Duane Eddy died on April 30, at the age of 86.
In a video posted to social media today, Bruce Springsteen paid tribute to the great guitarist Duane Eddy, who died on April 30, at the age of 86. You can watch it below.
“This is Bruce Springsteen, coming to you from Cardiff, Wales,” Springsteen says. “This is a belated note of gratitude and remembrance for the king of the twang guitar, Duane Eddy, who just recently passed away. Duane was a huge influence on my guitar stylings, and without Duane, there’s no this.”
Springsteen plays, at this point in the video, a bit of “Born to Run.”
“No ‘Born to Run’ riff,” Springsteen continues. “Duane, rest in peace. Play on in that big house of 1,000 guitars. We love you.”
Steven Van Zandt posted to X (Twitter) about Eddy, on May 3: “An instinctive genius and an amazingly humble cat considering the fact that if you went below the D string he owned it! His influence reached everybody including Italian legend Ennio Morricone. There’s no Good Bad OR Ugly without Duane Eddy.”
In his 2016 autobiography “Born to Run,” Springsteen wrote that at the time of his life when he was writing that song, “At night, I’d switch off the lights and drift away with Roy Orbison, Phil Spector or Duane Eddy lullabying me to dreamland. These records now spoke to me in a way most late-sixties and early-seventies rock music failed to. Love, work, sex and fun. …
“From Duane Eddy came the guitar sound, ‘Tramps like us …,’ then ‘ba BA … BA ba,’ the twanging guitar lick.”
Springsteen and The E Street Band will perform at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, May 5.
Here is Springsteen’s video:
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