And Dino Danelli was literally the greatest and most exciting drummer in all of rock and roll. Everybody who came to town went and studied Dino, including Keith Moon and all the rest. And Felix introducing the whole B3 organ thing, Gene was a great guitar player.



They were individually great, and together they were the first white soul band. So we were getting at that great soul music, very very close to the source. Which was a wonderful way to translate it to us young white kids.



Of course, just a year later, we’d be getting into the original guys . The Temptations, and Sam & Dave and all the rest… But at that point, it was strictly a new kind of music. We didn’t know w here it was was coming from . We wouldn’t know where it was coming from until later. B ut at that point, It was the most exciting live band ever ,

playing very soulful music with two of the greatest lead singers, and then they started writing and became phenomenal writers on top of that . They had it all all . And the influence remains. You can trace the E Street Band directly back to the Rascals.



Q: How so? Just because they were from New Jersey, or musically as well?



A. There's the Jersey thing, which is superficial . But the musical thing is quite deep . The B3 organ alone was something straight out of the church . So you have that combination of gospel and soul music right there, in

that instrument which, of course, we had with Danny Federici. One of the few guys in Jersey who had a B3 , and once he got to know it, and knowing a B3 is like the equivalent of a sitar for a guitar player , It's very very complex, there's a million subtleties to it, a lot of different sounds and and textures to it, and when you get good at it, youre really quite unique. And Danny was coming to it, of course, diirectly from Felix Cavaliere . That’s where that came from.



Once we had the organ and piano, that immediately changed the genre from rock to gospel-based and soul-based. Rock bands didn’t have two keyboards, if they had any . Rock bands by definition were guitar based

Maybe would have occasional complimentary keyboards on the record. But the Stones were the archetypal rock band: Two guitars, bass and drums , and occasionally add some keyboards. To have the keyboard as a main part added to the instrumentation put it into another category .