More cowbell!
Or any, actually.
The first time Bruce Springsteen covered “Honky Tonk Women,” it was missing that key ingredient.
It also technically was not a full performance, but because I have a predilection for contemporaneous interpretations, I’ll allow it.
The Rolling Stones released “Honky Tonk Women” as a non-album single in the summer of 1969. It climbed to the number one slot on the Billboard Hot 100 in late August and refused to start its climbdown for most of September.
It didn’t drop out of the Hot 100 until after Halloween. Barely two months later, Springsteen was performing it on stage with his band Steel Mill as a mid-song interlude during “Dancing in the Street.”
Fifty-five years on, its easy to dismiss a performance like this as a throwback cover, but to that South Amboy club audience, it was thrillingly new. (Heck even, “Dancing in the Street” was only six years old at the time.)
What’s shocking, though, is that with only one obscure exception, Bruce never covered it on his own stage.
He’s teased it from time to time during the introduction to “Darlington County” (which owes more than a little debt to “Honky Tonk Women”)…
But the only time he’s ever played it in full was in Berlin in 1995, during a head-scratching but undeniably great team-up club gig with Wolfgang Niedecken.
Okay, that’s pretty honky tonk for Germany.
Technically, he did perform it one other time, and with the original artists to boot. But you’ll have to watch and listen carefully to pick him out.
Keep your eyes open for Bruce Springsteen in the background, lending his backing vocals and guitar to the all-star assemblage jamming with the Rolling Stones at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1989.
Honky Tonk Women
First performed: January 18, 1971 (South Amboy, NJ)
Last performed: July 9, 1995 (Berlin, Germany)
© July 27. 2026
