That "I've just seen the Rock and Roll future" (NOT "the future of Rock and Roll" as is often misquoted) was written by Jon Landau, then a reviewer at Rolling Stone. He parlayed that highly-influential review into a management gig with Bruce. My favorite review of a Springsteen album (Born To Run) was in Creem Magazine (I don't recall who wrote it), the heading of which read something like "Consumer warning---contains no actual Rock and Roll. An amazing simulation!". I like the review because I, too, do not consider what Bruce does to be Rock n' Roll.
Some may find my definition too narrow and specific, but to be R & R the music must contain, I feel, elements of both it's sources---Hillbilly and Blues, both Rural musics. It's true that Blues also has an urban strain, but it was not yet in much evidence at the birth of R & R. Urban Blues developed when the Southern Blacks left the South for Chicago (and to a less extent Los Angeles), to work in the automotive plants during the day and play music in the bars at night. To rise above the ambient noise level of the big city (and the noisy patrons of the bars!) they switched from the acoustic guitars they had brought with them from the South to electric ones plugged into small amplifiers, and assembled a rhythm section---a drummer and bassist, and often a pianist.
What Elvis and the other white Sun Records artists (Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison) heard locally in Tennessee when they would sneak into the "colored" bars in the black part of town (it's tempting to say "on the other side of the tracks", but that would be incorrect; Elvis LIVED on the other side of the tracks, in Public Housing) was very rural (Howlin' Wolf, etc.). What they and the Rockabillies who followed did was combine that Rural Blues with the Hillbilly (itself inherently Rural) they had heard all their lives growing up (The Carter Family, Bill Monroe, etc.), creating a hybrid Pop music---Rock n' Roll. The people who say that Elvis and the other early white Rock n' Rollers stole the music from Blacks who had already created and were playing it, are not acknowledging the white Hillbilly element in early Rock n' Roll. Without it, it's Jump Blues. I love Jump Blues (I've played a lot of Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner songs in Bands!), but it's not R & R, sorry. Listen to Elvis' version of Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky". With that recording, Elvis CREATED Rock n' Roll! Chuck Berry wasn't recording yet, but he came along shortly thereafter with his signature style of guitar playing (by FAR the most important and influential guitar player in Rock n' Roll's history), and there you have it---THE Rock n' Roll recipe!
I hear neither Blues nor Hillbilly in Springsteen's music. His roots are Folk (Woody Guthrie is obviously his biggest influence) and the sounds found in Urban recordings, especially those on Atlantic Records. Ben E. King, The Drifters, Doo Wop, etc. I'm not a big fan of Folk (finding it too "earnest", serious, academic, self-conscious, and just plain boring. Except for Dylan, who elevated it above all those failings.), and though I love the music of Atlantic Records as much as anyone, Springsteen's mix of it with Folk just doesn't push my musical buttons, so to speak. I respect him to death, though!
