play it live. If he ever does another “Stump the Band” tour with fans holding up sign requests, we’re going with “Tweeter and the Monkey Man.
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