One of rock’s biggest instrumental hits was a complete accident.
One night, between songs at a gig, Billy Butler, Bill Doggett’s guitarist, improved a riff–the one that opens the song below. But when the audience began to dance to it, he kept it going. He ended up keeping it going for a full five minutes, with band members alternating solos all the while.
But while the band might have been finished with the song after five minutes, the audience wasn’t. Someone requested an encore performance, and the band obliged. And then another audience member requested it. And then another.
By the end of the night, they’d reportedly played their improvised jam a full ten times, and Doggett knew he had a potential hit on his hands. The band recorded it, and the resulting two-sided single became a massive hit and the top-selling R&B song of 1956.
Featuring a prominent guitar riff and saxophone solo, it’s not surprising that the E Street Band had “Honky Tonk” in their arsenal. It’s only surprising that it took a technical problem to prompt them to play it.
One night in New Orleans during the Darkness Tour, the sound system went on the fritz and the band needed an instrumental they could play while the techs worked on restoring the vocals. Bruce asked the band “What instrumentals do we know?” and within seconds the band was in full “Honky Tonk” mode.
For a completely (and suitably) improv performance, the band nailed it–which leads one to believe that while they might never have played it at a show before, they must have played it in rehearsal.
And yet to this day, we have no record of Bruce and the E Street Band playing “Honky Tonk” before or ever after.
Honky Tonk
First performed: July 16, 1978 (New Orleans, LA)
Last performed: July 16, 1978 (New Orleans, LA)
